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aconflagrationofmyown · 7 months

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Patch It Up Baby

A Sarge and lil Mama fic

Summary: It’s 1977 and Jesse Presley has never loved his family more or had more chances to prove it. When America’s last dynasty implodes, it‘s up to the Presley heir to mend and rebuild what’s left. His first and least glamorous commission is to take his little sister Daisy Mae to rehab in Texas after she embraced their daddy’s rock n’ roll lifestyle a little too thoroughly. In the great game-plan of getting mama and daddy back together, keeping up appearances and bolstering up his siblings’ spirits, what Jesse doesn’t expect is Donna. Just…Donna.

Warnings: mentions of past hard drug use, mentions of withdrawls, a brief but recounted callous comment encouraging death, children dealing with parent’s divorce, publicity of said divorce, paparazzi stalking, a panic attack, Jesse being a bit hardcore like his father to a stalker and mentions of his previous violence, brief sexual scene and occasional mentions of sex.

My thanks to all the dears who helped me so much with this, who added their lines to this and aided in the plot, @prompted-wordsmith @elvisabutler @stylespresleyhearted @ab4eva @butlersxbirdy @eliseinmemphis to mention a wee few

NOTE: In this chapter the baby that is referenced as growing inside Elaine was conceived during Elvis and Elaine’s divorce, and ends up being Danny. Jesse refers to his upcoming sibling as a “last” and “surprise” baby, which he was. However he was neither the last nor the only surprise for Elaine and Elvis. Danny came and a few years later was followed by Shiloh. So uh, that means better times must be around the bend, right? But of course, Jesse wouldn’t know that. ;)

2nd Generation Refresher: as this is out of order and missing many key pieces, I understand it may not make perfect sense yet but I hope y’all enjoy getting a glimpse into the family later on. You’ll meet Elvis and Elaine over the phone and the older kids as they grow into their maturity. Everyone is a bit spread out in their different pursuits in this one compared to the last one shot when it was all young, familial domestic chaos, but there’s little updates in here I think y’all will enjoy. Xoxo

Jesse’s long and ringed forefinger pecks peevishly at the Rehab Center’s grimy rotary dial. He waits for the phone connection to be made with studied nonchalance, leaning casually against the bleach white wall in a tiny alcove, checking like a studied dandy for dirt under his nails. It’s a photogenic sorta lean, one boot crossed over the other and bell bottoms flaring in a way that naturally carries the eye to the belt buckle at his tapered waist.

Daddy taught him well enough how to cut a figure, and daddy was the reason why Jesse had any need to pretend nonchalance when calling home.

Home, he wants to scoff.

Not Graceland while this fiasco lasted.

Graceland was too storied and way too watched. Home was Palm Springs and warm weather and privacy to figure out what the hell the rest of them were gonna do with their lives and if mama and daddy could still make it. Together.

Home, where mama could cook this last little one that precious few in the outside world knew was coming, home where daddy could eat crow and stay sober.

Jesse’s teeth ache from the way he grinds them in his stress, he rubs at his cheek and wills the tenseness away, if he answered with clenched teeth mama would be able to tell. And mama would worry. And mama had done enough worrying to nearly cost her her life.

“Hello?” came through the receiver.

Jesse felt guilty for one brief second at his immense relief that she’d been the one to answer, not daddy, but then a flood of very legitimate grievances against one Elvis Presley came flooding in and he shrugged it off. “Hey mama.” he kept his voice down but he couldn’t help the smile that lifted his tone at just hearing her sound so soft and rested. “How’re you doin’?” he ventured, keeping an eye at the nurses and patients passing nearby, always aware of potential eavesdroppers.

“I’m good baby, I’m real good, how’re you holdin’ up?”

Jesse listens for any trace of a fib in her tone but for once she doesn’t sound strained when she says she’s good. He’ll take it that physically she must be finally good for the first time this whole pregnancy. “Thas good.” he whispers, cupping the receiver closer, “He takin’ care of you, mama? He’s being gentle a-and he’s -he bein’ respectful?”

Of her space and her nerves and her whole taken for granted self. He’s picked a cuticle till it’s bleeding on him, wincing he sticks it into his mouth, full lips curling around it, something his mama gave him in a face strikingly similar to his father’s. The scowl he sends at a lurking relation of some inmate in this druggie bedlam is entirely his father’s and he’s grateful for that one singular legacy. It’s come in real handy as folks come up to him and pepper him with questions on the football field like:

-is your dad strung out on coke or heroin these days? is it true what happened to your sister, man? did your daddy force himself or is your mama so pathetic she couldn’t say no to a man she was divorcin? got anythin’ I can trade off ya, Presley?-

Benign, regular family questions. Sorta questions most 20 year olds have gotta answer, for sure. He sucks harder and tastes copper round his finger.

“Oh yes. Really darling, I’m fine. We’re fine, in fact.” Mama’s talking again. That’s a bold statement. To refer to them as “we” and to say they’re fine. She’s not mean enough to lie to him now, not now it’s all crashed and crumbled and they’re trying to pick up the pieces together. His little cupcake world of happy families is sorta shot to hell by this point, anyways. Least Mama can do is be truthful about it, and learning from his daddy’s mistakes, Jesse chooses to believe her when she says she’s well.

That they’re good.

“Ok, good.” he breathes for what he realizes must be the first time in awhile, his fingers are numb and his lips feel tingly, he’s gotta stop doing that, he’s gonna pass out one day, he can feel it. “The baby?”

“Fine. We’re all fine, Butnin, I asked how you were.” she reminds him gently.

“I’m fine, mama.” he is, now that he’s back to breathing. Breathing is good for one’s health. He’s gonna keep it up. “Daisy is settling in alright, too.” he beats Mama to the question, glossing over some of the more queasy aspects of heroin rehabilitation. “T-the nurse here, uh, D-Donna, she uh, she said we oughta be over the worst of it. The uh, initial withdrawls and such.”

“Was it bad, Jesse?” poor mama, how’d it come to this that she has to ask it.

“Yeah, fairly.” he admits, recalling his baby sister’s foaming mouth and dilated eyes and seizing throat. Holding her as she scratched at herself like a maniac, forced her to tear at him instead. Donna, the nurse, has got him fixed up with plasters all up and down his forearms and hands. “But that part’s worn off.” he assumes mama knows what he means, if she hasn’t dealt with it directly with daddy she at least knows of it, even if his were all prescribed. “She’s just real sleepy now. Sleeps all day and most the night. I try to keep her talking and singing and playing stuff so, uh, so that she’s tired, ya know? So she’ll sleep heavy. She’ll get better quicker. That’s what Donna says, the more she sleeps the faster she’ll detox.”

“My sweet boy.” Mama murmurs and that’s compensation enough for how little sleep he’s gotten this past week and everything else.

“Happy to do it.” he mumbles, and he means it.

“I know,” she answers earnestly, “and we’re grateful.” they both let that lie and after a minute she speaks up again, a saucy undercurrent to her tone that throws him for a loop. It's been such ages since he heard it: “So, this Donna, you’ve mentioned her last time and before that, too. Is she an experienced nurse, dear?”

Jesse groans into his hand only to realize it’s amplifying the sound through the speaker. In his loneliness here he may have forgotten how obvious it is that he’s latched on like a limpet to the one genuine human who’ll give him something besides canned answers when his sister aspirates on her own spit in the bathroom floor.

“I-I-I lost one sister this way already.” he’d gasped to sweet little Donna and her baby cheeked self as they peeled Daisy off the floor and got her on a stretcher, “Jo, Jo died from this.”

Not a drug withdrawal, of course. Jo had drowned inside mama. But still.

-Aspirating.

It held a bizarre terror for him, that fancy word, his whole childhood and the whole nine months of waiting for Marie to come out healthy. He’d never forget asking his daddy one day at table how they could be sure this new baby wouldn’t drown, too. Daddy had gotten so angry before bursting into tears at the head of the table. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before or since. All that grief just stored up, and him scared as any of them for a repeat and no kid’s tactless inquiry and it all surface. “We don’t know.” Mama had said and daddy cut her off harshly, “No, Elaine!” he’d near yelled, “No, don’t even say it. This one’s gonna live, I'm demandin’ it.” Mama had bit her lip and replied softly, “Then we’d better start praying so.”

And that’s what they did every night for eight months, Daddy led them all in laying their hands on mama's growing belly and prayed and prayed until Marie came screaming into the world with clear lungs. And so Jesse got himself on the floor and beat at Daisy’s back while praying and Donna did it too, right with him.

“Uh, Donna’s pretty young but she’s capable.” he answers mama’s question.

“How old?” there’s nothing sly in her tone now, just genuine concern for the quality of her daughter’s care takers.

“She’s nineteen, mama,” Jesse admits with a wince, “she’s my age.”

“Ah.” and a long pause follows.

“There’s others too, but she’s the most eager, most -caring.”

“That’s good. Thank God he sent someone for y’all. I knew He would.”

“Yeah, she’s, she’s real sweet mama.” he assures.

“Oh is she?” there’s a smirk in her tone now.

“Nineteen and sweet.” that’s daddy’s voice coming through the phone from a distance and Jesse starts to stiffen. “Does this Donna happen to be pretty, too, son?”

Jesse is back to grinding his teeth and it sends a spark of pain up to his temple.

“Elvis!” His mama honest to god titters and it’s been such a while since Jesse heard that sound he suddenly feels like forgiving his daddy a few things just for that. Just for bringing that back. It makes his eyes sting.

Donna has hair the color of mamas but with a touch more red in it and it curls and fans in such a messy and unstudied way as to remind him of an artist, all while smashed beneath a nurse's cap. And her smile is sunshine incarnate and her eyes are as blue as his and her lips as plump as strawberries and she’s the first person he feels like he can trust in ages. Not that he’s trusted her with much besides showing he’s at the end of his rope with exhaustion and emotion. But she never missed a beat.

“I-I-I don’t mean to keep mentioning her it’s just-“ he bites his lip harshly before deciding to be frank, “it’s hard to trust anyone. Even here everyone is gossiping about us, they think I can’t hear ‘em but I do and it’s all the time and I ain’t going up to one of those tongue wags and asking them to help Daisy when she’s that vulnerable. I just can’t. So -so it’s Donna.” he explains.

It’s dead silent on the other end for a length of time that oughta be uncomfortable but instead it soothes something in Jesse’s soul to think that he got his point across enough to shut his smartass father up for a whole minute.

“I’m sorry this is so damn hard for you, son,” it comes in a deep rumble and bitter as he is, Jesse feels his hands sweat and his cheeks too, or else that sting has overflowed and he’s crying. In public. “I’m sorry you’re havin’ to pay for my sins.”

“I-I-I’m just glad you’re back.” he croaks and looks about the place frantically to make sure he’s unobserved.

It had been so good that day daddy walked through the threshold at Graceland looking twenty pounds lighter and stone cold sober, there to sort out his children, there to intervene for Daisy. The day mama’s body gave out on her and she puddled like so much water on Graceland’s foyer floor, as if her body trusted Elvis to take care of her family even if her mind wasn’t sure he’d forgiven her for the divorce. Daddy had been perfect that day, picked mama up like a baby and took her to the hospital, made press statements like a ordinary human sayin simply that he’d “jacked it all up and was here to make amends.”

Mama and him tucked off to California to grow that baby that made her faint and Jesse was charged with Daisy and bringing her here to Dallas. It had felt like old times, Sergeant Presley and all that famous stage presence ordering them all to battle stations.

It wasn’t till later that Jesse wondered how the hell the man had the gall to show up and demand respect. Turns out mama had kept that fire going bright enough all the kids just fell in line like nothing had ever been askew. Jesse wonders if now he can go back to being nineteen again. He’s a little scared to hope. That’s the worst of it, he’s not bitter, he’s scared.

Twenty year olds have futures with little nurses named Donna. For now Jesse is not a normal almost-twenty year old.

“I’m glad you’re back.” he repeats to his daddy, “Please…stay…back.”

It’s what he begs Daisy when she tries to bribe him to sneak her illegal shit next morning.

“Enough of that, you’re nearly sober and you’re gonna stay sober. Please stay good, f’me! Please.” he begs and weedles until her big blue eyes go from watery to scornful and she has fun at his pathetic expense but Jesse doesn’t mind. It gives her something to do, teasing him for being a blubbering softy over her. It distracts her. It assures Daisy she’s wanted, that somebody -more than one in fact- would be devastated if she didn’t win this fight.

She’s become a skeleton as the detox racks her. Hospital food tasting bad on a good appetite, it’s ever worse on a poor one and Jesse tears out clumps of his now shaggy black hair in desperation to have her stay nourished. He’s not supposed to be sleeping there overnight but Donna fibs for him. He’s not supposed to sneak shit into the clinic but Donna takes him back to her house, lets him use her stove to cook pancakes -Daisy’s favorite- and helps him smuggle them in under his leather jacket. All for the price of a motorcycle ride.

Jesse’s belly burned for nights after where her little hands had overlocked to hold onto him during the ride, burning him and cooking his guts hot and wanting even beneath the leather and the layers.

“Donna’s got the same spatulas you use, mama.” He’s reporting by the third week.

“The baby’s the size of an cantelope.” she reports back.

“What’ve y’all been doin?” he tries to make conversation and even to his own ears he sounds suspicious. When did he start to sound like Jack? How much more could daddy possibly screw this up? Knock his ex-wife up doubly? Like a cat? Jesse snorts and covers with a cough.

“Talkin’ mostly, floatin in the pool.” he can hear her shrug from here, “It’s terribly hot.”

“Mmm.” he sympathizes.

“We got a marriage license yesterday.” Daddy pipes up and Jesse lets out a stifled sob of relief. The gang is back together, it would seem.

“Cool.” he rasps before Donna passes and then approaches in concern for his blotchy face.

“You ok?” she asks gently.

“Yeah, yeah fine,” Jesse scrambles, “hay fever. Killer.”

“Who’s that, Butnin?” mama asks.

“Uh, umm nobo-“

“Is that Donna?” she guesses and he winces for the umpteenth time at this damn phone.

“Mamaaaa.” he begs.

“Can I talk to her? Please, please!” she begs in turn.

“Mama no!” Jesse pleads right back and Donna backs away with that keen sense of intruding while unable to suppress her fond smile at this cute, boyish side to such a burdened young man.

By week four Donna and him have taken to walking Daisy along the corridors, getting her strength back and making her move, her always lanky frame a featherweight between them now. They all share a laugh at how Daisy towers over Donna’s tiny self, has to hunch to use the petite nurse’s shoulder while Jesse’s height makes her strain to reach. They can use a laugh, the stares they get as Daisy’s famous face gets hauled past in pajamas and socks makes Jesse lose all appetite afterwards, his fingers going cold and his lips numb. He’d like to punch something but everything here is breakable, his sister and his family’s reputation, most of all.

It’s not fair to her and it’s more work for her but this loss of appetite worries Donna and by the end of their long day’s shift they’re together again as she force feeds Jesse tacos from a nearby stand, as they walk around the old part of the city and inadvertently become friends. He may have sucked some mango salsa from her fingers, but neither of them mention it. Too busy watching the others' faces as the sun dies out and eventually he drives her home, her body tucked behind his on his bike, wind whipping her hair that’s escaped his offered helmet.

By the fifth night of this routine he steals a kiss. It’s not hard fought, she leans into him eagerly and for the first time in his life there’s nothing about conquest in the act for him, it’s just…nice. So nice he tries it the next night while they’re sat on his bike, parked by a dance hall. It’s less nice and more like licking fire this time, suddenly his sweet intentions for her are a burning mass of need and that night Jesse goes back to his dinky motel alone and engages in wasteful practices in the shower. Donna had asked where he was staying and when he told her she’d been aghast.

“I just prefer something more -normal.” he’d said.

“Sure but -but that place is dangerous, Jesse.” she’d been so concerned for him and he gobbled it up like a starved man. “Normal folks don’t stay there even.”

“Maybe I’m not normal.” he’d quipped and Donna thought about his mother and her mafia connections, the ones with the dirt that sank Colonel Parker during the divorce, she thought of the bike clubs that Jesse is seen frequenting in the magazines, she thinks about how far the Presley’s might go to reconnect with normal folks -she holds her tongue. “Don’t worry ‘bout me, lil, I can handle myself.” he’d assured her as he thumbed out her frown.

“I know.” Donna had replied, “I mean, I’ve read about how you handle yourself.” and she’d run an admiring hand down his bicep before kissing him again.

That was another thing he liked about Donna, she didn’t play stupid about his family and she also didn’t pry. She’d read about him and Jack bustin’ those guys asses for what they did to Rosalee and she mentioned it. And left it at that. Jesse liked that maybe most of all. He also liked how everything he’d trusted her with never got related by anyone else. No nursing staff gossip or a sweet insider tip for a newspaper. Donna took his trust and tucked it tight inside her chest, right in that tender heart of her’s. He liked that about her, right next to her sweet smile and her warm nature and the feel of her breasts smashed to his back on a long ride.

“You’re in love.” Daisy goaded him the next day as she scribbled in the journal he had gotten her. They encouraged writing here and Daisy’s material had gradually shifted from juvenile doodles and giant block letters proclaiming “JESSE IS AN ASSHOLE” to something that looked alarmingly like stanzas as he snooped over the top of the pages.

Jesse colored brightly at her goad and adamantly refuted it. “That’s the drugs talkin’.” he joked.

“So you’re just passin’ time with her.”

“I-I-I dunno, Daisy.” he spluttered, “It’s not exactly hoppin’ here when you’re out cold. Can only call mama so many times a day. Gotta talk to someone.”

“Does mama hate me?” she asked suddenly and he stopped cold in the middle of tuning her guitar to stare at her dumbly. “I mean -I deserve it I just…”

“No she don’t hate you!” he found his voice, “Don’t be an idiot. That self pityin’ mope don’t help the beauty of those dark circles none. She’s just wore out.”

“I wore her out.”

“Mm well, we all had a hand.” Jesse fudges.

“Ella told me to just get on with dyin.” she reveals, and Jesse puts his pick down for good this time, taking a deep breath and trying to listen coolly. “When mama was taken to the hospital and layin’ there unresponsive, Ella said I’d brought her to that, said if I was so intent on killin’ myself that I should get on with it and spare mama the suspense.”

“Well,” Jesse tries for a moderate tone, “that was a shitty thing to say.” he concedes, “And you -don’t pay Ella no attention. She’s worried and scared to death half times that Johnny won’t come back from ‘Nam. And now she’s takin’ care of Marie on top of her own baby. She’s just a little vinegary, thas all, pregnancy hormones. Took it out on you.”

“I think she’s scared the guy she married in such a rush is gonna come back.” Daisy growled. She crossed out a line angrily and Jesse was really starting to worry about those scribbles.

Jesse let her finish before he asked, “Why’s that?” It’s not like he got much thinking done lately between the court hearings and getting his head knocked about on the turf.

“She don’t love him.” Daisy rolled her eyes heavenward in an action that mama would have looked on with annoyance. Jesse glared at Daisy in her stead.

“People love in different ways, Daisy.” he sighed even as he had no bullets to fight her argument, Ella had left in uncharacteristically rash fashion, seemingly unable to take the atmosphere at home anymore. “And she says John’s a good man.”

“All that means is he don’t beat her.” Daisy snarked.

“Well, that’s a step towards romance.” Jesse joked back and they let the subject lie.

Each day Daisy gets stronger and writes more and more in that little book. Not that Jesse sees her at it most times, it’s just the pen she wedges in to keep her place gets closer and closer to the middle, and then towards the back. Snooping isn’t an option but he imagines they’ve got a lotta heartbreak on those pages, maybe bled out like lyrics.

Now days he makes the walk with her without Nurse Donna, and it’s both sad and a victory in one. Now that she’s strong enough to notice the stares Daisy takes delight in feebly flipping off her voyeurs and that’s a fight Jesse doesn't have it in him to win. If it makes her grin, he allows it, that stupid, crooked little boy grin that his daddy plopped right onto a young girl’s face. She’s perfect, she’s perfect and getting healthy and the stares don’t matter much. Not till he hears a voice he’s become very attuned to, snap at some idling nurses:

“Haven’t you got any work to do?”

And his head spins like a top on his neck and sure enough, that was Donna, temper snapping for what might be the first time in her sweet life, and Jesse feels his tingly gratitude down to his very toes.

“She’s alright, that one.” Daisy smirks beside him and little does he know her enthusiasm stems partly from last night when Daisy gave a little sisterly admonition to Miss Donna that her brother liked her and if she didn’t treat his soft heart gentle like, then Daisy was gonna unstring her guitar and end her with a metal cord.

“How ya doin, mama?” he asks her on a Tuesday and even to himself his voice sounds better. He may be far more tired than he was when he first came in here but his relief at Daisy’s progress colors his tone in hope.

“Doing good Butnin, real good.” she sounds good alright, more than good and Jesse uncurls his fist and let’s himself relax a little as he gives his daily report on Daisy. And Donna.

“Rosalee told me she’s gonna pop in and see y’all.” Mama informs him.

“Good time for it,” Jesse hums, “Mae Mae’s better enough to chat but she could use the encouragement.”

“I bet.” Mama sounds sad again. That won’t do.

Jesse lip curls up in mischief as he asks next, “Jack been by to see ya?” he inquires about that little sea creature hybrid he’s been missing and must call brother, “Brought any dolphins home to meet ya yet?”

“Oh Jesse! Stop!” she laughs a sweet peal of laughter and Jesse smugly twirls the phone cord round and round at his success, “He’s coming to dinner tonight, he has been too caught up before, he’s been out on the ocean for six weeks! I’m scared to see the state of his skin!”

“Welllll,” Jesse drawls, “No way the sun could burn that dimple off so, he’ll be fine.”

“He actually saved someone’s life, uh, day before yesterday.” Daddy’s voice rumbles through the receiver and Jesse’s eyes roll backwards a little at the way he’s never caught his parents separate on this trip, not even once. He can picture the patio phone and its loungers and its umbrellas right now, and imagines that daddy is probably cradling mama’s belly like he can push that magic healing through the skin and make that baby the healthiest infant California’s ever seen.

“Did he now?” Jesse admires, “Makin’ us proud, ain’t he?”

“Yeah, hauled someone who’d been adrift for ages, right up into his boat.” Daddy elaborates without a hint of mockery in his proud tone and Jesse smiles to himself.

“Bout time he put those muscles to use, s’not like he uses them when carrying snails around.” he teases back because having a serious and admiring conversations about Jackson might be a step too far in the healing process. Not this early, mama resting and then getting remarried and cooking a baby is plenty for the plate. Conceding that Jack isn’t a walking disaster is a little too much too soon. Heroics aside.

By week six at the Center they’re into behavioral shit and Jesse can freely admit this isn't the Presley family’s strong suit, but he’s gotta hand it to his sister that she is less preoccupied during it than he is. Out of respect for Rosalee’s interest in the same profession, Daisy pays a decent amount of attention to the therapist’s counsel. Jesse would be more attentive if the first fifty pages of Red West’s freshly published tell-all of his family’s secrets wasn’t banging around in his head. Somehow, somehow it’s not even the dirt that gets to him, makes him stagger out into the hall after a while and crumple against a cart and let the world go dim.

It’s the sweet stuff, the gentle stuff, the stuff that was only ever supposed to be theirs as a family and that fuckers like Red West were goddamn privlidged to be witnesses to, spilled out for all the world to pick apart and psycho-analyze. He hasn’t told Daisy and now she’s asleep and as he’s on the floor in the deserted hall he finds there’s really nothing stopping him from doing what he wants. So he panics and lets himself work up to a dim eyed fury and only the cool shock of a wet rag against his neck brings him back from it.

“Just breathe for me, honey.” That little Texan ascent is saying as he gulps into a brown bag with the embarrassed realization he’s had a panic attack. Sure Daddy had them at his age, too, but that was to go perform in front of hundreds of folks. This is just from reading Red Fuckin’ West’s bad prose. He can hear himself laughing, hiccuping little laughs of derision at himself and it, and Donna cooing all the while.

“You can’t drive your bike like that.” she points to his still shaky hands half an hour later.

It’s comforting watching Donna shut the place down, not that it’s totally abandoned at night, not at all, but just watching her finish up her duties and stash away her papers and arrange her workspace feels as if the heart of the place, the vitality if it, is turning in for the night. And he’s going with it.

He follows Donna like a lost puppy and she doesn’t mind it, he’s sweet and soft spoken and no matter what she does she only gets weak chuckles from him.

His boisterous charm and tired joviality is threadbare and she feels like it’s the right thing to do to slip her hand into the crook of Jesse’s elbow, to gently tow him out of the Center’s fluorescent lit maze and out into the night. He giggles at her guiding him into the passenger side, a soft little noise of trusting gentleness that is bizarrely attractive in such a capable man. He folds his long limbs into her dinky car and waits patiently for her to get into her side.

“What?!” Donna asks him as Jesse keeps gazing at her with big blue eyes and droopy pink lips as she turns the key and fidgets with the windows to get some air flow, “Am I gonna have to buckle you in?” she teases at the way he’s just melted into the seat, head leaned against the headrest and long limbs folded where they first flopped.

“Mmmmmaybeee.” Jesse drags it out and giggles again -and she knows it is common to be a little drunk, a little silly, a little loopy after a panic attack as severe as the one she found him having, but she’s never heard of it or seen it be so cute. Against her better judgment to coddle a grown man, Donna leans over the small console between them and reaches across Jesse for the seatbelt, getting the strongest whiff of his natural musk and spicy cologne she’s ever gotten, it makes the musty cab of the car feel ten times hotter than it was moments ago and she fumbles in her haste to hurry up and distance herself.

It’s silly, Donna thinks, she’s being silly to find this procedure of bucking him in a intimate thing when they’ve done far more, when they’ve kissed heatedly on his bike and danced wildly to that new Elton John record in her off time. They’ve been more forward than this but somehow his pliant and drowsy magnetism has her heart thudding and her body responding in ways not even his glorious kissing could produce. But the way his breath puffs from his lips and the way he looks at her as if she’s everything he wants in this moment makes it hard to brush this interaction off as a nurse with her patient. Or a friend helping a friend. Donna brought Jesse in because he was physically unfit to drive, she is being kind because he’s obviously had an awful day, he’s loose and pliant because of exhaustion -these are familiar things to Donna, they are integral to her vocation and her expertise.

And yet there’s those eyes of his, soft and burning all at once, catching her skin on fire and soothing it right after.

It does nothing to make her breathing calm as she drags the buckle across his soft yet lean belly, down the taper of his waist, so willowy and elegant that it makes her want to cry in envy, sliding it to latch at his hip.

“Donna.” he rasps before she can pull away, his hand shakily coming up to touch her cheek and she stalls, feeling as scared as a kid for what he’ll say next, “You take the sunshine with ya, everywhere you go. M’sorry for those poor suckers we’ve left.” he jerks his head towards the blazing ball of light that is the Center amidst the dark parking lot and Donna blinks at the compliment, absorbing it slowly as his fingers on her cheek do their best to wipe her mind blank.

“Daisy is gonna be fine.” Donna assures, scrambling to order her reassurances for maximum comfort, “She’s getting stronger and she’ll be asleep the whole time we’re gone. A-and we gotta take care of you, ok? Can’t have you going down too, can we?”

“Okay.” he whispers and she realizes her hand is still pressed to his belly. “I-I’ve had a bad day.” he admits, and it’s the first self focused thing she’s ever heard out of this forever uncomplaining boy.

“Let’s uh, let’s get you home -rested. Let’s get you rested.” she propels herself back over to her side of the car and jerks the gear more forcefully than needed before driving them out. She’s not sure they actually talked about it or that it was agreed to verbally but they somehow both know they’re headed to her rented house, the place with the ratty sofa and the duck taped windows and the malfunctioning stove that Jesse cajoled into working long enough to make Daisy batch after batch of fluffy pancakes. She had nearly sprung on him back then, taken him down to the floor and ravished him for being such a nice human being.

The bar might be low for men, but since that day, Donna had learned that Jesse Presley was more than lean legs, a nice ass, a gorgeous face and an earnest desire to please. Jesse Presley was a good man. And so Donna felt no qualms about taking him to her house, plopping him down on the sofa after fetching sheets, and letting his grabby hands tug her down atop him for a goodnight kiss. A kiss that lasted, and lasted, and lasted. Lasted until he was kissing between her breasts, the neck of her tshirt tugged down in a way that would deform its shape forever as she was idiotically scrambling to undo his clunky belt, eager to see the expanse of perfect, golden skin that his face and neck promised.

Donna had never gone this far with a man before but some inner voice told her it was a once in a lifetime chance, not to sleep with a Presley, but to ease a boy who needs so much comfort right now he literally can’t breathe. Jesse’s kisses don’t stop and she doesn’t try to make them, he’s inexorable while being slow, and it’s a combination she’d never witnessed before. Perhaps if he’d rushed her, or made an outright pass, she’d have had time to consider, to deny. But he just kissed her and kissed her as his hands mapped and worshiped her, caressing her all the way from his allotted couch to her bed until she was beneath him, accepting him inside her body like she had let him in her heart.

Idly Donna wondered how many girls his father took and left with the same good intentions, winders if the generations will just keep at it, on and on. It doesn’t feel trite though, she’s not sure if it’s because it’s her first time or because of how intensely tender he is, or the way he cries partway through the act.

“Hay fever, sorry.” Jesse insists weakly.

“Killer this time of year.” Donna agrees, stroking down the sweaty muscles of his rippling back, “For me it’s the cedar.”

She feels trusted with his tears, cherished by his revenant kisses, and never once does he give her cause to regret it, to panic. It’s slow and needy, strong but kind, the whole way through -just like him. Donna’s eyes sting at the realization he’s giving her such a sweet first time, even if he doesn’t know it. She finds herself sniffling with him over the thought that it might be the only time.

“Thank you, thank you.” he gushes, sweet as anything in a thin whisper, after he scrambles out of her and she adds her hand to his to finish him off. He had dexterously snagged a pillow case off one of her pillows and after it had served its purpose, he dropped the sodden thing to the ground.

There’s nothing trite about the way they lay in sweet silence afterwards, the way he doesn’t even try to collect his autonomy but instead winds those long limbs around her and keeps his face on her sweaty chest. “You’re a rare one Donna.” he praises, sleepy and gentle over her heart.

Donna struggled against sleep for the next hour, desperate to engrave the feeling of him laying melted on her in peaceful slumber and the pounding ache between her legs that had finally known a man. Something like virginity that she simply hadn’t gotten around to tossing away, was suddenly something very dear and painfully sentimental to her now it was gone. Now it was now wrapped up in soft kisses, large hands entwining hers to the sheets and raspy endearments. She fell asleep propped against the pillow with his head on her belly, repeating to herself at the rhythm of her pulse down there -it’s just a fling, it’s just a fling, don’t expect more, you hopeful idiot.

Cold sheets, or the sound of the door shutting from his exit or the scratchy presence of a note the next morning were conspicuously absent when Donna woke up.

Instead she heard the sound of gentle babbling, like the way a person might talk to a pet and combined with the gentle wriggling she sensed beneath the sheets, Donna engaged briefly in a time warp and wondered when she got a puppy and who was talking to it. But there was no puppy here, instead, as cognisense fully set in she frantically sat up and beat at the wriggly sheets, Donna found Jesse, still long and lean and naked as she hazily recalled from the dimness last night, wedged between her legs and chatting with her muff, placing chaste kisses to it that barely parted her outer lips.

“No way.” she said her foggy morning thoughts aloud at the sight of this beautiful boy still with her in the daylight and more pressingly -face to face with her used and unwashed and unshaven privates. “Oh what are you going to do?” she wailed as that mortifying relaxation sunk in. “Why’re you down there, you nut?“

“Good Mornin’ to you too, miss.” Jesse laughed and his breath tickled her core that was feeling strangely achy and happy all at once. “I’m gonna lick your wounds, silly.” he slapped her thigh gently as he went on as if to reprimand her while tugging up a mildly bloody sheet corner as evidence for his displeasure, “Donna, ya shoulda said, dear.”

“Oh it’s not a big deal.” she insisted in a bit of a panic to get him away from her vagina and in an attempt to convince herself it didn’t mean much. “You were so good. Don’t worry about it.”

“But you shoulda told me.” he insisted gently.

“There wasn’t much time for talking.” she cringed as soon as she said it but he took that in stride after realizing she was not insinuating any wrongdoing on his part.

“Are you hurtin’ much?” he asked gently and he was still down there, broad and smooth shoulders wedged between her stubbled thighs, tapering down to his tiny waist and that peachy butt and then those legs that were hanging off the edge of her bed like so much lumber. “Donna?” he asked with laughter in his voice as her eyes glazed over in review of him.

“No, not much, you were very nice. It felt great.” she insisted truthfully and ended with a little hiss as he ran his knuckles along her petals. “I mean, I-I’m honestly not sure I’m up for more activities right this minute but it’s not bad. It’s not hurting. Please don’t worry about it.”

“Did you even…peak?” he asked and his face flushed red like he was most ashamed of not being sure of that.

“No I-I was mostly just soaking up the whole…experience.” she admitted because it was true and didn’t strike her as deplorable at all. He had been big and she was new and it wasn’t quite comfortable enough to get there. Which hadn’t diminished the experience or changed the point of their tryst anyway. “That wasn’t the point of it all anyway.” she said softly while reaching to push his hair out of his eyes. It had grown inches since she first met him. “Not for me.”

Jesse’s face softened quickly at that. Like she had struck a nerve and soothed him all at once. “Yeah,” he nodded, “it wasn’t for me either.” and it feels like a far larger confession that it is for both of them, “Which is rich comin’ from the man who got to come.” he laughed at himself right after and she did too. “Now spread these legs so hims can do a lil community service on hers poor widdle clam shell.”

Donna never would have thought such babyish, almost infantilizing gibberish could be so authoritative but the potency of its endearing qualities, with his skilled tongue and earnest desire to please, ensured her cooperation so that they didn’t leave the bed for hours yet. Donna soon forgot her unshaved legs, her need for a glass of water and the fact she’d forgotten to set an alarm -and then when she recalled that detail in a lull of his caresses, she recalled that it was Saturday and she was off. And then he wiped her mind blank again.

It wasn’t till halfway through the radio blasting Dancing Queen and Jesse discoing in jeans and nothing else while flipping an omelet that it seemed to occur to him there was a life outside Donna’s little place and Donna’s fluffy hair and Donna’s ratty rented flat, and Donna’s sunshiny smile. She watched as reality intruded on his creaseless features, an instant pucker and burdened eyes clouding that ethereally sweet face as the outside crashed in.

A world outside Donna. It felt as good to see how well she’d helped him to escape as it was painful to watch it all come back down on him, weighing like a mantle on those strong shoulders.

“Shi-eeet!” he slid to a screeching stop of his jiving in his sock feet across her linoleum floor. “I was gonna call mama, see how they’re takin’ the book release stuff.”

Donna had vaguely heard gossip about what she supposed was the book in question. A dirty little tattle tale by a fired employee is all it sounded like to her. “It’s bad then?” she asked.

“Shitty enough grammar to make me puke.” he joked bashfully and she supposed that it was his way of asking to drop it. “What’re you doin’ with your weekend? Like today? What else ya doin?”

“Not much.” she admitted, crossing her arms over the baggy shirt she’d donned to watch him cook her breakfast. “Um, I suppose I should get more groceries-“

“-I’ll make ya a list and we can go.”

“-and, oh. Ok. Yeah. And umm, well, I need to check on my dad. I usually spend my Saturday dinners with him.”

“Oh.” Jesse bit his lip, “I-I can go…you wouldn’t mind me taggin’ along for the groceries bit?” he asked.

“Of course not!” she tried to laugh off her butterflies, “Are you worried I’ll buy the wrong flour?”

“No, I’m worried you’ll buy margarine instead of good wholesome butter.” he growled gravely as he looped his arms around her waist and tugged her to him, laying his chin on the top of her head like she was dear to him and the butterflies went rogue in her belly against all her attempts to stay untangled. “I just wanna be with ya.” he admitted and she shuddered, winding her arms around his willowy waist and clinging on.

“I’d like that.” she admitted.

“Lemme just call my Mama real quick?” he asked.

Donna cringed before admitting, “I don’t have a working landline.”

“What?” Jesse pulled away just enough to look her in the eye, his own wide in protest, “Good lord darlin’, that won’t do. Livin’ alone and no phone for me to hear if you’re alright. Well, lemme grab my shirt and- help yourself to the omelet, baby. And remind me to get ya a damn phone!” he was already disappearing down her hall and she stared at the egg and ham concoction before her, wishing the terrible anxiety she felt over much she liked him would calm so she could taste it.

They ended up swinging by the Center first as Jesse acted like he’d committed a murder when noon rolled around and he hadn’t checked on Daisy yet. Donna felt for him and recalled the feel of his tongue too clearly to a fuss as she flicked her blinker to turn left, away from groceries and phones, and back towards her workplace. Some little part of her hoped he’d forget his promise to buy her one, it was extravagant and a little embarrassing.

The thumping beat of Springsteen’s Thunder Road filled her car with verve that matched the muggy exhaust tainted breeze that whipped through the windows and the noonday sun that glinted off Jesse’s rings as his hand wind surfed out the window.

“I got to play bass on this one.” Jesse murmured like someone might mention they had a hand in scoring a strike in their local bowling championships.

“What?! On this? You’ve worked with Springsteen?” she cried in shocked admiration.

“S’all my mama’s doin’.” he insisted as if regretting he’d made a deal of it. “A-and daddy. He taught me bass.” it’s the first personal thing about his daddy he’s divulged and Donna tucks it away for safe keeping.

“Aren’t you marvelous.” Donna swears.

“Hardly,” he blushes, “S’just when your name is Presley and your mom’s got her hand on the levers -artist’s tend to let ya mess about.”

“I somehow doubt they’d let a complete dud jam on their album.” she snarks and he bites his lip and doesn't retort.

The harmonica warbles on and Jesse’s hand raps out a rhythm on the car door. “-show a little faith there’s magic in the night! You ain’t beauty but hey you're alright, and that’s alright wi’me.” he sings to her, far more melodious than Springsteen’s grit and his eyes sparkle far more than stereo light ever could.

Once parked he worries his lip between his fingers as he stares at a faintly familiar car parked by his bike. It’s probably telling enough that Jesse left the thing here and went home with someone else. Or maybe folks will assume he wandered the streets and dive bars all night. At least that would spare Donna’s reputation while at it. “How ‘bout I go in first a-and if you want you come in later or -if ya don’t mind, you could wait out here? I’ll be back! Soon, I-I won’t dawdle, I swear!” he assures.

“Jesse, take all the time you need.” she smiles at him, leveraging her chair to lay back as sunbeams bathe her in a lemony glow, “I’ll be out here working on my tan.”

His smile is so full of relief that Donna realizes he was worried she’d be offended by his distancing himself and if he weren’t so relieved then maybe she’d be tempted to be offended. But she can’t bring herself to be. It’s all a mess in her head but she figures she can not make it worse by being accepting of the fact he doesn’t want to be seen with her. It’s ok, his smile makes that ok, as does the way those long fingers unclasp his seatbelt and the way those long limbs lean over her in a mirroring of last night and she feels those plush pink lips smooch her forehead, long and devoutly.

“Sit tight, baby.” he commands with his lips barely leaving her skin and then he’s out the door and strutting across the parking lot without a seeming trace of nervousness.

Rounding the hall down towards Daisy’s room he passes by the familiar wall phone and stops in his tracks at the sight of Rosalee propping Daisy up while having the receiver wedged between their cheeks. For a flash in his mind they don’t look a day over six with their scrunched faces and contrasting hair, always so compatible while entirely opposites.

Rosalee spots him first as Daisy is busy yacking at whoever they’ve held captive on the line and her blue eyes light with sweet recognition as she teases, “Well hey loverboy, good morning. Or is it afternoon?”

That makes Daisy look up and she answers someone on the line by proclaiming, “Yeah, he juusssst nowww walked in.”

“Who is that?” Jesse mouths, his forehead a washboard of wrinkled anxiety that Rosalee can’t bear anymore so she cracks and admits,

“It’s Mama, silly.”

Jesse relaxes a little on that account, moreso for the fact Daisy has obviously gotten past her presumption of being hated by their mother, if the giggles and gumption in her talk are any clue.

“Well yeah, I think he can talk,” Daisy is saying, “I mean I dunno, I’ll ask him. He looks like he’s missing a few ounces of fluids. You still got your tongue Jess?”

“Hush up!” He begs, pink in the face at the thought of mama thinking he’s been sleeping around when he was entrusted by Daddy to take care of his sister.

Daisy sticks her tongue out at him and Jesse finds that more reassuring that she’s stone cold sober than any other behavior he’s seen from her in rehab. Checking to make sure their squabble is unwitnessed, Jesse turns back and sticks out his own.

“Eww put that away, where’s it even been this morning?” she groans and his closes his mouth so fast his sisters become convinced of what had just been a suspicion.

“Oooh…” Rosalee coos.

“Nope nope nope.” He silences them with a meaningful hand chopping motion to the throat, “I kinda had an episode last night, and uh, Miss Donna was kind enough to lemme ride with her since my hands were shakin’. That’s it.”

“Oh Jesse!” Mama’s concern is loud enough over the phone to blast Daisy’s eardrums and reach his own, “Are you ok? You gotta make sure you eat and sleep. Did you sleep? She taking care of you? Baby? Are you -is he there, y’all?”

Rosalee scootches aside and pats the tiny sliver of white wall between the twins in invitation and resignedly he wiggles between them as Daisy laughs and tugs on the cord to help it reach him. Tucked together like this it feels doubly absurd to Jesse to be so fretted over and also, entirely soothing. He flings a lanky arm around each girl’s shoulder and squats a little to help Daisy reach his ear as she holds the receiver for him.

“Mama I’m fine.” he insists mid giggle as Rosalee’s finger finds a way to his armpit.

“Yeah, so fine you can’t drive!” Mama retorts and it relieves him that she obviously thinks the best of him, that he was in bad enough shape to go to a random girl’s house and not that he’s behaving like an absolute horndog in a new city. Just to make her not worry, he half wishes she’d think worse of him and just be displeased.

“Alright so, maybe I snooped through Red’s book yesterday.” Jesse admits since he intended to see how daddy and she were taking it, after all. “And it’s such shitty storytelling I got a little worked up. You know how I am when folks lyrics are dry a-“

“-Red wrote a book?” Rosalee interrupts as does Daisy with a-

“-am I in it?”

Jesse purses his lips and nods, twirling the phone cord and waiting quietly for Mama to say something.

When she does it’s a droll, “Red made takin’ LSD sound boring.” And between Donna’s sweet lovin’ and mama’s superhuman ability to shrug off the most defaming shit on the planet, Jesse is left smiling and burdened with only one small anxiety.

“How’s daddy takin’ it?” he asks as his ear gets pinched from Daisy mashing her face to his, eager to overhear. Rosalee is just face watching and Jesse knows she’ll get more information from that than if she listened.

“Oh, a bit hard.” she admits, “It's just so -so- tacky. To do that to a friend!” now she sounds mad, “When did we ever hurt that narcissistic fool? If our lifestyle was so unbearable he coulda quit, he had two decades to do it.”

“Yup.” Jesse pops the word for emphasis and notices someone down the hall has a disposable camera pointed at their little huddle. He supposes they do look a little bizarre, stacked in the alcove like overly matured sardines.

“Anyone giving you trouble about it?” Mama adds in concern.

“No. You know it jus’ came out yesterday and I-I-I haven’t been out and about much today.” Jesse admits and Daisy makes suggestive hand motions at waist level that he pointedly ignores.

“He predicts that when we’re in our fifties we’ll get back together.” she murmurs.

“Spoilers!” he hisses and mama laughs as does someone in the background that could only be daddy. “A real, genuine prophet, that Red.” Jesse wheezes. “And daddy,” he hollers loudly in hopes he’ll hear, “he were wrong about me hating the damn rollercoaster. I shit my pants everytime outta joy, I swear. Don’t let nobody make ya doubt that.”

For a minute all he can hear are mama’s suppressed belly laughs before Daddy’s rings clatter on the other end and the kids can almost hear the scratch of a sideburn against the mouthpiece, “Y’all can hear me?” he rumbles through and Jesse’s face gets smashed from both sides as the girls crowd in.

“Yeah we can hear ya daddy.”

“Alright then listen to me, lil munchkins,” his voice sounds as deep and smooth as chocolate, even over a trashy phone speaker, and they all hypnotically sway in anticipation of his next word, “y’all know how much I love each of ya, that I’d happily burn down my trophy room ‘fore I let anythin’ happen to the window boxes with yer various uh, weeds and rocks and such in ‘em that Red was always mockin’ and uh, I wanna apologize to ya, from the bottom of my heart, that I hindered y’all in your quest to strap the Wests to Roman Candles that one christmas. Ya had the right idea.”

Jesse’s day gets magically better after that phone call, like one sentence from Daddy can patch up his whole life. But deep down he knows, it’s a thread of Donna running through the whole thing, buoying him up, smoothing out the creases, patching up the little cuts. It makes daddy’s voice sound richer and his promises truer and Jesse holds the receiver and smiles as Rosalee makes plans to drive back for classes and visit them while she’s at it and Daisy suggests baby names.

Things are as they should be and somehow that means he ends up walking out into the parking lot with his two sisters, one of whom was technically not released and piling into Donna’s beat up Oldsmobile and taking off for the grocery store as if that were a sane thing to do. Rosalee tries her best to meet the young woman driving them and Donna is anything but cagey, yet with Daisy’s blathering about her and Jesse’s blushing over her and Donna’s slightly overwhelmed joy at it all -they make for a chaotic entourage picking out butter and pickles and hamburger buns.

Next stop, Donna watches as Jesse and Daisy spend a solid twenty minutes weighing the value of different landlines when all Donna needs it for is to answer if she’s been murdered or not and during this analysis she learns from Rosalee that the auburn haired girl with the bashful grin is going to school at Stanford. Nearly gave her father a heart stack, she laughs when she tells it, but she wanted to study psychology and be nearer him -the subtext that Elvis was more often in Vegas than at his own home goes unsaid and Donna doesn’t bat an eye.

For what the papers have to say about this family, there’s never once been due credit given for their love and comradery. It couldn’t have been easy and maybe it was far from good at times, but the Presley’s didn’t create this much love from a vacuum. Some aching part of Donna wants to meet them all and watch them in their natural habitat, swear to them that she gets it, that she’s so starved for it herself she’d trade anything for such affectionate dysfunction.

The phone Jesse buys her has no superior merits in static or connection but it does have a zebra print handle on it that Daisy insisted was the height of chic, and he insisted in turn that Donna deserved sexy things. Looking down at her overalls and plaid shirt, Donna has to agree she’s not exactly in Jesse Presley’s league.

Before she can think on that for too long and get herself into knots about it, they’ve piled back into the car and Daisy is eagerly asking if they can get dinner -if she can eat outside of her fluorescent lit, sterile white prison. Donna feels for her and she can see Jesse trying to formulate an excuse, how now is time to let Donna be as she’s gotta go visit her dad. If she weren’t so convinced these dear kids actually liked hanging with her she’d never have the guts to suggest it but they’re too honest and forthright in their affection for her to doubt it so she hears herself suggesting:

“Y’all could come meet my dad? H-he loves your dad’s music. Learned drums awhile back just to match Fontana. I know he’d love y’all to bits.” Rosalee and Daisy raise a chorus of agreement in the backseat but Jesse hesitates and Dona refuses to be hurt by it. He’s obviously the more cautious of them, and he’s got reason to be. Donna thinks she saw someone taking photographs of them all as they came out of the market.

There’s also the unspoken worry about putting Daisy out in public so soon with surroundings teaming with alcohol and other temptations. It makes Donna clarify, haltingly, “It would be somewhere quiet, wholesome. My dad he’s um, he’s a recovering alcoholic, see? That’s how I got into nursing, mama left to go get more from life and I stayed to take care of him. He’s been clean for a good bit now but -he could use the friendship.”

Daisy looks like she’s about to take offense at being considered only fit for friendships with washed up drunks and Donna gets it, that it’s touchy but it needed to be said if they’re going to meet him. Rosalee intervenes instead with a soft,

“Sounds good to me, we’d love to meet him. For my schedule it works, doesn't it Jesse?” she asks, “I mean, as long as it’s somewhere quiet? Maybe out of the city proper?”

“Yeah,” Donna agrees, already having a joint in mind, “we’ll get out of the city. Maybe out by Plano? They’ve got good barbecue at this one place.”

“Jess?” Rosalee asks again, softer this time.

Jesse just turns around in his seat, long arm bracing himself and his bulging forearm stretched across the console and Donna’s mouth waters at the popping veins and nimble fingers as she watches him stare a mute Daisy down. “Can I take you for barbecue with Miss Donna and her daddy and trust you to behave yourself?”

“Oh for fu-“

“Daisy?” Jesse cuts her off, dead serious and so easily authoritative that Donna’s legs rub closed despite the inappropriate context. He’s not all sweet boy and needy young heir and it gives her shivers. “I mean I don’t want even a raised middle finger outta ya, you hear me? Just imagine whatever you do is gonna be plastered everywhere, think about that and we’ll go. We got a deal?”

Daisy seems to weigh her anger at her brother’s bossiness with the dire need for something besides hospital food and after twenty tense seconds of belligerence she gives in with a hoarse, “Deal. Gosh it’s not such a big thing, relax.”

That night Donna’s love for them gets cemented. They’re only licking their fingers of sticky sauce and ordering five different smoked briskets to try but the kids make conversation like they’ve learned a bit of everything from everywhere. Which in retrospect, Donna assumes that maybe they have, exposed as they were to the best and the worst, but she didn’t expect it to be so natural and kind, so outwardly focused where Jesse pulled anecdotes about the Korean War from her dad she’d never heard and a mention or two of Ma from happier times after one of Rosalee’s queries.

Everyone just talks, talks about the stuff they want to talk about but usually don’t. It’s cathartic and Donna hasn’t seen her daddy so recharged in ages. Jesse ends the night digging in his deep pockets for something that ends up being a guitar pick.

“I-it’s my d-daddy’s, sir,” he stammers as he puts it in Donna’s father’s weather palm, “wish he were here to swap stories but I-I-I thought maybe you’d like it. Till you can m-meet him.”

Her daddy takes it gratefully and thumbs over it with a fondness Jesse has seen a lot of folks show for the man he knows too well and they love more than seems possible for strangers. It never fails to humble him and reignite some apprecIation of his own for Elvis’ warmth that’s made it all the way into the heart of a middle aged vet from Waxahachie Texas.

“I’d sure like to meet the man someday.” Her daddy admits. “And thank ya for dinner, young Presley.”

“I hope you will meet him, I think ya will.” Jesse stammers and can’t bear to meet Donna’s surprised gaze, “We owe your Donna a heap, sir. Mama is about ready to come down here and eat her up she’s so grateful. And I uh, I intend to not lose touch.” he mutters the last bit and it makes Donna feel close to faint with hope that her father misheard as they go on to talk about how the press has treated Elaine Presley and eventually say their good nights. Jesse won’t meet her eye, just tucks her into his armpit like her short height mandates for a hug and says goodnight. After the heat of last night she thinks she’ll waste away from such propriety.

As she gets in the car to drive her dad home, working the shift, a bright light slices across their windshield and after the sparks clear from Donna’s dazzled eyes she realizes someone, probably with a professional grade flash, just snapped a photo of them. They’re ordinary people who had barbeque with the kids of a famous man and now they’re being stalked. It’s not fair to them or the Presley’s and her dad rages against the unfairness of it and how nice those kids were all the way back to his place. It keeps Donna from crying over the notion that Jesse went through all those motions this morning to make her think he liked her more than just a lay, and now it’s a sideways hug and a terse “goodnight.”

Jesse’s heart hurts as he drives the girls back to the center in Rosalee’s car, smiling softly as he listens to their protests against his ratty motel and noticing the car behind trailing their every turn. He knew that the rehabilitation was wrapping up and he knew they were getting sloppy at laying low. There’s been a countdown in his head that’s kept him going, after all, and they’re so close now to the finish line that he had burned out and fallen into Donna’s arms for the last leg. The fact it is the last leg makes him jittery with a thousand thoughts at once. The chief one is how unfair it all is.

For her mainly.

But if there’s one thing Donna taught him last night, it was to take a little time to hurt for himself. By the time he sneaks Daisy back into the Center under a cloak of darkness and drives Rosalee to a hotel fit for housing a nice girl like his sister is, his heart just about wants to burst with hurt. He sends Rosalee up to her room with a kiss to the forehead and plans to have her car back in time for her to drive back tomorrow. He goes cback out to the parking lot and making a beeline for the beater Mercedes’ parked three rows down from his ride. He raps on the window and it doesn’t even take the gun in his boot to freak the unexpecting and nosy little bastard in the driver seat.

“Hey, brother.” Jesse greets as the guy actually rolls the window down in his panic on being confronted, “You like my route?” he asks congenially but there’s an edge to his voice that isn’t false bravado, “I noticed ya liked the barbecue, too. Wanna come up to my room and watch me sleep? Or were you gonna wait till I leave and try that with my sister? Hmm?”

The guy, like most guys in the nation, knows what Jesse did to the last fella who tried something with Rosalee, how his brother Jack and his friend Sam and the whole of Sam’s squad from the Memphis police just sipped bourbon while Jesse drug the fucker by the balls down S. Riverside Dr. It makes the smirking boy at his window a lot more imposing than his decent stature, hippy length hair and strong hands seem on first impression. “N-no man I’m here- I’m here to- uh-“

“Just hand me the damn film rolls and we’ll part ways, ok?” Jesse holds out his hand expectantly and the guy hesitates a bit. Sighing heavily, Jesse reaches into his back pocket for the persuasive shit and he can see the man’s panic show in his eyes again as Jesse reaches, only for it to be replaced by confusion as he’s presented with a badge of sorts. “This here badge was given to me by President Nixon himself, alright? Back when he asked to meet my daddy in the Oval Office, and he gave me this badge and it’s got the authority to demand such private property as photographs of my face and my sisters’ faces, ya understand? I wouldn’t wanna get you into trouble none by writing a damn reportc a. Just -hand ‘em over, k?”

The guy still hesitates, doubtful he’ll get off so easily and wary to give in and still get his ass handed to him. To be perfectly honest he doesn’t care much about some badge that some impeached President gave a rockstar’s fifteen year old kid . “Really, dude, I’m just here to meet a-“

“You really wanna see what my daddy gave me for my birthday last year?” Jesse asks with burdened patience and somehow, without it even being said, the man knows that birthday gift was a gun. Elvis Presley has been downright insane for some time now, it just fits. Jesse Presley, lanky frame bent to wedge into his low window like a looming specter in the dark doesn't look much more stable. He fumbles in the passenger seat and grabs the priceless rolls containing an excellent shot of that girl he’s been hanging out with, in her car with her dad as she pulls out of the barbecue place. It hurts the guy deeply to watch them go but he comforts himself with the thought of all the earlier snaps he’d managed to drop at the publishers earlier.

“Here, Jeeze.” the guy plops them in Jesse’s large palm and Jesse’s fingers curl over them elegantly while his pointer finger beckons still.

“Gimme the one in the camera, c’mon now. I’m not stupid.”

“You can’t shoot me-“

“No, I can do way worse, believe me. The roll, give it here!” Jesse’s ringed fingers make a gimme-gimme motion and the guy notices that those rings would make a mean and gaudy sort of brass knuckle if tested. His nose hurts at just the thought.

He hands over his camera and despite expecting the kid to drop the precious thing and stomp on it or something, all Jesse does is pop the lid and take out the roll. Adding it to the others in his back pocket along with that stupid and sentimental badge that belongs in an era back when his famous daddy still had the nation’s respect.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Jesse murmurs as he hands back the neutered camera, “and I hope you understand that if I ever catch you at this again, for myself or my friends, you’re gonna have more audits and subpoenas than you do donuts in that gut. Am I understood? I’ll bury your ass.”

It’s freaky getting threatened so effectively by a teenager. Like he’s old inside and knows that paperwork is scarier than a knife when you’re tired and broke. Most of these Presley’s belong in the loony bin or the MET, with Elaine Presley being the latter and the rest of her family the former. Either way, all of them need to be under lock and key, except they're too rich for that. And they’re certainly rich enough to make the guy’s

I life a living hell. Or very rich if he were to sell pictures of Jesse Presley necking a rehab nurse on his bike.

“Yeah ok, can I go?” the guy asks, exasperated.

“By all means, get the hell away from my family!” Jesse smiles and backs away, patting at the back of the guy’s car in farewell before the man hears a screeching sound of metal ripping off.

He frantically looks behind him only to find Jesse innocuously sauntering back to his bike in the dark parking lot. Suspicious of what the kid did, and suspecting a poked tire but too scared to get out and investigate while he’s still on the prowl, the guy waits and watches as the kid’s bike revs to life. Sure enough Presley steers the thing right past his window while waving the guy’s license plate like a giant metal envelope in his hand.

“Have fun without this, man, lotta bored cops on the lookout tonight!”

Feeling very good and very angry, Jesse waits at the red light, full aware the guy is watching him and when the fucker doenst get the hint to leave the parking lot ahead of him, Jesse revs his motor and bekons the guy over like a gentlman ushering a lady through the door first. Exhaust fumes have never smelt so sweet to him as he takes a turn trailing the guy until he’s well out of Dallas and nearing Arlington, well away from Daisy and Rosalee.

And Donna. Jesse’s blood boils and the hot summer air clings to his neck as he peels off into the dark of night and heads back to his motel with its greasy bedspread and its mildew shower where he’s gunked up the drain with his fervor for her large lips and sweet eyes and eyebrows that are like busy caterpillars dancing across her forehead. He wants her so badly it’s painful and now he knows what it’s like to be with her and held by her and accepted so readily, so selflessly, so sweetly -it’s worse than before. He can’t even bear to think of settling for shower steam and his fist. He falls into bed and rolls onto his belly, pulling open the bedside drawer before placing the license plate next to the complementary motel Bible. It makes him smile, Donna’s got a phone and he’s got a license plate. He keeps staring at his tin trophy knowing fully well tonight’s slumber is merely metaphorical. He’ll not be sleeping a wink.

He’ll be thinking of her. And how he’s gotta be a bastard for a little longer to keep her safe. And how mama’s about to have a baby and daddy’s about to remarry her and Rosalee just started to sleep herself after the attack and how Daisy will be out and testing herself and how John will be coming home to Ella and their baby and -he really outta visit Ella while he’s here in Texas. And while she’s got Marie staying with her. Marie could use to see another face. There’s so much ahead and none of it needs to involve Jesse fending off reporters so he can go make professions of premature love to a little Texan with a penchant for his pancakes and clitoris nibbles.

Like the planner his mama taught him to be, he steadies himself with a hand to the bridge of his nose and lines all these frantic responsibilities into a tidy row. And to the side are his wants. For a few years now those have gotten a little dusty and he doesn’t begrudge that, not really. But right now he makes another column to this mental checklist.

His needs.

Which comprise Donna and more Donna and Donna forever. It’s so simple, the roses ahead that may take years but it is simple nonetheless.

Go get the girl, that’s what they all say. Daddy had done just that.

Jesse thinks about that phone he got her this afternoon, assuming she’s hauled it out of the trunk by now. He’s already arranged for someone to hook it up by next weekend.

Step one accomplished. He wants to laugh at his own impatience. Step one, already done. Before the end of the week he can be calling her and she’ll be wrapping her fingers around the phone like he wishes she would somewhere else and he can make comments about how nice the barbecue was and she can ask about Daisy’s progress once released.

And they can keep that up. Till he finds a time to marry her. Hopefully not in some red letter year that involves his parents remarrying or making a surprise child.

Hope y’all enjoyed! Your “bugging” and “screaming” is music to my ears, fuel to my fire and keeps me writing, please never hold back -this is a safe space for feral little Elvis loving rodents…like you and me.

If you’d like to be tagged in this particular series please drop a note below. I’ll admit I’m disorganized and have trouble keeping all the requests sorted when they’re scattered, what I do check regularly are the requests in the notes for chapters -and I do manage to get those added. So, if you’ve put in a request and I’ve failed ya, or if you’re new and would like to be added, please pop a note below. Xoxo

@paradsol000

@eliseinmemphis

@prompted-wordsmith

@ab4eva

@foreverdolly

@powerofelvis

@butlersxbirdy

@crash-and-cure

@elvisabutler

@heartbrake-hotel

@stylespresleyhearted

@thatbanditqueen

@crazymadpassionatelove

@myradiaz

@ash-omalley

@arianatheangelgirl

@steph-speaks

@burningloverdoll

@angelface-555

@lookingforrainbows

@missmaywemeetagain

@coolgirl462

@kingdomforapony

@18lkpeters

@richardslady121

@from-memphis-with-love

@lillypink

@artlover8992

@pennyroyalcreep

@notstefaniepresley

@ellie-24

@renaissingle

@waiting4brucewayne2adoptme

@presleyenterprise

@marriedtopresley

@ashtag2887

@dkayfixates

@vampireindistress

@ashtag6887

@i-r-i-n-a-a

@obsessedvibee

@peskybedtime

@goth-cowgirl-03

@stephthestallion

@fav-fanficssss

@loving-elvis

@honeyorangess

@soloangel

@xenaspace3-blog

@60svintage

#elvis presley #elvis fanfiction #austin butler fanfiction #Austin butler #elvis austin butler #austin butler x reader #austin x reader #austin butler elvis #austin butler smut #elvis the king #elvis fanfic #elvis imagine #elvis x reader #elvis #sarge and lil mama #sarge: 2nd gen

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bettyfrommars · 2 months

Text

A wee game I thought would be fun: choose an excerpt from one of your posted fics, 600 words or less, that will make people curious for more. Share it with the title of your fic and little to no context.

I thought this would be a way to let people have a "taste" of one of your longer fics or series, and hopefully they will want to investigate further. Tagging some people, but it's open to anyone. I'd love to see snippets of your stuff.

This is a bit from my vampire Eddie fic Death Becomes Us. Eddie isn't even in this excerpt, I just really miss Hopper and wanted to think about him.

18+MDNI, Jim Hopper, mention of vampire!Joyce, mention of addiction

Tangerine hues seeped through the slats in the blinds at the crack of dawn while Jim Hopper sat at the end of his bed, shirtless, in a pair of unbuttoned jeans, and rolled his neck from side to side. There were empty beer cans on the dresser, and a small glass vile of crimson liquid in the ashtray next to a smashed-out butt with lipstick on it. He groaned as he stood, feeling his age as he fastened his jeans, snatching the pack of cigarettes off the bedside table as he went.

“Age is just a number,” is something Joyce would say, and to that he would reply: “Yeah, well why do I feel so fucking old, then?”

Joyce Byers hadn’t aged in a decade; that’s the one gift vampirism bestowed upon its victims. Being immortal? Living forever? Jim couldn’t imagine a worse fate. If someone turned him against his will, he’d give himself over to the sun and turn to ash immediately.

Joyce had chosen the vampire life, though, and for that—a part of him would never be able to forgive her. Sure, their fling was long over, and she’d been with Bob for a while now, but he used to be able to daydream about growing old with her later in life, and now he couldn’t even do that.

Something fell out of his pocket while he was searching for his lighter and he cursed. It was another small glass vial, but this one was almost empty, and he held his cigarette between his teeth as he bent to catch it before it rolled under the bed. Picking up the vial, he regarded it between thumb and forefinger so he could get a good look at how many drops were left.

God, he hated this about himself. He hated the way he measured the days of his week around how much he had left in the vials. Every morning, he promised himself that he’d quit, as soon as work wasn’t so stressful and he had some time to himself to stomach the withdrawals.

The kitchen was cold, and it sent a pang through his heart, making him wish there was someone there to make a pot of coffee and sit with him for a few minutes before he left for work. He’d give anything to hear bacon sizzling in the pan and smell fresh squeezed orange juice again while cartoons played on the television, but those days were long gone.

Emotions rose in his throat and choked there, making him dig for the vial in his pocket. He knew there was another full one in the ashtray in his bedroom, but he had to make them both last until next week, and it already wasn’t looking good. He tore a tiny corner off of a paper towel, and then bent to unscrew the cap and tap two drops onto the paper, watching the dark red liquid bleed into the fibers. He then placed the square of paper on his tongue and let it dissolve with a hard swallow and some sink water to wash it down.

Tagging: @somnambulic-thing @deadboyfriendd @kookygranger @trashmouth-richie @atinylittlepain @joejoequinnquinn @powderblueblood@destroya2005 @eddies-house @eddiesxangel @thornsnvultures

#Death Becomes Us #True Blood au #Jim Hopper #chief hopper

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ptn-imagines · 2 months

Note

Hello, I hope you're having a good day/afternoon/night! If possible, would you be able to do relationship headcanons for Uni with fem Chief? I love her so much :>

Thank you for your patience! Part of why this took so long was simply that I hadn't done Uni's interrogation until now, and, well, seeing as she has no appearance in her debut event...

Anyway, let's play a game: it's called spot the autistic Uni headcanons I didn't know I had until I wrote these.

Uni x F!Chief

Absolutely neither of them have any idea how it ended up here. Chief had entertained thoughts of being in a relationship from time-to-time, but definitely not with Uni; the surgeon herself hadn't considered it at all.

After Luna's death, Uni had felt quite certain that she would never love anyone ever again. All those vain people with their fickle wants and greed… What was desirable about that?

And then the Chief came along, with her shackles. At first, Uni thought she had wanted her eyes; now, she knows that had wanted the Chief’s connection all along.

More than what the shackles could give, Uni fell in love hard and fast. The realization she was in love? Not so much. Months straight of daydreaming about what it might be like to kiss the Chief, errant musings about holding her hand; these were all written off by Uni as intrusive thoughts, or, at their worst, perhaps just a form of aesthetic attraction. Even Uni was not immune to the vice of beauty; in some ways, she was more vulnerable than anyone.

It wasn't until she heard the Chief laughing one day, and recognized the fluttering of her heart in response, that Uni realized she was in love.

Her first thought? Shit.

Feelings were complicated and messy, and Uni wanted no part of them. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like she had a choice. Uni was screwed.

Uni is also notoriously bad at flirting. She's the kind of girl who sends their crush a note telling them to “get out of my school/work/neighborhood/etc”. She can't exactly tell the Chief to get out of the Bureau, though. Which sucks for Uni, but is probably a long-term good thing.

Nevertheless, the Chief is very surprised when Uni suddenly gets colder and ruder to her. Uni had been… defrosting around her, so to speak, but now she was all ice and sharp teeth again. It almost felt like Uni was even more abrasive than before?

Asking around, other Sinners and staff said that Uni was just the regular level of rude to them. Her being singled out baffled the Chief at first, but, in combination with the shackles, it was eventually the vital clue that led her to her answer.

Not that confronting Uni about it was any less stressful. If she was wrong about this, Uni's sharp tongue would probably kill her, and not in a pleasant way. Not that there were ways to die that were exactly pleasant, but – she was getting off topic.

Finally steeling her courage, the Chief called Uni to her office. The Sinner was scowling, looking like she'd much rather be anywhere else. Chief took a deep breath and tried to look confident.

“Uni… Allow me to be blunt. Do you… have feelings for nothing?”

Uni didn't reply, but the way her eyes went wide and she sharply averted her gaze, a fierce blush crawling up her cheeks to her ears, was answer enough. That was even before taking into account the spike in the shackles.

“So you do.” Chief leaned back in her chair, sighing. “Uni, I–”

“Forget it,” Uni suddenly snapped, though she still kept her gaze fixated on a random potted plant in the office as though it was the most interesting thing in the world. She probably didn't even like it. “I know you don't feel the same, so forget it.”

“Uni.” The sharpness of the Chief's tone is what finally dragged the surgeon's gaze back to her. “What I was going to say was… I'm willing to go out with you.”

So that was how their confusing and messy relationship started. And in many ways, messy was an understatement.

Going steady with someone didn't magically make Uni good at handling her feelings. In fact, it may have even made her more of a disaster.

Thankfully, a lot of things would go away with time. Some things would never change, though.

For one: Uni hated being touched. Chief learned that quickly. Touching was reserved for rare, special moments, and she was otherwise to keep a respectful distance.

Despite that, Uni tended to hang around Chief like a shadow. When asked, she just said it was “more worth her time than anything or anyone else.”

This meant that Uni was in the Chief's office a lot. It also meant that Chief heard Uni's complaints about her decor a lot. Eventually, they reached a compromise: Uni would get to decorate her own little sitting corner if she let the Chief be. She agreed.

Dates between these two are pretty much always the same thing, due to Uni's tastes. There's one particular cafe that does their desserts and milkshakes and iced chocolates and such just right, and she always insists on going there in their free moments. Chief doesn't really mind, because the food and drink there is good and she doesn't want to stress Uni out during what should be a fun moment for them.

Uni also likes to buy Chief small jewelry pieces or accessories that fit her aesthetics, which usually isn't a problem. The one point of contention that commonly arises is Chief refusing to take off her one asymmetrical earring in favor of a pair Uni bought for her; it drives the surgeon crazy. The fact she can't even explain why is even worse! It's a testament to just how much Uni truly loves the Chief that this isn't a deal breaker for her.

Finally, even though she may not want them for a mad Frankenstein experiment anymore, Uni is still entranced by her eyes. Now that she's no longer seeing Luna in them, Uni can appreciate their beauty in full. And by far, they're the most beautiful pair of eyes Uni had ever seen.

Chief tensed a bit when Uni first complimented them, causing the other to scoff and say that she meant it in the normal way, this time. This was affirmed by the shackles, so Chief eventually learned to relax and take Uni's compliments as, well, compliments, and nothing more than that.

Overall, Uni can definitely be a difficult partner at times, and she knows it. But Chief is willing to stay with her even so, and Uni can’t express how much she appreciates that.

#ptn #path to nowhere #ptn uni #path to nowhere uni #uni #ptn headcanons #path to nowhere headcanons #headcanons

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bridgertonbabe · 5 months

Note

I love your bridgerton siblings support group chat.

What would be in the group chat the morning after the families Monopoly night ended in a screaming match with several death threats?

BSSG Group Chat

Sophie:

Lucy:

Phillip:

Michael: Well at least we got the game night out of the way for this year 🙃

Penelope: and thanks to last night we can dissuade them from having one for another couple of years

Penelope: I hope 🙏

Kate: Wait what?

Kate: Are you serious?

Kate: Last night wasn't that bad!

Gareth:

Lucy: I...

Sophie: Kate

Sophie: Sweetie

Simon:

Sophie: In what world was last night not that bad????

Kate: Oh you guys are being so dramatic!

Penelope: Kate

Penelope: you do understand that a trip to a+e is the epitome of a bad night

Penelope: right?

Penelope: please tell me you get that

Kate: Yeah but it was only the one casualty this time!

Kate: So it was a way better night than the Cluedo incident of '19

Lucy: i'm sorry

Lucy: THIS ISN'T THE FIRST TIME A GAMES NIGHT HAS ENDED IN A TRIP TO A&E???????????????

Michael: Ah Lucy

Michael: So young

Michael: So innocent

Michael: So pure of heart

Sophie: Wow I had forgotten all about the Cluedo incident. I genuinely think I had repressed it.

Phillip: Lucky you.

Phillip: Btw Simon how much was the vase that El broke? I'll Venmo you.

Simon: Honestly Phil don't stress about it.

Simon: I hated that vase anyway.

Phillip: Are you sure?

Simon: Yeah and besides Daph's never gonna learn otherwise that this is always going to happen when she decides to host game night.

Gareth: also apologies about hy

Gareth: i wasn't aware she would bring her penknife to a fucking games night

Gareth: but more fool me

Penelope: Gareth we can't control our spouses

Michael: No matter how much we'd like to.

Penelope: So don't beat yourself up about it x

Lucy: so none of you are going to expand on what happened with Cluedo?????

Lucy: just how many people had to go to a&e that night?????

Lucy: how long into the night did it all descend into chaos????????

Lucy: why would any of you allow a games night to happen again after that???????????????????????????

Sophie: Lucy, were you under the impression that any of us wanted to be there last night?

Kate: I wanted to be there!

Michael: Community note: Kate suffers from a mental illness which only flares up in competitive circumstances.

Kate: Fuck off Michael!

Lucy: well at the very least you guys could have warned me about it!!!

Gareth: i did warn you about it

Lucy: gareth sending me this

Lucy:

Lucy: is not warning me about it

Gareth:

Gareth: i-

Gareth: please tell me you get the reference?

Gareth: if this is the way i find out you have never seen the film

Lucy: relax i know it's get out

Lucy: i understood

Lucy: i just thought you sent it as a joke because of how family game nights can be in general

Lucy: you never specified the severity of a bridgerton game night

Gareth: see for me sending you the pic was a warning about the severity of a bridgerton game night

Penelope: Also Gareth's warning aside, I did tell you to brace yourself when you arrived last night.

Lucy: again i thought you guys were joking

Michael: Did you miss Phil catatonic in the corner before the monopoly board had even been set up?

Michael: Or the fact Simon was half-cut from pre-gaming?

Sophie: Or the mad glint in each of the Bridgertons' eyes?

Lucy: ok fine

Lucy: perhaps i willfully ignored all the warning signs

Lucy: i was naive

Simon: Look don't stress Lucy, we've all been there.

Phillip: Yeah at some point we were all young and naive about game nights before we met the bridgertons

Michael: Not Kate tho

Kate: Fuck off, I'm not that bad!

Simon: ...

Simon: Kate I know it was you who keyed my car last night.

Gareth:

Lucy:

Phillip:

Michael: Fucking hell Kate

Kate: What

Kate: Simon

Kate: No

Kate: That wasn't me!

Simon: Multiple people saw you.

Kate: Like who?

Sophie: Me

Kate: Sophie you're mistaken

Sophie: I can assure you I'm not

Kate: No, you're mistaken. Besides you were too busy crying last night to see things properly, the tears must have distorted your vision.

Penelope: I also saw you.

Penelope: You were not discreet.

Kate: Pen I have no idea what you're talking about.

Phillip: Not Kate in her gaslight era

Simon sent a video

Gareth: ayyy lmao talk your way out of that one

Kate: You filmed me???

Kate: While somebody was getting loaded into an ambulance???

Sophie: Bitch you were keying a car while somebody was being loaded into the ambulance!!!!!!!!!!

Michael: Wow now you've gone and done it

Michael: Provoking Sophie into using bitch

Kate: Instead of filming me why didn't you just stop me???

Simon: I wasn't the one filming you.

Simon: Amelia was.

Gareth:

Michael: welp

Penelope: 😬

Kate: Ok look I'm really sorry, that was really out of line of me to key your Audi, I took things too far, especially when it was your car and not Daphne's.

Kate: But in my defence

Simon has left the chat.

Sophie has removed Kate from the chat.

Sophie has added Simon to the chat.

Sophie: Don't worry I removed her.

Simon: Thanks Soph x

Sophie: I'll leave her in time out for a couple of days and then add her back.

Michael: She never learns.

Lucy: ...

Lucy: are you telling me kate's been removed from the gc because of game nights before????

Phillip:

#asks #bridgerton spouses #group chat au

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mirkwoodshewolf · 6 months

Text

Metal type; Eddie Munson x reader

*Author's note*

Well this came at a funny moment, plus after seeing some posts of how Eddie Munson and Patrick Verona from 10 things I hate about you are similar, I figured why not do this fic with a fun little twist at the ending. Unlike my Halloween fic there's not much warnings here but I'll still list them as followed:

Warnings: parental death, grief, drugs (not hardcore just cigarettes and joints mentioned), some angst but ends with fluff at the end.

Enjoy the fic my darlings :)

Taglist:

@plethora-of-things

@waddles03

@psychosupernatural

@gay-and-ready-to-cry

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels

@queen-paladin

_________________________________________________________

There’s been a lot of rumors going around lately. Now me I typically stay out of that gossiping chain because it’s just a bunch of hens clucking up the coop where they don’t need to be sticking their beaks into. But when the rumor’s involve (Y/n), that starts perking up my ears like a deer.

Now lately my girl’s (well at least in my head she’s my girl, I haven’t gotten the balls to ask her out yet but I have my reasons! Like this for example) been going through a rough patch. Her mom just passed away from breast cancer and it’s been hard on her not only having to go through the whole funeral process and trying to figure out how to keep the house, and trying to deal with all of that whilst still going to school and trying to finish off senior year.

She shouldn’t need all this stress. She deserves to have fun her last year of school, not be dealing with house mortgage, trying to sell her mom’s stuff or put it in storage, keep paying off the funeral and hospital bills, Jesus Christ she shouldn’t deal with this. Now I have tried to at least help her but she’s been pushing me away telling me and the guys that she’s fine and that she doesn’t want to burden us with all this family drama.

Now I may have been young when I lost my mom, but I remember the stress that Wayne felt having to go through mom’s stuff since my old man sure as hell wasn’t going to do any of it. But that’s not even the worst part of the rumors.

Hawkins is a small town where everyone knows everyone blah blah blah blah, but there is a new face that’s been around Hawkins since the start of the new year. Some guy from Seattle named Patrick Verona. Now if I’m honest, he seems like a descent guy. Good taste in music, pretty metal looking, not into sports or anything like most guys are. But he’s been hanging around (Y/n) far too much and he doesn’t even go to our school and yet people are saying they’re dating.

Again I’ve tried not to believe the rumors but I have seen how Patrick seems to be there whenever (Y/n) is too depressed to be around anyone else. Always having an arm around her, allowing her a shoulder to cry on, and even kissing her tears away. I can do all of that, hell we’ve been friends since middle school! Why can’t she allow me to do any of that stuff for her!? I want to be there for her so why isn’t she letting me help her out!?

It was lunchtime and once again (Y/n) hadn’t shown up for lunch. I silently munched on my pretzels.

“(Y/n) not joining us again?” I heard Henderson say.

“Nope.” Said Jeff.

“I think I heard she went off with that Patrick guy again. Saw his bike coming up during third block just before the lunch bell rang.” Said Gareth.

“And my best guess is she’s gonna miss Hellfire again.” Whined Wheeler.

“Back off Wheeler!” I snapped throwing a pretzel at his head. “She has a very good excuse to miss so many meetings. Grief isn’t something that can just be put on hold like a stupid laundry basket game or a dentist appointment.”

“Ow! Jesus…..” Wheeler whined.

“He didn’t mean it Eddie.” Henderson tried to lighten up Wheeler’s insensitive comment.

“Really cause I think he was making a statement on how I should run my club. Am I wrong Wheeler?” I sneered lowly.

“No Eddie I swear I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.” Even for his weak-ass apology, I dropped it and went back to my snacked lunch.

“To be fair though Eddie, normally this many missed Hellfire meetings results in automatic banishment from the club. You sure you ain’t just going easy on her because you love her?” Gareth said bluntly. I smacked him upside the head.

“Continue to say stupid shit like that and I’ll think about the banishment for another member of this group.” I threatened which got him to shut up and look back down at his tray. When I looked up I soon spotted (Y/n) heading for the back doors.

Quickly I grabbed my lunchbox and chased after her. I at least wanted to check up on her and see how she’s been doing since last I saw her a week or so ago.

“(N/n) wait! Wait!” I charged out the main doors of the school and she turned to face me.

“Oh Eddie, it’s you.”

“Yeah, sorry bout that didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t.” she looked extremely exhausted. Bags upon bags were under her eyes and the poor thing looked exhausted. The usual bubbly girl that I loved was nothing more than a shell of her former self. Hell this girl would even sleep in class, the one thing she’s never done for as long as I’ve known her.

“So—so listen I uhh—I know it’s been hard lately for you. But I-uhh…I was wondering if you’d like to uhh…..have a movie night after Hellfire at my place? I’ll let you pick out any of your favorites, even if it’s that cheesy rom-com shit that I don’t like.”

“Eddie, that’s sweet of you but I—”

“Hey girlie, everything alright here?” that Australian accent (which I think is fake) came up and soon Patrick came up wrapping an arm around (Y/n)’s shoulders and in his other hand a bag of McDonalds, all the while holding a toothpick between his teeth.

“Everything’s fine Patrick.” My jaw ticked as (Y/n) introduced us, “I don’t think you both have been properly introduced. Eddie this is Patrick, Pat this is Eddie Munson.”

“Ohh Eddie? The Eddie Munson? Well nice to meet you mate.” Being the gentleman, we both shook hands and I said trying not to sound condescending.

“You too man. Nice ride.”

“What that old thing? A hand me down by my dad. Trying to save up for a real sweet ride. May even take this little lady for a joy ride. God knows she needs it.” He lightly jostled her which made her smile what almost resembled her real, sunshine smile (the smile that I always got out of her, the smile that rivals all the stars in the sky, the smile that I wish I could make her do again, but they all seem to be reserved for Patrick Verona now).

“So uhh about……” I started back up the conversation between (Y/n) and I but she said.

“Eddie I’m sorry but Patrick and I have some plans tonight. Maybe some other time?”

“Yeah, yeah sure no uhh—no problem. Just figure I’d offer.” I said nonchalantly as I stuffed my hands in my pockets and kicked a couple of pebbles at my feet.

“And Eddie, about Hellfire I……”

“No need. Your temporary leave is still accepted. Just come to me whenever you’re ready to return.”

“Thanks for understanding Eddie.”

“C’mon sugar glider, better get going before someone sees us.” Patrick said as he took them over to his bike.

“See yah around Eddie.” She said to me.

“Yeah, yeah see yah.” She got behind Patrick and wrapped her arms around him as he placed a second helmet on her head before revving his bike and pulled on out of the parking lot driving off down the road. “That manipulative son of a bitch.” I walked back inside and prepared for the remaining day of hell.

The day came and went and I found myself over at Family video just to browse but also to return some of the movies that needed to be returned (they may also have been late I honestly can’t remember).

“And he just waltz up and has her pinned up to his side like an ornament.” I ranted. “And seriously I cannot take that accent seriously, don’t you think it’s fake?”

“Eddie, you’ve gotta stop obsessing over this Patrick guy, it’s not healthy.” Robin told me.

“I can’t Robin! The guy’s completely taking advantage of her! I can’t just sit idly by anymore as some metal-head biker punk comes into town, and swoops down at her like a hawk.”

“You know it is kinda scary how he almost resembles you. Same wild hair, same eyes, you sure you don’t gotta brother or something?” Steve asked as he was stacking some videos.

“Not helping here Harrington.” I grumbled.

“Eddie, how do you know this is like a romantic thing? I mean, take me and Steve. We hang out all the time and we’re not together.”

“Oh absolutely not. Yet I’ll always have Robin’s back if she needs it.”

“Strictly platonic. With a capital PLAH. Have you seen them kiss on the lips?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean they probably don’t do it behind closed doors. Plus couples don’t always make lip to lip contact in public.”

“You can kiss platonically too. I see the cheerleaders doing it all the time, course it’s that fake Barbie air-cheek kiss but still they do it. You’re letting your imagination run wild, again.”

“Plus man if you had told her how you felt in the first place, maybe this wouldn’t be happening.” Steve added.

“I told you man, I was going to tell her but then she got the call from the hospital about her mom’s diagnosis. It—didn’t feel right to tell her. She needed her best friend, not a confession to think over while her mom’s dealing with sudden stage 4 breast cancer.”

“I agree with him on that Steve.” Robin said.

“Okay, okay but still you just…..gotta relax, okay? Look maybe he’ll move on after a while and forget about (Y/n).”

“It’s impossible to forget about her, that girl can make anyone fall in love with her.” I grumbled. The bell rang and speak of the devil himself, Patrick came strolling in and he said.

“I’m told this is where you can get some good films.”

“Yeah, yeah what can we help you with?” Steve spoke up.

“Something upbeat and funny. Sugar glider needs it for tonight.” Sugar glider? Wait that’s what he had called (Y/n) yesterday, she isn’t…..after rejecting our daily movie night she goes off and has a movie night with this asshole? I swear if he weren’t so relatable, I’d beat his ass right now.

“Okay well comedies are just over there man.”

“Thanks mate, say you two wouldn’t happen to be Steve Harrington and Robin Buckley would you?”

“We are, how do you know our names?” Robin said.

“(Y/n) has told me a lot about you two. Especially how you two have been helping her out with sorting through her mum’s belongings. My thanks to you both.” So she goes off and tells this guy about all of us but she doesn’t say a word about you?

“Yeah, yeah it was no problem. She’s helped us out so it was only fitting we’d help her out.” Robin said as she was stacking some tapes along the shelf. As Patrick picked out some of (Y/n)’s favorite comedies like Beverly Hills Cop, Ferris Buller’s Day off, Back to the Future, and the Princess Bride. As Robin rang them up for him, he turned to me and asked, “Now (Y/n) told me you’re the one to go to with some good deals on weed. You got anything in stock?”

Weed? Doesn’t he know that (Y/n) hates the smell of weed? Hell the girl’s allergic to cigarette smoke! Which is why I always make it appoint to never, ever under any circumstances wear the same clothes I smoke in around her let alone smoke around her. Hell I’ll have the trailer burning multiple scented candles just to rid of the smell, yeah it gives me and Wayne headaches but it’s worth it so that she’s comfortable.

“What’s the occasion?” I demanded.

“Nothing special, just need a refill. Ran out of my own stuff and of course (Y/n) don’t have anything.” Jesus this guy is really gonna smoke around her?

“Regretfully I’m out of stock at the moment.”

“Damn, oh well. Gas station always has some smokes.” Jesus this guy is a grade A asshole. And not in the popular jock standard, I mean just straight up insensitive asshole. “Later.” He then walked out after paying for the videos.

“You see what I mean?!” I snapped lowly.

“The guy’s just asking for some smokes Eddie. You do it all the time.” Said Steve.

“Yeah but not around (Y/n)! Jesus I don’t even know why I’m still talking to you guys.” I rubbed my face into my hands in annoyance.

“Eddie, why don’t you just go home? Relax, have a drink, and just get your mind off of Patrick and (Y/n). I’m telling you you’re getting too involved in this and your imagination is running away with you.” Suggested Robin. I stuffed my hand into the twizzlers jar taking a handful of them, bit into one and stormed out of the store.

As I lay across my bed twirling a twizzler in my hand I couldn’t help but think about (Y/n) and Patrick. The more I thought about them together, the more my blood boiled and my other hand kept fidgeting with my rings.

“Screw it!” I sneered lowly before getting up, grabbing my keys and racing off toward her house. I parked a bit off from her house and slowly walked up towards her hedges and hid behind them. I slowly peeked over her window and saw (Y/n) sitting on the couch talking on the phone with someone while her TV was paused on Beverly Hills Cop.

Patrick soon came in with two beers and plopped down right next to her. He set the beers down and had an arm wrapped around her and he looked at her concerningly. His ringed hand stroking the top of her shoulder. She then hung the phone up and I saw her lower her face into her hands in defeat. Patrick stroked his hand through her hair and the two of them briefly exchanged words.

I then watched as (Y/n) got up from the couch but Patrick suddenly grabbed her by her waist and pulled her over his lap and he gave her a peck to her forehead. She gave him a gently slap to the chest before he allowed her to get up off his lap. But again, just as she walked two steps, he sat up, grabbed her by the waist again and pulled her back across his lap and pecked her twice this time on both her cheeks. She shoved at his face playfully and told him something that I couldn’t understand but he allowed her to get up a third time.

As she got up, he then grabbed her and they playfully went down to the ground as he wrestled on top of her tickling her, I could hear the faint sounds of her laughter coming out from the window.

So it is true, she really did find someone better than me. Well if that’s her decision then—I can’t stop her. But this guy should at least have the decency in knowing of what she likes. I walked over to the door and knocked on it rapidly. I heard the laughter stop and footsteps coming to the door and opening it was (Y/n)m her hair a bit disheveled from their wrestling I had just seen.

“Eddie, what are you—”

“I need to talk to Patrick.”

“Uhh okay.” I didn’t wait for her to open the door as I just stormed in. When I saw him getting up from the floor, he looked up at me and said.

“Well this is a surprise. Did you end up finding some smokes left over?” that smug-eating grin came across his face.

“Even if I did have any smokes or left over joints, I would tell you one thing. Don’t you ever smoke it around (Y/n), okay? She can’t stand the smell of it, not to mention she’s allergic to cigarette smoke. And that’s no joke, okay? Her breathing becomes so tight she can barely breathe, it’s like she’s going into anaphylactic shock if she even smells a whiff of it. So if you’re gonna date her, don’t you ever do that in front of her.”

“What?” he said confused with a head tilt.

“No, no you pay attention because you don’t know just how lucky you are man!” I snapped. I jostled his shoulders and emphasized each point I made with a firm poke to his chest. “You better treat this lady like a Queen, okay? Because if I had someone like (Y/n) (L/n) I would bring her her favorite flowers every chance I got. And they aren’t roses because she says roses are too cliché, you understand? Her favorite flowers are blue orchids, you got that blue orchids. Because they bring out her bright, beautiful eyes. And when she’s sick, she gets chicken ramen just like how her mom used to make for her with a side of saltine crackers. I would be her shoulder to cry on and her best friend. And I would spend every second of every day trying to get her to smile because she—she has the most beautiful smile that I’ve missed so much. And that I would do anything to see that smile again.”

I turned to look at (Y/n) who was staring at me with this wide-eyed look of awe. Even though my heart was aching at the fact I had now spilled my feelings for her even though she’d never be mine, I—I had to at least let her know that I’ll always be there for her.

“But she chose you. So……you better do just that. And much more to make her happy, especially now. Because that’s what I would do.” I released Patrick’s shoulders and went to walk out the door but (Y/n) quickly got to the door before me and shut it, staring up at me with soft but sad eyes.

We both stared at each other until she slowly walked towards me. I looked down shamefully but I soon felt her take my face in between her hands and her lips soon met mine. Her arms slid around my neck and I wrapped mine around her waist bringing her closer to me as I kissed her back.

“See what’d I tell yah? He’s your penguin.” Patrick’s voice said. We separated and saw he was leaning up against the wall, toothpick in mouth with a wide grin.

“What?”

“Eddie, I’d like for you to formally meet Patrick Verona. My cousin.” She told me. I looked to Patrick in shock who grinned at us again and gave me a two-finger salute.

“Your—your cousin……”

“Well when we call each other cousins its more loosely. I treat my little sugar glider like she’s my little sister.” Patrick told me.

“He’s been a real familial support system that I haven’t been getting with the rest of the family ever since mom got sick. After the funeral he just—showed up and he’s been staying here ever since helping me out with all this stuff.”

“Aunt (M/n) was the glue that kept the family together and ever since her death, the family’s been divided and (Y/n) has been stuck in the middle while still trying to finish school. I couldn’t let her go through all that drama and stress alone. One of us has to at least be successful, right sis?” He gave her a wink which made (Y/n) shake her head.

“They were right, I’m a complete dumbass.” I muttered.

“Look mate, any man whose willing to allow me to take this girl as my own, is a real man in my books. Even though if we did hook up we’d have some ugly-ass kids.” The three of us softly laughed. Patrick came up to me and placed a strong hand to my shoulder softly jostling it around, “You know, I haven’t heard my little sugar glider talk about a boy the way she talks about you Eddie Munson. Now I see that you are truly something special to my little cousin.” I turned over to (Y/n) and said.

“More than anything in this whole world.” (Y/n) softly smiled as she placed her hand over her heart.

“Then you have my permission to date her, but just know this. If you ever break her heart or mistreat her,” the sound of a switchblade came out and I froze as the gleam of the blade came below my chin.

“Patrick!” (Y/n) exclaimed. As quick as he had brought it out, he sheathed it back and put it back into his pocket.

“Just for a word of warning.” He gave me a hard pat on the back and walked out ruffling (Y/n) hair before saying. “Be back in a few hours, don’t have too much fun you two lovebirds.” Patrick then left the house leaving the two of us alone.

“I am so sorry about that, I swear that man acts like the fucking Joker sometimes.”

“He’s more metal than I ever could be.” (Y/n) came up and wrapped her arms around me.

“I think you are just the right amount of metal for me Eddie.”

“Really?”

“Really, really.” We both smiled and kissed each other again when a bang at the window spooked us apart and there stood Patrick giving us a warning glare (well mainly at me). (Y/n) flipped him off and tossed a pillow at the window. He stuck his tongue mockingly before disappearing from the window.

So the rest of the night was spent cuddling up on the couch watching her favorite movies until we both ended up falling asleep together. By morning I noticed a blanket had been put around us both and I knew I wasn’t the one to have done it and neither had (Y/n). There I saw a note on the table and it read:

Take care of my little sugar glider. And if you’re ever interested in some embarrassing stories she hasn’t told you from when we were kids, meet me for some smokes later this evening at the Hideout.

Patrick

I smiled and looked down at my best girl and kissed the top of her head. At least we both had something in common besides physical appearances and our outlook on the world, we both care deeply for this girl that’s in my arms and want nothing but the best for her as she tries to move on from her grief.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson imagines #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson angst #stranger things #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things imagine #stranger things imagines #steve harrington #robin buckley #patrick verona

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bitbybitwrites · 2 months

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WIP ASK ME GAME

I was tagged by @wordsofhoneydew and @itsmaybitheway. Thank you so much for thinking of me! Sorry for the delay - it took me longer than usual to think of descriptions of all the WIP I've got in the works 😂

So here are some Klaine and RWRB fics I'm working on that anyone can feel free to ask me about if you'd like:)

A long WIP list can be found under the break!

Partially published WIP:

(Klaine) If I Can Make Your Heart My Home - (Klaine Reverse Bang 2023) Life in New York City and working in the restaurant industry wasn’t exactly what Kurt Hummel had expected it would be. He’s lonely, stressed out and miserable. He’s almost ready to throw in the towel and return home to Ohio when a chance meeting with a musician in Central Park changes everything. (Warning: an angsty rollercoaster of a ride. Soooo many cameos from Glee characters! 😉)

(Klaine) Falling For You -(Klaine Secret Santa 2023 - NOW COMPLETE AS OF 4/16/24) - Successful doctor, Blaine Anderson has his hands full heading up the pediatric wing of Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital in NY City. Life with that job and his precocious 6 year old daughter certainly keeps him on his toes - so much so that he thinks he can avoid dealing with the hole left in his life from the death of his husband. Little does he know that falling in love is on the horizon, quite literally, when he meets a florist by the name of Kurt Hummel. (Kid!fic with a bit of angst but a happy ending)

(RWRB) Puppy Love - (RWRB NYE gift exchange 2023) The cold snowy day that Henry Fox discovers an abandoned beagle puppy in an alley brings handsome, flirty veterinarian, Alex Claremont-Diaz into his life. Alex is a single dad, recently moved to NY with his young son who Henry hasn't met yet - or so Alex thought. (Fluffy kid!fic)

(Klaine) Sanctuary - (Klaine Word Scramble 2023) Crown Prince Blaine has stumbled into a secluded glade, trying to escape the horrors of the bloody war his father had brought upon their kingdom. Mourning his beloved older brother and faced with the burden of taking his place in the kingdom, Blaine yearns for a place to hid from the world to deal with the issues weighing on his heavy heart. He encounters a mysterious elf, the guardian of the magical spring that Blaine has mistakenly defiled, whose growing connection to his life the young prince can't ignore. (Inspired by an idea/ artwork by @datshitrandom and @justgleekout)

Not published yet WIP :

(these are in various states of readiness: some outlined, some partially written, some still in the brainstorming/research phase)

(RWRB) I approach, and I withdraw (tentative title) - Historical fic - Alejandro Diaz was still a boy when he followed his father into the thick of the fight for Mexico's independence. A series of unfortunate events, however, led him and his family to flee his home and to adopt new identities for their own safety. Years later, after he finds himself well ensconced in his new life as an attaché to the office of the new American ambassador to England, Alexander Claremont soon finds his past catching up to him. (Inspired by these historical paintings by @stormtrooperjeff17004 as well as artwork from @artofobsession seen here and here.)

(RWRB) Shaken, Not Stirred (Spy!AU) - CIA Officer Alex Claremont Diaz is not new to working on joint operations with other foreign agencies. He does it often and he does it well, which is why his superior, Zahra Bankston, never hesitates to assign them to him. What he wasn't expecting that morning was to be put on a new assignment with his least favorite MI6 operative, Henry Fox - and that they had to use being a newly married couple as their cover to get the job done. (Inspired by this drawing by @noodles-and-tea )

(Klaine) Cuffed (a D/s and soulmate story and prequel to my first ever fic, Trick or Treat) - - Musician Blaine Anderson has always been lonely sub, yearning for a place to belong and someone to belong to. Kurt Hummel is the an overworked and high in demand designer - a Dom with no time to sit and relax and focus on what his needs are. When an old friend hires Kurt to revamp his new club, Kurt's life becomes intertwined with Blaine's in a way neither of them could ignore.

(Klaine) Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie (Day 2 /Bikini - Klaine Advent 2023/ PWP) - A casual little fashion critique while the boys are on a well needed vacation, leads to a little outdoor fun. (Set in my Trick or Treat AU)

(RWRB) how ardently i admire and love you (online auction!AU) - Alex is desperate to find the perfect birthday gift for Henry, and eventually finds himself in an online bidding war for the one unique item that he knows his boyfriend would just adore.

(Klaine) I Know You Wanna Take Me Home (tentative title) (Klaine Valentines Challenge 2024/Pretty Woman!AU) Well established business man, Kurt Hummel never thought he could find anyone of substance among the escorts at Dalton House. But after being convinced to visit the upscale club by his friend, Kurt's mind is quickly changed once he sets his eyes on a beautiful boy in a gilded cage who was up for auction that night.

(Klaine) Untitled Klaine fic (Klaine Advent 2022) - Set in my Klaine superhero AU - Under The Cover of Darkness) Blaine decides to go home with Kurt for the holidays and doesn't make the best first impression with Kurt's parents.

(Klaine) Untitled Klaine fic (Feudal Japan!AU) - based off of novel The Tokaido Road - On a personal mission to avenge the murder of his father, Kurt travels the Tokaido , braving its dangers and interesting characters on the way. As the son of a nobleman, Kurt travels in disguise, unaware that the person who sanctioned his father's murderer has also sent Blaine, a talented and deadly ronin, to find and kill Kurt as well.

(RWRB)- the phantom touch of your hand (tentative title) - (Fantasy/cursed tattoo fic!AU) Two young swordsmen are determined to vanquish a sorcerer who has laid a tragic curse on them both. The problem is, the curse keeps them from being together at the same time, doomed to travel alone, one by day, the other by night - the only reminder of the other being the cursed tattoo burned into their skin.

(Klaine) - Untitled Klaine fic (While You were Sleeping!AU) - Kurt Hummel always wanted to live in NYC - his dreams were to be on Broadway. Being on the Broadway stage that is. Not working on the corner of Broadway and 44th in one of those coffee/food carts parked out on the street. Things for him change the day that Cooper Anderson, Kurt's gorgeous repeat customer whom he secretly fantasizes about, nearly gets hit by a bus. After following him to the hospital, Kurt gets mistaken for being his crush's fiancee which should have been his dream come true - until he meets Cooper's sweet down to earth brother, Blaine.

(Sebklaine) Untitled Klaine fic (PWP College threesome) - heavily influenced by "one of those movies" - wink, wink . . - Kurt's frustrated ( in more ways than one) and his good friends Blaine and Sebastian find a way to help him out.

(Klaine/RWRB) - Untitled fic (Scheherazade/ 1001 Arabian Nights !AU) - A lone traveler gets captured by a band of sex slavers in the desert. After being subjected to the horrors of slavery, the young man gets rescued by a desert prince in disguise, chosen to be his sole consort. Every evening, the consort tells his prince a story for him amusement. - planning a series of probably shorts all in the same style. Maybe it'll be a collection to do with other writers? Not sure yet. Might alternate with either Henry/Alex being the Prince and Consort and Blaine/Kurt being the characters in the bedtime tales or vice versa. Or maybe create 2 OC to be the Prince/Consort and have the other four boys be the characters in the shorter stories. I'm assuming it would be alot of mature/explicit shorts - but wouldn't mind a mix of other ratings in between as well.

Tagging ( only if they want to play): @myheartalivewrites, @clottedcreamfudge, @hkvoyage, @kirakiwiwrites, @gleefulpoppet, @gleefuldarrencrissfan, @onthewaytosomewhere, @sarkyblueeyes, @madas-ahatters-world @rougedraconteur, @yadivagirl @lilinas, @forabeatofadrum, @kiwiana-writes, @spaceorphan18, @special-bc-ur-part-of-it, @fallevs @daisyishedwig @annepi-blog @wowbright @backslashdelta @kurtsascot @coffeegleek @14carrotghoul @rockitmans @teilo @iboatedhere, @orchidscript @welcometololaland . . oh hell and anyone else who sees this and wants to share their WIP - go for it!

#ask game #wip ask game #bitbybitwrites

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darkdevasofdestruction · 1 year

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My Little Twinkling Star ~ Ominis Gaunt x Slytherin!Reader

Summary: Reader misses her family to the point of crying, but is too afraid of telling Ominis, knowing his bad relationship with his own parents.

It was no news for anyone that Y/N loved her parents more than she loved life itself, almost to the point of obsession. Why? Certainly, no one could really understand. Most of the children her age were attached to their parents, yes, but not like this - Not to the point of crying just thinking about them. And the more the years passed, the harder the separation became. Once again, not even she could understand why - After all, she had the best of friends in Sebastian and Anne, and an absolute angel of a boyfriend in Ominis. Not only that, she loved her time at Hogwarts, the studying, the Professors, the environment, the creatures, the forest; There was not a single thing she disliked about her years spent at Hogwarts... But at the end of the day, she knew she wanted to return back at her home village and be close to her mum and dad.

Now, in her last year of Hogwarts, with the stress from the NEWTS weighting so heavy on her shoulders, she wrote to her mother more than ever before - In fact, if the poor Owl could handle the tedious flight, she would write her parents ten times a day, at the minimum. At some point, she even asked her mum to send her a few Howlers, just to hear her voice, as so many months passed without seeing each other, without feeling her warm, loving touch, or her protective embrace.

It was always late into the night, when sleep refused to visit her, that she’d go to the Common Room, with a calming tea laced with some sleeping draught and honey, that she would listen to the sweet voice of her mother, calling her all sorts of cutesy nicknames, like ‘My little twinkling star’, ‘My precious little angel’ or even ‘My beautiful sweetheart’.

Of course, she got along very well with her dad too, always playing around and going on adventures, playing games or doing tech-stuff, as he was a muggle carpenter and built everything around their home, including the cozy little cottage all with his own hands... But there was always a special connection with her mum, her guardian angel, her most beloved person alive.

And tonight, like during many other nights, she laid on the couch, hugging the plushie that her mum gifted her on her birthday many years ago, along with the fluffy blanket, and she opened the envelope. A bittersweet smile appeared on her face, hearing that tender voice, telling her words of love, of the mundane, and how much she misses her little twinkling star. Y/N’s face became wet with tears, hugging the plush tighter to her chest and stifling her sobs in the blanket.

Oh, how she wished she could explain what she was feeling, how she wished to talk to someone without sounding pretentious or spoiled. Sebastian and Anne both lost their parents, and her sweet Ominis... He didn’t even want to hear about his dreadful parents. Poppy’s parents were just as awful, and she ran away from them... Though perhaps she would understand, as she loves her grandma as much as she loves her mum... And then there’s Natty, who still blames her father’s death on herself, and she has a little bit of a rebellious state with her mum.

Y/N was so absorbed in her own thoughts, comforted only by the envelope’s voice looping the message over and over again with each flick of her wrist, that she didn’t hear the sound of soft foot steps, until a familiar voice called out her name, confused. “Y/N?” Ominis called out in a soft voice. “O-Oh! Ominis, h-hi! It’s late, why aren’t you sleeping?” she quickly closed the envelope, hiding it underneath the pillow. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d get a glass of water.” he explained. “I can only guess you’re pretty much in the same boat as me, huh?” “Y-Yeah... Sort of. I made myself some sleeping draught tea with honey. It’s still a bit warm, if you want some.” she offered, patting the spot on the couch next to her. “Sounds lovely, thanks.” with a soft smile on his face, the boy sat next to her. “I heard your mum’s voice. Is everything okay?” Y/N’s breath was hitched in her throat, unsure of how to answer. “Y/N? Are you okay, my darling?” he asked again, hearing no answer. “Ah, y-yeah, of course, everything is alright, no need to worry. I, uh... I guess I just miss my parents, that’s all. No big deal.” Ominis, however, frowned. He might not be able to see the blatant fidgeting of her body, or the way her eyes were looking everywhere but at him, but her voice was betraying her. “Y/N, come here.” he extended his arms, and by instinct, Y/N cuddled into his embrace, getting herself comfortable and covering the both of them with the blanket. “Please, tell me what’s bothering you. I’ve heard you crying on a couple of occasions - And it’s not only me worried, but Anne and Sebastian too.” he tenderly caressed her hair. “Is it the gossips from those nasty girls? Because, if it is, I don’t want to hear any of that. I won’t accept you agreeing to some low-lives degrading you for your softer nature. I have told you once, and I will tell you again - Your emotions are endearing, and the fact that your love for the people you care for is so strong that’s overflowing... I think it’s beautiful.” “Ominis...” she whispered his name in disbelief, feeling his hands softly make their way to her face and wiping away her tears. “It’s a selfish reason, I don’t... I don’t want to bother you with it. It’s really... It’s really silly, you know?” “Is it exam stress, then?” the boy could feel her head nodding at first, only to shake just after. “So not only that.” “I just... I just really miss my mum, okay? I know, it’s a stupid reason to cry. It’s very, very stupid. But I just want to go home, and... And hug my mum, and joke around with dad, and play with my puppy, and be in the comfort of my own home... If it makes any sense at all.” she sighed deeply. “I’m stressed from the exams, yes, but... I don’t know why I’m so emotional. I thought I was getting older, tougher, more mature... Instead, I’m just turning into a huge weeping mess. It’s... It’s stupid. It’s ridiculous!” she gritted her teeth in exasperation. “I have the perfect life with my family, and I feel like I’m selfish if I cry about it, when people like you are one step away from being estranged for not sharing the same bigoted beliefs as your family, or -- Or Sebastian and Anne, whose parents died... Or Poppy who ran away from her criminal parents... I just... I don’t want to burden you with my silly, makeshift problems... Because they aren’t even problems, I’m just being a spoiled brat.”

Ominis was silent for a few seconds, before pulling Y/N into a sweet kiss, and smiling at her like the loving angel that he is. “Now, now, didn’t I ask you to tell me, whenever something bothers you? Even the little things? You missing your family is included, you silly little lady.” he chuckled softly. “It’s not your fault that my family sucks. In fact, I think your family is more my family than my own family ever was. Didn’t your mum say two years ago that I’m as good as her son?” his smile widened. “I’d say, I miss your family too.” “R-Really? You do?” Ominis nodded affirmatively. “Then, after we finish Hogwarts, would you like to move in with me, in the same village? A pretty little cozy cottage, just the two of us, in the comfort of a familiar and very friendly village - Which so happens to be rather close to Sebastian’s?” “Ahh, you want the world to explode, don’t you? If the four of us are reunited after Hogwarts ends, then no doubt, bad things will happen. Either the end of the world, or... Erh... Sometimes similar.” Ominis joked. “But I do fancy that idea, I can’t lie, especially if I get to taste more of your mum’s cookies or meals. They were positively fantastic.” “Ominis.” Y/N abruptly murmured his name. “It was me who baked the cookies.” “Even better!” he exclaimed in surprise. “I just have to wife you now, and it’s all good. Everything is going according to the plan.” If only he could see the heavy blush painted on her cheeks - Though Y/N suspected he could feel the warmth at least, as the cheeky grin never did leave his face. “Ah, you got all quiet, have I flustered you so? Forgive me, my little twinkling star. Just wait a bit more, until we’ve graduated, and I can get you a proper ring, beautiful, to match your own charm.” Y/N had to bury her face in the crook of his neck from embarrassment. “It’s times like this when I’m really upset I can’t see. I would do anything to see that look on your pretty face.” he just won’t give her and her beating heart any break, will he? “Ominis, you’re embarrassing me!” she finally managed to whine. “I might have done that, but at least you’re not upset anymore, so I don’t regret anything. After all, I meant every word I said.” he rose her face, just enough to place his forehead against her own. “The love you have for all of us is magnetic. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s what attracted me most to you. You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever met in my life, and I never want to lose you. All jokes aside, I hope you will actually come to me, no matter what silly thing bothers you so. I can feel when you’re upset, just as you always could with me. We are connected, the two of us, didn’t you say that - Remember, when you touched my wand, and you said you felt happy? That you felt a comforting warmth take over you? That’s what I feel whenever I’m with you. Any bit of sadness I have, simply disappears. Do you know why?” “Why?” Y/N dared to speak, though her whole being was frozen from all the heart-warming words addressed her way. “Because I love you.”

#hogwarts legacy imagine #hogwarts legacy x reader #hogwarts legacy #ominis gaunt x reader #ominis gaunt imagine #ominis gaunt

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britcision · 1 year

Text

Happy WIP Wednesday everyone! And no, no I’m not giving you Constantine early, because I think it’s funny to make you all wait 😈

How about a little Danny instead to get y’all ready for chapter 12 (which is just over half done, so we’re moving along swimmingly!)?

————————

Never Make A Promise You Can’t Keep

Harley had gotten back just before Sam had to leave, with perfect timing to see her to the door actually.

The look on Pamela Manson’s face when Harley kissed Sam on each cheek and waved her off would keep Danny warm on cold nights.

A quick check of flight times back to Massachusetts (like Danny wasn’t going to take shortcuts) confirmed that Tucker could have one more night in Gotham.

Tim immediately offered to put him up in Wayne Manor again, clearly not allowing the chance to slip by him two nights in a row. Tucker was only too happy to accept, although Steph and Cass begged off.

Probably for their hero patrols. Danny wasn’t exactly sure how many vigilantes Gotham had, there seemed to be a new one every few months, but having six of them at the gala last night probably meant all the rest had been out.

Obviously Red Robin wouldn’t be out tonight either, but there were enough of them to cover for each other.

Danny was kinda jealous of that. It had been just him for so long, and then him and Valerie, which hadn’t been better until she stopped hunting him too. He’d have loved a night off.

Still, their numbers meant that Jason probably wouldn’t need to go back to the night life unless he actually wanted to. He was definitely still built for it, but Danny couldn’t imagine anyone wanted to ask him to.

Most of the bats had clearly had their own run ins with death, but Jason’s had stuck in ways even Danny knew he didn’t quite get.

Jason had been so tense at just the thought of Danny being a teen hero. It wasn’t like that’d get easier when it was his little siblings swinging from rooftops.

Danny’s hero career might have started with his own death, but he personally was of the opinion that that’d be a perfectly fine reason to end one too.

So Dick, Steph, and Cass headed out not too long after Sam, and Danny wasn’t exactly surprised when Jason’s background angst jumped.

He’d stayed on edge since Danny and Bruce got back, even when Harley told them Bruce was off dealing with his own shit and probably wouldn’t be out of his room all night.

Danny’d bet fifty bucks that the arrival of Constantine actually meant Bruce was in the Bat Cave being suspicious, but he wasn’t gonna say it.

Tim had shown them to a games room, for all that he’d apparently also moved out. He still knew where everything was, and soon had them hooked up for Mariokart on the biggest TV Danny ever saw.

They’d played a couple rounds (Harley was expectedly devastating with red shells) and while Danny and Tucker were having fun, he could feel Jason stressing.

Like, even if he stuck his fingers in his ears and ignored the aura. The guy was tensed so tight his shoulders strained at his shirt, which woulda been visually interesting if Danny didn’t know why.

Cass was one near death experience from slipping back across the boundary for good.

Cass was off punching criminals with rocket launchers in body armour and spandex.

Duke was probably actually in bed, Signal did morning patrols, and Damian was obstinately refusing to play video games with them perched on the back of the couch, but still.

Dick and Steph had both given one life to the cause too, and for all Dick was a cop and in danger on his day job too, cops pretty famously showed up after the vigilantes ended the party.

More than half Jason’s immediate family were back in the line of fire and Danny could practically taste Jason’s Obsession eating away at him.

As much as he tried to pretend he was playing along and gave a shit about winning, the controller creaked in his hands more than a couple casual races should allow.

So, yeah, if he couldn’t get Jason to crack a smile with this one, he was gonna gently bow them both the fuck outta the manor.

He kept half an eye on Tim, who had a glass of water.

“Hey, you guys heard the theory about Batman?” He asked casually, just as another round of Mariokart started.

Jason kicked him in the ankle but otherwise ignored him, which was fair. He’d been exposed to Danny’s bullshit.

Tim stiffened and then forced himself to relax, Tucker rolled his eyes and jostled Danny from his other side, but it was Harley who answered.

Innocent as the day she was born.

“Oh? What? Is it that he’s a lizardman? Cuz I got right up on that cowl and he’s definitely a mammal,” she said casually, not even looking away from the screen.

Danny was pretty sure he heard Damian almost slip off his perch.

He was a little bit in love with Harley Quinn. He should get her number for Jazz, maybe his big sister would learn to have a little fun.

Grinning broad and only half fake, he drifted a turn to pick up a double item from under Tucker’s nose.

“Shit, yeah, you might actually know! It’s his secret identity!” He exclaimed cheerfully, and felt the tension in the room ratchet up.

From Tim and Damian. Jason… still wasn’t paying attention.

Not like he was deeply immersed in the game, for all he kept up he was nowhere near the speed demon that handed Danny his ass the night before.

Hmm. Better get his attention.

Tim and Damian had already settled again, probably remembering he was already In The Know even if Tucker wasn’t, and Harley had given him a very knowing look right before she fire flowered him.

Almost ready.

He waited until Tim had taken a hasty sip of water on a calm stretch, nudged Jason in the shins, and made sure he was louder than the music.

“So d’you think it’s possible that Markiplier’s Batman?”

Tim sprayed water across the couch, Harley fucking cackled, and Jason snapped his head around to stare at Danny so hard he cricked his neck.

Danny red shelled him for good measure, just so he wasn’t missing anything on screen.

Tucker rolled his eyes, also deeply deeply used to Danny’s bullshit and much more interested in gaming revenge.

“Fuck off Danny, Markiplier isn’t even a Gothamite,” he said disdainfully and Danny shook his head, grinning.

“That’s why it’s the perfect cover. I mean, Batman wants to keep his secret identity a secret, right? So having an identity that very publicly “isn’t in Gotham” makes perfect sense!” He argued cheerfully.

Jason half snorted a laugh beside him, picking back up and speeding his way back into the race. Across the couch Tim wiped his face, still catching his breath.

“I fucking hate that that made sense,” he moaned, and Harley cackled again.

“Nah, he’s got a point! How does anyone know where a youtuber lives? We only see one room!” She agreed cheerfully, clearly leaning in.

It was so nice to have a true showwoman in the crowd.

Damian looked angry in the confused way now, and Danny would hazard a guess he didn’t watch youtube at all, let alone a lets player. That might have made it funnier, had there been no other concerns.

Beside him Jason huffed out another dry chuckle, shaking his head with the barest hint of a smile.

“I can’t believe Batman has an OnlyFans,” he said in a solemn, almost sorrowful voice… and dropped a blue shell.

Tim groaned like his soul had gone with it, clinging desperately to his first place lead. Harley cackled and added her own green shells to the mix, dropping all three as they came to the home stretch.

“Don’t forget the calendar of tasteful nudes! All for charity, just what Batsy would like,” she crowed with evident glee, and Tucker snorted a laugh.

“It’d explain all the surgeries,” he agreed reluctantly, and Danny had a sudden, utterly wicked idea.

“Hey… now that Batman’s on OnlyFans, d’you think he’ll convince the whole Justice League to do a pinup calendar, or just the other bats?” He asked innocently, watching said bats from the corner of his eye.

Well, Robins technically, but since only Tim was of age birds didn’t seem appropriate.

Tim himself threw his controller to the ground, abandoning the game and throwing himself over the back of the couch and almost hitting Damian on the way.

Damian definitely hissed at him like a startled cat.

No way Danny imagined that this close to the finish.

Tucker hesitated for a long moment, clearly considering his odds of winning, but when Harley blasted past Tim’s spun out corpse and across the finish line he abandoned his controller too to check on Tim.

Harley was surprisingly good at the game when flopped sideways on her chosen couch, laughing too hard to breathe. Danny breezed into an easy third behind her and Jason, giving the other man an assessing look.

A little wary of reaching out with his aura, especially when Jason was on edge. He didn’t want to make him uncomfortable.

Didn’t want to be too invasive, if he was honest. Danny had… kinda always been the one who was new to aura stuff before. And he’d gotten used to it, in the Ghost Zone.

He’d never spent this much time with another halfa before. Especially not without a single trace of punching or stabbing.

Except in Mariokart, where the Geneva Convention held no sway.

He’d have to get Ellie to give it a shot the next time she came by, she could join them remotely from an internet cafe anywhere on Earth.

Jason had clearly noticed him looking though, and read the concern even without Danny pushing. He gave Danny’s shoulder a gentle bump, a nudge of fine-stop worrying alongside.

Danny nudged back, his own disbelief tinged with understanding-empathy-worried too.

But, that was kinda the other thing… the thing he didn’t really want to bring up around the other bats just yet.

And while Jason had smiled, Danny didn’t think he’d mind them dipping out.

Faking a yawn, he stretched, cracked his back, and looked over to where Tim had rejoined the couch.

“Honestly, I’m beat. I gotta try and get back into a better sleep schedule before classes start,” he said, pulling a face at the self-reminder.

Their break was coming to its end, and then he’d be back into university. His class schedule was flexible, more afternoons than early mornings, but he’d… miss this.

Free time to just spend the whole day hanging out with friends and catching up. Meeting Jason’s family, Jason meeting his.

Danny didn’t actually know what Jason did, whether he was working or going back to school, but it was gonna come up soon.

They had a trip to Frostbite to plan, some ecto shots from Danny’s fridge, and at some point he still had to introduce Jason to Frighty… and probably ask the guy if he wanted to be called that still.

It’d be a little weird to start calling him Halloween or whatever, but frankly him obeying Danny’s orders and calling him “my liege” was way fucking weirder so it’d be fine.

And about four more days before half of Danny’s time would be eaten by lectures, study halls, and projects. Fuck, maybe Jason would give him a hand with those too.

So long as he wasn’t sick of Danny by then.

Another quick glance showed that Jason’s face had reset into that tense almost-scowl again, staring past the TV.

At the other end of the couch, Tim gave a disgruntled huff.

“I’m gonna make you pay for that next time,” he grumbled, shifting to Tucker with an adorable moment of sudden concern. “Do you need me to show you to a room too, or…”

Tucker shook his head with a snicker, giving Danny a side eye.

“Nah, unlike that weakling I got used to the vigilante sleep schedule back in high school. I’m good for a couple more hours at least,” he bragged.

Danny flipped him off, hauling himself to his feet and giving Jason a nudge.

“Yeah, well, this weakling fought a croc last night and needs his sleep. Mind giving me a ride back?” He asked when Jason looked up at him.

Gently offered a touch of easy out-reassurance-trust me.

The deep furrows in Jason’s brows twitched until he caught on and his expression cleared. He nodded quickly and pulled himself to his feet.

“Yeah, we can take my bike.” Then he hesitated and looked a little uncertain. “You never told me where you live.”

It took Danny a moment to realise that… no, he really hadn’t, because that just plain didn’t feel right. But no, he’d met Jason again in that coffee shop, then come to the gala with Sam.

Hadn’t gone home last night, just stopped at one of Jason’s apparently multiple places; at least he was doing better than Danny had thought from the first apartment.

He found himself chuckling at the thought, shaking his head.

“Oh yeah, we’ve only been to your place… I’m at the south dorm at Gotham U, I can give you directions as we get closer,” he offered and Jason nodded.

He felt… weird? Like he was surprised Danny had told him where he lived, and ashamed of being surprised.

Danny decided not to dig into it, offering Jason his arm and bowing like all those Shakespeare plays he knew Jason loved.

“Shall we?”

Jason’s moment of surprise was quickly swallowed by delight and he bowed back, then tucked his hand into Danny’s elbow. Almost definitely knew etiquette better than Danny did, so Danny wasn’t gonna doubt him.

“We shall. I’ll drop you off and head home,” he agreed, then paused and glanced back at Harley.

Whose giggling had completely ended and was now watching them like her favourite sitcom. Chin in hands and all.

“Did you wanna meet up here tomorrow, or…” Jason trailed off, obviously also a little put off by her intensity.

She perked up when addressed, giving him a cheery grin and a double thumbs up.

“Here or th’ station, I don’t mind! Hey, did ya wanna come too, Danny boy?” She asked sweetly, head cocked to the side and just waaaay too innocent.

Not that Danny could work out what she was up to.

“Uh… to do what?” He asked carefully, head cocking to match hers before he noticed and straightened up.

Her grin widened, so she noticed.

“Oh, Jason an’ I are gonna go check on my buddy Waylon, see if we can’t work out what he was doin’ at the gala. If y’ouse threw down he might like ta see ya there?”

Which honestly left Danny at a loss, until Tim explained.

“Killer Croc. His actual name’s Waylon Jones, and he was Harley’s tenant in Coney Island before coming back to Gotham,” he said casually, and Danny stilled.

Felt something cold and all too familiar at the back of his neck. And felt Harley notice it, suddenly predator sharp in a way he hadn’t felt since Skulker was a serious threat.

For the life of him though, he couldn’t put his finger on what he felt, since she didn’t move. Just grinned like she had been all along.

“People called him Killer Croc cuz of his skin condition. He gave up tryin’ ta change their minds,” she said with a light shrug, completely belied by the intensity of her stare.

Danny couldn’t look away until she released him, something satisfied in the quirk of her lip. Like she could feel the sudden well of tension in his chest.

He’d never actually given in to all the things his parents had called Phantom. They’d been ashamed of all of them when the truth came out, and he’d only had to put up with them for a few years.

He tried to imagine decades of it, being called a monster for things he couldn’t control. For nothing more than a weird scaly skin condition.

He couldn’t imagine going full bomb vest over it, but Danny was man enough to admit he might just be a little touchy because of Jason’s death.

Which Waylon might not even know about.

Suddenly he actually did want to know why they’d attacked the gala.

Until now it had just been inevitable, someone was going to so why not them, but… well. He’d felt it under the whole plan, every stupid step.

Jason had trusted Waylon, not Danny, to keep things from getting out of hand. To know that a tussle was part of the fun.

Danny hadn’t planned on asking, but. Yeah.

��I’d like that,” he agreed quickly, nodding, at about the same time as Tucker found his own voice.

“Wait, that’s a skin condition? He’s just like that?” The techie asked sharply, staring around at Tim and Damian to confirm.

And got a disdainful look from Damian back.

“Tt, what else would it be? Do you know many scaled people?” He asked archly.

Danny’s mind snapped directly to Dora and her asshole brother. Knew Tucker’s had gone to the same place a second later.

“More than you’d think,” he and Tucker said in unison, and they shared a grin. If there was one benefit to their fucked up ghost hunting years, it was shutting down smart ass remarks.

Damian only looked more annoyed at being corrected, and Tucker shrugged.

“I thought he mighta been a scientist and tried to fuse himself with a lizard or something, like in Spider-Man,” he elaborated, and Danny kinda hated how much their lives resembled superhero movies.

Not that he’d say that in a room full of bats.

Damian’s brows drew down even further and he sneered, displeasure evident, but Jason cut him off before he could speak.

“Before you make a comment about mad scientists I’m gonna remind you we live in a city with Viktor Fries,” he said dryly and Damian’s mouth snapped shut.

Big brother privileges.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Ellie had given Danny those?

Tucker gave Danny a confused look, and Danny just shrugged back. He didn’t pay much attention to Gotham’s various rogues; he didn’t want to tempt his Obsession.

Tim chimed in again, without actually looking at Tucker which was kinda impressive.

“Dr Freeze. He uses a lot of liquid nitrogen and freeze rays, he’s usually after money or diamonds to try and cure his wife,” he explained with a slight shrug.

Tucker made a confused noise.

“So… couldn’t Bruce just pay him off and keep him from bothering the city?” He asked carefully, glancing around the room.

Jason actually snorted a laugh at that, shaking his head.

“If he could, he would have. What Fries wants isn’t possible yet.”

Not possible for humans. Part of Danny perked up, wondering if Frostbite might have the answers… but no. It wasn’t his job to solve every problem in the world.

Bringing healthy humans to the Zone was iffy. An already sick woman… well, she might get hastened along her journey to the afterlife.

And this was a conversation he really wanted to keep away from, honestly. Gotham’s rogues weren’t his problem. Couldn’t be his problem.

Danny fought ghosts, unkillable entities who enjoyed missile attacks as sport. He wasn’t interested in learning how squishy human rogues were; it had been bad enough with his friends in the line of fire.

Mega pass on being the firing squad.

He almost reconsidered the trip tomorrow, but… he trusted Jason. Trusted Jason knew where he was coming from, and that neither of them wanted to trip Danny’s Obsession.

So he gave the big guy a smile and an elbow nudge, nodding for the door.

“Not that rogue chat isn’t fascinating, but you were taking me to bed?” He asked hopefully, and only realised what he’d said when Harley stuffed half her fist in her mouth to laugh.

—————

Tag List: @welcometosasakiworld @kyrianclawraith @someonebored0100 @stealingyourbones @starkcravingmad @frostedthroughghost @akikkobara @rainbowbunny0159 @littlefeather345 @violet-catsarelife @serasvictoria02 @wolfjackle @blacksea21090 @secretdestinywerewolf @anime-hipster-the-amazing @undead-essence @skitscratched @blackroserelina @snoodly-boop @trickerdi @mayoota-blog @xysidhe @idkmrpianoman @little-apricot-the-writer @chaoticmistake @the-legal-shipper @bun-fish @aroranorth-west @demon-cat-goes-woof @perfectwastelandcreation @onyxlightdragon @larks-and-katydids @peachesandcreamfemboy @jesus-camp-the-sequel @may-rbi @mothman-the-mothman87 @viyatrix @stargirl1331 @idfk-man10 @thedepressedrobin @skulld3mort-1fan @rootsmudge @ravenshadow17 @cankoking @phantom-dc @mentalcarebear @magic-pincushion @redamancyardor

#danny fenton dead and loving it #wip wednesday #chapter 12 #dp x dc #dead on main #never make a promise you can’t keep #lots to talk about here #funny and serious

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gabessquishytum · 8 months

Note

Hello Friend,

I am begging you to hear me out on a fic idea I just have not the time nor talent to write for now. But I really want to one day so maybe if you’ll help me get some of it out? Or feel free to add to it! It goes like this:

Hella slow build, Hob has been searching for Dream since he missed their meeting 24 yrs ago. He has nothing more to go on that Johanna Constantine looking for a being of his stranger’s description. But one day he sees Death and she can no longer hide from him that Dream was captured. She fesses up and gives Hob a hint of who to look for: “The Magus shouldn’t have been strong enough, Hob. Someone else helped him so you should stay away from it.” Hob won’t listen to that and she knows it. Bada-bing bada-boom Hob fishbowl savior intro is done.

The big thing I cannot get out if my mind is the LONGING. That they become friend friends who BOTH talk, about former lovers and sons, who visit each other’s houses, who eat together and cry together, who watch movies and maybe cuddle slightly too closely. I’m talking about the longing of too many wistful stares, too many deep silences, too much hand holding and charged eye contact, and so many unsaid words but it mostly being, “I love you.” Then after 20+ years of friendship, after Hob has reinvented himself again they finally have it out.

It was a family dinner or some stressful event for either Hob or Dream where they get too tipsy and too honest. “Gods Dream, can I finally kiss you?” Dream runs to the Dreaming out of fear but Hob finds his way to the throne room. Dream can only stare at him as he ascends the stairs and by god, why is he so beautiful? Why is he so unobtainable? Hob is not hurt, not angry, he’s confused. This cat and mouse game is so like them yet when they should have started furiously making out on Hob’s couch, Dream had disappeared into the air.

“I don’t understand, Dream. Surely, you must know how much I feel for you. I haven’t been able to hide it since you that day you shot a ramen noodle out of your nose at my impression of Destiny.” Dream chuckles but he still doesn’t look up from where his hands clench at his robe, pulling the stars around him like a shield. Hob steps forward so that their feet almost touch and he gently cups Dream’s face. Dream sighs as he melts into that hand and he’s grateful Hob does not make him look up further because seeing his beautiful face would crush him. Hob continues as a thumb caresses along a pale cheekbone. “I worried for centuries that you didn’t feel the same but I see the way you look at me. I know the regard you have given me in spades is so rare that even Lucienne couldn’t believe it. And I know I can comfort you, that I can make you laugh and that I am not afraid of any aspect of you. I can love you like you have never been loved before. And I know that you know it. So can you tell me why you ran?”

Dream takes a long time to say what he’s been thinking because while he needs Hob to know he is afraid what Hob knowing it will mean. “I will not have a relationship with you, Hob.”

“Why not?”

“I have already stated my intent, why must you know the reasoning?”

“Because I know you aren’t thinking about this right so I want to know what your lovely brain is cooking up there in order to make this reasoning.”

Hob says it so plainly, so lightheartedly that it should make Dream angry if it wasn’t something he adored about the man. But he will feign angry anyway in a spiteful attempt to get Hob to back off even though it’s obvious to them both that he won’t. “I won’t explain myself to a mere mortal. I cannot be with you so end this folly.”

“I’m actually immortal and cannot die so… And you said can’t that time.”

It was a trap. Dream turns away with a huff, out of Hob’s intoxicatingly warm palm. He walks towards the stained glass windows hoping the distance will help settle him but considering it’s colorful swirling motif is a representation of Hob’s joyous laugh the irony almost makes him scoff. He is so fickle these days. His false anger turns to embarrassment and then that turns to agony. He wants nothing more than to sink into Hob’s arms but he cannot be so weak as to ruin him. He is in the heart of the Dreaming at the helm of his throne but deep inside he knows Hob has all the power here. How long had that been true?

“Dream? My love, what are you thinking?”

Hob’s kindness burns him. Immediately his proverbial heart slams into his throat, choking him and tears well in his starry eyes. If Hob won’t take his anger maybe he would take the truth. “I cannot care for you in this way, Hob. I would not see you scorned the way I have ruined all those who previously cared for me.”

“Dream. You would not ruin me. And even if you did I would thank you for it.”

Images of Hob’s imagining flood in. Him crying with a reminiscing smile. Them screaming at each other and slamming doors. Hob wearing a suit of armor about to fight Hell for Dream and asking only to kiss him upon the hand as a boon though he knows he will never return from battle. It’s too much so Dream folds further in on himself.

“Love, please. I can see you’re hurting. Let me help you, let me love you.”

His pleading hurts and Dream does something he has never done before. He turns to face Hob and suddenly drops to his knees in front of him. Hob immediately lunges to pick him up but before he can do so Dream lays his hands on the icy stone before Hob’s bare feet. He closes his eyes against the tears there and places his forehead between his upturned palms. “Please. Please, Hob Gadling. Grant me mercy from this torture.”

Hob’s stunned into silence at the king kneeling before him. “Dream…I…”

“I beg of you, Hob. I could not bear it if I hurt you the way I have hurt those who came before you in loving me. Even now, I cannot say the words for fear calamity would instantly strike you down. So please, I am begging you as all that I am. As Dream of the Endless, Oneiros, Morpheus, Ruler of Dreams, King of Nightmares, and the master of the Dreaming and its inhabitants, I beg you please, do not love me.”

Silence echoes in the hall and the only sounds that make it pass the roaring in Hob’s ears is Dream’s unspoken words. I love you.

*****

That’s all I got so far in this hour long sleep deprived rant session (sorry!) but all that really matters to me is the image of Dream kneeling. Him begging Hob not to love him because I have always thought Dream would never accept Hob’s love so easily out of fear for hurting him because of course he’s already in love. I just always like the idea of them knowing but not saying anything because longing and pining are what make love confessions feel so much like relief. And I just want Hob to be as patient in this matter as a man who waits decades for an unknown friend. But mostly, I just want to be in looooovvvvveee.

Sorry this got out if hand lol. I did not mean to drop all this on yah😅 Any thoughts?😅 I know this isn’t like your normal asks but I’m ace so the smuttiness doesn’t occur to me so naturally. But if I ever get to writing this (in 10 years lol) then I will defs have some crying throne sex for you😘

Have a great day!! Thank you for all your wonderful thoughts that bring me joy everyday!!❤️

-🧶 Anon

🧶 anon you have RUINED me. Dream begging Hob not to love him??? Hi I'm going to cry. Dream has hardly ever begged in the entire course of his existence!! He desperately wants to tell Hob that he loves him - he can't even say it! He'd rather beg and humiliate himself than risk hurting Hob.

And poor Hob 😢 what would you do if the love of your life BEGGED you not to love him?! Holy shit!!!!

Hngnng. Thank you for sharing this, I hope you have the opportunity to continue with it! I think it has amazing potential and you can make lots of us cry with this concept!!!

#🧶 anon #the sandman #dreamling #dream x hob

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skyloftian-nutcase · 2 years

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Link’s Personality

I love how even though Link is meant to be our connection to the games, and therefore has no dialogue and his personality is downplayed, you can still see so many differences between the different Links. Granted, I’ve only played OoT, SS, BotW, and am starting on TP, so I don’t have the full story for all of them, but this is what I’ve observed so far of their canon personalities...

Time Link: This kid had an active imagination of adventure. He drew himself fighting what looks like a dinosaur on his house. It’s precious. This kid also had to start his journey at the age of nine, and he looked and sounded like he was five, he did not deserve any of this oh no wait I’m getting sidetracked, and yet he could hold his own in literally the most difficult dungeons I’ve encountered in all the games I’ve played so far. So clearly, this kid is smart. I’m not talking book smart, I’m talking sharp and observant. For personality dweebs like me, I’m talking that ISTP kind of smart, the sense of awareness of one’s surroundings in a way that others can’t see that makes one quick on one’s feet, able to use their environment to their advantage, and as adaptable as molding clay.

He also had a strong sense of duty on top his sense of adventure. He went off and saved Hyrule with barely any context of what was going on. It could have been a vengeance mission after the Deku Tree’s death, but you don’t really get the impression of that so much as Link doing it because people say it will help. And he wants to help. But this kid, given his experiences and his immediate decision to go off on his own and look for Navi in MM, is clearly also a loner, somebody who keeps his cards close to his chest. He makes friends, but he doesn’t seem to confide in them or rely on them too much. Again, at both the beginning and end of Majora’s Mask, Link is alone. And going through what he did and then losing Navi, the one person who would understand what he’d endured, had to be so isolating. And considering he died with regrets and hence stuck around as a Stalfos, it’s clear this kid had baggage he never learned how to handle.

So overall, this Link is a very sharp child, adaptable, dutiful with a good heart, a loner, far more mature than he looks (duh), and someone who does not know how to open up to others.

Sky Link: Unlike Time, Sky didn’t dream of adventure. He had his head in the clouds, for sure, but it was more of that chill and laid back daydreaming nature, not wishing for excitement. This Link is called “lazy,” loves to sleep, and generally seems to take most of his interactions in stride (he handles Groose’s bullying fairly calmly, he doesn’t seem overly concerned about the Wing Ceremony). For personality nerds, I peg him with an enneagram type rather than MBTI, and I say he’s a 9. Type 9s are known for being peaceful, even keeled, loving, and sweet, but also can come across as lazy and unmotivated and have a deep seated anger in them. I feel like this sums up Link pretty well in this game. An interesting note with this is that the “laziness” known for this personality type comes from a keen sense of surroundings - these people are hyper vigilant of their environment, to the point that any stressor in the area will likely overwhelm them and make them shut down, draining them of energy or motivation. And the crazy thing about it is that unlike Time Link, who is aware of his surroundings and uses it to a practical advantage, type 9s (and therefore Sky Link) are emotionally aware of their environment but not necessarily mentally aware of this ability - they’ll be drained once entering a room where they detect stress and/or conflict but may not know why. This is because 9s are hellbent on maintaining inner peace to the point that they automatically shut down anything that might upset them. Hence, they come across as lazy.

Link has been hazily making his way through life in a time of peace, but he doesn’t seem to be a lackluster student, because there aren’t any sour or concerned remarks from teachers. In fact, Eagus says that Link learns quickly and is a great student. So clearly the kid isn’t dumb, just floating in a mental haze. However, that haze gets cut through quickly when his seemingly main supporter in his life, Zelda, is kidnapped. For Link in this game, unlike in Ocarina, this journey is personal. He doesn’t care about destiny, he cares about Zelda. His motivation is to save his best friend.

One of my favorite things about this Link is how expressive he is. This boy wears his heart on his sleeve and he is just a cinnamon roll and I want to hug him.

As you play through the game you also start to notice that this kid is freaking feral: need something from on top of that chandelier? Nah, don’t use the beetle that can clearly get it for you, just break the entire chandelier and then be nonchalant about it. Tired? Find the nearest bed and literally pass out in it, whether its yours or not, and act like this is totally normal. For heaven’s sake, Link’s literal first reaction to being given a love letter to deliver is “ahh, now I can feed that random ghost hand sticking out of the toilet.” This child is bonkers and clearly has little to no social decorum whatsoever. Probably comes from being as introverted as he is and possibly from being orphaned at a young age (I headcanon that after he was orphaned he was kind of just raised by everybody until he got old enough for the academy, which kind of makes him aloof and socially awkward).

Lastly, this Link is snarky. There are multiple times where you can sass someone in response (teasing Groose about his hair when he is actively bullying Link is a pretty ballsy and funny move, not to mention when Link can say “am I late?” to Impa’s face in the middle of a life and death situation after she verbally beat him into the ground last time), so clearly Link thinks a lot of snippy replies to situations whether he voices them or not.

So overall, Sky Link is sweet, quiet but sarcastic, cares very deeply for Zelda, kind and helpful, feral, a quick learner, expressive and sensitive. Oh, and don’t get this kid angry.

Wild Link: It’s in the name, really, but despite him acting like a wild person when he’s out in the vast wilderness (kid catches fish with bombs and his bare hands, clearly he is a little bonkers), there’s honestly a lot to be said about the most expressionless (at least in the cut scenes) Link. First, this kid clearly cares about how others perceive him. He follows in his father’s footsteps to become a knight, he is so overwhelmingly nervous about being the Hero everyone expects him to be that he stops talking, thinking if he says something he’ll screw it up, he isn’t sure he and Mipha can have a relationship because she’s a princess and he’s just him. This kid is very self-conscious. Or, at least, he was before he forgot everything. He’s also kind of a thrill seeker, it seems; Mipha comments that he got into trouble a lot when he was younger (which, yeah, he was a little boy, of course he did, but still), he enjoys seal surfing (based on his journal entries in the Japanese version), and he is fearless in battle. Dude deflected a Guardian laser with a pot lid, which I’m sure no one knew was possible until he did it.

Speaking of battle, I think it’s super interesting that this kid is clearly a child prodigy. That probably doesn’t help with his opinion of himself, because once you are pegged as a prodigy then there’s expectations and you have to fulfill them. I figure this Link was very eager to please, he clearly dove into taking his fighting prowess seriously, practicing whenever he could even though he was already the best. It’s unclear if he still feels this way after losing his memories, but I’m sure he’s having a major identity crisis anyway given that whole scenario, which likely doesn’t help his self esteem either.

On a lighter note, this Link is such a complete dork. His sense of humor consists of puns and dad jokes. He can be a little sassy too! Sky has a contender for sassy replies, though I think our sky child does win for that Am I late? jab at Impa LOL. Also I adore how much this Link loves food and cooking, it’s clearly what makes him happiest both before and after the calamity. If he wasn’t busy saving the world he should go into the cooking business!

In terms of interpersonal interaction, he seems very empathetic and loves children. I feel like this Link feels very deeply but doesn’t quite know how to express it, rather like Time, except he makes himself stoic for a specific purpose rather than bottling everything up because he feels isolated from the rest of the world.

So overall, this Link is a lover of all things cuisine, empathetic and patient, extremely self-conscious, eager to please, dutiful, has a terrible sense of humor and loves every second of it, and wants to help others.

Twilight Link: He’s the one I know the least because I’m still playing his game, but honestly I love him so much so far. He’s clearly the responsible big brother type. He even has a job! I feel like he’s just as happy with animals as he is with people, which makes him stand out from the others. Like, Sky is a loner because he’s got his head in the clouds but he clearly relies heavily on emotional relationships with others like Zelda, Time is basically a loner altogether, and Wild seems to enjoy being with people in general and kind of deals with being alone because he has to, but Twilight could happily sit around the ranch talking to his goats all day and not care. Or carry puppies and kitties with that absolutely precious smile on his face. The very fact that he sees animals and immediately wants to pet them or carry them like babies just AHHHH I love this boy.

He seems more serious, like Time, rather than having the sassy, goofy, and feral energy of Sky or the dorky and chaotic energy of Wild. When he emotes it’s usually subtle, and so far the majority of his time has been spent being the responsible one. Also, he had to deal with being treated like a monster by the people he loved when he was first a wolf, which I’m sure had to hurt. He probably prefers to be in nature more after that time anyway.

We can also learn a lot about him based on how he reacted to becoming a wolf in the first place. He immediately works on trying to escape, he immediately puts together that he has to trust Midna and work with her despite her treating him like a dog. Clearly he is pissed when she just jumps on and rides him like a pony, but he’s patient and smart enough to recognize that it’s necessary. I’d say he gives Time a run for his money on being the most adaptable Link.

I will say, for him stepping up to the plate to be the Responsible Adult Figure to all the Ordon kids, he is insanely reckless and extremely aggressive. Big monster knocks him out? HE'S GOING AFTER HIM WITH NO WEAPONS BECAUSE THEY TOOK HIS FRIENDS AND FAMILY DANG IT >:( Zant appears, threatening Midna and forcing Link back into wolf form? CHOMP THAT DUDE'S THROAT OUT before getting knocked into unconscious. Bridge is on fire and there's a dude with a giant, long, pointy weapon coming at you? CHARGE HIM AND KNOCK HIM OFF DANG IT. And then JUMP OFF THE BRIDGE. This dude is insane. I N S A N E. I thought he was responsible, damn it, and then I started playing this game more and he's one of the craziest of the bunch LOL. So I think he's more of a situational type. Stick some of the other Links with charges and they'd all set things on fire together. Stick this Link with kids and he's the Picture Perfect Older Brother. And he does it to take care of them. He just... doesn't realize how reckless he himself is.

That’s all I’ve got so far for him, still have to play the game! But overall, animal lover, a guardian, simultaneously gentle and aggressive as hell, ridiculously strong, and so, so patient.

So yeah. You can learn a lot about Link despite him being the avatar character and I love the variety between them all.

#legend of zelda #ocarina of time #skyward sword #breath of the wild #twilight princess #oot link #ss link #botw link #tp link #HOW DID THIS GET SO LONG HOLY COW #character analysis

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visionthefox · 2 days

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I think sometimes the VAs work when sick, but there are times where they are absent for a whole week just like when moon went missing (I think last year) and it was because he was sick, or more recently Davis and Kat moved and they didn’t appear that’s why foxy or puppet showed up.

But I do agree I wish they could go back like the beginning where they would post lore videos on the weekends and for special occasions like the first Halloween takeover like they are doing it right now. I miss them playing more and just having fun I also wish they could finish a game like little nightmares, idk that’s wishful thinking, but also don’t try and speed run the game, play it like it’s the first time, or for games like cult of the lamb have a new save file start from the beginning so viewers get interested on it, just don’t jump on it and play it otherwise people won’t know what’s going on (I speak from experience, when watching their gameplays).

Ive bought games from the ones they played just to see how it ends or if the game is not available due to it being VR I see another YouTuber playing XD

yeye is kinda of sad they only get a "day off" is when sick, tho maybe we are assuming too much- since only time I knew of Moon's VA- sorry forgot the name- being sick and still working is been these past days - but I cant even say if its true! but the constant posting is something I dont like- one thing is a gameplay, ok is easy you just and play- but lore wise? knowing how that affects the fandom? mmh trickyyy I just wish they had time - just- time - idk get to choose and see if its a good idea or not - also these lines

idk if they meant this- but is indeed a fact too - many have been saying how forced things feel- im sure the discords had to mention this enough times to be mentioned on a video aside with the "harrasment of people because of death characters" (this I know is real) just- aah give em time to cook- and listen I dont see the gameplays unless is horror or like in the villaints takeovers! yet still I rather know we will have 5 games and 1 lore to feel happy knowing is not rushed nor stressing for them if if thats the case ! but yea- let me know what yall think! im too crazy? haha

#tsams #ask #sams #answers is yes im crazy

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mk-oc-imagines · 4 months

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Maybe I'm taking in the wrong way, so correct me if I'm wrong.

In Raiden's ending, it is implied that Geras said to this Timeline's Raiden that he was made mortal and humble because when he was a God, he was prone to anger because of it?

If that's the case, then it is not true: Raiden became corrupted because what happened to him, not because he was a God.

Let's take it step by step, shall we?

Mk9: It opens up with Shao Khan winning, beating the living daylights out of Raiden, who rewinds time and sends his past self a message. Throughout the game, Raiden has visions of what would lead to Armageddon and is trying to prevent it all, so he's possibly stressed throughout it all - everyone is doubting him and criticising him for his actions and decisions - having to do tough decisions, while Quan Chi is sabotaging it - then tragedies happen. Kung Lao gets his neck snapped in front of everybody, Sindel kills almost everyone and then he accidentally kills Liu Kang, who fights him for his last and final decision, mind you that Liu Kang got pissy over....nevermind.

They have won but at what cost? Sonya and Johnny along with Raiden are sole survivors from the group, while another threat looms on the horizon.

MkX: Raiden is tired. I don't know if its the model or if it was conscious decision but to me, Raiden seems tired troughout the whole game. Raiden, has witnessed so much death, experienced so many loses and there are still threats that threaten Earthrealm, Realm he's supposed to protect - Earthrealm Defenders perhaps got some semblance of peace but Raiden - I wouldn't be surprised if he developed some sort of paranoia. At the end of MkX Raiden is both physically and mentally exhausted, that when he cleanses corrupted Jinsei, he gets corrupted instead - warning the revenants that he won't be afraid to get rid of them if they threaten Earthrealm.

Or does he?

I'm gonna throw in my two cents that it brought out Raiden's deepest desires that he never acted upon. It perhaps showed him visions or what he could do and he acted upon it, losing himself in the process.

In MK11 he's so detached from his friends, that he gives an awful comment at how Sonya died a warrior's death, protecting Earthrealm. It's all about protecting Earthralm, everyone else be damned.

(And I also hated that they insinuated it in Mk11 too, that just because he got angry, he could become Dark!Raiden, which no and why even?)

Dark!Raiden could be very interesting if handled well, because if we look at it, Dark!Raiden is a tragedy.

#mortal kombat #mortal kombat x #mortal kombat 11 #mkx #mk11 #mk1 #mk1 2023 #mortal kombat 1 2023 #mortal kombat 1 (2023)#mortal kombat 1 #mortal kombat 2023 #mk raiden #raiden #lord raiden #dark raiden #dark Raiden is a tragedy and I stand by that #correct me about mk1 Raiden ending if i got it wrong

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sablegear0 · 5 months

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Finished TotK Finally

As in, finished the story. End numbers after buying the last boss pictures and completing the Compendium were 87.72% complete. I may go back and do koroks and minigames sporadically when I want to wander around in the world again.

So I suppose people might expect my thoughts or a review. Idk if I have anything unique to say but I may as well so: Plot and BIG ending spoilers under the cut. Also extremely long detailed opinions. Like this one got REALLY long. TL;DR at the very bottom.

The End Bits The Light Dragon In a previous blog I applauded Nintendo for letting their women characters turn into incomprehensible beasties lately (TotK, Dread). For the record, I posted that shortly before being spoiled on the fact that Zelda changes back at the end. Needless to say I was re-disappointed. I get WHY they did it. Permanently removing the title character from the game via 10,000 years of ego death doesn't really seem like a great reward for the player seeking out the plot; BotW/TotK Link and Zelda have gone through more than most of their incarnations to get where they are, so it's nice to give them a happy ending, etc. It just... kinda sucks because that was a really cool move otherwise. But Nintendo will not tell us an intentionally tragic (or even bittersweet) story so we got our girl back.

Also she was fine, by the way. She just woke up fully able to move and speak like she'd just had a bit of a rough nap. She also canonically does not remember her millennia spent as a dragon in any fashion. I know the fan writers are probably having a field day with injury/trauma recovery fics for her and I don't blame them. 10k years of ego death and a monstrous transformation should come with some consequences, shouldn't it?

To be honest the nature of the deus ex machina in question bugs me more than the fact that it happened. "Idk Sonia and Rauru did something" is the actual explanation we get (thanks Mineru, you're a real one tho) and it feels... hollow. Like, if the two dragons had clashed and injured one another, and "dying" knocked Zelda out of the transformation the same way destroying the Secret Stone that Ganondorf had taken destroyed his dragon form, that would make more sense, right? You still get your dramatic ending that's a cinematic reflection of Skyward Sword and a symbolic close (presumably) to Ganon's cycle of reincarnation. The arbitrary "power of love" (and not even the Hero's love, come on) ending just doesn't sit right.

Ganondorf Neither did the actual fight with Ganondorf, to be honest. I prepped some pretty high-value weapons, assuming that like BotW I'd have to break a few swords on him before the fight was over. But they just, again, deus ex machina'd that the Master Sword was indestructible for that fight and at no other time. My big scary weapons did see some good use in the wave fight beforehand, which was kind of neat but also kind of underwhelming. I guess that's the point where the game checks if you can handle that many enemies (ie. did you bring enough friends), similar to how doing the Divine Beasts halves Calamity Ganon's HP in BotW.

The duel-style fight for the first two phases was kind of cool. Made a bit annoying by TotK's tighter timing on parries and dodges. And the fact that the legitimate pressure of having your HP outright destroyed (cool, stressful) was removed by the third phase (annoying, no consequences for doing poorly in that part of the fight).

Third phase was neat. It was cinematic, but with no actual danger. I don't think I took any damage that wasn't just gloom-ticks from standing on the demon dragon to attack it. Didn't even get to use my cool bows in the aerial battle. Additionally I didn't have any need for the cool armour I had worked so hard to upgrade. I spent quite a lot of time and effort upgrading the Ancient Hero's Aspect and a second high-defense set (Champion's Leathers, Soldier's Greaves, Amber Earrings). The latter I did use in the demon dragon phase because it looked cool. The former I completely forgot that I had (despite having had to kill an ungodly amount of King Gleeoks to complete it). I used the Depths set for the first two-thirds of the fight because of the Gloom resistance it offered.

The Mechanics Devices All that said, what TotK set out to do it did decently well. It expanded on the physics-heavy improvisational gameplay of BotW with the addition of the Ultrahand fusion mechanic and Zonai Devices, improving on their base engine to create a system that I have heard other devs consider basically magic. Devices and weapon fusion, however, were clearly balanced with the early-to-mid-game in mind. The devices were tools, not weapons, even the ones that were nominally weapons. They simply did not put out enough raw damage to be used offensively, and were better as deterrents or distractions for enemies.

Weapon Fusion I know people weren't crazy about weapon degradation in BotW and I think TotK managed to make it slightly worse. In BotW, all you had to do was find where a desirable weapon spawned and make note of it so you could come back to pick it up after the Bloodmoon respawned everything. In TotK, you have to do that AND fight a monster with a good fuseable part to improve it. You have to do twice as much farming for about the same amount of gain. And that's not even accounting for the weapons you'd break fighting something big like a Lynel - sure they drop good parts, but you might break 2 or 3 weapons taking one down, even with help from your sages. You're operating at a net loss.

Granted the fused part of a weapon does the bulk of the work, but TotK did the interesting thing of making each flavour of weapon ("Soldier's", "Zonaite", "Gerudo", etc) have its own unique properties. This is very cool, until you find a type you like and struggle to find enough of them. Again, you have to trek around to find them and also hope you have the materials for a good fusion. It has its moments, like sticking a Silver Lynel horn on a Gerudo weapon to get a damage value over 100 (which is absurd, most "good" weapons cap out around 50 on average, barring any extra effects), but again, you're usually operating at a slight loss with respect to weapons.

Armour Upgrades To be frank: It's bad. It's bloated and way too resource-intensive. In BotW there were a limited number of sets you'd actually want to upgrade, as each had its own unique thing and that's it, there's one of each. Even doing all of them for completion's sake was achievable. In TotK they have those basic sets, plus a few more unique sets, plus a few redundant sets, and a frankly absurd number of generic aesthetic sets (which flavour of Link would you like? Ocarina of Time? Twilight Princess? Link's Awakenng Remake?) And in all of this they never thought to rebalance the amount of materials required for upgrading.

And on top of THAT, I think they messed with the item drop-rates too! Most enemies can drop 2 kinds of resources, some potentially have more, some only drop 1. in BotW I don't think (thought I may have to check) each type was a guaranteed drop, but you saw every type fairly frequently. In TotK each enemy now has distinct rare drops. And they can be RARE. And the worst part is you need a LOT of them for some armour upgrades. For example; Lizalfos tails are the Lizalfos rare drop, and the armour sets that need them can need up to 15 of the stupid things from a particular species of Lizalfos. Have fun grinding, because now you're playing Monster Hunter instead of Zelda.

Vehicles and Horses The vehicles both did and didn't trivialize crossing the map; a significant amount of grinding is needed before you have enough batteries to cover any distance, Wings (the bird-shaped gliders) have a limited lifespan to keep you from just flying everywhere, and the overworld is generally complicated enough that any fast wheeled vehicle will not be useful for long, and any all-terrain vehicle moves only at a modest speed. Ironically, just use horses where available. They're faster, more versatile, and can be called to you if they're within earshot. Also horses can spawn with overall higher stats than in BotW, and can be upgraded, though with significant resource investment. (It is worth noting that the "best" horse in base BotW, the royal white horse, is only middling to above-average stat-wise when compared to a good wild-caught horse in TotK. They power-crept the horses!)

The most interesting vehicles/movement devices, to me, were the rockets and hot-air balloons. Both add a lot instant verticality in a game that is all about traversal. Fusing a rocket to a shield gets you a huge boost for little resource expenditure (rockets are a bit rare until you can purchase devices). And once you find the Autobuild schematic for a hot air balloon base, all you need to add is a flame-emitter and you can ascend as far as your batteries allow.

Shrines In my humble opinion, TotK knocked it out of the park with its shrines. The ones that have actual puzzles, anyway. There is an unfortunately large proportion of "blessing" shrines that have no puzzle in them, and not all of them even need to be worked for that hard. The ones that do have puzzles are excellent. There are quite a few that highlight different uses for devices, and a good handful that take the Eventide Island/Master Trials-style challenge of stripping you of all your gear and put some twist on it. (Notably these are most interesting in the mid-game, when you have enough hearts to survive but not to trivialize the no-armour combat difficulty.)

They also did the very classy thing of not locking outfit parts behind hidden chests in Shrines. All the hidden chests were perfectly optional bonus chests that required no frustrating re-visits after finding out where that last piece of armour was hiding. Also the slight variations on the music theme was a nice touch that kept the shrines feeling fresh. No shade to the Sheikah Shrine theme, but the strong synths could get a bit grating at times. TotK's gentle, plinky shrine theme variations were an improvement.

The Map The Overworld Probably(?) the most common complaint about TotK and one I share. It's too damn big. In addition to mostly recycling the map from BotW (which bothered some people more than it bothered me, I think), they added an equivalent-sized map for the Depths. Now, BotW's overworld already felt a bit sparse, but it fit the tone of a literal post-apocalyptic world and encouraged you to poke around looking for koroks and investigating enemy camps. TotK's surface overworld is dotted with far more enemy camps and significantly fewer koroks, so it is about as dense but more dangerous/annoying (depending on your hp and gear) to traverse.

There are some major changes to the surface, beyond adding ruins to some spots; most of Death mountain is now safe to travel on foot (probably to encourage use of vehicles) and is no longer superheated, and there are a few spots where the road network is broken, dividing the map into 2 halves that cannot be crossed between on horseback. (In BotW, by comparison, all the roads were connected and you could auto-pilot a horse from one end of the map to the other, provided you took roads marked on the map.)

The Sky The Sky islands were relatively few, for all the hype they got in the promotional material. However I think their self-contained structure and handful of unique features (the "death star" islands, the dive challenges) helped them not overstay their welcome. Besides, the islands themselves are technically also ruins, 10,000 years old and finally visible to the naked eye from the surface, It's a wonder there's as much left and it's as functional as it is. They are beautiful, though. I did enjoy just loitering around in the sky to take in the view and the relaxed atmosphere, as there are fewer enemies up there.

The Depths The Depths... I think I share the majority gripe with the Depths. They're too big. The Depths are another whole open world that is more hostile with even less in it. It exists to grind for resources and pad the playtime. The challenge of the depths is in initially traversing it, having to light your way through impenetrable darkness and navigate dense enemy encampments and find Light Roots to fill out the map. After that, provided you have enough battery power, it can generally be ignored by flying over it. Which is unfortunate. If I were to fix the Depths, I would make it more akin to the Sky Islands; more self-contained, make it a series of winding, interconnected discrete caves, like one big dungeon crawl, rather than a second open world to ignore. Still have the Light Roots be important to vision and mapping, but have the general landscape be more contained. Maybe even have a few more areas that are inaccessible at first except by dropping into the correct chasms, like they did with the Eventide Island and Tingle Island Chain areas of the Depths.

Everything Else Side Quests and Koroks Honestly I enjoyed the variety of sidequests in TotK, and also enjoyed that some of them were quite involved. TotK had two "Tarrey Town"-equivalent long-form side-quest lines; one being visiting all the stables with Penn (I am counting this as one quest because you get drip-fed armour pieces from a unique set throughout it), and the other being the Mayoral Election / Local Cuisine questline in Hateno Village. There were also side-quests to optionally construct the Champions' weapons, which was neat, and to build a house with crazy Ultrahand powers, which was totally frivolous but fun to do. The one thing that bugged me a bit about the side-quests was running into NPCs that reasonably should have remembered Link but didn't. It felt odd, especially poking around Tarrey Town initially.

The Korok puzzles had some new variety to them, which was nice. The block puzzles were given the extra interest of being able to rotate things with Ultrahand, and the vehicle/towing mechanics were given a chance to shine with the "help me reach my friend" puzzles. Having Hestu appear in some less-than-ideal places to begin with (and the whole Lost Woods thing omg what a pain) kind of sucked, but getting those sweet sweet inventory upgrades is always worth it.

The Characters I love all the Sages, I'm going to say it right now. It was really cool to see some familiar faces from BotW (that actually recognized me) and learn what they'd been up to in the ambiguous time-gap. Teba being the slight exception but honestly - meeting Tulin and realizing this sweet bean bird boy looks just like both his parents hit me right in the heart. Mineru was also very cool and I'm glad we got to hang out with her (and bid her a tearful goodbye... my lovely lanky lady...). I also appreciated that doing the Ancient Writings quest teases Mineru's introduction. That was a nice touch.

Penn and Purah are fun, and the Lucky Clover Gazette and Monster Control Crew quests add some depth and background progression to BotW's Hyrule. You get to see how ordinary people are faring and how things are advancing post-Calamity. Seeing the various peoples of Hyrule gather at Lookout Landing after clearing a regional temple was neat, even if it was really only for show.

I know some people have beef with Rauru and that's maybe a blog for another time, but I don't think I have a strong enough opinion to bother. I didn't mind him, I think his arc was clear enough, I think I would have liked to see more of him and Sonia interacting with Zelda in a more everyday fashion - it seemed like she had a lot of fun in the distant past and something more than just a text log of that and a couple cutscenes might have been nice. Honestly I think I would have liked to see more of Sonia especially, she seems like an interesting lady (again, something more than Chaucerian text as proof would have been nice).

I'm honestly kind of mid on Matt Mercer's Ganondorf? I get that he's a big name and people were excited to hear him in the role but idk if the voice was entirely a good fit. They rocked the hell out of his visual design, though. Very good updated look, borrowing elements from some of his previous incarnations. Again I would have liked to see more elaboration on him though; what was the Gerudo tribe like under his rule? Were there dissenters? Give me more worldbuilding or I'll be forced to do it myself.

Music Mostly the same, actually. Overworld themes were recycled. Shrine themes were different and an upgrade imo. Combat themes were slightly different but I probably wouldn't be able to tell them apart at a listen. The Temple music though, oh boy. I loved these themes; they took the ramping instruments from the Divine Beasts control panel gimmick and mixed the Divine Beast Approach themes with each Sage's unique motif to create some really cool but pleasantly unobtrusive tracks. The Depths ambience was appropriately spooky, and the dynamic theme that kicks in when you high-dive was a nice touch, especially since there are distinct versions for diving to the surface and diving to the Depths.

But the standout tracks for me? First, the intro sequence where you descend with Zelda into the foundations of Hyrule Castle and hear the ever-layering Zonai chanting with the spooky reversed voice clips? MMM. 👌 So spooky, so tasty. Genuinely had me on edge even though I knew nothing would happen because it was the intro. The return sequence by the endgame has it build even more intensely as you descend even further and it's fantastic. Second is the Gloom's Approach / Gloom's Source battle theme. The distinctly electronic drone and beat associated with the Depths/gloom-related stuff gets room to shine when this tense bass-heavy track kicks in.

The Little Things I am actually going to stop this one here because I think this part deserves its own blog. There are a ton of little details in TotK that I absolutely adored and I want to gush about them with proper space allotted.

TL;DR TotK is alright. I know I'll catch flak for saying it's "good", so I won't. Settle down. It's alright. Some things it does extremely well, some things could have been edited for time, and some things remained just kinda mid from the original.

If I have to give it a number, it's a solid 6.5-7/10 . Competently constructed, technically impressive, mostly cut-and-pasted, mildly bloated, narratively kind of boring with no sense of stakes and an ending that undoes some otherwise interesting choices.

#sable has a take #sable talks about games #this one got away from me #long post #totk #loz totk #tears of the kingdom #tears of the kingdom spoilers #totk spoilers #seriously the first thing i do is talk about the ending in some detail so if you care avoid this one #now with headers for your reading convenience

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