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morganaspendragonss · 3 years

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holly's august extravaganza day 17: you and me (moving through this world as a two-man team)

for both my incredible birthday twin jenny (@laelipoo) and a little bit for myself! i hope you are having a wonderful, wonderful day and i wish you all the love in the world. i'm so glad we became friends and i cannot tell you how glad i am for our conversations 🥰🥰🥰

many, many, many thanks to jenny as well for helping me out with the plot!

ao3 | 3.1k | firefighter carlos, hurt/comfort, pining, developing relationship, major character injury (two of them 😌)

TK does not have a crush on the 126's latest hire.

Carlos Reyes: an Austin local, an incredible firefighter, and—objectively speaking—the most beautiful man TK has ever laid eyes on. Which is, in fact, the entire point; TK has eyes and, yes, he will use them to sneak a look or two when he’s suddenly sharing space with a man who looks like a Greek god.

That does not mean he has a crush, Paul.

(and, sure, maybe he does sometimes dream about how soft Carlos’s lips look and the soft blush he gets when he laughs and those little flecks of gold in his eyes, but he’s only human)

(how TK knows about the gold in Carlos’s eyes is none of anybody’s business)

The thing about Carlos Reyes is that he isn’t only stupidly hot; he’s also just plain nice. TK can’t even make up a flimsy excuse to keep his distance. Carlos is, quite literally, perfect.

He shares recipes and book recommendations with Paul, he spars with Marjan, he discusses superheroes with Mateo, and Judd has had nothing but good things to say since before Carlos even joined them. Apparently they’d worked together a lot before the explosion, when Carlos was with the 116, and he’s ‘one of the best damn firefighters’ Judd has ever seen.

He even makes time to hang with the paramedics, which...isn’t a new development, exactly. But it is recent, and TK is willing to bet they’d still be pretty divided if Tim hadn’t suddenly transferred back to Maryland and he hadn’t taken the leap to be a full paramedic.

Even after that… His friends were hardly going to abandon him after he switched, but Nancy had still only been semi-included at best. She’d called him out about it during their first week working together, but fixing it had been a slow process.

Until Carlos came along, that is. Excluding Judd, they all regularly hang out at his place now, and Nancy’s inclusion had never even been a question. Safe to say, Carlos has charmed everyone in the firehouse, including both captains, and the worst part is, he doesn’t seem to realise he’s doing it.

He’s perfect, from his freakishly toned body to his infuriatingly sweet personality to his incredible skills in the field, and TK does not have a crush, goddammit!

One morning about three weeks after Carlos’s arrival, TK is greeted in the firehouse by the sound of a long, beautiful laugh coming from the kitchen. Three weeks is an embarrassingly short amount of time to admit that he’s memorised everything about him, but he instantly recognises the noise as coming from Carlos, even if he can’t see him yet.

He saunters into the kitchen, where Carlos is standing with Paul, and leans up against the counter. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Carlos turns with a winning smile and holds out a steaming mug of coffee, clearly freshly made even though TK only got in two minutes ago.

He blinks. “How—” Then, taking in the slight pinkness to Carlos’s cheeks, “Are you seriously offering me your own coffee, Reyes?”

Carlos shrugs, forcing the mug into TK’s hands. “I only just made it so technically it belongs to anyone, and I can always make another,” he says. “Besides, you look like you could use it more than me.”

His grin has TK narrowing his eyes and stubbornly refusing to drink even though Carlos is right—he really, really needs it.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that was an insult.”

“Who says you do know better?”

TK splutters, momentarily left speechless in the face of Carlos’s smile and the twinkle in those goddamn eyes. He turns to Paul for help, but Paul...has disappeared. Huh. TK honestly hadn't noticed him go.

He shakes his head and looks back to Carlos, only to be stunned silent again by the way his smile has softened into something else, something more.

TK’s heart skips a beat or two and he swallows, staring down into Carlos’s coffee. “Whatever, Reyes,” he mutters.

It was too late for a witty comeback anyway.

Carlos’s laugh follows him out of the kitchen, and TK wonders when, exactly, he let himself fall this far.

“Earth to TK? Hello?”

TK is rudely snapped back to reality by one Nancy Gillian’s hand waving violently in his face. He scowls at her, to which she responds with an eye roll.

“Stop drooling over your man and come help me with inventory.”

“I’m not drooling,” TK argues, following her over to the rig. “And he’s not my man.”

“Right,” Nancy drawls, folding her arms over her chest as she leans against the ambulance. “So you’re just going to deny that weird energy around you two that makes the rest of us feel like we’re creeping on something?”

“Exactly.” TK nods emphatically, then frowns. “Wait, what?”

Nancy casts her eyes heavenward. “You know,” she says, “you’re a lot of things, Strand, but I hadn’t pegged you for oblivious.”

TK’s next words are reflexive, said without thought for the consequences—the story of his life, really.

“I’m not oblivious!”

The grin spreading over Nancy’s face rams home just how much he’s fucked up with those three words. TK drops his head in his hands and groans, unable and unwilling to look Nancy in the eye.

“Not a word,” he warns, which Nancy appears to respect, for now. TK is well aware that there will be words—several of them—later, whether he wants them or not.

The thing is, he really isn’t oblivious. He knows perfectly well what Nancy is talking about and he has often fantasised about all the things he’d do to Carlos given half a chance. TK likes Carlos, way more than just in the physical sense, and he’s pretty sure that Carlos likes him right back. It would be so easy to start something between them and, god, TK wants to. He just… He can’t.

One year—that’s what he promised himself back in New York. One year on his own to sort his head out and figure out how he fits back into the world after the overdose. Granted, his sobriety anniversary is only a couple of months away now, but he refuses to give up on his promise, especially when he’s so close.

Maybe in a couple months, if Carlos hasn’t gotten bored of something that’s clearly going nowhere.

But not now.

“He did not ask me out!”

“He totally did, dude, and you know it. You want to say yes, I can tell.”

“No, I don’t. I—”

“Children,” Tommy interrupts from the back of the ambulance. They’re heading to a callout, and Nancy has not let up the entire way about something TK is certain never actually happened. “Either of you want to enlighten me on what the argument is about this time?”

“TK’s too chicken to go out with Carlos,” Nancy jumps in, before TK can stop her.

“I am not!” he protests. “Plus, he wasn’t asking me out, he said we should go over to his place for dinner sometime, which Carlos does all the time. So there.”

“Strand, you are not this dense,” Nancy snarks, probably rolling her eyes. “His exact words were, ‘You should come over sometime’.”

“We were all there! It was obviously the plural you.”

“Oh my god—”

“Alright!” Tommy sighs wearily. “Nancy, can we keep from provoking TK until we’re back at the firehouse and he’s no longer driving?”

“Ha!” TK exclaims, but Tommy’s not done.

“TK, if I weren’t your captain, I’d be telling you that Nancy is right and you should pull your head out of your ass before it’s too late, understand?”

Now it’s Nancy’s turn to be triumphant as TK struggles to form a coherent response. Thankfully, he’s saved from further torment by them finally pulling up at the scene—a warehouse where one of the workers had become trapped after parts of the upper level walkway had broken and fallen. Apparently, the falling metal had caused some of the machinery to malfunction, turning the call from simple to beyond complicated in a matter of minutes.

“TK, grab your turnout gear and your bag; I’m sending you in with them,” Tommy informs him as soon as they’re out of the rig. “Normally, we’d just talk the firefighters through it over radio, but given your training it’ll be quicker and safer for you to deal with our patient.”

TK grins; he’s missed the adrenaline rush of running into emergencies more than he can say. “Got it, Cap.”

“Maybe try and look a little less happy about a serious injury, too.”

“Copy that.”

The noise when they enter the warehouse is deafening, an ugly screeching cutting right through TK’s skull.

“Shouldn’t they have shut the machines off?” he shouts, fighting to be heard.

“Apparently they can’t,” Judd calls back. “Something wrong with the control panel, I don’t know exactly what.”

TK groans—just what they need. The sound is lost in the din, but Carlos still looks over and gives him a sympathetic grin, shrugging in a ‘what can you do’ motion. TK can’t help but grin back, the mere sight of Carlos easing the annoyance he feels and the headache already beginning to build behind his eyes.

Their patient, when they reach him, is pinned under a large, heavy-looking sheet of metal. He’s bleeding from a gash on his temple and his skin is worryingly pale, to the extent that TK can tell even from a distance. He jogs to the patient’s side and kneels down, pressing his fingers against his neck.

“Cap, I have a pulse,” he reports into his radio after a few seconds. “But he’s unconscious with a head wound, and I think there are probably injuries I can’t see yet. Possible spinal damage, but I can’t tell until we’ve got this metal off him.”

“Copy that,” Captain Vega says. “Get ready to run a line; he’s gonna need it as soon as he’s free.”

TK nods and moves to secure a c-collar around his neck. “We need to cut this thing off of him,” he says, addressing the team. “Quickly, but carefully.”

Judd steps forward, brandishing the saw. He hands TK a couple of spare turnouts and kneels on the patient’s other side. “Couple of you need to cover him, and yourselves.”

TK doesn’t even have to ask before Carlos appears next to him, taking one of the turnouts from him. He smiles gratefully before arranging himself to provide maximum protection to all three of them as Judd starts working on the metal. The vibrations from the saw are unpleasant, and TK dreads to think what effect it’s having on the already unstable machinery, but it’s the only option they have to get their patient free.

Fortunately, everything seems to go off without a hitch, and soon the team are able to remove the metal. TK immediately gets to work, feeling for any damage. As he suspected, there’s a pretty large gash on the man’s leg which is bleeding badly, though thankfully it seems to have missed any arteries. He also seems to have a broken wrist, but he should heal.

TK quickly wraps his leg, then gets Carlos and Judd to help move him onto the spine board. It feels like, for once, the call has gone as smoothly as possible, and TK allows himself a breath of relief as they prep to get the guy outside to the ambulance.

Naturally, that’s when everything goes to hell.

The machine closest to them lets out a threatening groan and shudders before there’s a loud roar and it explodes. On instinct, TK folds himself over the patient as shrapnel rains down on them, and he sees Carlos doing the same in his periphery.

The downpour seems to last forever, but eventually it slows and comes to a stop. TK cautiously lifts his head, his heart pounding, and sags in relief as it seems that the worst is over.

They need to get out of here, now.

He stands, a brief stab of pain running through his back—probably because of his awkward position over the patient—and turns to Carlos, reaching to offer him a hand up.

Only to see Carlos’s face tight with agony, and then the cause—a jagged piece of shrapnel running right through his hand.

“Carlos,” TK breathes, horrified. Carlos looks up at him, his breathing carefully measured and his eyes wide, and TK drops back to his knees, reaching out for him. “It’s okay, I’ve got you, don’t worry.”

Carlos swallows and nods, his eyes squeezing tight. TK’s heart rate skyrockets, and he’s barely able to keep his cool as he signals to the others to get their first patient out of the warehouse.

“Cap, the team are bringing him out, but we have a problem.”

“Talk to me, Strand, what’s going on?”

“It—It’s Carlos.” TK breathes out shakily and takes a moment to steady himself before continuing, “It’s not serious, but some of the machinery broke apart and some shrapnel impaled his hand. I’ve got to stabilise the shard before we come out to you.”

“Alright, but hurry. I don’t want you guys in there for longer than necessary.”

“Copy.”

Stabilising the shrapnel with rolls of gauze and wrapping Carlos’s hand should be a matter of course—it’s an easy process that TK could probably do in his sleep. But this is Carlos, so his damn hands won’t stop shaking and he almost fumbles and drops his supplies.

He manages though, and soon he’s helping Carlos up, instructing him to hold his injured hand above his heart. Carlos sends him a wobbly smile, which ends up turning out to be more of a grimace, but it’s a comfort nonetheless. Things could have gone so much worse today; TK could have even lost him, and he would have never been able to—

But that’s not important. Carlos is okay, or he will be, and they still have plenty of time to figure out whatever this is between them.

Everything will be okay.

TK’s back and side twinge again as they make their way out, but he brushes it off, too focused on getting Carlos to the hospital as fast as possible. Tommy shakes her head as they make their way over, her eyebrows raised despite the concern clearly in her expression.

“Never a peaceful moment with you, Strand, is it?” she asks dryly, hissing as she inspects Carlos’s wound.

“In my defence, Cap,” he says, more at ease now that they’re safe, “it’s not me who’s injured this time.”

Tommy hums, then directs Carlos into the back of the rig, jumping in after him. “Get back here, TK. Nancy’s driving.”

She has a teasing look in her eyes that instantly makes TK suspicious, but he moves to comply, shrugging off his turnout coat as he does. The movement hurts, which is weird, but he thinks nothing of it.

At least, until Tommy’s eyes go wide and she stands from her seat, holding her hands out towards him. “TK, do not move,” she instructs, her eyes firmly fixed on his right side.

TK frowns, then follows her gaze down, and— Oh.

His grey undershirt is stained with blood, and it’s difficult to miss the large piece of metal sticking out of his side. He has no idea how he missed it, but now that he knows, the pain slams into him full force, causing him to stagger.

“Oh,” he gasps, eloquently.

Then, his legs buckle and the world goes black.

TK wakes up to a steady beeping sound, which only exacerbates his pounding headache. He groans, scrunching his face up, before slowly peeling his eyes open, almost slamming them shut again after getting an eyeful of obnoxiously bright fluorescents.

“You’re awake,” a voice says, sounding surprised, then the lights suddenly dim, the room lit by the gentle glow of a lamp. TK sighs in relief and shifts to look at his saviour.

It’s Carlos.

“You… You’re here,” TK states, confused. His gaze drifts down Carlos’s body and lands on the white bandages around his hand, the memories of the warehouse suddenly hitting him all at once. “Shit, you— How are you?”

Carlos shakes his head and comes to sit in the chair by TK’s bed. “I can’t believe you’re the one asking me that.”

“I’m a paramedic, it’s my job.”

“Not when you��re the one in the hospital bed,” Carlos counters, sighing. “If you must know, I’m fine. They gave me some pretty good drugs, so…” He shrugs, and TK can’t help but laugh, which proves to be a very bad idea.

His side lights up, an unnecessary reminder that TK is very much not on the good drugs, and he moans softly, slowly settling back in the bed. “I hate you,” he mumbles, eyes closed.

“You love me,” Carlos says, and TK’s heart seizes in his chest.

The silence after his words is deafening, so TK forces himself to crack his eyes open enough to look at him. Carlos is frozen in his chair, biting his lip hard, and he looks like he either wants to bolt or be swallowed by the earth.

TK thinks he should probably be feeling the same. They’ve been dancing around this issue for weeks now, and he’d thought he had it under control. That he could last that little bit longer until his one year was up; that he could ignore these feelings that have been steadily growing since he first laid eyes on Carlos.

It was a hopeless endeavour; he recognises that now. TK remembers the fear he felt when Carlos was injured back at the warehouse, the desperation for him to be better, and now with his own injury…

He could have lost this chance before he ever got it, and TK isn’t about to let it slip through his fingers now. He reaches out and takes Carlos’s good hand, startling him into meeting TK’s eyes.

“Yeah,” TK whispers, just loud enough for Carlos to hear him. “I think I do.”

The smile Carlos gives him lights up the room, and he doesn’t waste any time in leaning down to kiss TK. And it’s… It’s everything TK had hoped and imagined it would be and more. It’s soft and sweet and gentle and perfect, and he never wants it to end.

But end it does, though Carlos doesn’t go far. TK smiles at him, squeezing his hand with all the strength he can muster.

“That’s a yes, by the way,” he says.

Carlos frowns. “What?”

TK’s smile widens and he flicks his eyebrows at Carlos. “To dinner. Or were you not asking me out after all?”

Carlos huffs a laugh, and the look in his eyes when they lock back onto TK’s melts his heart and makes his entire chest ache. “Does Friday work for you?”

He nods, tugging Carlos down for another kiss. “It’s a date.”

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flying-guinea-pig · 3 years

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Not What He Seems (ch.1)

(Prefer to read this on AO3?)

(It’s happening folks. The big reveal, four years in the making.)

NotWhat He Seems: Chapter 1

Thomas' heart always beat a little faster when he summoned something, even after several years in this job. It was the thrill of calling a powerful being into this reality with only your wits and some chalk lines as protection.

Beëlzebob was an intermediate-level demon. He took the appearance of every cliché devil ever - hairy black goat legs, a ridiculously buff and gleaming red upper body, large curled horns. The works.

He was also not cooperating at all.

"You are... di̵s̢tra͢c̢te͜d," the demon whispered, his voice echoing back strangely from the corners of the summoning lab. The shadows seemed to thicken.

Thomas kept his face impassive. These were just some special effects, after all. His binding circle was perfect, he didn't need to worry.

"I have outlined our offer in this document. These are the terms you have previously discussed at length with my colleague," he said, reaching out slightly to hand Beëlzebob the carefully rolled up contract. "All should be in order."

The demon unrolled it and took his sweet time reading it through. He would make a good addition to the safe summons list, despite being a bit higher level than their usual choices. This old-fashioned approach, with the written contract and all - it would teach the students to be patient and give them time to focus on the details before shaking on anything.

"Yes," the demon said, dragging a black claw over the parchment. "These terms are acceptable. However, there is one issue."

"Is there?"

A horrible, fanged grin. "The contract must be written in your o̦̰͚w̮̮n̬͇̹̕ blood, mortal."

Maybe it was his experience with grandstanding demons, or Tyrone had been rubbing off on him, but Thomas was not impressed. "That wasn't in the agreement."

"You will rewrite it. Ḩè̲̙͙̩̤r̦e̹̦ ͏͕̥a̝̱̺͟n̘͔d ̛̦̱̲̖n̩͈̪o̰̻͓͓͢w̺͍͎̦.̪̣͇̩́"

"No, I don't think so," Thomas said, mildly. Seriously? All that work was just wasted? Typical. He was not going to use his own blood to write it, sheesh. With all those clauses and addendums the thing was way too long. Not to mention willingly given human blood had power - power that wasn't a part of this offer.

The shadows twisted - the candles flared. "You will, little mortal, or I will step over this boundary and write it myself, straight from your veins."

"This attitude is not convincing me you're a good fit for our list."

"You have summoned me and I will not leave without my deal!" Red-tinged smoke filled the circle, edging over the chalk lines and spreading into the room. It stank of sulphur and decay.

Thomas coughed. Dramatics aside, maybe it was time to get rid of Beëlzebob. Too bad, Hicks would be disappointed to cross off another name on the safe summons list… It had shrunk a lot in the past years. If this kept up their students would soon only get to summon the Organ Duck. If they couldn’t offer a proper practical education they might eventually run out of interested students as well, which was bad news for the survival of the demonology department.

"Whoa, did someone drop a rotten egg in here?"

Tyrone usually didn't barge in during summonings, especially when they were trying to get more demons for the safe summons list, but this time Thomas didn't mind. The open door let in some fresh air and that was very welcome at the moment.

Tyrone entered the room, waving away some of the smoke. "Hey, Hicks mentioned you wanted to have a talk?"

"What? Oh, yeah," Thomas said, distracted. The smoke was dissipating with record speed and Beëlzebob was visible again, staring at Tyrone in abject terror. "I'm a bit busy right now though."

"Do you need any help?" Tyrone offered. His smile was perfectly friendly.

Thomas glanced at Beëlzebob. "As a matter of fact, he was just leaving."

"Yes! Yes indeed," the demon hurried to say. "Just leaving. Right now. I’m going. Big misunderstanding, you know how it is, have to be somewhere else, goodbye now!"

“Thanks buddy," Tyrone said. "Very accommodating of you, leaving without a deal like that. I will remember this. Here, have a snack."

With a snap of his fingers a familiar deep-fried ball appeared, partly wrapped in a festive paper towel.

Beëlzebob caught it with a flinch and popped away without another sound.

“So, what exactly did you want to talk about?”

“Just a second, let me clean up first.” He frowned at Tyrone. “Speaking of cleaning up, what happened to your shirt?”

“What?” Tyrone glanced down at the brown stains on his usually so crisp white shirt, and made a face. “Aw man, seriously?”

“Do I want to know?”

“I bumped into Banerjee on my way here. He was carrying samples. And he didn’t even apologize, can you believe it?”

Banerjee was the Cryptozoology department’s newest hire, working on his doctorate involving – honestly, Thomas had no idea, he just knew it involved a lot of mud. He wasn’t aware of Tyrone’s true identity. The university staff tried to keep that one under wraps. Parents might object to their children coming to a university where Alcor the Dreambender was frequently hanging around.

“He owes me a new shirt.”

Thomas rolled his eyes. “You can literally make it brand new with a thought.”

“He doesn’t know that. It’s about the principle of the thing.”

Shaking his head, Thomas set to work. To his students it often came as a surprise that practical demonology involved a lot of cleaning up. The preparations were extensive, of course, but afterwards someone had to put away the candles and mop up the chalk, blood, and other assorted fluids the demons occasionally left behind. Beëlzebob in particular had left footprints of some kind of sulphurous ooze that he probably shouldn’t handle without gloves…

Safely removing summoning circles was an art, really. It’s not like you could just start scrubbing away with these things – the outer part was usually the binding circle, and you never knew if the demon was still hanging around, invisible, waiting for you to make a mistake. Not that he expected something to happen while Alcor the Dreambender was literally waiting at the door, but proper caution was a good habit to have.

“You know, I could clean this up for you with a snap of my fingers,” Tyrone mused, lounging against the wall while he waited. His shirt held no trace of the brown stains.

“Are you offering?”

“For free?”

Thomas snickered at the almost scandalous look on Tyrone’s face. Put down his cleaning supplies. He had planned to do this differently, but you know what? Now might be as good a time as ever. And it would be fun, wouldn’t it, to put Tyrone off-balance for a moment? “How about a deal then?”

Tyrone perked up.

“You get this room back to its cleaned-up, usable state,” said Thomas, and felt the smile break through on his face. “In return, you get to be my best man.”

To his credit, it didn’t take Tyrone long to realise. “Thomas! You finally popped the question then?”

“Yep. I said I was going to do it soon, this can’t be a surprise –“

“And she said yes?”

“We did talk about it beforehand, you know –“

“Congrats!”

“Thanks,” Thomas grinned. “So, what do you say? Fair warning though, being my best man comes with certain responsibilities. Making sure I’m on time at the wedding and such.”

Organising the stag night as well, technically. Though Thomas suspected Brad already had some thoughts in that direction.

“I’ve been someone’s best man before, I know how it goes,” Tyrone said. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Thomas.”

The room around them shifted, the magical arrays fading away and taking the trailing odour of brimstone with them.

Tyrone’s expression shifted too, as he let go of Thomas’ hand.

“What’s wrong?” Thomas asked.

“Nothing.”

“You seem upset?”

“I am happy for you,” Tyrone said. “It’s just… you’re getting old.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“No, I mean – look at you! Getting married. Maybe kids and a house, soon.”

“I’m not buying a house on a teacher’s salary,” Thomas said. “The rest… who knows? We’ll see how it goes. Is that what’s upsetting you? That I’m growing up?”

Tyrone shrugged awkwardly. He seemed smaller somehow. “You’re going to be very busy with all that – that life stuff. It’s happening already. Everyone is so busy. Your dates with Elisha, Eddy’s got his new job, Brad’s mucking around in his dad’s company - when was the last time we all hung out, just for fun? Not because it was someone’s birthday or anything? It’s been ages since we had a game night.”

That… had been a while, true. “I guess that’s what happens when you get older. There are more demands on your time, you get to juggle more responsibilities.”

“I’m not getting older.”

“Right.” Thomas took a deep breath. “Listen, so… we’re busy more often. And it’s not like in college, where we all could just hang out all the time. But you’re basically part of the family, Tyrone. Alcor. You’ll always have a place here. And I’m sure the rest of the gang would say the same.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” Thomas said. And smiled, to lighten the mood. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“You’d just miss all the amazing deals I make with you.”

“Of course” Thomas said, glad Tyrone was now teasing instead of moping. “I’m clearly only using you for your clout as Alcor. You’ve made my life so much easier.”

Tyrone mimed a gasp. “Sarcasm, Thomas? Ouch.”

“Not entirely sarcasm,” Thomas admitted. “You do make my life easier, sometimes. When you feel like it. For instance, vanishing that sulphurous stuff Beëlzebob left behind, I was not looking forward to handling that. The smell lingered.”

Tyrone suddenly looked way too innocent. “Oh, I didn’t exactly vanish it.”

Oh Stars. “What did you do?”

“Might have put it somewhere. Like, oh, I dunno… Banerjee’s car.”

Thomas facepalmed. Serves him right for making a vague deal like that. “Is it at least safe?”

“Define ‘safe’.”

“Tyrone!”

“Don’t worry, Thomas, I promised not to deliberately harm the university’s students and faculty, remember? He’ll be fine.”

“All this for an accidental stain on your shirt, really?”

Tyrone folded his arms in front of him. “He didn’t apologize.”

Thomas shook his head, exasperated.

Demons. They really knew how to hold grudges.

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

The Mindscape was a vast, endless realm where the strong hunted the weak and territories were defined, invaded, and redefined. This was the place where demons lived, and they didn’t like each other any better than they liked humans. The collective noun for a group of demons, as they say, is ‘a carnage’. Teaming up was rare, and more often than not ended in the stronger one destroying the other as soon as their goal was met. That was just the natural order of things.

Even so, sometimes even they needed a neutral place to go. Somewhere deals could be made without worrying about being devoured. This place was the Midway Bar, run by a demon known only as the Bartender, and for the past six years it had attracted a group of regulars.

They took over the table in the corner. Sometimes the group lost a member, occasionally it gained one. They weren’t here to make deals. They were here to drown their misery and sneak away before a stronger demon took advantage of their intoxication to ambush them outside these walls.

Beëlzebob entered the Midway Bar. He went straight to the Bartender, who after a short conversation pointed in the direction of the gloomy table in the corner.

“Get lost,” Flaga the Eagle-winged said, at his approach.

The demon next to her, who mostly looked like a giant fungus with teeth, curled a green tendril around their glass. “Yeah. This is a private party.”

Beëlzebob paused. He was stronger than each of them, he knew. But this was no place for threats. “Apologies for the interruption. May I sit?”

That wasn’t how demons talked to each other, especially not to a bunch of low-levels like them. They shared a suspicious glance. The one across from Flaga, some kind of feathered crocodile hybrid, raised his empty glass meaningfully.

Of course. “Listening can parch the throat so,” Beëlzebob said. “Let me get those refilled for you, and then we̙̮'̥͉̘ll̟̮ ț̳̮a̪̩̗̥l̯̹̹k̰.”

#transcendence au #alcor the dreambender #thomas strange #fic: not what he seems #the midway bar #demons #I mean it's TAU so that's a given

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nickydestati · 3 years

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duolingo tog prompts #13

prompt: Now he is just a normal citizen (Adesso è solo un cittadino normale)

i am aware this is a superhero au for what technically is a superhero movie already but oh well, i hope you enjoy it anyway!

In general, Yusuf likes being Joe. On some days, though, he feels like screaming. Only yesterday night he was chasing down some stalker scum to teach them a lesson and make sure they would never even think of harassing anyone ever again, and now he is just a normal citizen. Just a face in the endless, dreary morning commute.

He wants to grab someone by the shoulders and yell his secret in their faces. Just so someone knows he’s doing it all for them.

But he buries his hands in his pockets and walks on.

A bell rings when he enters the antique shop. The Old Guard, it is called. And of course, it’s just a facade, but to his surprise, Joe genuinely likes working there. He likes being surrounded by ancient and not so ancient objects, he loves walking around in the chaotic assortment of precious art pieces and absolute junk. He often wonders how Andy has gotten hold of all these things, but however sneakily he tries to coax it out of her, she always sees right through his schemes and just shrugs.

He puts everything ready and turns the sign of the door around so the ‘open’ side is facing the street. He glances at the numerous grandfather clocks lining one of the walls. Booker is late. Maybe on a job Joe forgot about, so he guesses he’s on his own for today.

He’s staring at some lists with a lot of numbers he doesn’t understand much about because 1) this is usually Booker’s job and 2) he’s running on three hours of sleep and caffeine, when the phone rings. He picks up immediately, grateful for something else to do.

“The Old Guard Antiques, with Joe, how can I help you?”

“I’ve got a job for you.” Andy.

“Hello to you, too,” Joe says, glancing about for customers, though the bell hasn’t made a sound yet all morning. He lowers his voice just to be sure. “And a job? So soon? I just finished the last one this night.”

He can barely hide his excitement, he quickly checks his free hand, making sure he doesn’t start glowing by accident.

“It’s urgent. We’ve got word that someone is after Lykon’s bracers.”

“Lykon’s bracers?” Joe’s happy mood sobers. Lykon was one of their team once. But the life of a superhero is never without danger. Things went terribly wrong on a mission a long time ago, and Lykon had sacrificed himself so the rest could get out with the people they were saving. They went back later, but despite his healing powers, he hadn’t been able to use them on himself in time.

His bracers still hold fragments of his powers, though, just like Joe’s rings will when he dies. Every hero has such a token, and there are rumors it might grant the powers to someone else if used right. But so far, no one has tried yet. All superheroes agree that it’s simply too morbid and intruding.

“Yes.” Andy sighs. “I knew I shouldn’t have given it to the museum. It would’ve been safer with us after all.”

“Hey, boss, don’t beat yourself up. It was the best option back then. So, who’s after it?”

“Some rich megalomaniac called Merrick. You know, the usual. The theft is planned for this Friday. Booker is at the museum now to find a way to get you inside and get a layout from the building. He’ll be on it for the rest of the week so you’re on shop duty alone for a while.”

“Got it.”

“I’ll send you some more details you can look through. How did it go last night?

“It went well,” Joe answers, but it’s a tad too late and of course Andy notices.

“But?”

Joe sighs. “But the Shadow showed up and I had just gotten them right where I wanted them, but when I rounded the corner, he’d taken care of them already.”

“The guy’s good,” Andy says and the appraisel in her voice makes a spike of jealousy flash through his chest.

“Maybe you should ask him to join us, then,” he says and he hates how annoyed he sounds.

Andy chuckles on the other end. “Have to figure out who he is first.”

Just some pretentious bastard thinking he’s too good to talk with other superheroes. But Joe is tired talking about him.

“So how are you and Nile? Have you found her yet?”

“No, no sign yet.” All mirth has left Andy’s voice and Joe’s heart clenches.

“It’s only a matter of time. We’ll find her. Or she’ll find us again, she wouldn’t leave us like that.” She wouldn’t leave you.

“Let’s hope so,” Andy says with a heavy sigh. “Gotta go, I’ll send you the information. Keep me updated, okay?”

“Sure thing, boss. Say hi to Nile from me.”

He’s breaking his head over the lists again when the bell makes him startle.

His throat runs dry when he looks up because the most beautiful man in all the universe has just entered the shop. Joe really shouldn’t be so dumbfounded by the man, because objectively speaking he is rather plain-looking with that simple hair cut and those pants that are really doing nothing for him, but still. Even like that, he has something incredibly mesmerising to Joe.

He pretends to look back at the lists for a while, but glances at the customer every now and again from the corner of his eye.

When the man has been wandering around for a while and has been staring at those small angel statuettes for five minutes already, Joe slips from behind the counter and goes to him.

“Good morning, sir, can I be of some assistance?”

The man turns around and a small smile appears around his mouth when he sees Joe, melting Joe’s heart into a puddle.

“Maybe. I’m looking for a birthday gift for my nonna, but I don’t know which archangel she would like more.”

And to Joe’s surprise, the man goes on to explain the different meanings behind them which is incredibly fascinating - and not only because his hand gestures are so elegant and his eyes are alight with a passionate glow that Joe would describe as moonlight in one of his poems. And Joe is all too happy to chip in with his own knowledge of art and iconology.

They get so caught up in their conversation that Joe jumps when the grandfather clocks start their various announcements of the fact that it is twelve o’clock. The man startles too by the cacophony and glances at his watch.

“Oh, I should get going. I’ll take this one.” And he picks out Joe’s favorite.

He follows Joe to the cash register and pays.

“I am Joe, by the way,” Joe says when he’s wrapping the statue in bubble plastic to protect it.

“Nicky, nice to meet you,” Nicky says and Joe can’t keep the wide smile from his face.

“We should do that again some time,” he says, gathering all his courage. “Talk, I mean, not necessarily buying or selling angel statuettes.”

Nicky laughs, and the little snort makes Joe’s heart jump to his throat. “Let’s grab some dinner then, when are you available?”

“Only Friday wouldn’t work for me,” Joe says.

“I can’t make it on Friday either, so let’s say Saturday? Here, let me get your number,” Nicky says and picks his phone from his pocket.

They exchange numbers and say their goodbyes, Nicky flashing a last smile at him from the door before leaving Joe helplessly lost behind his cash register.

Focus, Yusuf! Yusuf chastizes himself when his mind has wandered off to what he’s going to wear for his date tomorrow for what must be the millionth time. You’re supposed to be watching out for a thief, focus!

Yusuf takes a deep breath and scans the room again. He’s hidden in a very uncomfortable position against the ceiling, holding on to a pillar that grants him a view of the entire exhibition room. If he didn’t have his powers, there was no way he could have endured this position for so long, and while it would have been even easier if the sun was out, he manages.

The minutes are ticking by, no sign of a thief yet. The bracers are still safely in their display case beneath him.

Then there’s a movement, ever so slightly, by the windows. Yusuf’s eyes latch onto it, but it’s gone so soon that he almost thinks it’s a trick of his mind.

Always trust your instincts, Andy told them over and over again. Our minds don’t play tricks on us.

Sure enough, there’s another flutter in the shadows. No, not in the shadows. Of the shadows.

One of them is moving.

Joe curses inwardly, of course Merrick has hired the Shadow.

He waits for the Shadow to reach the display case. Then, when he reaches over the glass, Yusuf slides down right behind him. He reaches for him, letting out a sound of victory when his hands guess correctly and circle around the Shadow’s neck. He lets his hands glow, unleashing the heat he’s always containing.

Surprised by the sudden attack, the Shadow turns visible and Yusuf stumbles back out of pure shock.

He’s all clad in black, with a balck version of a mask not unlike Yusuf’s own, but Yusuf would recognise the eyes peeking through it anywhere. Those eyes that are unmistakably glowing with moonlight now.

“Nicky?” Yusuf exclaims.

“Joe?”

Nicky seems just as confused as Yusuf who’s still looking him up and down as if he might change into someone else after all - and oh man, these tight pants are definitely doing things for him. Nicky recovers faster from the shock, though.

“Sorry, but I really gotta take these,” he says and before Yusuf can make his muscles move again, Nicky already has the bracers in his hands and is dashing for the windows.

“Wait no!” Yusuf sprints after him, but Nicky whisps away into shadow-form again and slips through a slightly opened window.

“Nicky!” Yusuf screams after him. He opens the window wider - not alarming the guards be damned - and looks out over the city. But there’s no trace of Nicky.

His heart is pounding. Nicky, the beautiful man he is already head over heels with, is the Shadow. Not only is he the Shadow, but he has also stolen Lykon’s bracers for some capitalist asshole.

Shit.

“Is our date still on tomorrow?” Yusuf calls weakly into the night.

#this got way too long i'm sorry #i got so carried away with this au so yeah there will be more most likely!! hence the cliffhanger hehe #anyway i hope some of you like this silly au too!#duolingo prompts #superhero!au #the old guard #joe x nicky #joenicky #immortal husbands #kaysanova #userbooker #usertriz #swquser #demonicneonfishy

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chaoticallysapphic · 4 years

Text

slippin’ through my fingers

summary: three times Lin should have spoken up and the one time she finally does.

a/n: this one shot does feature a bit of homophobia along with an abusive relationship, please don’t read if either of those things triggers you. Also there is mildy explicit tones in the earlier parts of this but it sticks to being PG-13

word count: 4k

“Lin slow down!” You scream which only causes her grin to widen. You tighten your arms around her waist and bury your face in her back, she can faintly hear you cursing her out over the wind as she speeds past automobiles on her brand new motorcycle. She’d gotten it for her seventeenth birthday and immediately convinced you to go for a ride with her, it took some begging but finally, you caved after saying she owed you a piece of cake in return.

She revs her cycle and heads out of the city, to a spot on the outskirts overlooking the ocean, she’d found it the other day with Suyin and knew how much you’d appreciate it. When she turns a corner a little sharper than the rest you let out a terrified scream that has her laughing so hard it hurts her cheeks, but almost immediately she chokes on that laughter as you bury your face in her neck this time instead of her back. Suddenly she feels stiff, nervous even, having you this close was a bad idea.

Lin had been feeling weird towards you lately, she’d chalked it up to growing up but the other night she woke up from her dream drenched in sweat as she vaguely remembered sliding her hands up your bare thighs as you begged her to stop being a tease. Technically it was from growing up, just… a different kind.

Thankfully they finally pull up to the spot and she kills the engine before kicking the stand into place, hesitantly you pull your face away from her neck, just a few inches and now she feels your breath tickle the skin behind her ear. Lin was screwed.

“Oh wow, Lin…” You breathe out after finally detaching yourself from her, you stand up and adjust your rumpled clothes before taking off your helmet. Your hair falls out in a glorious heap and Lin has to pull her gaze away from you because the sun is hitting you just right and she won’t last long if this continues.

You grab onto her hand and pull her to the cliff edge where you carefully sit down so your feet can dangle off of it. Lin sits beside you but makes sure there’s a decent distance between the two of you, you furrow your brows at her actions and scoot closer so your thighs are touching. It’s like you want to torture her.

“You like it?” she asks softly, she’s worried you won’t all of the sudden. You are from a very aristocratic family and you’ve probably seen better things, but you erase all her worries when you smile softly and say so quietly the wind almost carries it away “Yeah, I do.”

“Can I tell you a secret?” you ask hesitantly, your fiddling with your nails as you stare down at your lap. You’re nervous.

“You can tell me anything, y/n.”

“I don’t like men” you whisper, going completely still as you wait for her reply. Lin laughs, “no one likes men y/n, we just tolerate them.”

“No like romantically I don’t.” Your shoulders sag and you finally chance a glance in her direction, Lin’s quiet now, her laughter has stopped and she doesn’t know what to say, are you somehow aware of her dream? Is this a joke? “I kissed Tenzin recently, not because there’s feelings but I asked him if he would and I think he was just excited to have his first kiss… It felt gross and wrong.”

“Well Tenzin’s one man,” Lin says, “and he’s hardly even a man at that.” You snort, one of your hands going up to cover your mouth, you’re insecure about that, but now that Lin is thinking about it, it’s kind of cute.

“I’ve kissed other guys Lin. Some of the girls at my school mentioned having dreams… “ you flush, “sexual kinds about guys and I’ve never had those. They even listed off a bunch of stuff guys do that they think is hot and I just kept picturing women doing it.”

You knock the wind out of Lin at that, she’s had some thoughts towards guys before now that she thinks about it, desires, but none of them have been as intense as her current desire for you is. It’s tense between the two of you as you wait for her to reply. “Can you please say something?” you beg.

I think your really pretty and I’d like to hold your hand and kiss you goodnight

“Nothings wrong with liking girls, y/n,” Lin says instead, you look a little relieved yet disappointed.

———————————————————————————————————-

Breaking news! Mrs. y/l/n of y/l/n industry has fallen ill! Her immediate family has not given any statements but a close source says it’s any minute until she departs this world.

———————————————————————————————————-

When you open your bedroom door for Lin she notices how pale you look, she leaves work as soon as possible after hearing the news through the radio stationed in the main office of the station. “Y/n, I am so s-” before she continues you launch yourself into her arms and cry, she pulls you in close and stays silent, letting you get it out of your system.

You lost your dad when you were ten, your mom is the only parent you have left and she knows it’ll be hard when she passes, especially since you’ll have to take over the family company. You pull her into your room and kick the door shut with your foot, still gripping her tightly.

“She’s gonna die Lin” you choke out between sobs and Lin’s heartbreaks. It’s been three years since she realized her feelings for you and every day since she’s wanted to take your face in her hands and kiss you until you both run out of breath. She’s even had to distance herself from you a bit, you guys used to see each other every day but now it’s once a week if you’re lucky.

When Lin became a cop you’d always waltz in around lunch in one of your beautiful dresses that stopped mid-thigh, you had tights on underneath but she knew your mom still gave you hell for your daily attire. You are always holding two cups of tea along with a paper bag being dangled between your fingers that always had something incredibly delicious inside.

The day that Lin realized you couldn’t come by anymore you’d brought donuts along with sandwiches for the two of you to eat. The glaze of the donut had dripped down the side of your hand and onto your wrist, instead of using a napkin you simply licked it up with your tongue. Once you left she stumbled her way to the gym and tried to take out her sexual frustration in another way.

That night she called and said she was told it was unprofessional for you to keep visiting, she could tell through the phone how disappointed you were, but you didn’t want to get her in trouble so you stopped showing up. One of her coworkers made a joke that the first day you didn’t stop by “hey Lin, where’s that lover of yours?” Her face flushed a deep red and she taught him and the others to never talk about you again.

“You won’t be alone, you’ll have me… a-and Tenzin, Bumi likes to come to your birthday parties so you have him too,” she says, a weak chuckle escapes you as you finally pull away from her and wipe at your eyes.

“I’ll never be alone again,” you say cryptically and walk over to the deep green velvet couch stationed underneath a wide window overlooking the city.

“What do you mean?” Lin sits down beside you. You lean your arms against the back of the couch and look out the window, a deep frown has found its home on your lips and more tears escape the corners of your eyes.

“My mom’s dying wish is for me to marry,” you say softly. Lin’s eyes widen and before she can ask any questions, you beat her to it. “She’s already picked him out, her assistant is planning it as we speak.”

“Him?” she all but spits out, unable to control herself. You flinch at the tone of her voice and drop your forehead to rest on the soft velvet.

“She’d never let me marry a woman, Lin.” you murmur, “she wants me to keep the perfect image she’s created of me, I can’t break it, that might just kill her before her sickness does.”

“But you’ll never love him, does she not know this?” Lin demands, her mind is racing with a million images of you in some man’s arms and suddenly she wants to destroy everything in sight.

“I’ve never told her about my… attractions. She thinks it’s wrong and read it can be fixed with some kind of medicine that’s being sold in the black market in Ba Sing Se.” You look up finally and meet Lin’s gaze, suddenly her anger dissipates as she looks into your eyes and sees how truly devastated you are.

She tries to calm herself down and pulls you into her arms where you begin to weep. Your hand clutches the front of her shirt so tightly Lin’s sure you might just rip it. She once dreamed of you two getting married, it was before her fight with her family and she even put on a dress to make you smile, which you did. Before your lips touched after saying ‘I do’ she whispered against your lips “I love you Mrs. Beifong” and you flushed a deep red before pulling her into a breathtakingly passionate kiss that had someone in the crowd, most likely Bumi or Suyin, whistling.

“I’ve never even kissed a girl” you croak out, your head resting on Lin’s shoulder. You’ve cried out all the tears in your system for now and your eyes are puffy. Her hand that was soothingly running through your hair stills at your words. Truthfully, neither has she.

“Would you- do you want to?” Lin asks and instantly she regrets it. You pull away from her shoulder, her hand dropping onto the back of the couch as you stare into her eyes.

“W-With you?” Your eyes are wide and cheeks a deep red, your still close and Lin takes that as a good sign. All she can do is nod and some kind of strange sound comes out of you that makes her stomach clench. “I… “ you rub the back of your neck, “would like that a lot.”

For a minute, maybe two, neither of you move. You’re the first to break as you lean closer to Lin which helps give her the courage to lean into you until your lips are a breath apart. You’re shaking like a leaf so Lin places one of her hands on your shoulder to help ground you before pressing her lips against yours. That same sound from before escapes you, it’s some kind of desperate low moan and Lin brings her other hand to rest on the back of your head to bring you even closer.

Lin tugs at your bottom lip, eliciting a moan from you as you happily open your mouth for her and something within her stirs, awakens at the sounds.

You crawl onto Lin’s lap and place a leg on either side of her hips, it’s like her dreams but it’s so much better which is confirmed by the hand that slips up her shirt to grip her bare hip. Lin lets out a guttural sound and pulls away, you let out a breathy sigh as Lin’s lips reattach themselves onto your jaw and make a slow, wet trail down to the base of your neck.

“Lin” you moan and she’s officially decided that she can die happy now, if she must live any longer her name on your lips is all she wants to hear. You lose yourselves in each other and eventually stumble to your canopy bed that’s across the room.

It’s the best thing Lin’s ever done, she makes sure to touch you everywhere she possibly can and kisses you there too. If she were ever to become religious you’d be her goddess and your body the temple that she’d worship every single day.

The sun has set by the time you two have calmed down and Lin holds you in her arms as you lay your head on her bare shoulder. Her thumb traces circles on your stomach as she whispers “we could run away.”

“You know I can’t Lin, she’s all I have.”

You have me

———————————————————————————————————–

The media representative for the Y/L/N family says y/n and Chao have just welcomed their first child, a healthy baby girl, only ten months after their wedding! I think we all know what that honeymo- Lin rips her radio out of the socket and throws it against the wall.

———————————————————————————————————–

Never once has Lin dreaded standing on these steps until today, a call was made late last night whilst she was asleep about a break-in at the Y/L/N family estate, an attempt was made on your life and due to the high profile of your family Lin along with five officers have to come to your home to make sure its a secure and get statements.

One of her best detectives knocks on the grand mahogany door for her and a male servant opens it up “thank you for coming so quickly” he says and ushers them inside. Another servant, also a male, offers them tea to which they all, besides officer Liu who began to ask for a cup of oolong before Lin gently jabs him in the stomach to shut up, politely decline.

“We’ll split up, Liu and Cho, I want you to secure the perimeter, apparently the perpetrators entered through the west wing. The rest of you along with myse-”

“Chief Beifong, Lady Y/L/N asked if she could talk to you privately about last night” one of the servants interrupts her in some uppity tone that makes her roll her eyes. What could you want?

“Fine, the rest of you interview everyone who was working here yesterday whilst I get a statement from Mrs. Y/L/N” Lin has to try her hardest not to spit out the word ‘Mrs’ but ultimately fails seeing as her officers look terrified now and all scurry off to do their respective tasks.

Someone leads her up the stairs and down the left hall, to what Lin remembers being your mother’s sitting room. The servant opens the door for Lin and says to whom she can only assume is you, “Chief Beifong.” He leaves and Lin reluctantly takes a step inside.

She’s seen photographs of you in the papers, your family has always been one the media adores but it’s still shocking to be face to face with you. After your wedding, Lin stopped returning your calls or letters, after a month you gave up much to Lin’s chagrin. Part of her wanted you to go to the ends of the earth for her like she would for you.

Your features have matured a bit over the past three years and you’re dressed in a floor-length hanbok instead of your showy dresses. There’s a massive bruise around your throat that makes her anger dissipate as worry sets in. She clears her throat which snaps you out of your reverie and says “So, what can you tell me about last night?”

Your brows pinch together and you frown, you look hurt at her tone of indifference. She tries to not let it bother her. You turn your back on her and go to sit at one of the elaborately designed couches. It’s heinous and so not you. “You can sit, y’know.”

“I’m fine right here, now I need to know anything you can remember about last night to help me keep you… your family safe.” Your shoulders sag and you sigh.

“I don’t know much, I think they wanted to kill me… one of the men kind of looked familiar though” your hand comes up to your throat and hovers over the nasty bruise. Lin decides she should probably sit down, if you’re going to continue and if it gets any worse then that she might just fall to her knees.

“Where do you remember seeing the man?” she asks, your eyes flicker around the room. “He used to work for mom.”

“But he isn’t currently employed by your family?” She pulls out her small notebook meant for things like this and starts to write down about a possible suspect.

“No, he quit after the wedding, I don’t remember his name but his eyes were so… blue.” That unfortunately isn’t much help, Lin sighs, trying not to flinch when you mention that day. You stand up from your couch and sit on the one Lin settled on, she tenses up but you make sure to sit on the opposite end. “I want to divorce him, Lin.”

“That’s irreleva-”

“I’ve never loved him, please. H-He knows about… me. He found out a month after the wedding and fired all our female employees, he doesn’t like me alone with women. Lin, I want to leave him” you plead softly, as if someone may hear.

“Then leave him, I don’t understand why you feel the need to tell me” she grumbles. You lean a bit closer to her but make sure not to get too close.

“He has my family assets, I-I don’t think I can do it alone. Lin Please” you beg and at that she looks up and into your eyes. Your eyes are brimming with tears and you grip the fabric of your hanbok tightly.

“What about Annchi?” Tenzin had told Lin about your daughter one time, he mentioned how he met her a few months after her birth but you stopped talking to him shortly after.

“I’d take her with me, please, tomorrow at dusk meet me at that spot you took me to on your birthday, our spot, please.” Before Lin can respond the door to the sitting room slams open and in steps your husband, following him is the same servant who guided Lin here. “Sir I am so sorry. I’m new and I-I di-”

Chao sighs and looks over his shoulder “It’s fine, but next time lady Y/L/N needs a guard with her, it’s far too dangerous right now, especially in her condition.” You quickly wipe away your tears and stand, he opens his arms for you and you reluctantly step inside of them. “Chief Beifong, you’re a childhood friend of my wives, yes?”

He offers her a wide grin that unsettles her, “yes, we went to grade school together.” Lin stands as well and puts her notepad away along with her pen.

“Well I’m shocked to have not met you before today, Y/N why wasn’t she at the wedding?” he pecks you on your cheek and you look up at him with a small, almost defeated smile.

“I believe she was busy, honey. She does have a time-consuming job” you reply smoothly, you set a hand on his chest and Lin feels like she’s been subjected to one of her worst nightmares. “Well that is to bad, y’know we do have another monumental par-”

“I don’t think she’d want to come to that Cha-” you hastily reply but Chao chuckles and interrupts you.

“Why not? Do you not want your friend at the baby shower? It’ll make up for lost time.” You look down at your feet as he brings you even closer. Lin feels like she’s been submerged into the North Pole’s canals and her heart has most definitely stopped beating. Are you pregnant again?

“I need to get back to the station, I want to try and find the awful men who broke in yesterday as fast as possible,” she says and hastily leaves the sitting room, she bounds down the stairs as fast as she can without tripping and slams the front door open so she can get out of there, out of eyesight and away from him, from you. She doesn’t wait for her officers to finish up, instead, she mounts her motorcycle and speeds off.

The next day she reluctantly takes herself to your spot, she brought a car instead of a motorcycle since you said you’d be bringing Annchi. She doesn’t know if she can look at your daughter without breaking down, but she’ll try her hardest for you.

It’s ten o’clock when Lin gives up on waiting, she slams her car door shut and drives home, she’s pretty sure she broke at least three traffic laws but she’s too consumed in her thoughts to care.

It’s three days later that she sees you again, you stop by the station with two bodyguards in tow, you’re wearing another elegant hanbok and an officer brings you into Lin’s office, claiming if anyone just knocks they’ll get yelled at for it. The guards come into her office with you and it’s a bit cramped with the four of you.

“My husband found the men, he wanted me to come to tell you we’re safe now and to thank you for stopping by,” you say softly, Lin’s brows pinch together, you won’t look her in the eyes. “I also wanted to let you know that I was a bit hysterical the other day due to fear and my hormones, but thank you for lending an ear.”

What? Lin looks between the two guards and then at you, you very subtly shake your head.

“Mrs. Y/L/N the men should be brought into the station, they are criminals and need to be apprehended” Lin stands from her chair.

Give me a sign, anything, show me you meant to be there at dusk. Give me something, please.

You nod and make to leave but one of the guards lays his hand on your shoulder “Lady Y/L/N, aren’t you forgetting something?” he asks, Lin looks him over and her heart stops as she looks into his eyes ‘his eyes were so blue’ you’d said. You pull out a small, golden envelope and hand it to her before disappearing with your guards stalking behind you.

I still love you.

Lin rips open the envelope and inside is an invitation to your baby shower which is set a few months from now.

———————————————————————————————————–

I am here to report sad news today, Republic City, Chao Y/L/N was found dead this morning. He peacefully passed away in his sleep and is survived by his wife, Y/N Y/L/N, and his two children, Annchi, who is sixteen, and his son Han who is thirteen. Please send them your condolences as they go through this hard time.

———————————————————————————————————–

Lin is sent a letter two days after the announcement regarding your husband, it’s from you, she’d never forgotten your handwriting, asking her to meet you at your spot, at dusk once more. She wants to burn the letter and not show up, but she’s weak when it comes to you and caves at the last second, she drives there, her heart racing at the idea of seeing you once more.

When Lin pulls up an hour has passed since dusk but you’re still sitting there, waiting for her. You’re wearing a pair of pants with a shirt tucked in and an overcoat to help with the fall breeze and you seem a bit lighter than last time she saw you.

Shortly after she got the invitation for your baby shower the servant from the day she stopped by, the one who showed her to the sitting room, had knocked on her apartment door with a letter gripped in his shaking hand. Lin took it from him and slammed the door on his face before opening it up.

“I can’t go through with it anymore, I just got confused when I saw your face again. I’m happy here.”

She had spent that night curled up on top of her covers crying as she remembered every little thing about you and your time together. She’ll die alone, she thought, because no one could ever beat you.

“Hi,” your voice is like honey and she has to squeeze her eyes shut to keep from giving in to it and getting trapped once more, “I wanted to… I wanted to explain somethings.”

“Then explain” she replies plainly and you wring your hands out in front of you as you try to find the right words.

“I was gonna show up, Lin… but he figured it out and threatened to keep Annchi from me, he showed me these papers, they were lies but it was all incriminating and would have been used against me in court…” You let out a shaky, uneven breath as you try to remain calm and not cry. “I’ve spent the last eleven years envisioning if I had successfully run away with you and Annchi and each time I have to stop myself before it gets too painful.”

“And the letter?” she replies harshly, your brows furrow in confusion. “What letter?”

Lin scoffs, is she so unimportant that you just forgot? “The letter y/n, stating that you were just confused, are you lying to me now or were you lying to me then?”

“You think I’d write something like that? Lin, he never let me write letters to people, whatever you received was not from me!” You shout out, you look so hurt and her head is swirling in confusion, it was fake?

Suddenly it all makes sense, you seemed so desperate to leave, and then you called it all off with a flick of your wrist. You knew Lin was a bit insecure and she was so hurt when you stood her up, but all along you didn’t want to. You were getting ready to meet her that night. You take a hesitant step towards Lin, then another and another until you’re in front her, only two paces away.

“That night, when we were younger, it was the best night of my life, Lin. After you left in the morning I couldn’t stop crying, everyone tried to comfort me because they thought it was about my mom and I felt even worse because… because the pain of knowing I destroyed our chance hurt more.”

“Do you still… care about me?” Lin asks, part of her wants to take the question back but she keeps her ground and waits for an answer. Your head flies up in surprise as you stare into her eyes.

“Lin… I’ve never stopped loving you, the maids on my wedding day kept having to dry my tears in the dressing room because I couldn’t stop thinking about you and how badly I messed up.” Her eyes widen at your confession, love? Do you love her? Even now you love her despite all those years apart and you still love her. Everything regarding you seemed so unachievable her whole life but now it’s within reach and Lin feels her throat constricting, she doesn’t know what to do or say.

It’s different then her dreams, there aren’t any consequences in her dreams or chances of you changing your mind. She’s worried if she pulls you in for a kiss like she wants to right now you might just take back your words and break her heart again.

You take her silence as an answer and take a step back, you rip your gaze from hers as you feel your heart crack. Spirits you’re so embarrassed, you had assumed she knew about your feelings and had always hoped she reciprocated them, all the signs pointed to yes but maybe you read into them too much.

“I’m sorry” you mutter before going to leave, you walk towards your car with your head down and as you go to open the car door Lin puts her hand on it to stop you, you’re trapped now between the car and her, and you don’t know what to do.

You don’t lift your head up so Lin gently grasps your chin and tilts it up so she can look into your eyes once more. “I love you too,” she leans down and captures your lips in a searing kiss that makes you feel twenty again. You feel light headed as she leans you gently against the car, as if you’ll break if she’s to rough.

You wrap your arms around her neck and pull her closer to you, so long has she been out of your grasp, you don’t know if you’ll ever let her go again but you don’t think she’ll mind.

#lin beifong #lin beifong x reader #lin/reader #lin beifong/reader #lok #legend of korra #lok fanfic #lin beifong fanfic #suyin #bumi #tenzin

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thetravelerwrites · 3 years

Text

Dr. Mael Halvorg (Part 2)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationship: Male Part Fae/Female Part Fae Additional Tags: Exophilia, Monster Boyfriend, Fae, Naga, Reader Insert, Anthropology, Genetics Content Warnings: Children, Pregnancy, Incubation, Infertility, Birth, Oviposition, Egg-Laying Words:

Commissioned by @ivymemnoch! The reader and Dr. Halvorg discuss his lingering infertility problem. Amai lays her final clutch of eggs. Please reblog and leave feedback!

The Traveler's Masterlist

“Good morning, class!” You said on the first day.

“Good morning!” Fourteen bright voices responded.

All of the children except for baby Yenu were sitting on their tails behind desks in a room that had been set up as a classroom by the staff.

“So, every day each week we’re going to work on a different subject,” You began. “Mondays are reading and language comprehension, Tuesdays are maths and sciences, Wednesdays are social studies and economics, Thursdays are geography and history, Fridays are fun days with arts, crafting, music, and educational games. Today is Monday, so we’re going to start with reading. You should each have a workbook appropriate to your developmental level in your desks, so please take out your reading workbooks.”

As the children shuffled and searched for the right book, Dr. Halvorg stepped inside the classroom with a clipboard. You raised an eyebrow.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

“I’m observing the children in a school setting to see how they adapt,” He replied.

You narrowed your eyes at him. “And I’m also assuming how I teach, correct?”

He dipped his head sheepishly. “I was curious. And it’s for my research.”

You raised an eyebrow at him. “Mm.” You turned back to your students and fell into your teacher’s voice. “Keenai, if you would begin reading the first sentence, please?”

Keenai picked up his workbook and started reading. “The small dog lives in a red house.”

“Can you tell me which of these words are verbs?”

“Um…” He looked at the sentence, frowning.

“To remind you, a verb is an action word, something someone does.”

“Uh… lived?” He replied slowly.

“Very good.” You said, and he smiled in relief. “Tani, you’re next. Read the next sentence in your book.”

“The red house was built on a wed… wedeness…”

“Wednesday,” You said. “That’s a hard word, I know. Can you tell me what the noun is in that sentence?”

“House?”

“Good! A noun is a person, a place, or a thing. I’m a noun, you’re a noun, the room we’re in is a noun.”

“Is Nenish a noun?” Jinsa asked.

“Yes.”

“Ha ha, you’re a noun!” Jinsa said, pointing at Nenish.

“So are you!” Nenish interjected.

“Hey, hey! Settle down, please!” You called over them, sitting on the edge of your desk. “Fuma, you next.”

Fuma read from his book, and then Amaia. Next, you went down the line of the four-year-olds, having them read a sentence and find colors, shapes, numbers, or sounds in the sentences. The three-year-olds were next, and they simply read small sentences. You then had the one-year-olds spell and say three-letter words.

Their quick development was normal for nagas, as they tended to age quickly until they hit puberty, when their aging progress slowed to accommodate for yearly hibernation, but it was also startling in conjunction with the developmental levels of similar creatures. You had never studied the advancements of a species’ young so closely before, and you had to admit, it was fascinating. You could see why Dr. Halvorg found it so interesting.

You set the children writing tasks appropriate to their learning level and took a moment to talk to Dr. Halvorg, who was scribbling quickly in a notebook.

“They have computers now that you can write on, you know,” You told him, amused.

He looked up over his glasses at you and quirked an eyebrow. “I am aware of that, thank you. I’m not quite so old-fashioned as I seem, regardless of what Amai might tell you.” He looked back down and continued scribbling. “I’m a chronic note-taker. A bad habit I can’t seem to break, though with my profession, it’s often a strength rather than a weakness.”

“Hmm,” You hummed. “And what do your notes say about my teaching?”

“Adequate,” He replied, still scribbling. “Don’t misunderstand, that’s not a criticism. I hold everyone to an extremely high standard. If you hadn’t met expectations, I would have dismissed you.”

“So I meet your expectations?” You asked sardonically.

“At the moment,” He said, snapping his book closed and standing up. “I still want to observe your other classes before I’m completely satisfied.”

“Hmm,” You said again.

True to his word, Halvorg attended every class that week, observing you interacting with the children. Other than a question or two about your future curriculum, he stayed quiet. At the end of the week, he asked that you submit a weekly progress report until you either found a replacement or were dismissed.

It seemed excessive to you, and you were beginning to wonder if he still saw the children as an experiment. He seemed to care about them, but how much of that was genuine and how much of it was his own self-interest? You were starting to feel leery of and disconcerted by him.

Perhaps he picked up on this, because he seemed to go out of his way to avoid you. He had you direct all of your questions and reports to his assistant and rarely picked up his phone. Any conversations were brief and succinct. He did send you notes on your curriculum, making suggestions for each child. If you weren’t already suspicious of his motives, you might almost have though it sweet.

“I think Halvorg is avoiding me,” You told Amai when the two of you went to lunch together. Now that the two of you could hang out after all the years, you made it a point to set time aside for each other and had lunch at least once a week.

“What makes you say that?” Amai asked, drizzling dressing over her starter salad.

“Ever since he watched me teach classes, he’s barely spoken to me. He seemed excited to exchange research notes when I first arrived, but now he seems to have no interest in speaking to me since he finished observing class.”

“He could just be busy,” Amai suggested. “The four year old’s birthdays are coming up. He always does something special for the kids on their birthdays.”

“Are you concerned that he only sees your children as test subjects?” You asked her. “He seems obsessed with them.”

Amai laughed. “I thought that way in the early days, but he genuinely loves kids. If anything ever happened to me or Yenuno, I’m confident Halvorg would take care of them.” She took a sip of her mineral water. “Are you coming to the kids party? You’re invited, obviously.”

“Will there be clowns? I hate clowns.”

She snorted. “Nothing so gauche. I think Halvorg set up a treasure hunt. The kids always love whatever he plans. Honestly, I know I complain about him, but he does make it easy for me sometimes. I haven’t had to plan any major events since the kids hatched.”

“Hmm… I don’t know. It’s strange to me how involved he is.”

Amai sat back in her seat and eyed you shrewdly. “Did he ever tell you about his son?”

You looked up in surprise. “Son? I thought you said he had no children.”

“He doesn’t… technically.” Amai set her fork down. “You didn’t hear this from me so don’t repeat it, but he had a wife nearly a hundred years ago who cheated on him. He raised a boy, thinking he was his son, but the child was actually fathered by the other man. His wife left him and took the boy with her and he never saw him again. I don’t think he ever got over that.”

“Oh, god,” You replied, horrified. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

“He’s spend the last several decades saving dying races from the brink of extinction. In a way, he thinks of those children he helped bring into the world as his children, too. And every time he has to let them go, it’s like losing his son all over again. I think the fact that he gets to help raise our babies is something of a gift for him. Trust me, it’s not something he takes for granted.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought of it like that,” You said in dismay.

“Halvorg is stuffy, strict, and a stickler for protocols, so he can be difficult to read, but I assure you, he loves my children as if they were his own. It may have started as research, but he has a family now and I think that’s what he wanted all along. Try not to judge him to harshly.”

You conceded with a nod. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The following Saturday, you attended the kids birthday party as requested. The kids were excited and zooming around the receiving area, shrieking and laughing, all of them wearing party hats and nothing else. Amaia was piggy-backing on Dr. Halvorg, her tail wrapped around his waist for stability and her arms hugged around his neck. Dr. Halvorg walked around completely normally, as if this was a typical action and he was used to it. He watched the children playing with a wide, fond grin on his face.

You walked over to Amai and Yenuno, who were watching from the refreshments table with Yenu, feeding her crackers.

“Nothing like a little bit of chaos in the morning,” You said.

They laughed.

“You’ve never seen them after a group kill,” Yenuno said. “They’re uncontrollable after they’ve taken down an elk together. It’s pretty incredible to watch for me, personally. Nagas in the wild typically don’t work together and they especially don’t hunt together, not even siblings.”

“They are very close and friendly, for nagas,” You remarked. “Markedly different to most snake-related species I’ve met.”

“It’s Amai’s blood and influence that’s doing it, I’m sure,” Yenuno said, kissing his wife’s cheek. “She’s the most friendly and cheerful person I’ve ever met.”

“To be fair, sweetie, you haven’t met all that many people,” Amai said, laughing.

“That is fair,” Yenuno conceded. “My point stands, though.”

“Alright children, gather ‘round!” Halvorg called, and they flocked to him, swirling around him like a whirlpool. “Now, you guys are going to split up into teams to help Nenish, Tahara, and Sadji find their gifts. Nenish will have Tani, Jinsa, and Keenai on his team. Tahara will have Amaia, Osan, Ishni, and Dashu on his team. And Khuzho, Chidil, Fuma, and Itheti will be on Sadji’s team.” He handed a small leaflet to each team. “Follow the clues to find the treasures! Go!”

The kids scattered, giggling madly.

“Come get something to drink and rest for a minute, Halvorg!” Yenuno called. “I think you’ve earned it.”

Halvorg grinned boyishly, an expression that brightened his face and made him look… well… rather handsome. He jogged over to the table and had a ginger ale. Elves have hypermobile ears, and his ears were high and wiggling slightly, a normal indication in elvish peoples of happiness and excitement.

“I think they’ll really enjoy their gifts this year,” Halvorg said, taking sips of his soda. “And the treasure hunt is half the fun. It’s challenging, but not too difficult. If they work together, it should be no trouble at all.”

“You didn’t get them history books like last year, did you?” Amai asked with her eyes narrowed. “You might as well have burned the money you spent on those for all the use they got out of them.”

“No, I learned my lesson,” He said defensively. “I bought toys.”

“Educational toys?” Amaia asked shrewdly.

He stopped mid-sip and looked at Amaia with an eyebrow raised. “…maybe,” He said into his cup.

Amaia rolled her eyes. “At least Yenuno and I ordered some stuff the kids will like.”

“You don’t know that they won’t like them,” I said. “I loved educational toys.”

“Yeah, but you’re a nerd,” Amaia said, poking you playfully.

“So what? Your kids could be nerds, too. I’m pretty sure Osan is going to be a Star Wars fan. He’s been talking my ear off about the Mandalorian.”

“It’s so strange,” Amaia said, ignoring your response and looking off in the distance. “I thought that because the kids were hatched in clutches, they would be like twins or triples or the like and have similar interests and personalities, but they’re all so different. Different likes, different traits, different styles. It’s amazing.”

“It amazes me, too,” Yenuno said, staring into his drink with a wistful expression. “My siblings and I separated when we were young, so I don’t know what they were like or if we had similar interests. Honestly, until recently, I never gave them a thought. Watching my children work together… it makes me wonder what my own siblings were like, and if they’d still be alive today if we had helped each other.”

There was a contemplative silence for a few minutes, broken by excited voices reentering the receiving area.

“We found it!” Tahara said, holding up a wrapped gift. The other four were carrying smaller treat bags that had their names written on them. “Uncle Maël, look!”

“Excellent! Well done!” Halvorg said, bending to give Tahara a hug. “Now, let’s wait until your brothers return with their gifts before we open them, okay? How about you five play tag until then?”

“Okay!” Tahara said.

“I’ll play with you,” Yenuno said. “I’m starting to get fat, preparing for the incubation period.” He patted Amai’s belly, which carried his three eggs, likely to be the last clutch they’d have together.

“How soon?” You asked Amai as Yenuno took off to chase with his children.

“Any day,” Amai said with a weary sigh. “And I’m ready for it. These little guys are heavy.”

“Boys or girls?”

“We won’t know until they hatch. It’s too hard to get a clear picture with the ultrasound, and besides, even if it could, both the male and female genitalia are internal, so it’s nearly impossible to tell.” She took a sip of ginger ale. “We’re really hoping for at least one girl. Don’t get me wrong, we love the boys more than anything, but we’d like Amaia and Yenu to have some sisters.”

“I’d like to be present for the laying, if that’s okay,” You said.

“For your research?” She asked.

Your head rocked back. “No, because you’re my friend and I want to be there for you.”

Amai smiled fondly. “Oh. Of course, thank you.”

Dr. Halvorg had not added anything to the conversation with you and Amai, and instead went to the table and made a plate of snacks. You gave Amai a look and a cocked eyebrow, and she nodded understanding, slipping away from her spot to watch her husband and children play.

“Dr. Halvorg?”

He flinched and looked up, glancing around furtively and noticing that the two of you were alone. “Yes?”

“Why are you avoiding me?”

He opened his mouth and closed it again before responding, “I’m doing no such thing.”

“I’ve requested at least three meetings with you this past month, and you’re always too busy,” You said dryly.

“Well, I am,” He said, turning. “If you’ll excuse me…”

“Are you avoiding me because I asked you out?” You asked bluntly.

He missed a step in his stride and stopped.

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I should have realized from your professional demeanor that you wouldn’t be open to interoffice dating. I apologize.”

Halvorg sighed and turned to face you. “It’s not that. Not exactly, I mean.” He set his plate on the table and looked you full in the face for the first time in weeks. “I haven’t given a thought to dating in…” He rubbed his forehead. “Gods… decades. The question took me off guard, of course, and I actually had to sit down and give it some thought. I’ve been wrapped up in my work, of course, but I think I was just distracting myself.”

“From what?”

He sat on the edge of the table and crossed his arms. “It’s hard to talk about. I don’t even really talk about it with Yenuno, and I would consider him my closest friend.” He sighed heavily and avoided your eye. “I’ve ignored my personal life in favor of spending my career and fortune in this century helping races achieve something I want for myself.”

“Children?” You guessed.

He nodded a little morosely. “Not just that, but that is a significant part of it. I’ve been following the reproduction rates of Celtic fae since the fae were originally integrated and it’s decreasing year by year. I live in constant fear that my own race will be extinct in my lifetime.” He quirked his head at you. “Your race still seems to be fairly prolific, is that correct?”

“Oh yeah, I have a bunch of brothers and a truckload of cousins. No problems there.”

He sighed. “I don’t know what the problem with my race is. I’ve studied genetic traits, magical impediments, marriage and divorce rates, and ratio of coupling to conceptions.The numbers are terrible and I don’t know why. That’s what drives me crazy. I hate not having an answer.”

“Have there been miscarriages?”

“No, that’s the crazy thing, the rate of conception is extraordinarily low. I think there have only been three live births of Celtic fae blood in the last year.”

“Oh, jeez,” You said, sitting against the table next to him. “I didn’t realize the problem was that severe. Have you considered whether it might be a physical problem?”

“How do you mean?”

“Have you ever done a sperm count? Or had an MRI of the area to see if there’s a blockage? That kind of thing can be genetic and men tend to be shy about stuff like that.”

He tilted his head and frowned. “No, I haven’t. It actually hadn’t occurred to me. Honestly, I’ve been so focused on my work to distract myself, it may have worked too well and I ignored such things.” He looked at you and smiled. “You’ve given me something to think about.”

You smiled back. “Good. I wonder if the females of the race have a similar issue. It may have been something bred into the people over time, over centuries.”

“That’s possible,” He said. “There’s certainly a precedent; some creatures have been bred to extinction. Remember the pug?”

“That tiny dog breed with the squashed face?” You said. “Yeah, they died out a while ago, didn’t they?”

He nodded. “That was human interference, though. Yenuno’s people were dying out due to antisocialism; too reclusive to even propagate their own species. Yenuno was the only one of his kind to take up this project, and even he was reluctant.”

“He seems happy now,” You remarked.

“Yeah,” Halvorg said softly, watching Yenuno laughing and chasing his kids with a sad kind of jealousy. “He does.”

You watched his face, the deep, deep sadness creasing his face and making him look older than he was.

“Follow up, Halvorg, see a specialist. This may have a fix that didn’t exist the last time you tried.”

He nodded, smiling at you, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I will.”

As you stood up, you bumped his shoulder lightly. “Thank you for talking to me. I appreciate that you trusted me enough to discuss such a sensitive subject. I get the feeling that you don’t share yourself with many people.”

He laughed. “No, not really.” He looked up with a smile that seemed more sincere. “Thank you for listening.”

Amai went into labor three days later. She was taken to the laying room, where both Yenuno and Dr. Halvorg were present in addition to the interspecies OBGYN. You were suited up in scrubs and the paper gowns that surgeons wear, as was everyone else in the room besides Amai, who was completely naked, and Yenuno, who never wore clothing. There were natal heart monitors on her belly and an EKG hooked up to her chest.

Amai was sitting on a specially designed chair that would allow her to pass the eggs through her birth canal and into the waiting arms of the doctor. She was already sweating and panting by the time you arrived. The OBGYN and Dr. Halvorg were having a quiet conversation. You went to the other side of Amai and took her hand, trying not to wince when she nearly crushed your fingers.

“Is she okay?” You asked in alarm.

“She’s not fully dilated yet,” Halvorg said, pulling his braid into a surgical cap. “The eggs are getting impatient, it seems.”

“Yeah, well, so am I, so they can settle the fuck down!” Amai shrieked at him.

He bore the abuse with no reaction other than a wry smile. Yenuno wisely said nothing and simply wiped Amai’s forehead with a cloth.

“It won’t be long,” the OBGYN said. “She’s almost there.”

“Just saw me open and get them out,” Amai moaned. “It would hurt less.”

Yenuno tried to kiss her cheek, but she swatted him away weakly.

“No,” She said peevishly. “No touching ever again.”

“You said that last time,” He said, smiling fondly.

“Yeah, but I mean it this time,” She said sulkily.

“Of course you do, darling.” He patted her head. She scrunched her face up at him in annoyance. She was always adorable when she was miffed.

“I’ll make you into shoes,” She said sourly. “And a matching purse.”

It took a while for Amai to dilate fully, and by then she was very tired. Yenuno was looking worried; she’d laid several eggs over the years and never struggled this much before. Perhaps this being their last clutch was a good idea.

“Okay, I think we can start pushing now,” The doctor said, getting ready to catch the eggs. “Amai, when you feel the next contract, hold your breath, bear down, and push.”

“Okay,” She breathed. “One’s coming.”

We all braced for the push. Amai took several quick deep breaths and held it, her face pulled tight in pain and effort, doubling over in the chair as she did. You and Yenuno held her hands and patted her back and murmured encouragement. Halvorg was waiting with a soft cloth to take the eggs for cleaning, after which they would be laid in a specialized incubating carrier to be taken to Yenuno’s cottage.

The first egg came slowly and with much screaming. The doctor caught it and handed it off to Halvorg. The shell of the egg was soft and needed extremely delicate care, but Halvorg was well practiced by now and got the egg washed and into the carrier under ninety seconds and returned for the next.

The second egg came more quickly, but Amai screamed the whole time. By the time the third and final egg was laid, her voice was raw and she was too exhausted to scream.

But it was over. She fell back into the recline of the chair as if boneless and breathed in shallowly, her eyes barely open.

“You were amazing, darling,” Yenuno said gently, kissing Amai’s face. “Rest. I’m taking the eggs to the cottage. The children will visit you when you’ve slept.”

She turned her head slowly to look at him and touched her fingertips to his face, tracing down his cheek, chin, neck and chest before letting her hand fall back to her side, and her eyes closed. Nurses came to whisk her away to a recovery room, the OBGYN following behind. Yenuno and Halvorg left to take the eggs to the cottage for the incubation, and you were left alone in the laying room.

As you were shedding the paper gown and surgical cap, you noticed a small book lying on the ground. It looked to be one of Halvorg’s research journals, though it was smaller than his usual ones. He must have dropped it out of his back pocket when he was disrobing. You picked it up and took it with you with the intent on returning it to him in the morning.

And of course, you’d completely forgotten by the time you woke up.

Amai recovered enough in a few days to be up and walking around. She and the children took turns keeping Yenuno company, as he grew morose if he was left alone too long. You had declared half days until the new babies hatched so that they could have more time with their dad.

One afternoon, after the children had left class for the day, Dr. Halvorg came in and sat on the edge of your desk.

“Hello,” You said pleasantly, closing the folder with their latest work for grading. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“I wanted to let you know I took you up on your advice,” He said, looking a little bashful. “I went and saw a specialist. They’re going to be doing some tests soon. Sperm count, blood tests, an MRI. Any test that can be done will be done.”

“Good!” You said, swinging your chair around. “I’m glad. Maybe you’ll finally get an answer.”

He sighed, looking pensive and anxious. “I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but I still wanted to thank you for pushing me to do it.”

“I didn’t push you to do it, Maël,” You said. His eyes narrowed at your use of his first name, but he didn’t say anything. “I just brought the subject up. It was your decision to do it.”

“Well, thank you all the same,” He replied. “I admit, I’m nervous about it. I could either get wonderful news or have my worst fears confirmed. I don’t know how I’ll react to either option.”

“Would you like me to come with you?” You asked him.

He looked at you in surprise. “You… you don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t,” You replied. “But this is the kind of thing you need friends for. And since Yenuno is tied up with the eggs, I could be a good substitute. You don’t even have to think of me as a friend, if you don’t want to, just an emotional support associate.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I think of you as a friend.”

“Well, thank you. I was hoping we’d get there eventually. So? What do you think? Want some support for this?”

“Not for the tests, I can do those by myself perfectly well,” He said, adjusting his tie nervously. “But… for the results… perhaps… a friend would be nice.”

“I’ll be there for you, then,” You said, standing and patting his arm. “Does Yenuno know about this? Have you talked to him about it?”

“No,” He replied. “I didn’t want to tell him while he’s dealing with his own new babies. Besides, if the news is not good, I don’t want people feeling sorry for me. If the news comes back positive… I don’t know… I think this is one thing I’d rather keep to myself.”

“Except for me, you mean,” You said.

He nodded concedingly. “Besides you.”

“Let me know when the results come back and I’ll go with you. We’ll make a day of it, go to a spa, get a bikini wax together, eat some overpriced salads, buy something ridiculous we want but don’t need. It’ll be a blast.”

He actually laughed a little. “Sounds like a plan.”

Since my work is no longer searchable, please do me a favor and reblog this story if you enjoyed it. Help me reach a wider audience! To help me continue creating, please consider buying me a Kofi, becoming a Patron, or donating directly to my PayPal!

Thanks for reading!

My Masterlist

The Exophilia Creator’s Masterlist

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kingbiwing · 2 years

Note

Hey! How ya been?

Hi @mr---moth, it's been a while!

I haven't really been active on this blog for a long time, but I've been meaning to come back, so I'm going to use your ask to like, rant and give some news! Good, bad, neutral, I don't really think it matters, I just miss telling everyone on here how I've been!

I genuinely have no idea of how to properly TW/CW all of this, so here are the topics that I will talk about:

Birthdays, fear of growing older (?)

Mental health issues/relapses, non-graphic mentions of suicidal thoughts, diagnosis, mention of having a shitty psychiatrist

Family, legal guardianship, court

The most recent one is: I'm sixteen now! Woohoo! It's been five days now, so I'm not exactly used to it yet, but it's been good so far. The week before my birthday was pretty stressful, notably because I wasn't really (at all) supposed to live this long.

For some reason, I always had it as my last limit. I'm pretty sure it was already set when I was maybe six, years before I had my first suicidal thoughts. I suspect it is somewhat related to how the media (and the people around me) always called sixteen the "perfect age to be" (and the fact that the term "sweet sixteen" existed too didn't help either). I mean, your high school years are the best of your life, right? /s. And sixteen is the middle. You enter at fourteen, leave at eighteen, it only makes sense.

Anyways. I was still up at midnight, on that day. Not surprising for anybody- many people stay up until then, especially on a birthday.

Funnily enough, my childhood friend Isaac (whom I've met merely a few days after I turned ten) sent me his message only a few seconds after it turned to 12! I honestly don't know how they did, because they said they didn't even notice how early he was.

It felt... I don't actually know how it felt, to be honest. It wasn't a shock, nor scary or sad, or any opposites. I don't think I even registered it. I was just mostly glad that he remembered, because we only reconnected in summer 2021 after about three years without any kind of communication.

I still don't "feel" sixteen, to tell the truth. I am aware that I am, I don't mess up on my age, I know it. It just doesn't feel real.

But, overall, it was a pretty nice day! Not the birthday in itself, but knowing that my closest friends remembered (whether they wished it to me or didn't, some avoided it because of how stressful it was to me, but I know they didn't forget about it) and getting gifts was pretty cool!

I got a total of four comics from my parents in law, including an integral. I don't think it'll surprise anybody to learn that all of them were about Nightwing! :)

And I got blankets, too! Two of them, a purple and a bright pink one. And a bathbomb.

And also something I didn't even know existed: a Bat-Signal lamp! Not only is the light bat-shaped, but the lamp in itself is designed to look like the Bat-Signal; that's so cool!!!

So, yeah, TL;DR: I turned sixteen, and it wasn't that bad. Plus, cool gifts!

Oh, and another thing! I've known I had ADHD for years now, and it's here! I'm finally officially diagnosed and medicated for it! Isn't that amazing??? (I mean, I technically got diagnosed with ADD, but that's only because my psychiatrist didn't believe me to be hyperactive because she "doesn't see it", despite my neuropsychiatrist saying that I had eight symptoms of hyperactivity out of nine. Whatever, I will keep on saying I have ADHD, I don't think anybody cares anyways.)

I will also be going to court on May 4th to be officially put under my parents in law's care. They technically won't be designed my legal guardians, but something called "trusted third party" (I don't know if that's a thing everywhere else, so I'm just translating it literally). Don't ask me what the difference is, I don't know! But yeah, that's nice. My mom's social workers will finally stop bugging her about where I am.

On a slightly more negative note, my mental health has been pretty random for the past few months. I've had mood swings for years, but it has somehow worsened. I've been lashing out about twice a day for quite a while now, and I can't control my emotions anymore now. I already didn't have a strong grasp on them (especially anger), but it's completely gone now. Yesterday, my fiancé told me he loved me, and I started crying out of sadness (despite how happy I am that he loves me!!). Everything I feel is extremely overwhelming, and my continuous relapses and recovery attempts in every single issue I've ever had are of no help.

I've also attempted to drop out of high school (I tried to go online for this school year and it didn't go well either), but due to a bunch of (mostly recent) stupid laws and issues, I can't, despite the fact that anyone in France is technically legally allowed to drop out after turning sixteen. As I mentioned, there are more things involved, so it's not a possibility for me anymore.

I honestly don't know what to do about it, considering how hard this whole situation is to me, but I'm managing. I think.

This post/answer probably doesn't make a lot of sense (especially with my tone, it took my an hour to write this so I don't think I succeeded in keeping the same tone the whole time), but I wanted to try and only include the most important events/changes/things, because so many things happened during this past year that it'd take me days to finish writing everything down!

However, do you know what hasn't changed?

I still don't know how to end a post... eh.

- Lys

#moth asks #cw birthday mention #tw mental instability #tw court #long post

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fallen-gravity · 4 years

Text

awaken the stars, ‘cause they’re all around you

Stanford Pines never really believed in soulmates.

He can't imagine the idea that there's one person out there for him in the multiverse who would stop at nothing to love him for who he is, despite everything he is and everything he's done. He can't imagine that someone out there is meant for him, someone who will stand by his side until the end of time.

Or maybe he'd just been looking at it from the wrong angle.

Notes:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, @stariousfalls!!!!! I can't believe we've been friends for upwards of five years now?? You've been a huge inspiration of mine from my first day in the gravity falls fandom back in late 2014, and now you're one of my closest friends. I've been spending the last week and a half working on this behind your back, because I wanted to surprise you with a gift I thought you'd love!!

7.5k words of fluff was....not my original plan, but fluff brain wanted to go feral for you, I guess.

Huge, huge shoutout to @ariasofelegance for helping me keep my mouth shut about this, I absolutely would've internally combusted without your help & support

AO3

Ford never saw the appeal of romantic relationships.

One night when he and Stan were kids, they snuck downstairs in the middle of the night after their parents were asleep to dig through Pa’s “Secret stash” of movies he thought he was good at keeping a secret. They’d thought for sure they’d be coming across bootleg cuts of action movies that were still playing in theaters, or documentaries about how all of the politicians in power were secretly aliens.

What they actually found was much more…sensual. They were both horrified, to say the least, but each time Ford had to turn away to prevent himself from gagging, he’d hear Stan beside him struggling not to laugh.

For years, Ford was convinced coming across those tapes before he was old enough to fully comprehend what was happening in them is what had turned him off to relationships altogether. It certainly didn’t help that he was never able to experience romantic relationships firsthand, as every time he tried asking someone out in high school he’d just be laughed at or called a freak.

Though college was another story entirely, his feelings towards romantic relationships never seemed to change. He went out with a girl from his dungeons, dungeons, and more dungeons club for a few weeks, a guy from his advanced physics class for almost two months, and even tried going out with Fiddleford for upwards of nine months, but he never felt that deeper connection with any of them, no matter how much he wanted to feel that connection.

It’d be forty more years before he learned the term aromantic, but when he was still in college he would brush off his parents’ questions about his relationship status by telling them he was too busy working on his thesis, which technically wasn’t all that far from the truth anyway.

Still, the faint sense of yearning never seemed to leave him be. Whenever he found gaps in his schedule, he would spend hours in his university library reading up on the science of relationships and their place in society. Though he no longer remembers most of the papers he read, one scientific study that’s always stuck with him was a dissertation written entirely on the concept of soulmates.

Everyone has a soulmate, the paper claimed. Though it may be decades until you properly meet, your path always leads to the moment that you and your soulmate are finally united. Once finally together, not a single force on earth can tear you apart. Even if you are apart physically, the stars will always align to bring you together. Weirdest of all, the paper mentioned soulmarks, which were described as “the phenomenon that a person’s very soul is marked with a piece that belongs to their soulmate, which may appear as a physical anomaly on a person’s body, such as an oddly-shaped birthmark”.

Ford had thought for sure that somebody must’ve moved a romance novel into the sociology section of the library as a joke. The only sort of anomaly he had going for him was his polydactyly, and thinking too much about how that could connect him to a single person who was destined to love him gave him a headache.

Nowadays, though, Ford tries not to give it much thought. He’s perfectly happy right where he is, watching the sunrise from the deck of the Stan O’ War II through the steam visibly rising from his coffee mug.

He sighs contently.

“Mornin’” Stan’s voice sounds beside him, gruff with sleep. When Ford turns to look at him, he’s rubbing at his eyes with one hand while he holds a steaming cup of coffee in his other. He’s already donning one of the sweaters Mabel mailed to him, a deep blue with a tropical island and a treasure chest stitched across the chest.

Ford smirks. “You’re up early”

Stan cocks an eyebrow as he sips from his coffee. “A’course I am. I always get up early when we’re docking to see the kids”

Ford blinks, the teasing smirk on his face melting into a gentle smile. “That’s today?”

“Haven’t you checked the calendar lately?” Stan tosses a second handmade sweater at Ford. This one’s the same shade of maroon as his journal covers, and pictures an angry cycloptopus squirting ink towards the bottom left corner of the sweater. “The kids are on spring break. They talked to their parents about letting us have ‘em all week”

Ford is quick to pull the warm sweater over his head. “All week?”

He can’t help sounding like a broken record, but it’s been months since the last time he saw the kids face to face. Sure, they talk over video at least once a week, but nothing beats seeing their smiling faces and having them nearly tackle him to the ground in a hug in-person.

“Heh, you miss em too, Sixer?”

As little as two years ago, Ford would’ve flinched at the nickname. But Bill is gone for good, and Ford knows that Bill is gone for good, and Stan made a promise to do anything in his power to help him reclaim the nickname. He brings his mug close to his face without taking a sip, allowing himself to take in the warmth in his hands and the steam in his face.

“Not as much as you, clearly” Ford smirks, and Stan crosses his arms over his chest.

“You bet I missed them more than you. I’d been taking care of them all summer before you showed up and fell in love with them in half that time”

Ford smirks as he finishes up his coffee and heads into the navigation room to set their course. “By that logic, wouldn’t that mean that I miss them more, since I had less time with them?”

“Hey!” Stan groans as he follows him into the room. “It does not. It means that you don’t know them like I know them, genius. Everyone knows that it’s all about how much time you’ve spent with a person that determines how close you are with them”

Ford laughs as he enters the coordinates they need to get to the seaport they were meeting the young twins at. From the looks of it, it’d be three hours before they arrived.

“Mm, and who put that study together? Was it you?”

Stan doesn’t reply with words, just a noise that sounds halfway between disgruntled and baffled. It makes Ford laugh even harder, and he wipes at his eyes with a wrist. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Stan’s overdramatic pout melt away until he’s laughing too.

The sight of it makes the smile on Ford’s face widen. It’d been decades since the two of them were able to just be like this. It’d been so long since the last time Ford heard Stan’s genuine laugh that he’d gone and forgotten what it sounded like altogether. When he was still traveling the multiverse, he searched far and wide for a shred of hope, something to keep his anxieties and nightmares from catching up to him.

What a fool he’d been to ignore his childhood memories of home.

The trip is a quiet but familiar one. Ford can’t talk much when he’s steering because he needs to be on constant lookout, but Stan remains in the room to talk at him and keep him company anyway. The sun is well over the horizon by the time they reach the seaport, and call it instincts, intuition, or something else entirely, because Ford spots the kids sitting on a bench in the near distance the moment he and Stan step foot onto the dock.

They’re squished closely together, watching a video on Mabel’s phone. Whether they’re aware of it or not, they’re swaying their legs back and forth underneath the bench in perfect unison. On the ground beside them are their backpacks, overstuffed with so many things that both of them are popping open.

Most importantly, neither of them have noticed that Ford and Stan are approaching them.

Ford exchanges an amused glance with Stan, and clears his throat to catch their attention.

The phone nearly stumbles out of their hands in shock when they look up and meet their eyes.

“Grunkle Stan!” Mabel squeals, standing to sprint past Ford to knock Stan off of his feet. Ford chuckles at the sight, but not quickly enough to hear Dipper’s “Great Uncle Ford!”, and before he knows it he’s hitting the floor too. The young twins are laughing messes, and stumble over each other as they try to stand to their feet and help their Grunkles up.

Mabel spits out the hair that stuck to her mouth, and pulls a hair tie seemingly out of thin air to tie her hair up into a ponytail. It’s only now that Ford realizes that she and Dipper are also both wearing sweaters, and if Ford had to guess, it looks like Mabel made both of these sweaters as well. Mabel’s is a galaxy print with actual twinkling stars, and Ford makes a mental note to ask her later what she did to make it glow like that. Dipper’s is also space themed, though his pictures the big dipper splotched across a black night sky with a bright orange meteor shooting through the center.

“You have to tell us about everything you’ve encountered”, Dipper beams, once Stan finishes brushing himself off.

Stan cocks an eyebrow. “Two years’ worth is a lot to get through, kiddo”

“Exactly!” Mabel beams, turning to pick up her backpack and put it on. “Which is exactly why you can tell us on the way to the hotel!”

“Hotel?” Ford and Stan ask in unison.

“Surprise?” Dipper giggles. “Our parents rented us a hotel room for the week cause they figured you’d appreciate some time away from the boat”

“It’ll be like our summer in Gravity Falls all over again!” Mabel grins. “But in reverse! You’re in our territory now”

Stan laughs. “You’re the boss, kiddo”

“You bet I am!” She beams, and hands Dipper his backpack. “Now c’mon! If you tell us all of the horrors you’ve encountered out at sea, we’ll tell you about all the horrors we’ve encountered in high school!”

“I...think I remember those horrors pretty well already, thank you” Ford smiles sheepishly, adjusting his glasses. “But we’d be more than glad to tell you some of our own stories”

It’s a short walk to the bus stop, but Ford honestly wouldn’t mind if they walked all the way to the hotel on foot if it meant an extra half an hour with the kids. They’re just as eccentric as he remembers, attached at the hip but still wildly different people all on their own. Dipper’s still hanging on to every word he’s saying, and Mabel’s still skipping along like she’s in her own world.

Once they reach the hotel and check in, Dipper collapses face first onto one of the beds the moment he steps into the room, groaning.

Stan smiles. “Something bothering you, kiddo?”

He turns on his side to look Stan in the eye, his face smushing into the pillow. “Mabel didn’t let me get any sleep last night. She insisted on getting to the seaport three whole hours early because she insisted that she had this gut feeling that you guys would have the same idea and we’d magically show up at the same time”

Mabel pouts, and sits on the bed besides him. “Well it’s not my fault you stayed up late reading that dumb book of yours. Plus, would you rather have kept them waiting for three hours?”

Dipper removes his hat and places it on the table beside him, exposing just enough of his forehead through his hair to reveal his birthmark. It has the same faint glow to it as Mabel’s sweater, and Ford wonders how the two could possibly reflect off of each other.

“Their boat has beds and a fully stocked kitchen, Mabel. They can afford to wait. All we had were those strawberry pop tarts that you ate five minutes after we got there”

Ford can’t help but smile softly at their banter. He missed them so, so, much more than he could’ve ever imagined. He’s got half a mind to stow them away on the boat at the end of the week and homeschool them both himself so he never has to be apart from them again.

Apart. The word still feels like a knife twisted into his chest. There’s nothing he regrets more than trying to separate the young twins from each other two summers ago because he’d been so caught up in projecting his own fears onto the pair. He’d tried apologizing to Mabel over the whole ordeal, but she stopped him before he could even start to tell him he had nothing to worry about.

He only wishes he could learn to forgive himself as easily as she did.

“...Can we, Grunkle Ford?”

He blushes. Had he just said all of that out loud?

“Can we...what?”

“Take the boat out! Not right now, since Dips is being a grumpy-grump and insists on wasting precious time with a nap, but we’ve been talking about it all week”

From across the room, Stan snorts. “Let me get this straight,” he takes his jacket off and hangs it up in the closet. At this point Ford swears his eyes must be playing tricks on him, because Stan’s old burn scar is glowing just as Mabel’s sweater and Dipper’s birthmark are. “All the time you spent groaning and complaining about fishing every time I took you in Gravity Falls, and now you’re asking to go fishing?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a joy ride,” Dipper yawns from under the covers. “But if agreeing to go fishing is what gets you to say yes, then sure”

He’s smirking under the covers, Ford can tell, because he inherited that expression from Stan.

Stan’s about to bite back, but Dipper must not have been exaggerating about how long he and Mabel were waiting for them at the dock, because he’s already out cold. Stan smiles at him, gently ruffling up his hair before he takes a seat on the adjacent bed, kicking his shoes off so he can kick his feet up on the bed and relax. Ford sits beside Stan, and Stan slings his arms behind him to support his head in his hands as he glances over at Ford.

“They make you wanna retire the whole ‘treasure hunting’ thing and move into the city to be closer to ‘em too?”

Ford chuckles. “I’ve already considered hiding them away on the boat twice today already.” He taps at his chin. “Though I suppose that moving in with them would go over better with their parents then taking them away to live on a boat”

“Hmm…” Stan taps at his chin as well. “Being stuck in the same stuffy high school for four years, or living on a boat traveling all over the world whenever they feel like it? I dunno about you, Sixer, but I have a pretty good idea on what the kids would prefer”

“Grunkle Stan? Grunkle Ford?” Mabel’s voice suddenly chimes in, and Ford blushes, wondering how much of that she just heard.

“What’s on your mind, pumpkin?” Stan asks.

“Well, uh, Dipper was right about us only eating once really early this morning, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to, uh” She twirls her hair between her fingers. “Cook something for us? For old time’s sake?”

Okay, it’s settled, Ford’s never letting these kids go again.

“Sure, kiddo. Soon as your brother’s up we’ll head right back up, okay?”

“Okay!” she beams, and crawls back into her side of the bed, staring at Dipper like she can will him into waking up on command.

Though Ford would’ve been okay if they’d had to wait hours for him, it’s really only about twenty minutes before Dipper opens his eyes again and nearly shrieks in surprise at Mabel’s face hovering three inches from his own. He smacks his hand into her face to shove her away, and she giggles as she rolls off the bed and onto the floor.

Beside Ford, Stan smirks. “Better get up before we leave without you and all our food goes to Mabel, kiddo. You’ve got plenty of time to crash in Ford’s bed on the ship, since he never seems to use it anyway”

Dipper yawns, rubbing at his eyes as he kicks the covers off. “I hadn’t even realized I’d fallen asleep”

“I didn’t realize you were even capable of sleep, bro-bro” Mabel punches him in the shoulder as she walks past him to put her shoes on. He glares at her wordlessly, and Ford has to cover up his snicker with a fake cough.

This time, the bus ride and the walk back to the ship are a quiet one. Ford never really lets himself let his guard down and relax for an extended period of the time, so he cherishes any moment he can get where he finally feels like he doesn’t constantly feel the need to check over his shoulder for signs of danger. Most of the time, if you asked him about his heightened senses, he’d call them a curse. But on days like these, when he can hear the birds chirping and the waves smacking gently against the boats in the seaport, he’d almost go as far as calling it a blessing.

The kids take a seat at the dining table as soon as they enter the kitchen, and Stan grins at them from over his shoulder as he clicks the stove on. “Whaddya say, Stancakes?”

Dipper and Mabel grimace in unison. “Ewwww, Grunkle Stan, you promised lunch!” Mabel scrunches her nose, and Stan’s grin only widens.

“Ah, ah, you said like old times. That means I get to decide what to make, and you have to eat it because I’m your legal guardian”.

“Well I wasn’t even awake when you were talking about old times, so I’d say that cancels out” Dipper crosses his arms over his chest, and Ford can’t help but smile warmly at the three of them as he reaches into the cupboard for his favorite coffee mug. The younger twins clearly had just gotten two copies of the same mug, but crossed both of them out so they’d say #1 GRUNKLES on them instead of #1 UNCLE. Stan has the other one, of course, but he keeps it on his bedside to hold small treasures and keepsakes because it’s, in his own words, “Too special to waste on something as ordinary as coffee”.

Ford sits himself in the seat between the younger twins at their okay, and after some back and forth banter between the four of them, they end up settling for burgers. Truth be told, this is the first time Ford’s eaten a meal in a group larger than two since the last time he and Stan visited the young twins in the winter, and he can’t help but smile into his food at the thought. The closest he’d come even remotely close to eating with others in his research years was his very, very brief time at the truck stop diner, and the experience had soured his view of...well, other people for near decades.

Now, though, he’d burn his own research dozens of times over before he’d even consider eating alone.

Stan’s chair scraping across the floor as he stands pops Ford out of his bubble of serenity.

“Now that that’s taken care of,” Stan cracks his knuckles, smiling mischievously at Dipper and Mabel. “I think I remember a couple of kiddos finally promising their Grunkle Stan he could take them fishing”

“Promise is a strong word-” Dipper starts as he stands to place his plate in the sink, but Stan’s already placing a fishing hat on his head before he can finish his sentence.

“Course you did! You wanna take our baby for a joyride, you gotta earn it first”

Dipper turns to Ford, like he’s expecting him to back him up.

Ford chuckles. “I don’t know, Dipper. That sounds perfectly reasonable to me”.

Dipper scoffs, sitting back down at the table. Mabel laughs.

“Aww, C’mon, Dipper! Aren’t you all about the supernatural? For all we know, Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford could be harboring magical glowing bait that only attracts, like, magical talking fish men, or something!”

Dipper raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t you just receive a bottle message from Mermando last week?”

“Exactly!” Mabel flashes a grin. “That must mean that he’s in the area!”

Stan laughs. “You tellin’ me you only agreed to go fishing so you could kiss and make-up with your long-distance fish boyfriend?”

“Grunkle Stan, what kind of person do you take me for?” she gasps. “He’s married! You know I would never want to break apart such a loving couple!”

Ford’s smile only warms. Where else could he partake in such a conversation that doesn’t turn heads and result in judgmental whispers? Where else can he just be like this, surrounded by loved ones who are just as weird, just as out of the ordinary as himself? In his younger years he thought for sure his place would be among the monsters and cryptids everyone in his childhood made him out to be, but even in the weirdness capital of the country he felt more alone than ever.

“...Don’t think you’re immune, Sixer” Stan’s voice cuts into his thoughts, and before Ford can ask what he means Stan is smacking a homemade fishing cap on his head. “It may ruin your badass image when we’re monster hunting, or whatever, but we’re fishing with the kids.” Stan gestures to them with his thumb. They’re already outside, leaning over the railing to look out at the water in a perfect mirror of each other. “If they have to embarrass themselves by humoring me for a few hours, so do you”

Ford waits for Stan to join the kids outside before he takes his hat off to admire the stitch work. It’s not perfect, and nowhere near the fancy embroidery he and Stan have found in various markets across their world travels. But it’s personalized, and Ford knows it comes from a place in Stan’s mind that’s been stuck behind lock and key since he was seventeen.

Ford runs his hands along each individual letter, which reads POINDEXTER, before placing it back on his head to join the others outside.

Stan has, miraculously, already pulled out his joke book. Stan’s laughing too hard at his own joke for Ford to really make out what the punchline is, but the younger twins’ collective groans is all he needs to know about it. When Mabel notices him stepping out of the doorway, though, her expression shifts entirely.

“So…” she draws out, stepping towards him. “Is there a trick for attracting merpeople to your boat? I mean, asides from being super cute, obviously”

Ford chuckles, taking a glance behind her to make sure that Stan is out of earshot. “Stan’ll kill me if I tell you this, but they’re really attracted towards shiny things. If you tied one of his gold necklaces around a fishing pole and dangled it into the water, the boat’ll be surrounded in minutes”

Mabel offers up her pinkie finger. “I won’t tell him if you won’t”

Ford interlocks his pinkie with hers, smiling. “I think he’ll notice when a whole family of merpeople show up”

“Hmmm…” Mabel taps at her chin with her free hand, visibly mouthing a plan to herself. “Oh! I know! Come with me,” she beams, and before Ford can even open his mouth to respond she’s already dragging him back into the kitchen. She kneels down on the floor and opens the cupboard below the sink. “Got any empty bottles I can use?”

Ford blinks. “Empty....bottles”

“Yeah!” Mabel pulls a neatly folded piece of paper out of her skirt. “If I can send out my response letter the same time we throw Stan’s necklace over, he’ll never be able to tell the difference!”

“Wait, wait” Ford shakes his head. “You really are dating a merperson?”

“Listening skills, Grunkle Ford” she taps at her forehead, folding the letter back into her pocket as she continues to dig through the cupboards. “Used to date. We met at the Gravity Falls Public Pool, where he was stuck, but then I drove him to the lake in a golf cart I stole from the pool grounds because he really missed his family, and then he was my first kiss, and then we were in a long-distance relationship for like, two months, and I kept every single bottle he sent me, but then we had to break up because he was arranged to marry to prevent a big undersea war.” She picks up a bottle, shakes it, and puts it back when it’s too full for her liking. “I know it sounds, like, super complicated, but it’s all okay, because we’re still pen pals!”

Ford laughs, shaking his head. “No, Mabel, I had to ask because I, uh…” his cheeks warm, and he clears his throat. “Before I...came to term with my orientation, I...dated a merperson too”

The bottles in the cupboard rattle as Mabel’s head smacks against the doorframe. She’s rubbing the spot where her head hit, but there are stars in her eyes. “Really?”

Ford’s cheeks burn even hotter. “Yes,” he whispers, and takes a knee so he can get at her eye level. “Technically he was a siren, but yes, we dated for about a month. He promised me he wouldn’t entice anyone else while we were together, but I guess there wasn’t anything...there.” He turns to help her shuffle through the cupboard, and finds a near-empty bottle of olive oil that’s definitely been sitting down there for at least a year. He hands it off to Mabel, smiling. “I’m glad that things worked out with you, though”

To his surprise, Mabel drops the bottle and throws her arms around him in a hug. “I can’t wait to introduce you! He’s gonna love you”

Ford huffs a quiet laugh, and pulls her close as he winds his arms around her as well. The hug only lasts for a few brief moments, but it feels to Ford in those moments that time itself had stopped. Mabel stands, taking the bottle in one hand and offering to help Ford up in her other.

Mabel places the bottle in the sink and turns the water on to rinse it out before she turns back towards Ford, stretching her arms up in the air as if she were warming up for an exercise. “Alright, here’s the plan. You tell me where Grunkle Stan keeps all of his jewelry, and I’ll sneak in and take his necklace while you distract him. Got it?”

Ford smiles. “Got it”.

As Mabel splits away for Stan’s bedroom, Ford heads back out to the deck. Dipper’s leaning over the side of the boat pointing at something jumping out of the water, rambling excitedly to Stan beside him. He’s holding his fishing hat in his hand to stop it from blowing into the water, and his hair is bouncing in the breeze. It’s just enough for the edge of his birthmark to poke through his bangs, and even in broad daylight it seems to be emitting a faint glow.

“I found it!” Mabel cheers, bounding up from behind him. She’s wearing the chain around her neck, and for some reason the gold seems much dimmer in contrast to her sweater. She takes it off and hands it to him. “You wanna do the honors while I go and throw this overboard?”

Ford smiles, ruffling her hair. “Sure thing.” He walks over to where Stan and Dipper are chatting and picks up one of the extra fishing rods. Making sure that Stan’s too engrossed with his conversation to notice, Ford starts wrapping the chain along the line, and at the signal from Mabel, he tosses his line as far from the boat as he can manage.

Five minutes pass before Mabel squeals so loud that Ford’s afraid his glasses might shatter. He reaches for the gun he knows he’s got stashed in his pants pocket, but when he turns to run to her aid she’s leaning halfway over the boat wrapping her arms around a young merman in a tight hug.

“...so good to see you again!” She’s beaming. “I didn’t think you’d be able to find us so quickly!”

“Yes, well, you were easy to track down after we figured out the coordinates to the seaport” the young man says in a thick Spanish accent. “It is good to see you too! My family was so excited to meet you”

“Your family?” she gasps. “Did they all come with you?”

“Of course!” he grins. “We merpeople are very family oriented. Wherever we go, we go together”

Ford winces at the uncanny familiarity of the statement. Mabel must recognize the statement too, because she responds with “Oh, that reminds me! There’s someone I want you guys to meet! Wait right here,” she says, and comes bouncing back over to Ford. Taking his hand in her own, she starts to drag him back to where she’d just been leaning. “C’mon! He’s the one I was just talking about!”

Three more merpeople emerge from the water when she gently knocks on the side of the boat again. “Grunkle Ford, this is Mermando!” she grins, gesturing to the young merman she’d just been conversing with. “He’s the one I helped reunite with his family after they were separated by tragic circumstances.” She wraps her arms around Ford in a side-hug. “Mermando, this is my Grunkle Ford! He was also separated from his family by tragic circumstances, but I helped with that too!”

Mermando laughs. “Even when you think it’s the end, family always finds its way, doesn’t it?”

Ford laughs, shaking his hand. “It always seems that way to me”

“Awwww!” Mabel squeals. “I knew you’d get along!” She grins, and turns her attention back towards Mermando. “Before I forget, though, did you see where Grunkle Ford threw that gold necklace? If I don’t get it back my Grunkle Stan’s gonna kill me”

Mermando laughs again. “I was wondering if that belonged to any of you!” He takes off his shell necklace to reveal that he’d put Stan’s necklace on around his neck. He takes that off, too, and offers it to Ford. “I much prefer this one, anyway” he clicks his shell necklace open, revealing it to be a locket with a picture of his family inside.

Ford takes the gold necklace back, and he means to thank him, but a bell ringing from elsewhere in the port interrupts him before he can open his mouth. Mermando turns to Mabel, taking her hands in his own. “We must go. I’m so sorry we have to leave so soon, but we merpeople recognize the sounds of fishing boats very easily. We’ll try to come back later this week” He opens his arms for her once more, and Mabel wraps his arms around him in a quick hug before she watches him and his family swim away.

“I am so glad that all you were doing was hugging,” Dipper shudders as he and Stan approach Ford and Mabel. “I’m not sure my stomach could handle witnessing you two kissing a second time”

“Awww,” Mabel punches him playfully in the shoulder. “You’re just jealous that I had a boyfriend before you did!”

Dipper cringes. “If you having a boyfriend before I do means I didn’t have to be the one dating a fish, then I’m glad you were the one who got stuck with him first” He punches her back, and gestures at Stan over his shoulder with his thumb. “But anyways, I came over here because Grunkle Stan says he wants to get out on the open water before everyone else gets the idea, or something”.

Ford pockets Stan’s necklace and makes a mental note to put it away sometime later tonight when Stan is too distracted to notice. “Tell Stan I’m going to untie the rope from the edge of the dock, and when he sees me back on board we’re all set to go.”

Nodding, Dipper bounds off towards the navigation room where Stan must be waiting, and Ford steps off of the boat to take care of everything else. On the way to the bow, he traces a hand along the white painted STAN O’ WAR II, and a feeling of warmth sprouts in his chest. Once back on board, he waves to Stan as he passes besides the navigation room once more, and takes a seat on one of the beach chairs they liked to keep aboard.

Most days, Ford prefers to be the one at the wheel. But every once in a while he just wants to be. All he wants to do is lean back in one of their beach chairs and let the sun warm his face. It’s a good kind of warm, the same way spending time with the kids and heavy rain hitting his bedroom window and planning new escapades with Stan feel warm. After so, so long of only knowing unbearable burns, it feels indescribable to have a constant back in his life that heals, rather than hurts.

“Mind if we join you?” Dipper asks, and Ford glances over to see both of the young twins dragging a chair behind them.

Speaking of healing constants.

“Sure,” Ford says, and can’t help the warmth spilling through his tone. They pull their chairs up on either side of him, and curl up to enjoy the warm breeze. Dipper places his hat on his lap to let the wind blow through his hair, and Mabel stretches her arms out behind her head to act as her own pillow. Ford chuckles silently at the pair, and closes his eyes to let himself relax.

All is quiet when Stan finally finds them a spot out on the open water without a single other boat in sight. The water is nearly still, save for the occasional small wave that gently sways the boat. The sun is at its afternoon high, turning the water beautiful shades of teal and aqua. Fishing is tedious, but it’s careful work, and gives Ford something to put all of his focus into. Two whole hours pass before any of them catch a thing, and Stan laughs himself to tears when it’s Dipper who pulls up a single sardine.

Typically Ford prefers much more immersive activities, but right now there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. The sun is starting to set before they realize they aren’t going to have much luck catching anything, and instead decide to take the boat for another ride around the harbor to look for a better place to eventually watch the stars.

“...Great Uncle Ford?” Dipper approaches him shyly once they’ve anchored the boat.

“Yes?”

He tugs shyly at the edge of his sweater. “I…” he starts. “I know you’ve told me that the multiverse was dangerous, and all, but...was there ever anything you enjoyed about it?” He pauses. “What were the sunsets like?”

Ford chuckles, patting at the seat beside him, and Dipper’s eyes light up as he sits down.

“You��re right,” Ford starts, folding his hands together. “I wouldn’t wish what I went through on even my worst enemies, Dipper. It was practically impossible to get any decent amount of sleep and even harder to find food digestible by human kind. I lost some of my best years to the multiverse when I could’ve gone on to become the most renowned scientist in the world.” Ford turns his gaze away from the sun setting on the horizon to meet Dipper’s eyes, but he’s frowning, eyes cast downwards towards the deck of the ship.

“But,” Ford adds before the poor kid can get too lost in his own head, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It definitely had its perks.” He smiles. “The sun in Dimension 18.2 would emit a sound that mimicked a lullaby every night as it set. Dimension 47’23 had three moons that would shift phases before your very eyes. I haven’t told Mabel because I’m afraid she’ll try activating a portal of her own and run away, but in Dimension 25-12, everyone and everything looks like a watercolor painting. There’s danger in the multiverse, but there’s beauty in equal measure”

“Do you ever miss it?” Dipper fiddles with his hands, like he’s trying real hard not to say the wrong thing. “I mean, I know you don’t miss being lost, or having no idea if you’re ever going to see home again, but...is there any dimension...where you could’ve seen yourself staying, if you thought you couldn’t make it back?”

Ford shifts in his chair so he doesn’t have to twist his neck so much to look directly at his nephew. “Occasionally,” he muses. “I met the most friendly faces in Dimension 52, so my mind does tend to wander there from time to time” he smiles. “But rest assured, there is something in this dimension that makes it my favorite”

“Oh yeah?” Dipper’s eyes light up. “Over every other dimension you’ve passed through? What is it?”

Ford gently nudges Dipper’s shoulder. “You and your sister”

Dipper’s cheeks turn bright red, and he looks as though he’s struggling not to bury his face into the collar of his sweater and disappear. “Really?” his voice squeaks.

Ford nods. “Everything I had in those other dimensions were fleeting, Dipper. At a moment’s notice everything I grew to love could disappear in the blink of an eye. The very thing happened to me in Dimension 52. When I fell asleep, I woke up in a new dimension I didn’t recognize. Things may have been more advanced, and there may have been dimensions crafted to give you your greatest desires, but in the end nothing ever lasted.”

Now it’s Ford’s turn to divert Dipper’s eyes, gaze casting towards the floor. “Stan was cut from my life completely in the dimension that claimed to be a perfect world. I had nobody. Even in dimensions that actively worked towards my happiness, I was all alone” Ford shakes his head, and turns his gaze once more out on the horizon. The sun is still touching the horizon, but it’s dipped just low enough that some of the stars are beginning to show in the sky.

“But...here, at home, everything is consistent. I don’t have to worry about waking up in the morning to find that everyone I love is gone. I can keep everyone in arm’s lengths, even when Stan and I can only communicate with you and your sister over a video call. I’m…” Ford gently squeezes his hands to reassure himself that this is real and now. “...happy. Happier than I’ve been in decades”

Beside him, Dipper yawns, and when Ford spares a glance over at him he’s smiling at him sleepily. “We’re really happy you’re here too, Grunkle Ford” he murmurs, and his eyes slip closed. Ford’s cheeks flush pink, and he has to choke back a laugh because that’s one of the first times Dipper’s felt comfortable enough to call him Grunkle.

Ford stands, so as not to wake Dipper from his nap. A small glance to his right and he catches a glimpse of Stan and Mabel leaning against the side of the boat watching the sunset just outside of earshot of his current conversation with Dipper.

“You finally bore him to sleep with all your nerdy science talk?” Stan asks as he approaches, sparing a glance behind him at Dipper. “Was starting to think that the poor kid would never get a nap in”

“Yes, well,” Ford smirks. “I’m sure it helped plenty that you bored him to death by taking him fishing first”

Stan gasps in mock offense, and slugs him in the shoulder. “Hey, at least I’m engaging them in something they can actually interact with, unlike your kooky alien stories, or whatever”

Ford can’t help the laugh that escapes him. “Bold statement coming from the man who dedicated thirty years of his life rescuing me from said kooky aliens” he says, returning with a punch of his own. Stan opens his mouth to argue back, realizes he has nothing to say, and closes his mouth. The sight of it makes Ford laugh even harder, keeling over and slapping a hand on Stan’s shoulder to support himself. It must be contagious, because it’s not long before Stan is laughing too.

Ford removes his glasses to wipe the tears from his eyes, and cleans off the lenses with the edge of his sweater. Once his eyes adjust after he puts them back on, his throat nearly catches in his throat when he glances back out towards the water. He’s just able to catch a shooting star before it disappears over the horizon, and the boat’s just far out enough on the water that there isn’t an ounce of light pollution obscuring the rest of the stars in the sky. He takes a few steps back so he can look up and admire more of them at once, and if he looks close enough he can see them twinkling.

Before he can ask the others if they’re seeing the same thing, a bright flash of light coming from somewhere on the boat cuts into his thoughts. He turns, to make sure that none of the lights in any of the rooms are on, but no, they’d turned those off when they’d started fishing. Scratching at his head, he turns to Stan and Mabel to ask if they have any idea where the light is coming from, but that question catches in its throat as quickly as it formulated.

They’re the ones emitting light.

Or, rather, Mabel’s sweater and Stan’s shoulder, approximately where his burn scar should be. Those are emitting light.

...Surely it must just be the reflection of the starlight on the water, right? That same bright light must have woken Dipper from his nap, yes?

He turns heel to ask Dipper the same question, but freezes in his tracks before he can take a single step forward. Dipper’s forehead is glowing too, the same way it has since he and Stan docked the boat this morning.

It...It can’t be, can it?

Gripping his forehead, Ford takes a number of steps backwards until his back hits the wall. Maybe...maybe he just needs to call it a night. He’s been awake since sunrise, maybe his vision is just blurring because he needs to lie down?

He waves his hands in front of his face, but no, those don’t look any different. He squints, to make sure his hands aren’t shaking, but no, they’re perfectly still.

He squints at Stan and Mabel, just to try and see if his eyes are watering, and-

He gasps.

Mabel’s sweater, Dipper’s forehead, Stan’s shoulder; they’re not glowing; they’re twinkling like the stars. It was hard to tell in broad daylight, but now that they’re surrounded by a thousand shining stars, the resemblance is unmistakable.

But...that’s not possible. If he can see them twinkling, but none of them have said anything about it, that could only be if those were…

...soulmarks.

Ford suddenly feels like he’s going to pass out.

He slides to the floor.

Is...Is that even possible? Ford thought for sure that study he read years ago was nothing but a joke. Someone...who does everything in their power to bring you two together, no matter the cost? Someone who, even though you may not meet for decades, will feel as though you’ve known each other their entire lives? Someone who will do anything for you, no matter the personal expense?

Someone...someone like Stan, who spent a painstaking thirty years teaching himself quantum physics to rescue someone that anyone else would assume dead? The man who sacrificed his very mind, his very life, so he could be spared physical torture?

Or...someone like Mabel, the first friendly face he saw after emerging from the portal? The one who forgave him so easily after he tried to separate her from her brother? The one who insists on calling him a good person, despite all of those he knows he hurt?

Or...Dipper? His kindred spirit in all things supernatural? The one who, alongside his sister, sacrificed himself as bait for the most dangerous being in the entire multiverse? Who saw memories of him at his very worst, and apologized to him for snooping?

After everything he’s been through...could things really work out that well in his favor? To not have one soulmate but three, and the guarantee that they’ll never leave, because they’ve already expressed how they love him so?

There’s a tear streaming down his cheek at the thought, but he’s too distracted by a fourth light suddenly emitting from...himself to really notice.

He spares a cautious glance downward, and notices a pulsing light emerging from his chest in perfect time with his heartbeat. If he looks closely, he notices that the light travels down his arms and ties itself into a translucent bow around his fingers. If he looks closer still, the light looks as though it’s slinking faintly across the deck of the boat and reaching towards the gentle twinkling of Stan and Mabel’s marks.

Ford places a hand to his forehead, throws his head back, and laughs his throat dry, paying no mind to the tears pouring down his face.

#gravity falls #my writing #syd #cool kid squad 2.0 #ILYSM FRIEND

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alpacaparkaseok · 3 years

Note

A few things…

I’m in the middle of my reread, just about done with part 3 but I had to pause to tell you I got literal chills this time. Seokjin holding a match as the flame creeps further down the stick saying “Do I not look dangerous enough?” is going to haunt me forever. Ah and Tae crouching down to move Namjoon’s hand in part 2 😖 the imagery is *chefs kiss* but also so far my sleuthing has been unsuccessful bc your amazing writing is distracting me lol

Second thing is that while I started this ask with the intention of just raving about your writing, I then noticed the time sooooo naturally I also paused to make a really shitty meme (shhh ignore the quality, I took a screenshot of a gif bc I don’t know how to internet like them young folks) also you can’t send pics on anon???? Or if you can I don’t know how…see previous parentheses.

Happy birthday!!! I hope you’ll get to do something you love with the people you love today. I regret to inform you that creative writing is not my strong suit. I legitimately took exactly one writing class in college…but hey if you want to read a lab report I’m your gal 😂 on what? Who knows, but I can promise it will be as dry and technical as all lab reports sadly are 🥲. I’ll leave the writing to you and your big beautiful brain (and your other more talented followers). I’ll settle for hype man…did I already mention how talented you are? 🧐 Whenever you get to write your own novel I’ll be first in metaphorical line to buy it 🖤 (what’s that one tik tok trend the 💳💥💳💥💳💥💳💥💳…that’s me)

P.S I cannot help but notice you are a Virgo/Libra cusper and to that I say que interestante but only bc I am legally obligated to do so any time I am made aware of someone’s date of birth

Aww thank you!! Sorry I'm nearly a day late in responding to this, but I caught you in the last few minutes of my bday! You're so sweet!

Agh now I wanna go back and reread htss because I remembered getting chills when I wrote those scenes lol. Oof, idk how I'm gonna finish this series, but it always comes together I guess. I love it though when you guys go back and come forward with your theories or opinions. It actually helps so so much!!

I will send my first published book right to your doorstep, lovely. Signed, sealed, delivered haha.

also yes ma'am I am a final day Virgo before Libra takes over, what does that say about me help idk

#miksancheese #b:asks #htss:asks #sweet asks

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erin-bo-berin · 4 years

Text

Birthday Surprise

MASTERLIST

So I actually got this idea from a adult romance book I read last year and it was so humorous, I knew I wanted to write a scenario like it with Spencer and the team. Besides, Spencer can be funny at times too. Hope you enjoy!

Spencer Reid/Reader

Rating: M (smut)

Word Count: 2,529

You can’t believe you let your best friend talk you into this.

“It will be a great birthday present!” Bree exclaimed, beaming.

You grumble to yourself. This was a better idea in theory than reality.

Your boyfriend, Spencer Reid, had a birthday coming up. It was the last year of his 30’s and you really wanted to do something special for him, but with every gift you thought of, it just didn’t seem to be enough.

That was when Bree, the grand schemer of all schemes, came up with what she thought was a brilliant idea.

She worked at a nice, upscale restaurant as a waitress. Also, she had one of the nicest sections. You were to make reservations for you two and you would hide under the table for when he arrived and you could give him a secretive, surprise blow job. It would be hot and memorable, she said.

You arrived at the restaurant 15 minutes early. Bree had managed to snag you a table that was off in a corner, with more privacy and helped you under the table. Which is where you currently were.

It all sounded great when she had hatched the idea, now you just felt silly, your knees were numb and your feet were falling asleep. You were about ready to give up and come out from under the table with your tail between your legs when you heard voices approaching your table.

“Here’s your table, sir, I’ll be right back with your menu,” Bree said, probably louder than she should have.

With one rap against the table, you knew that she was giving you the signal that you two were alone now.

You watch as he sat down and you see his familiar black converse suddenly appear inches from your legs, his black suit pants accompanying the shoes. He’d probably just come from work.

You hesitate, not sure if you should go through this, but decide you’ll never get another chance like this. You’re reaching out for his belt buckle when you hear Bree’s voice, loud and close again.

“Can I help you?”

There was a pause and then a mixture of voices you didn’t recognize.

“Let me see if I have a bigger table available in my area! I’ll be just one second!”

Bree’s voice is suddenly high pitched, sounding frantic. You know her voice only sounds like that during super busy shifts, when she’s panicked and freaking out. Something is wrong and you have no idea what’s going on.

Your phone buzzes in your purse. You twist around, not easily, to retrieve it from your bag. It’s a text from Bree.

ABORT MISSION. More dinner guests.

Your brows furrow. You have no earthly idea what she’s talking about. You send back a few question marks.

A huge group of people just showed up to your and Spencer’s table.

Your phone vibrates repeatedly with multiple texts from your friend.

Tall assassin looking black woman.

Hispanic looking guy with nice hair.

Buff Asian hottie with tattoo.

Italian grandpa.

Brunette boss lady with bangs.

Pretty blonde with killer legs.

Another blonde wearing every color in the rainbow and cute shoes.

You stop breathing for a second. They all sound like Spencer’s coworkers.

As in coworkers from the team in the unit of the FBI, where he works. This was not how you planned to meet them for the first time.

You have no idea why they’re here though, so you’re just as bewildered as Bree. But you’ve started to panic, trying to figure out how you’re gonna escape with no one seeing you. It would be humiliating to meet Spencer’s work family like this.

How the hell am I gonna get out from under the table without them knowing?

Don’t worry, I got this.

You hear the clicking of heels approaching and hear Bree talking to the team.

“We’re working on that table, why don’t I escort you all to the bar so you can see our drink menu.”

“I’ll wait here with you, Spence,” a male voice said.

“Damnit,” you mumble.

Now your escape was going to be even harder.

The majority of the voices fade away with Bree’s and you sighed, resigned to the fact that you’re going to be stuck under this table for a while.

You make a mental note not to listen to another one of Bree’s ideas.

“So, kid, did you tell Y/N that you were inviting us to your birthday dinner? We’re all so excited to meet her.”

“No,” Spencer answered the deep, older sounding voice, “I wanted to surprise her because I was afraid if I told her beforehand she’d stress out about meeting all of you.”

Well that explained that.

You were surprised alright.

“How long have you been together now? Over a year? And we haven’t even met her yet? Are you sure you haven’t made her up?”

You bite your thumbnail trying your hardest not to laugh out loud.

“No, Rossi, I haven’t made her up. She’s real. Besides you know every time we tried to make plans something has come up.”

“Quite conveniently too, I might add.”

You already like this guy.

“She should be here soon,” Spencer said.

You catch a glimpse of him pulling his phone out of his pants pocket, positive he’s checking if there’s any missed texts or phone calls from you.

You guess now is the best time of any to make him aware of your presence.

Your hand slides up his thigh and you choke back your cackle when he practically jumps ten feet in the air.

“Something wrong?”

“Uh I dropped my phone under the table, let me just get it.”

His chair scoots back and he bends down under the table, pretending to retrieve his phantom fallen cell phone. His eyes widen when he sees you under the table. You give a meek smile and wave in return.

You point to your phone, miming texting to tell him that’s the only way you can talk without being found out.

“Oh found it. It fell against the wall.”

Spencer sits back up again, pulling his chair in as he settles.

“I think I’m gonna text Y/N, just so I can get her ETA,” Spencer says calmly.

He’s way too good at staying calm in situations, so you’re not too surprised that he sounds completely normal even though he just discovered his girlfriend curled up in an uncomfortable position, under a table in a restaurant.

I’m afraid to ask why you’re under the table.

That was one good thing about Spencer; he didn’t have a mean bone in his body. So instead of mocking you, embarrassing you or even being angry, he approached most things calmly. Although you’re sure he’s secretly dying of amusement over this. You’re positive this isn’t going to be the last time you hear about this.

Well, I was kinda hoping to surprise you for your birthday with a hot, secret blowjob...but it kinda blew up in my face instead of how you were supposed to.

You hear him snort above you which he quickly covers with a cough.

“Y/N should be here soon. She’s probably closer than she thinks.”

You hit his leg. What a smart ass he is, although technically he is a smart ass but that’s another story.

Help me get out of here. I don’t want to exactly pop out to meet your teammates like “hi I was just hiding out for a nice birthday sexcapade nice to meet you”.

Technically doesn’t that mean an illicit affair?

Spencer, we really need to introduce you to Urban Dictionary.

A chorus of voices approach the table.

“Any update on that table?” came a female voice.

“Nothing yet. But, uh, have you seen their amazing aquarium? Come on, I’ll show it to you!”

“I gotta head to the ladies room, I’ll find you at our new table.”

This voice was a different female voice from the first one.

You wait until the numerous voices get far enough from the table when you decide to peek from underneath the tablecloth. You curse, seeing a woman that looks a lot like what Bree described as the brunette boss lady walking in your direction. That was most definitely Spencer’s boss.

You drop the tablecloth like it’s on fire, concealing yourself once again. You watch as the feet pass by the table and brave another look. Thankfully, it’s all clear.

You dash as fast as you towards the kitchen. If Bree is in there, your hands might find their way around her neck.

•

“Bree, that could’ve been disastrous!” you shriek, causing a few of the kitchen staff to peer over at you.

Sorry, you mouth, wincing.

“Well it’s not like Spencer is mad is it?” she asked, loading plates onto her tray.

“No, but he’s not going to let me live it down.”

“Hey, think of it this way. He’s gonna be thinking of that BJ the entire dinner,” she smirked.

“I’m never listening to another one of your hair brained ideas,” you grumbled.

“Hey, you’ll thank me later,” she sing-songed lifting the tray of food to her shoulder, “Now just go out the back kitchen door, walk around to the front of the restaurant and it will be like nothing ever happened.”

She was gone through the swinging doors in a jiff and you sighed, heading towards the back door.

•

It takes a whole ten minutes for you to circle the entire building before you finally reach the front doors. You attempted to compose yourself and straighten your red mini dress before entering and going to find the new table. You spot them a few minutes later and walk up nervously.

“There she is!”

Spencer’s face lights up when he sees you and suddenly you don’t feel as nervous as you did seconds before. He loved this group of people and that meant a lot to have a Spencer seal of approval. Maybe the night wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“Did you take the subway here?” Emily asked.

“Um, yes. That’s why I’m late, I’m so sorry.”

“I sure hope it wasn’t too crowded down there—I mean in there,” Spencer smirks.

You shoot him an exasperated look and are met with one of his thousand kilowatt smiles.

Turns out, dinner wasn’t so bad after all.

•

“You were right; they were all incredibly nice,” you say as you and Spencer walk in the door of your apartment, “I love them.”

“I knew you would,” he smiled.

“So, have you had a great birthday?”

“Well I’ve had quite the unusual one, that’s for sure.”

You stifle a groan as you kick off your heels in the hallway.

“I still can’t believe you actually hid under a table to surprise me.”

He’s already laughing again.

“I’m still gonna kill Bree.”

“Hey,” he grabs you by the arm, turning you towards him, “I’m incredibly flattered that you went to such lengths for me.”

“Really?” you asked timidly.

“Of course,” he smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear, “Not every girlfriend would plan to blow their boyfriend in front of his coworkers.”

“Spencer!”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” he chuckled, leaning against the hallway wall, pulling you towards him and kissing you.

“Mm, well it is still your birthday, you know,” you say devilishly, biting his bottom lip gently then kissing him again.

You pull away, taking a hold of his tie before leading him to the bedroom. It takes a few minutes for you both to make it there as he stops you frequently to steal a kiss or two.

Finally at your destination, you push him against the closed bedroom door, fingers pulling off his tie. Your lips trail his jaw then neck, fingers fumbling over his button down.

He chuckles amused, aiding you. Your mouth travels down his neck and over his chest, making slow work of your descent. He watches you closely as you fall to your knees, a kiss placed just above the waistline of his pants. Your hand comes up to press against the forming bulge in his pants and he groans lowly.

“I may not have been able to do this earlier, but we’ve got all the time in the world now,” you bite your lip and peer up at him innocently.

Popping the button and pulling his zipper down, you push his pants down over his hips. The edges of your fingers dip into the waistband of his underwear and you hear the sharp intake of his breath; you can tell how much he’s anticipating this.

Apparently Bree was right and he had been thinking about it all dinner long, especially if his small stolen touches under the table were any indicator. There would be a gentle touch on your thigh, slowly sliding just a bit too close towards your inner thigh; an arm wrapped around your back, his fingers just casually brushing the bottom swell of your breast. He had been ready for this hours ago and you were ready to give it to him.

Your eyes don’t leave his as the clothing is pulled downwards and you wrap a hand around him, squeezing just hard enough to cause his head to fall back with a dull thud against the door, a groan coming from deep in his throat.

You lean down, tongue swirling around the tip, agonizing slow, your fingertips ever so slightly tracing down his length.

“Oh god,” he groaned, “Don’t tease me, Y/N.”

“Not so fun when you're not the one dishing it out, now is it?”

He could be the ultimate tease in the bedroom, so this taste of his own medicine was long overdue.

Your tongue swirls around him before taking him in your mouth, his moan of relief and pleasure filling your ears.

With hollowed cheeks, you alternate your speed and pressure, keeping him on his toes, making your next move unpredictable to him.

“Baby, please.”

His moans are louder and more frequent as his hand moves into your hair. You look up through your lashes as you work him, keeping your gaze locked on him. You think you actually hear him whimper.

Your hand pumps the rest of him, your wrist turning as your mouth moves on him, your tongue whirling as if you’re enjoying a favorite ice cream cone.

His hand tightens in your hair and you can tell he’s close to losing all control.

“Y/N, Y/N, fuck, fuuuuck,” he groans finally letting go and succumbing to his ecstasy.

You take all he has in stride, discreetly wiping your mouth when you pull back although you’re sure he’s too dazed to notice.

“Happy birthday to me,” Spencer mumbles, pulling you to your feet and kissing you.

You break the chaste kiss, backing up towards the bed.

“Well lucky for you, there’s still three and a half hours left of your birthday. How about we do a little more celebrating?”

It takes him all of two steps to cross the room and take you in his arms, causing you to giggle.

Yeah, this would be a birthday he wouldn’t forget anytime soon.

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#spencer reid #dr spencer reid #spencer reid gifs #Spencer Reid fic #spencer reid smut #dr spencer reid fic #dr spencer reid gifs #dr spencer reid smut #Criminal Minds #criminal minds gifs #criminal minds fic #criminal minds smut #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you

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microcos-pod · 3 years

Text

Micro-Cosmos S1E3: A Little Piece of Home Transcript

(The crew celebrates a special day. Transcript begins below break.)

[THEME MUSIC FADES IN] ANNOUNCER Futuristic Trail Mix Productions presents Micro-Cosmos: A Science Fiction Podcast. [THEME MUSIC FADES OUT] [sfx: button press] ATHENA Hey, HQ. It's Officer Athena Romero, with Crew #0137-F. I'm transmitting from... North 54 degrees, West 109 degrees, in a moment of alone time. Camp's not too far, I just... wanted to come out here to record. We were up so, so early, but we made really good time getting our travel in for the day. And... I don't know. I felt like being introspective. I know that's rarely a good thing to be, for people of our situation... but sometimes it can't be helped, I guess. We're nearing what Doctor Couvillion calls the temperate forest region of the planet. Oh, uh, Felix is... fine, by the way, in case you were wondering. I know I haven't talked about him a lot for the last week since his little run in with Mercutio, and in hindsight, that was probably a little alarming from your perspective. But, no. He's, um... just been very focused on his work. Ever since our encounter with that little... strange... cat lizard dinosaur thing, he's taken to a pretty enthusiastic approach of figuring out what it actually is. You know, what is eats, how it behaves, it's characteristics. Thus, he's not been his usual social self, but he's had what I guess you'd call a breakthrough. He's named it. The species, I mean. Varanus concolor. Apparently he's determined that it's a new species of monitor lizard. Exciting stuff. Miles and Cal have been sorta... tense, the last little bit? I don't know if Miles is still mad at them about that terrible, terrible prank or just for being, you know, Cal. I like Cal. And Miles. Honestly, I do. I think they're almost a little too similar to get along sometimes. I get that. I've been in the same spot for most of my life. I only recently figured out how to sort of... stop taking my own reflection personally. [sfx: fingers drumming on comms, pacing footsteps] ATHENA (CONT’D) Alex is good! If you're wondering. You know, morale and all. We've been talking a lot, since we're sort of the only ones not in our own world. Well, I guess we're all in our own world, that's sort of our job, but...

[Athena laughs.] ATHENA (CONT’D) Literal humour, Athena. Good one. Anyways, she's nice to talk to. Leadership skills to boot, in case you didn't already know and needed someone to sing her praises. I think I'd be more than willing to sing her praises. So... the mission's going very well. Everyone is healthy and accounted for, and we're absolutely on track to get to our shipment drop-off point. Comms and tech and climate are all nominal. We're okay. We're okay.

[sfx: bag shuffling as she picks it up, footsteps] ATHENA (CONT'D) Oh, by the way, before I head back. It's my birthday. I don't know if that's something I should mention. Just thought... I don't know. I don't expect the others to notice, or even know at all, really. But it's nice to acknowledge another year, you know? I'm certainly not spending it where I would've expected to be if you had asked me on my previous... thirty birthdays. Anyways. Yes, it is my birthday, and I kind of miss home, and also I kind of don't, and also being here is present enough. So, I will celebrate by breaking open some of the candy in my bag, and getting some sleep- FELIX, ALEX SURPRISE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! [Athena laughs.] ATHENA Guys! What are you doing?

ALEX Oh, come on Romero. You didn't really think you were going to get it past us, did you?

ATHENA No, I wasn't meaning to-

ALEX Oh, don't bother backtracking. You're busted.

FELIX There's no real party, or, presents, or... anything that would make this a proper birthday because of our circumstance, of course, but...

ALEX But an ambush was the least we could do.

FELIX The Commander and I only found out when she was conversing with Cal, inquiring of the database today's points of interest, or else we would've...

ALEX Done more than an ambush.Alex observes Athena, who's just standing there, staring at the two of them and grinning. But, I don't know. Seems like the ambush worked out pretty well. Try to smile less, huh?

ATHENA Heh. I, I mean... this is really sweet of you guys, I appreciate it.

MILES Appreciate what?

[sfx: footsteps, tapping on a screen] [C41′s JINGLE PLAYS] ATHENA Oh, uh, hey Miles!

MILES Heeey Athena, guys. What's up?

FELIX Did we...?

ALEX Nope.

FELIX So we forgot to...?

ALEX Yep.

FELIX Dammit.

ALEX Well, when you assume...

C41 Oh, um! Happy Birthday, Athena!

ATHENA Oh, uh, thank you Cal. Anyways, I was thinking we could get to bed early-

MILES Crap, it's your birthday?

ATHENA ... Yeah.

MILES I am so so sorry, I had no idea, I must have like, missed the memo, but-

ATHENA No, no, Miles, it's okay, I promise. I didn't say anything, and so how would you know? Spending it away from home, I wasn't really sure what to do, it's kind of hard, but...I just got busted by the Commander, so... [The crew laughs nervously.] MILES Happy Birthday.

ATHENA Thanks.

MILES You're welcome. Yeah, uh, actually, Cal and I forgot something back at our setup.

C41 We did?

MILES We did. The thing. We need. We need that thing, Cal, uh... we will be back... later. [sfx: footsteps walking away]

[C41′s JINGLE PLAYS.] FELIX Well, who wants to get this party started and play some cards?

***

MILES Caal! Why didn't you tell me it was Athena's birthday?

C41 I didn't think it was that big of a deal. It's just another day of the year, which... happens to be the day that Athena was born. You can congratulate her on still being alive, like you did, and then move on! Didn't seem that important to me.

MILES Yes, it's a big deal! It's like you said, it's the day someone was born, not just another day. Come on, Cal! Remember when Em and I made a huuuge deal about it on the anniversary that I created you?

C41 By chance, do you mean Doctor Macey? If so, then unfortunately, yes I do remember. It was very loud. If not, I haven't the slightest clue who 'Em' is.

MILES Yes. Her. Doctor Macey.

C41 Okay whatever. Anyways. Do continue on with what you were saying. It's proving to be really entertaining.

MILES Oh, I'll show you entertaining.

How did you not know that birthdays were important? Seriously, there's even a song about them. I taught you better than that.

[Miles sighs.]

MILES Cally, I didn't mean it like-

C41 It's Cal. And no, you're right. Why would something the O Great and Powerful and All-Knowing Miles Abbott made be so inconsiderate and dumb?

MILES Seriously, Cal. I didn't mean it. You know how I get.

C41 Yeah?

Oh, just drop it.

[C41 lets out a long series of scoffs and huffs in the following silence.]

C41 (CONT'D) ... Miles?

Miiiiiiles...?

MILES Caaaal....

Caaaaaaaal.....

C41 Miles- MILES Cal, I need to make Athena a birthday present!

I don't even know what she'd like, let alone what I could make her! There's like, nothing even worthy of being a gift on this planet.

[sfx: Miles snapping.]

MILES (CONT'D) What do I have? What do I even have? What does our camp have? I need to find something. Anything. I'll make it work. Cal, help me look. Please.

[C41 snorts.]

C41 Oh.

Oh, you mean actually help.

[sfx: a buzzing noise of C41′s form]

C41 (CONT'D) Um... well there are some big batteries that Alex didn't need over there, she left them this morning with her equipment. There is a... There is a... it looks like... is that a plastic fork? I really hope that isn't used. You all are a mess. And, um... what's that box, over there? What's that?

[sfx: footsteps, objects being knocked over]

MILES It's, uhhh... Chocolate. And... more chocolate. A gift from Emily, I... forgot I had these.

C41 Huh. A... whole box, huh? Of chocolate? What could you even make with those?

MILES I don't know, okay? I don't even know like, maybe I'm overreacting. Athena didn't tell us because she's not at home, or whatever-

Wait. Cal, what, um, what does Athena's home have?

C41 What?

MILES Where she's from. What's it like?

C41 Patroclus C? Well, it's-

[sfx: a long glitch]

C41 (CONT'D)- Patroclus C. A moon in orbit around more well-known terrestrial body Mirana Dunis. Patroclus-C is known for it's industrial prosperity and plentiful resources, as well as it's freezing conditions.

Notable landmarks include it's few geysers. All imported plant and animal life have adapted to the cold climate, however they take refuge in the steamy geysers that provide both water and heat- MILES Okay, Cal. That's enough, thanks.

[sfx: the same glitch, a zap]

C41 Oh, ouch. Eugh. Why did you let that happen? You know I hate that mode!

MILES I'm sorry! I'm stressing a bit here, if you haven't noticed.

C41 Yes, I'm well aware.

MILES Anyways. I... I think I have a plan.

C41 That's never good.

MILES Let's just hope this turns out. Mmm.... a decent start. ***

FELIX Have any... fives?

ALEX Go fish. [sfx: drawing a playing card].

ALEX (CONT'D) Got any queens?

FELIX Yes, yes. Queen of stars.

ALEX Thank you! Got any threes?

FELIX Go fish.

[sfx: drawing a card]

ALEX So close.

[sfx: approaching footsteps]

FELIX (with his mouth full) Better luck next time. Do you have any-

ALEX Want us to deal you in, Romero?

FELIX Athena? Hm. Cannot believe you were still doing work on your birthday.

ATHENA What's the name of the game?

ALEX Go fish. Do you play?

ATHENA I like to think cribbage is more my forte but... sure. Deal me in.

[sfx: cards shuffling]

ATHENA (CONT'D) Who's winning?

ALEX Me. I've won three matches.

ATHENA And how many has Felix won?

ALEX We've played three matches.

[Alex and Athena laugh.]

FELIX I am beginning to suspect her a cheat.

ALEX Can't help having an eye for this stuff.

ATHENA For what, counting cards?

ALEX I wish. Patterns. Got any kings, Athena?

ATHENA Go fish. Is that technically cheating, then? Patterns?

[sfx: drawing a card]

FELIX I believe I can call it cheating if it makes me feel badly about myself.

ATHENA Fair enough. Felix? Any fours?

FELIX Go fish. See, that felt perfectly fair.

ALEX Doc, I said patterns, not x-ray vision. You keep accusing me of cheating, I'm gonna start to take it personally.

FELIX I harbor suspicion, not accusation. Commander, do you have any aces?

[Alex sighs.]

[sfx: passing cards]

ALEX Dishes and comets. Happy?

FELIX Yes. Athena, do you have any sixes?

ATHENA Yeaaah. Here you go.

[sfx: passing cards, movement of pairs]

ALEX Feeling better about yourself?

FELIX Yes. Very.

ATHENA Jeez, you're already on track to win.

ALEX Felix, should I start repaying you all that whining?

FELIX I-

MILES (distant) DOES ANYONE HAVE JUMPER CABLES?

[sfx: stumbling, approaching footsteps]

FELIX Speaking of.

ALEX Uh... no, I don't think so. Maybe you should ask Cal?

MILES (distant) No. That's okay. I'll use the transport hawser. That should work... just as well if not better. I'll... I'm gonna go get that. Bye.

[sfx: retreating footsteps]

ATHENA That's... that's for... emergencies, what do they need that for-

ALEX My guess? Nothing good.

FELIX Commander, do you have any twos?

ALEX No, but I do have a Petty Officer who needs their marbles back.

[sfx: standing, retreating footsteps]

ATHENA Alex?

ALEX (O.S.) I'll be right back!

FELIX It's her turn, actually. Which one of us should go next?

ATHENA It's my birthday. Got any sevens?

***

[sfx: shuffling]

MILES I got something! Not cables, but... almost even better.

[C41′s JINGLE PLAYS]

C41 You're... actually doing this?

Oh... Okay. Even if it may be sliiiightly dangerous? Not that I care or anything-

MILES Look, I just can't sit back and do nothing for Athena's birthday.

C41 Yeah, but I think it would be better to guarantee everyone's safety than... You know, possibly blowing us up and setting everything on fire.

[sfx: metal chain drops]

[Miles sighs.]

MILES I guess that's true. I just don't want to disappoint her.

ALEX You're not disappointing her, kid.

MILES Huh?

Oh. Hi, Commander.

ALEX Wipe that sad look off your face. Even if you didn't know, she's happy that you're at least thinking about her right now.

[sfx: footsteps, shuffling, sitting]

MILES I... guess that's true. But I want to make her something. That's what I specialize in.

ALEX Fair enough. I guess I just didn't know you guys were this good of friends.

MILES I don't know that we are. It just seems like the kind of thing I should've tried for, I guess. We've got so much time to spend together and I don't want you guys thinking I'm cold and ignoring you all just because I get wrapped up in crap and get away from myself and especially lately with everything going on with Cal-

ALEX Hey. We don't think that. And I'm not just saying that, either. What were you planning on doing?

MILES I- ... Well, if I tell you, it would ruin the surprise.

ALEX Okay, okay. Do your thing, fix-it guy.

[sfx: getting up, a few footsteps]

MILES Hey, Commander? What if she doesn't like it?

[sfx: footsteps stop]

ALEX Remember what we talked about, kid. Make it from your heart, and she'll love it.

MILES O-okay, Commander... Thank you.

ALEX No problem, Miles. Always here to help. Let me know if you need anything else, yeah?

MILES Mhm! Now, I... I gotta get this show on the road.

ALEX Cal, keep an eye on them for me.

C41 Will do, Commander.

ALEX Good luuuck!

[sfx: retreating footsteps, tent closes]

C41 Well, that surely was-

MILES Alright Cally! We have some major business to attend to!

C41 -motivational.

MILES Okay, so I'm thinking... What if we melt the plastic fork? Like, all the way, and then, and, and then shape it around to make a base for the volcano geyser thing?

C41 That sounds incredibly dangerous. And like it would be highly amusing to watch.

[sfx: a whirring]

C41 (CONT'D) And according to my calculations I am correct on both counts. Do it.

MILES And... then we can put the chocolate in- Hold on, do we have anything to keep the chocolate melted?

C41 Hm. Probably not.

MILES Dammit, okay. That's fine, that's cool, uh... We can hook it up to the batteries someway to keep the heat constant and the launch device powered, that's fine, I can do that...

This is going to be a piece of cake. Let's go, Cally!

C41 How many times to I have to tell you? It's Cal.

MILES Mhmm, yeah. Let's just kick this baby in the teeth.

C41 Wh... what?

MILES It's an expression. Like, "let's blow this popsicle stand"? Or... "let's get this show on the road"?

C41 I don't understand how that could be related to either of those meanings.

MILES Whatever. I am gonna get this thing started, and it's going to be great.

[sfx: prolonged noises of tinkering and contstruction, a zap of electricity]

[Miles yelps.]

[C41 laughs.]

MILES Not funny!

[sfx: more sounds of construction and tinkering]

MILES Aaaaand there! Done. Finished. Phew.

C41 That looks...That... looks...I mean, um...That looks so good!

MILES You think?

C41 Yeah, I think she's-

ALEX (O.S.) How's it looking in here?

MILES Yeah, I think everything went great!

ALEX Perfect!

[sfx: Alex claps]

ALEX (CONT’D) Well, grab it and let's go; we have a birthday to celebrate. Take Cal and we'll meet her and Felix at that clearing. We're doing a little more celebration for Athena.

MILES Okay, Cal. You heard the boss; let's get going then.

C41 Yuuup.

MILES You know, I’m pretty proud of this.

C41 As you should be, Miles.

***

[sfx: approaching footsteps]

MILES HEY! Hey, guys I'm back!

FELIX Hello- oh. Oh wow. What...

ATHENA Miles... what's all this?

MILES It's, uh, it's your gift!

ATHENA Oh, Miles, really you didn't need to do that, that's super sweet, but-

MILES Oh, it's... it's just a little... something... electrocuted myself a few times making it, but- Happy Birthday!

ATHENA Oh. Oh, wow, that's really something, Miles, I love it!

What is it?

MILES It's a geyser. Like... you said. Well, actually you didn't say, but I did some digging and your... your home plant has... geysers, yeah? So it's like a little piece of home.

A geyser.

ALEX A geyser.

ATHENA Oh! Yes! A geyser. Of course! That's really thoughtful, Miles, you, uh... you shouldn't have! So it's like a... trinket! Or a little... a sculpture!

ALEX Oh... just you wait.

MILES Well, it's for more than just show.

Heh. Bet you've never seen anything like this before.

FELIX I'm quite sure I have not.

[sfx: setting down the present, the geyser bubbles and erupts pathetically, with a crackle]

[Miles breathing heavily.]

MILES Ta-dah!

ATHENA Ohhhh, wow, that's... that's so cool. Was it... was it supposed to melt like that?

MILES It was not the intention but apparently... that doesn't matter now-

[C41′s JINGLE PLAYS]

C41 Evidently.

[sfx: more crackling]

ALEX Oh, okay, is this thing going to blow, Miles? Like actually, really blow?

MILES Shouldn't. It's a possibility... but it shouldn't.

ALEX Cal?

C41 Probably not? It'll be fine! Maybe Miles should get a little closer to shield the blast just in case.

MILES DON'T YOU RUIN THIS BY TRYING TO GET ME KILLED!

C41 Who, me? Never.

[sfx: the crackling and bubbling stops]

ALEX Alright, okay, okay. That was very cool. Right Athena?

ATHENA Right!

ATHENA (CONT'D) Look Miles, I really appreciate this, it's very, very sweet and I just hope you didn't feel like you had to do this, or anything-

MILES No, no, no. I wanted to. I mean... you were around to... keep me calm when I thought we were gonna get eaten in the woods. I didn't want you to think I didn't care, and... I wanted to make something nice for you. Normally I have more stuff to work with than forks and batteries and... chocolate.

FELIX Real chocolate?

ALEX Yes, real chocolate. Not now.

FELIX Ugh, and it's all on the grass, and... what a waste.

ALEX There will be more chocolate. Actually. Felix?

[sfx: receding footsteps]

[Alex and Felix whisper as they retreat.]

ATHENA Um, okay, but... Anyways. Thank you, Miles. That was a lot of fun. And I hope you didn't actually electrocute yourself.

MILES Oh, don't worry, it's not the first time.

C41 They're not joking.

MILES More of a shock than anything.

ATHENA Doesn't sound great for your health either way.

MILES Well, heh, yeah, I mean- Hey, wait a second. Wait what's-

ATHENA Huh?

[sfx: candles burning, approaching steps]

[Alex, Felix, Miles and C41 begin singing “Happy Birthday”]

ATHENA (overlapping) Oh, my... guys, what are you... that better not be our only fruit cake-

ALEX Come on, blow out the... flare candles. Make a wish.

ATHENA Okay, okay!

[sfx: blowing on candles, a glitch]

[sfx: candles burning]

[Alex laughs.]

[Athena hums in confusion]

[sfx: blowing on candles, a glitch]

[sfx: candles burning]

ALEX Come on, Romero. All in one go, now.

ATHENA Right. [sfx: blowing on candles, candles extinguishing]

[The crew cheers.] ALEX Happy Birthday. I'll clean up Miles's present later.

[Alex and Athena laugh.]

FELIX Time for cake!

[Felix leads Alex, Miles, and C41 in singing “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow”]

FELIX Cake! ***

[THEME MUSIC FADES IN]

ANNOUNCER Micro-Cosmos: A New Science Fiction Podcast. This episode, "A Little Piece of Home", was written by Zyrel Thompson and Lauren Tucker, edited by Luka Miller, and directed by Jesse Smith, Zyrel Thompson, and Lauren Tucker. It starred Jesse Smith as the voice of Athena Romero, Jackson Rossman as the voice of Miles Abbott, Luka Miller as the voice of Alex dela Cruz, Kaleb Piper as the voice of Felix Couvillion, and Pippa van Beek-Paterson as the voice of Cal. Original music by Julia Barnes, and sound editing by Tobias Friedman. Be sure to stay tuned to our feed for upcoming episodes from the new backpacking intergalactic adventure from Futuristic Trail Mix Productions. To follow the show and find transcripts, you can find us on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram as @MicroCosPod. Questions, comments, and concerns can be emailed to us via [email protected]. Find more information on the show on our website, microcospod.space. Thank you for listening.

[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]

#micro-cosmos #Microcosmos #micrcosmos #microcos pod #new podcast #science fiction #sciencefictionpodcast #audio drama #microcospod #podcast reccomendation #fiction podcast

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jaeffrey77 · 4 years

Text

Got this idea because we’ve had many power outages this year. Wish I could have had this kind of company. Hope you enjoy!

Summary: reader and boyfriend!johnny trying to spend some quality time during a power outage with haechan ruining the mood

Genre: fluff? i guess?

Words: 3,4K

Warning: there’s like one curse word. i know. scandalous.

"Die, die die, die. Ha-ha, you're dead!"

You huffed in annoyance as you turned to your right and looked up at Haechan as he was doing a little victory dance over killing you off in a game the two of you were playing. You turned right back to the screen, ready to respawn and continue. You didn't want to show him just how annoyed you were at him for being so overpowered in a game you had never played before.

"I'm gonna win, just you wait," you muttered quietly but loud enough for Haechan to hear and scoff at your words.

"Yeah, I'd like to see you try," he snickered, not sparing a glance at you as he focused on the game once again.

Your jaw clenched involuntarily but shook off the urge to bite back. Instead, you focused on the game.

Haechan got you once again, killing you in the game. You slammed your fist to your knee and groaned in annoyance. "This game is stupid."

"You're only saying that because you're bad at it," Haechan said with a bright smile on his face, knowing he was pushing your buttons and making you more and more annoyed.

Just as he killed you once again, you heard the door open behind you. You turned around abruptly, eyes landing on your boyfriend who had just come from the shower.

"Help," you said simply, looking up at him with the slightest pout on your lips.

Johnny smiled gently, closing the door. "He's winning?" He asked, immediately knowing what was up.

"Come kick his ass for me, baby. I know you can do it. I believe in you," you told him, scooting away from the laptop and letting Johnny take your place. He came over instantly, sitting down and beginning to play.

"God, babe, you picked the worst character."

"Well, how am I supposed to know which characters are the good ones?" You rolled your eyes before scooting a tiny bit closer, watching the game intensely. You hoped to learn a thing or two by watching him. "It just looked cool."

It didn't take long for Johnny to catch up on the scores, killing Haechan left and right only to have the younger boy whine how his hyung could do such a thing to him. Now it was your time to be snickering in delight. You had never enjoyed seeing someone defeated as much as you did at that moment.

"Suck it, Haechan!"

"What are you laughing about? It's your boyfriend who's winning, not you."

"We're a team. Technically speaking, if Johnny wins, I win too," you replied. "Right, Johnny?"

Johnny agreed with a nod but gave no further input.

You smiled, kissing his cheek quickly before resting your head on his shoulder, watching the game go down. Johnny ended up winning, even though before he had told you the choice of character you had made was awful.

You cheered as the game ended, high fiving Johnny and wrapping your arms around him. He only smiled, not shoving his win in anyone's face although you kind of wanted to see how Haechan would have reacted to that.

But even without it, his reaction was priceless. He had now slumped in his chair, the pout on his lips as prominent as ever.

"Ha-ha, you lost," you singsonged, sticking your tongue out at him while still clinging onto Johnny, your knight in shining armor.

Haechan turned to glare at you, whining about how unfair it was that Johnny swapped in for you. He had been winning before, up until Johnny showed up.

"Thanks, babe," you said before kissing Johnny on the cheek again. You pulled away, reaching out for your phone that was on the bed. "Anyone want some takeout?"

You heard agreements from both boys as they got themselves immersed in another round of the game. Haechan somehow convinced Johnny to pick another character. The older one abided without much of a fight. As the game started again, Haechan began with his commentary once more, complimenting himself and his skills.

"Is tteokbokki okay?" You asked, only to hear agreements from both once again. You smiled, humming in delight as the sheer thought of tteokbokki got your mouth watering. You had been craving it for quite some time, so hearing no disagreements from the two made you very happy.

You made a quick order on an app and tossed your phone on the bed. You got down onto the floor again and looked over Johnny's shoulder. "Who's winning?" You asked. Shortly after asking, you realized that Haechan was taking the lead this time around.

"Hey hyung, loser pays for the food?"

"Oh, getting bold now, are we?" Johnny asked, shrugging. "Sure, I'm down."

Haechan laughed triumphantly, clearly very sure about his upcoming victory.

You saw that the round was coming to an end soon, so the fact that Johnny was losing worried you a bit. You still had faith in him. After all, he did overpower Haechan in the previous round. You decided to just sit back and enjoy the game. You positioned yourself behind your boyfriend, wrapped your arms around him while attempting to peer at the screen from behind his shoulder.

Johnny seemed to be staggering a bit. He had been doing a bit better earlier but had gotten just a little worse, seemed to be getting slightly distracted even. It did not go unnoticed by Haechan since he began cheering already. Unbothered by his younger friend's antics, Johnny kept playing.

Haechan turned out winning, standing up from his chair, and doing yet another victory dance. Unable to prevent the amused chuckle from escaping you, you attempted to hide your face in your boyfriend's back. Now that you weren't the one playing against him, his behavior was rather amusing.

"I was rooting for you, dude," you whispered to Johnny, feigning disappointment. "How could you lose after the last round?"

"Can you blame me?" He asked, turning to look at you over his shoulder. "You're very distracting."

You tilted your head and looked up at him questioningly. "What did I do?"

Johnny gave you a look that mirrored yours. "Do you know where your hands are right now?"

Only after he brought it up, you realized your hands had wandered under his shirt. Letting your hands wander without being aware was nothing unusual. More often than not, you found yourself running your hands all over him, especially when cuddling. Johnny often had no complaints on the matter, he found it rather endearing. Now it had proved to be a bit distracting when there was something else that required his attention.

You slowly removed your hands from him and pulled away. "Sorry," you apologized with a sheepish chuckle. "You're just warm... And comfy," you mumbled.

"It's okay, I don't mind," he assured you. He turned to face you, smiling. He grasped your hand in his and placed a little kiss on your knuckles. "But I do hope you to know it was your fault I lost. But it's okay. I'm not mad. I still love you." He gave you a quick kiss with his signature charming smile. "Oh, and therefore I think it's only fair that you pay for the food."

"Excuse me? You were the one playing, not me."

"But I thought we were a team," he pouted.

You rolled your eyes in response. "Whatever, I was gonna pay anyway."

Before you could stand up and get your money, Johnny stopped you. "I'm just kidding. Here." He handed you his wallet. "It's on me."

You thanked him and placed his wallet on the bed next to your phone.

"Hyung!" Haechan spoke up again. "Let's play another round."

"Hey, that's enough of playing. We were supposed to have a movie night," you protested instantly.

"Hyung?" Haechan turned to Johnny with his best puppy eyes.

"One more game," Johnny pleaded, unable to resist the look in his dongsaeng's eyes. "We can eat while watching the movie?"

You shrugged. "Fine."

A few more minutes went by until your phone rang. The food had arrived. You handled the payment while the two focused on the game. Upon your return, the game was still on. You set the food down and flopped down on the bed, waiting for them to finish.

"Make it fast, guys. I'm getting hungry."

Neither of them responded. You sighed, taking your phone and beginning to scroll through some apps to pass some time.

It didn't take long for the game to finish, Johnny winning once again. Haechan was displeased. He insisted on yet another game, rationalizing it by saying it was unfair how Johnny won two times. He wanted to make the wins equal.

You were already preparing yourself for some bickering. You were ready to fight for your movie night and were beginning to run out of patience. Haechan also seemed adamant to persuade you into letting them play one more game, however, before he could try, everything went black.

All three of you were completely silent as it all set in. It wasn't just the lights that turned off, Haechan's computer did too. The only source of light in the pitch-black room came from the screen of Johnny's laptop. But even that was soon about to run out of battery.

You stood up and walked over to the window, opening the blinds enough to see outside. It was pitch-black everywhere. The powers had gone out.

"Well, I guess that means no more games," you said, turning to the two boys. "Or the movie..." You trailed off, bending down to place your hand on Johnny's shoulder. "Do you still have those candles I gave you for your birthday?"

Without saying a word, Johnny stood up, going over to his closet only to bump into his bed in the dark. He quietly cursed under his breath before taking his phone and using the flashlight to his advantage.

While Haechan went out of the room to look for more candles, you and Johnny lit up some that had been found and sat down on the ground, ready to dig into the food. With the faint candlelight illuminating the space you were in, the atmosphere felt a bit more intimate.

You looked at Johnny to see him already peering up at you. He smiled, picking up a piece of rice cake and eating it. "I know what you're thinking," he said while chewing, pointing his chopsticks at you before swallowing what was left in his mouth. "This is pretty romantic, right?"

The faint candle-lit dinner in a dim room, the warm glow flickering on his face with that charming smile making an appearance again... You couldn't help but agree. This night had the potential to be very romantic.

Johnny picked up another piece of rice cake before feeding it to you, praising the taste. You gladly accepted it, humming in delight as the delicious taste coated your taste buds. You immediately wanted to dig in for more.

"We should do this more often," Johnny said, breaking the silence.

"Do what?" You asked, curious.

"Have dinner together, like this."

"With candles?" You asked, amused by how big of a liking he took to such a romantic setting.

He nodded firmly, scooting to sit right next to you.

"Romantic lighting, good food, even better company... I'd love to spend my nights like this... Just the two of us."

As if on cue, the door burst open with Haechan's loud voice echoing in the room. "I got more candles!"

You and Johnny shared a look, your little bubble had been burst.

"Just the two of us, huh?" You asked.

Johnny couldn't help but chuckle. "Come on, Haechan. The food's getting cold."

Haechan joined you in no time, sitting down and setting more candles around before chowing down most of the food.

~~~

Sitting on the floor with your back against the foot of the bed and head resting on Johnny's shoulder, you found your eyes set on the screen of his phone. He was scrolling through songs, creating a mini playlist for you to listen to. You pointed out some songs for him to take into consideration, knowing full well he wouldn't say no if the song was good enough for the mood he was aiming for; chill.

You took your phone in hand out of habit, turning on the screen only to once again remember you had run out of battery. You huffed out a breath and tossed your phone on your lap. You turned to look at Johnny's phone again, realizing it might die out soon too.

"Haechan, can we use your phone if—"

"Die, motherfucker, die!!"

You rolled your eyes at the rude interruption. You had given up on having a calm night with your boyfriend since his much younger roommate seemed to have immersed himself in mobile games for a change. You shook your head slightly, pouting as you gazed up at Johnny, who was deep in thought while still focused on the making of the playlist.

"Your battery is gonna run out before we get halfway through the playlist. Just start playing it now."

Johnny chuckled, doing as told and set his phone down as the calm music played from the phone. Johnny hummed quietly along before wrapping an arm around you and pulling you closer.

You shifted in place so you could throw your legs over his and hugged his side, closing your eyes and enjoying the peaceful moment. You listened to his quiet humming and felt his fingers dancing along your waist to the rhythm.

Just as you were beginning to forget about everything else around you, and find yourself immersed in the comforting moment with Johnny, you received yet another rude awakening. Johnny jolted forward, yelping in pain from being kicked in the shoulder by Haechan.

"Hey, calm down, now," Johnny warned, his voice deepening as a frown appeared on his face. For once, he was getting a bit irritated as well.

"Sorry, hyung," Haechan half-heartedly apologized before rolling over to his stomach on the bed, feet up in the air. He continued whispering to himself as he played.

Johnny leaned into your ear to apologize with a whisper. You only shook your head, silently telling him it wasn't his fault. You kissed his cheek to give him further assurance.

The song switched to a slow ballad. Johnny's head perked up, causing you to shoot him a questioning look. He turned to you with a charming smile before pulling away and getting up into a crouch. He offered you his hand and bowed slightly.

"May I have this dance?" He asked, smile widening as he saw your slightly weirded out reaction.

You stared with a surprised look as his hand inched closer, grabbing yours. Before you could verbally answer, you were already being pulled up to your feet.

He wrapped his arms around you and gently guided your head to rest on his chest. You circled your arms around his torso and breathed in his scent, the smell of his shower gel filling your nostrils. You hummed in delight and embraced him a bit tighter.

"You have a great taste in shower gels," Johnny whispered before placing a tender kiss on the top of your head. "Thanks for the recommendation."

You smiled. "No problem. I'm glad you like it."

You two continued to dance as the music continued, filling the space with a certain kind of calmness. The feeling was nice. Being wrapped around your boyfriend, stepping side to side to the beautiful music playing while receiving gentle kisses from him here and there... If only the moment could have lasted forever.

For a while, you really did forget about everything around you as your lips neared each other's, ready to envelop the other pair in a soft kiss. Barely apart, you were forced to pull away as yet another awfully timed interruption by curses being yelled from the direction of the bed caused you to part.

"Haechan!" Both you and Johnny yelled out in frustration at the same time. The moment was once again ruined. You were beginning to think Haechan was doing it on purpose.

"How did I lose? This is so unfair," Haechan talked to himself, unbothered by the scolding.

You and Johnny gave up and sat down again, hoping to drown out the sound of Haechan ruining the mood all over again.

You focused on the music, sitting side to side with his head resting on yours, his fingers playing with yours. You smiled down as his big hand enveloped yours, grasping and lifting it to give him the chance to kiss your knuckles.

The sounds coming from Haechan were lessening, he was becoming quieter by the minute. After some time, soft snores were heard coming from the bed. Both you and Johnny turned to confirm that the younger boy had entered dreamland.

"Fast asleep," Johnny while gazing at the sleeping form of his younger friend. "On my bed."

You shook your head, chuckling. You heard nearly inaudible mumbles coming from him, even in his sleep he seemed to be making a bit of noise.

"Does he always talk in his sleep?" You asked and turned to Johnny, only to be met with a shocked face.

"No," he said, brows furrowing, "This is a first."

The two of you observed the sleeping boy, trying to keep your laughs quiet as he muttered out words here and there, most of them incoherent.

The two of you let him sleep in peace and turned away, backs resting on the bed as you stared off into the wall. The music stopped abruptly, and so you remained with no working electronics.

"I'm sorry," Johnny apologized once again.

You shook your head, taking his hand in yours and squeezing. "No reason to be," you told him, smiling. "This came out of the blue. You couldn't have prevented it in any way."

"I wish I would have come to your place instead. At least we could have been alone for some time."

You nodded, agreeing. "But this isn't that bad," you continued, nodding your head back, referring to Haechan. "Besides, it couldn't have been that fun for him to be third-wheeling with us. I would have been annoyed too."

You smiled, watching the younger boy sleep with the pillow finding its way in his tight embrace. Finally, some peace and quiet. "At least he's knocked out now."

Johnny nodded, a smirk appearing on his lips.

"Maybe we won't get interrupted this time."

He reached his hand out to the side of your face and pulled you in for a sweet kiss, lips gently molding against yours. Though you finally got to the kissing part, lips on each other's, it was cut short by an incoherent yelp coming from sleeping Haechan.

Nearly bursting out laughing, both of you had to pull away abruptly while covering your mouths and trying hard to suppress the giggles. Luck really wasn't on your side that night.

After a while of somehow calming yourselves down, you two ended up calling in for the night. You two lay down on Haechan's bed and wished each other a good night, hoping to wake up to a fully working electricity once again.

Before either of you could fall asleep, the power turned on as did the lights. You both opened your eyes but squinting, only been used to the dim candlelight for the past hours. You sat up, hearing shuffling from the bed beside you.

Due to the brightness, Haechan woke up as well. He rubbed his sleepy eyes before swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He looked to both you and Johnny before jumping up to his feet. "Power's back. Time for another round!" He ran up to his computer to begin playing again.

You and Johnny both groaned out loud and lied back down, throwing half of your body over Johnny's who was reaching behind him. He picked up a small plastic bag and offered you some earmuffs from it. You gladly accepted them, putting in yours, as did Johnny. You both closed your eyes again, hoping that most of the noise would be drowned out. It was time to finally sleep, even with a distraction. This time, you were very adamant to not let him, Haechan, win.

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galahadwilder · 4 years

Text

Unwise

Ch. 2: In Which Too Many People Turn Patrols Into Dates

Happy birthday @alexseanchai! You wanted more Unwise? Here you go!

Convincing Fu to let her bring out the other Miraculi on a semi-permanent basis had been a chore in and of itself. Feast had proven the depth of his paranoia—though, to be fair, it’s not technically paranoia if people are actually out to get you—and she wasn’t prepared to lose Tikki a second time. He’d refused to allow her to bring out more Miraculi, until she’d forcefully reminded him that A. she is a full-fledged Guardian now, he’d said that himself, and B. She, a child, is the one on the front lines while he hides. (She hates bringing that up, because she knows why he’s doing it, but it was that or go insane.)

Eventually, he’d relented, though he’d let her take only the ones who’d already proven themselves. Which was fine, it wasn’t like she was planning on doing any recruiting anytime soon.

She’d been planning to hand out all of the Miraculi herself, as usual, but as soon as she’d had them in her hands she’d paused, reconsidered. Chat was right—trying to do everything herself has been driving her insane. She already knows that, if she goes down, Chat can take the earrings and Mister Bug it up—or, in an emergency situation, just Cataclysm a butterfly and wait for her to get back up—so there’s a little bit of the weight off there. But the fact is, he was originally never supposed to know the identities of any of the backup, and if she were to have gone down in that situation he’d have been left to continue the fight alone in a way that she never would. The thought makes her want to vomit.

And she can’t deny that the way Chat’s face lit up when she asked him to help her distribute the Miraculi had done something funny in her tummy. Not love, of course, nor attraction—absolutely not that, stop laughing Tikki—but something. She’d laid out all of the Miraculi Fu had let her take on their favorite rooftop, then, after a moment’s consideration, handed him the Horse, the Bee, and the Dragon (she’d briefly passed her hand over the snake, but she saw the way he tried to suppress a shudder; curious as his reaction made her, she knew she couldn’t let herself think about what that was about, lest she learn something she shouldn’t).

She picked up the Fox, the Snake, the Turtle, and the Mouse, then paused, thought, made a decision. “You already know who the mouse is,” she said. “If you ever need an illusionist, and I’m not there to help you...” She held up the foxtail necklace. “This one goes to the Ladyblogger.”

Chat froze. “My Lady,” he said, the Dragon choker dangling between his claws, “are you... sure I should know this?”

She nodded. “You said yourself, I can’t keep doing this alone,” she said. “You’re my partner.”

There’d been no big meeting; someone might’ve noticed that Multimouse wasn’t there, and that would lead to questions she doesn’t want to answer. She’d made a list of reasons why, but surprisingly, Chat had asked for none of them, simply agreeing with her out of hand.

The whole thing is going swimmingly, and yet she can’t help feeling guilty about how she’d arranged the patrols. She’d insisted on not letting Rena Rouge and Carapace patrol together, since there was no way either of them could tear away from each other in a non-emergency situation, so for the first two few nights she’d rotated them through everyone but each other, just to keep from ill-advised makeouts. And yet, here she is, having intentionally arranged herself on patrol with Adrien...

God, she’s a hypocrite.

She can honestly say that after a week of letting other holders cover patrols, she’s more rested than she’s been in a while. But she’s done so many stupid things to spend time with Adrien, it’s not like one more will make a difference at this point, right? And at least this way she’s doing something productive with it. She hopes. If she can, you know, actually hold it together around him to do anything.

“Tikki,” she groans into her hands, her elbows propped on her desk. “Tell me I’m doing the right thing.” The cursor blinks on the anonymous Google schedule she’s been sharing with the team, waiting for her to confirm the time of her first patrol as Multimouse. Her first patrol with Adrien. She wonders, idly, what he’ll choose for his name.

Tikki sighs from her spot on Marinette’s pincushion, rolling a chocolate chip between her paws. “I don’t know,” she says. “Master Fu had very good reasons not to let the rest of us out of the box, but you also have very good reasons.” She looks up at Marinette, her blue eyes shining with compassion. “I do worry about you.”

“I’m just happy to be out and about,” Mullo says, climbing onto Marinette’s phone and poking the screen with delight. “So much new technology! I didn’t get to see this last time you wore me.”

“Not that,” Marinette says, dropping her hands onto the desk—then she tilts her head. “Well, yes that, but not what I’m asking about right now.” She sighs, staring at the calendar block. “Am I being... selfish, with this schedule?”

Tikki purses her lips, then turns the chocolate chip on its side and starts rolling it back and forth on the desk beneath one paw, staring at it pensively.

“Tikki?” Marinette whispers.

Tikki grimaces. “You know you’re not supposed to use your powers for personal gain,” she says. “I’ve told you before.”

Marinette swallows. “I remember,” she whispers.

Tikki tilts her head. “On the other hand,” she says, “this might be more practical than you think.”

Marinette blinks. “What?”

“If he is going to be a full-time member of the team, it might help to acclimate yourself to his presence?” Tikki says, a small smile spreading across her face. “We wouldn’t want you to start tripping over your words in the middle of combat.” She flings the chocolate chip straight up, then launches her tiny body from the desk, swallowing it in a single gulp in a manner reminiscent of the poster for Jaws.

“Hey!” Marinette protests. “I did fine last time!”

“You said one sentence and you had to use Sass to practice it eight times first,” Tikki says with a smug grin, crossing her arms.

Marinette bites her lip, then rolls her eyes. “You see how mean she is to me?” she says to Mullo.

“Hm? What?” the rat says, her head perking up and twisting back and forth. “I’m sorry, I was distracted by this...” Her turns back to the phone, where she’s been swiping between app pages with wide eyes. “Um, magic screen thing.”

Tikki giggles. “Not everything humans do is magic, Mullo.” She flits around to Marinette’s eye level. “Marinette. The day I told you not to use your powers for personal gain? That was our third time out. I didn’t know you then. I do now.” She reaches out, laying her palm on Marinette’s cheek. “You’ve grown into a responsible and professional young woman, and Master Fu has selected you to be the next Guardian.” She floats back. “I trust your judgment. And besides, you deserve a break.” She gestures to the computer screen, where the calendar is still waiting, unfinished. “If this is what you want to do? Then you should do it.”

Marinette swallows as tears brim in her eyes. “I—thank you, Tikki,” she whispers.

“Of course,” Tikki says, zipping forward to hug Marinette’s cheek again. “I love you so much, Marinette.”

“I love you too,” Marinette says, cupping her Kwami to her cheek with her palm.

“Oh my Guardians!” Mullo sobs. “You—you two— you are...” She rolls over onto her back, letting out a tiny melodramatic wail. “Your friendship is so perfect!”

Tikki snorts, backing away from Marinette’s cheek. “Okay. Back down there, Squeakers.”

Marinette sets her jaw, looking at the screen. “So,” she says, “I’m doing this?”

Tikki nods. Mullo rolls back onto her stomach, looking back at her expectantly.

Marinette nods back. “I’m doing this,” she says, and presses her finger down on Enter.

This was a mistake this was a mistake this was a mistake this was a mistake—

Sapis (who looks amazing in his costume, his gossamer half-cape floating off his back, furry cuffs on his wrists, black streaks in his carefully styled hair to resemble antennae—oh, she’s going to be gushing about this to Tikki later) is looking at her with eyes like the night sky, golden irises inset on black sclera, and she feels all the breath leave her body. She’s seen enough of Adrien’s patented “Soft Eyes” in candid shots from Alya that she thought she’d be immune, but nope, photographs have in no way prepared her for the real thing. Sweet Kwamis, she’s going to die and she hasn’t even said a word to him yet.

Say something, Ladybug, she tells herself. But under Sapis’ gaze, in Multimouse’s suit that she’s suddenly aware came out far more cute than her usual reassuringly minimalist design, she doesn’t feel like Ladybug, so when she opens her mouth, she only manages to squeak.

Nice, she thinks, mentally kicking herself. Well done. Very professional.

“H-hi!” she yelps. “Are you, um...” She grips her elbow, her free hand playing with the tail of the jump rope tied around her waist. “Queen Bee’s replacement?”

“Yep,” he says in an exaggeratedly deep voice. He takes a Superman stance, pressing his fists to his hips, and turns his eyes dramatically to look somewhere slightly behind her. It looks generally ridiculous, and he clearly knows it. “Sapis, at your service.”

“Sapis?” she says, squinting one eye, trying to remember if she knows what that means in Latin. Sagesse... that’s the same root, right? “Wisdom?”

His whole face lights up, and her heart leaps in her chest. “Old Latin pun,” he says. “Si sapis, sis apis.” He steps forward, holding out a hand. “If you’re wise? Be a bee.”

She stares at him, looking at his hand, then his face, then his hand, then his face. She has—she knows what she’s supposed to do here, but this is Adrien trying to introduce himself, and she knows it’s him, and he doesn’t know it’s her, and she has to get this impression exactly right. The joke is stupid, silly, it’s so very Chat Noir that she’s caught off guard and suddenly her chest is bubbling, she’s laughing, and oh god is he going to think that she’s laughing at him? Is he going to be disappointed? Is he going to be crushed? Oh Kwamis, is he going to hate her forever?

And then his eyes shut, and he giggles, pure and clear, and it’s just like that moment after the umbrella closed on her head. Lightning strikes in her heart all over again, and it’s everything she can do not to fall on her steadily reddening face.

Finally, he calms down, but when his golden-black eyes turn back to her he’s still beaming. “So,” he says, gesturing to her necklace, “Chat Noir tells me you’re really good with that thing.”

She reaches up, fingers it nervously. “I—pretty good, yeah.”

Sapis grins, hoisting his trompo. “Wanna show me what you’ve got?”

A slow, sly grin spreads across her face in answer as she reaches for her jump rope, the confidence building in her chest. This is familiar territory. This, she can handle. “You’re on, bee boy.”

Adrien wants to see what she can do? He won’t even know what hit him.

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bangtanfancamp · 5 years

Text

Honey (PJM)

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

��masterlist

•jimin idol au! x reader

•7.6k words

•fluffy stuff, she gets a bit angsty though, but swiftly back to the fluffy stuff. like a cotton candy sandwhich...idk. I regret that metaphor. Immediately 🤭😂🙈. Lol.

•one shot

• (technically in the same universe as this drabble, but can be read totally independent of each other) happy birthday, baby boy

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

Jimin was positively glowing today. The buzz around him was always electric after a performance, but it was extra fantastic today. He’d been in his element all night and it showed- he carried himself differently then. He stood taller, shoulders back, chest and perfect chin lifted to the heavens. his skin glistened under the can lights like fresh dew in the morning sun and god, were you helplessly in love with him.

After you’d accepted his proposal, he was insistent that you be present on as much of the tour as possible. He’d said he couldn’t stand to be away from you so he’d swept you up and away into his breakneck pace with him. Which is precisely how you wound up here- half a world away, snacking on a bite sized lemon tart behind the set of a British late night talk show and trying your absolute hardest to keep up as the boys were herded away to take photos following their performance.

The press tour for their new comeback had found the boys in five cities in the past four days- it had been relentless- but Jimin was beaming. Your beautiful boy was doing exactly what he was made for. Laughing and smiling with every stranger he met, enticing a crowd as he danced, drinking in this big fantastic world with bright eyes at every opportunity. You- however- were exhausted.

Sure it was exhilarating to see his life but it was another thing entirely to live it. Especially since this wasn’t actually your job- so you were never entirely quite sure what to do with yourself. You cheered on every performance and celebrated at every dinner, but there was also a tremendous amount of time where you couldn’t really be with Jimin and didn’t actually have something to do. You felt like such a stranger all the time who didn’t know how to keep up the pace.

You’d never been around this many people and you were terrified of getting in the way. No matter how incredible this was, it was still his job. You were a nervous wreck fearing you’d accidentally mess something up. Your elegant eggshell dance was getting overwhelming- that is, until you’d see him. His eyes would find you across the room and crease into those perfect moons and in an instant, you knew you’d do anything for him. You knew you were right where you belonged. You swear, that smile was how he got you to do everything these days. You weren’t really complaining either.

The crowd pushed you into a room filled with giant light panels and sweeping white backdrops- a perfect space to capture the seven golden boys on film. Jimin was standing coifed and perfect along the far edge of the room. He was still in his structured yellow suit from his performance and his presence honestly filled the entire room. His hair had been newly tinted the most delicious shade of honey for this comeback and swept away from his elegant face. The way it shamelessly showed off his bone structure made him look so regal and highborn. You’d be clamoring in line to take his picture too.

As the boys were arranged in line across the backdrop, you noticed Jimin’s eyes searching for someone. You’d assumed he was probably looking for a stylist or staff member until his ethereal grey eyes settled on you, waving you over. Hesitantly, you wove through the cloud of people and settled beside him.

“Yes, love?” You whispered.

“There you are. You’ve been so far away all night!” He was directed to form a bit of a long conga line-esque shape with his boys, him forming the caboose, and twisted his back away from you. You tried to slip out of frame, but he slipped a hand back to grab you.

“Hey, no. Stay with me. I missed you all night.”

“Jimin, you’re working. I’ll get in the way. You can’t use a shot if I’m accidentally in it”

“Then they’ll crop you out.” He insisted.

“Baby, I’m serious. Let me go.” You pleaded, nervously glancing around the set.

“Stay.” He said firmly, his voice resolute but sweet. “I want you by me.” He peaked back over his shoulder with the most dazzling smile. Shoot. And just like that, you were lost all over again.

“Jimin, that’s not fair. How dare you trick me like that.” Your brows furrowed as your lower lip stuck out.

“Like what?” He asked innocently. His giggle was infectious as he licked his lips to stifle a smile. “I’m not doing anything.”

“You know damn well how good you look right now. I don’t appreciate you using it against me” You pouted. He deftly slipped his hands behind him, tugging your wrists until they slipped around his waist. Curse this flirtatious boy. He knew exactly how to pull you in. Your eyes still danced around the room to make sure no one from BigHit was coming for your head, but when no one did, you felt your resolve crack as your cheeks happily pressed against his back with a smile he couldn’t see. The citrus swell of his cologne was warm and sweet, and God, it made you just want to take a bite out of him.

His head dipped forward as he laughed, showing off his beautiful neck. Forgetting yourself, you pressed forward on your toes, leaning into his back to come up and over to kiss the bare skin on his neck, a shudder running through him. God, he was so pretty. He’d gotten so much sun this year. First on vacation with the boys and then with you. The bright suit and dirty blonde hair just highlighted how beautiful his skin was these days. As the tip of your nose trailed across golden skin, You couldn’t help but sink a cloud of kisses into it as his airy giggle floated around your ears.

“See? You clearly missed me too. I don’t know why you’re complaining.” He winked back over his shoulder at you, wisps of blonde hair falling into his face. He tipped his chin down to give the camera heavy lidded eyes as his free hand snaked behind him to tangle with your fingers

“You’re a troll, you know that? Can’t stand you.” You sneared, nose scrunched but lips curled in a smile, tugging a hand free in defiance.

“What a shame. Cuz I can’t live without you.” He sing songed. “This tour is gonna get real uncomfortable with that kind of attitude, y/n. Just sayin.” He shrugged nonchalantly, a smug smile on his devilish lips. He hadn’t caught the way your heart sank at his words.

“It’s already hard for me.” You confessed to no one but yourself. Your words had been the smallest ghost of a whisper beneath your breath, but they pricked Jimin’s heart immediately.

“Hey. Wait….What?” Jimin shifted his weight back on his hip, his sculptured face softening in concern as you tried to slip your guilty hand away. Shoot. “Hey. No, don’t. I heard that, Jagi. What’s wrong?”

Your cheeks blushed softly, guilt tinting them pink at being caught. “Oh nothing. I’m sorry baby. Don’t worry about it. Forget that.”

“Y/n. How am I supposed to do that?” His free hand ruffled through his immaculately styled hair. It should have ruined it but only made it prettier. You sighed wistfully as you watched him spin his fingers through it. Taking a small step back, your shoulders dropped low, relieved to finally be fully out of frame as the tips of your right hand brushed his palm behind his back.

“Because I asked you to.” You said simply.

“Y/n. But you’re-God, I wish we could wrap this up so I could speak to you properly.” He sighed, displeasure clouding his features.

As the camera shifted to focus on an animated Hoseok, you took the moment to steal another kiss to the back of Jimin’s neck. He still smelled so clean and soft and so like him, but you could taste the salt lingering on his skin from his performance on your lips when you pulled back. He usually tasted so sweet, so like sunshine. The sharpness you tasted now reminded you that you weren’t just together in your own little world anymore.

“I’ll be fine, baby. Don’t worry about me.” You smiled into his skin again before slowly pulling away. Oh Jimin. You really did mean it. You loved him. You were so grateful to see his world and just be in the general stratosphere orbiting around him. How many people got an opportunity like this? You were fully aware of what a gift this was.

But at the same time, you felt so small in all this. What purpose did you serve here? How were you adding to the world? This was Jimin’s contribution- not yours. You felt lazy watching the entire room swarm to keep this machine going- stylists, directors, producers, performers. Jimin practiced and performed for hours a day just to fly overnight to start it all over again in a new city. You were barely keeping up, you hardly knew what was going on, and You just felt so…..small.

A stillness and displeasure had crept into Jimin’s features as the shoot progressed. His eyes were stony. His jaw set. He looked beautiful and furious and pissed.

You’d slipped back to the far edge of the room, your aura slowly collapsing in on itself as the night wore on, shrinking to hide yourself. You felt responsible for distracting him, like you’d just self fulfilled your own nervous prophecy that you’d accidentally eff something up on set, and you couldn’t bare to see the mess you’d made.

Jimin had immediately noticed the lack of your presence. The skin of his neck was cooling without the warmth of your lips pressed against it anymore, but he couldn’t move. And he couldn’t leave. Not yet. And It infuriated him. More than anything, he wanted to rush to your side. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he was willing to mold the whole world in his hands to fix whatever it was.

At this point, he was sweaty and tired and annoyed. He desperately wanted to take these damn contacts and all this stupid makeup off and just go hold his girl- but the shoot kept rolling on. His temper was beginning to flair with each new position they were shuffled into. He was ready to leave. When was this damn shoot gonna end?

Taehyung was the first to notice Jimin’s surly demeanor as he placed a loving hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“You look like you’re about to murder someone. What on earth is going on? Where’s y/n? I feel like I haven’t seen her all night.” He shook his shaggy bangs from his eyes, lifting his broad chin for the next shot.

“She was here earlier…..” Jimin sighed.

“Yeah, didn’t you see the lovebirds cuddling on the edge of the set?” Jin popped in, lips pouted and blowing hollow kisses out at the air. “Practicing for the honeymoon already, huh? I know you guys are gonna get married soon but calm down, bro.”

Ignoring Jin’s cheekiness, Jimin continued on. “Something’s bothering her. I just don’t know what. And for the love of god, this shoot will. not. end.” His words came garbled through gritted teeth.

“Do you think that’s part of it?” Taehyung queried.

“What do you mean?” Jimin asked.

“Well, I mean this is exhausting for us, but poor y/n just gets dragged around with us all day. She has to wait on us all the time. She probably misses her life back home.” Taehyung proposed calmly, shifting a hip to slip his hand in his pocket.

“She probably misses you. She came on a three week trip to spend time with someone who works eighteen hours a day and she just has to watch. She’s not at home in her studio or with her friends to pass the time. She’s probably lonely. And bored.” Jin added.

“Oh god, hyung. You’re probably right.” Jimin’s eyes found you across the room, leaned against the wall by the snack table before quickly starting out of the way as a stylist zipped by with a clothing rack. You didn’t seem like yourself. He felt like an idiot for not catching it sooner.

“Of course I’m right! Why do you sound so surprised??You should listen to me more often . I’ve got endless advice.” Jin said proudly. Taehyung rolled his eyes, fake gagging a little at his friend’s arrogance before being quickly being swatted in the shoulder. “Yah! I saw that. You’re lucky to know someone as wise and as handsome as me. Maybe if you listened, you would learn something.”

“Ow! I learned you hit like a girl.” Taehyung quipped, rubbing his arm.

“What?! Oh! Come here- I’ll show you how to fight!” Jin dropped into a boxing stance, crouched with his fists up, bouncing and darting around Taehyung. The shoot was quickly devolving into chaos as an enthusiastic Jungkook joined in the dance, happy to bounce and box and chirp around the other boys. Hoseok joined in, squealing out cartoon sound effects as Namjoon apologized to the photographer for their actions.

Jimin took it as his cue to slip away and find you.

“Hey, do you wanna get out of here?”

You jumped the second the crystalline whisper floated into your ears, gasping sharply only to be calmed by his gentle steady arms.

“Jimin? Where did you come from?” Your eyes wide with panic, looking back toward the chaos erupting on set, but Jimin slipped a ring laden hand against your cheek to pull you back to him.

“Wherever I had to to get to my favorite girl.” His smile was so sweet. “Hey, I’m starving and I really want to get out of here. Come with me?” How could you say no to eyes like those, so boyish and wide and full of hope.

“Okay,” you agreed, head bobbing your assent. He took his cue immediately, grabbing your hand and beginning to slip away. “But, wait! Jimin! Won’t you get in trouble? I don’t want to cause anything.”

Jimin turned over his shoulder to dismiss you, but stopped the second he saw your face. Worry was making you chew your bottom lip as your sweet eyes looked wide and startled up at him. He knew better. He knew that face. You were an anxious mess. He wasn’t gonna get you anywhere until he addressed this first, but before even bothering with his words, he dipped down to kiss you.

Nothing passionate or heated- just something soft and gentle, to get your attention. A simple kiss to bring you back to earth. God, you’d missed this. You melted pliant into his lips, wobbling a little when he pulled back, luminous smile glittering across his face. He laced his fingers into yours.

“We won’t get in trouble. Promise.I’d like to see them try. You’re with me….I got you. Do you really think they’d have the nerve to mess with the future Mrs. park Jimin? Please. C’mon.” He winked and your spine tingled.

Jimin called a driver to meet you both at the back entrance and take you back to the hotel. He wove you through hallways and rooms you hadn’t noticed before to grab his things and swept you toward the exit. Before he walked out, he stopped- snatching a jacket out of his bag.

“For you, my love.” He slipped the oversized cream hoodie over your head and pulled the hood up over your face, hiding your hair, sleeves spilling over your delicate fingertips. “God you look good in my clothes. I always forget.” He licked his lips, eyes warm as they danced over you. “C’mon. Let’s get you out of here.” He slipped a mask over his jawline, popped a pair of shades over his eyes and tugged you into the night, guiding you into the black suv.

The ride back to the hotel was quick, quiet, peaceful. It was the first bright splash of stillness either of you had gotten to indulge in all day, and talking would just shatter it too soon. Jimin leaned back against his seat, manspread in his tailored yellow suit with his elegant neck craned back against the headrest. He’d undone his top few shirt buttons, the smooth skin underneath kissed by the night air. His fingers were busy raking through his thick hair as his eyes danced over the city. His hair had taken on an ashy hue in the streetlights, and as you both slipped into the night, his sultry eyes finally closed- if just for a second.

Window rolled down, you pushed your hood back a bit to take in the sights of a city you may never be lucky enough to see again. The wind whipped fluttery tendrils of your hair out of place, but you didn’t mind at all. It was the first time all day that you’d finally let your guard begin to drop and it felt amazing…

Your fingers reached behind you to twirl loosely with his on the seat between you. He happily took your hand in both of his, making a proper profession of caressing your knuckles softly. He still had his rings on from his performance, the cool metal occasionally tapping against your skin. A smile tugged at the corner of your lips at the contact and finally- you decompress.

It was the first time in days that you both sat still with no other people around. You couldn’t imagine how he exists under that kind of press all day long. It’s ignited a new respect in you for him and all that’s asked of him. It’s an impressive feat indeed for any human, especially one as sensitive and sweet as Jimin.

You wonder- for the first time -why it had never occurred to you on this trip to ask how he was doing. He had just seemed so happy despite all the reasons he should be overwhelmed so you assumed he was fine…but maybe you should get out of your head enough to check on him. I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to-

“Hey baby, we’re here.” Jimin tugged at your fingers, snapping you back to the moment. “You floating off in space again?” He whispered soft as he pressed a kiss to your knuckles. He was smiling like the midday sun at you again and there went your train of thought. “He’s gonna pull us around back so we don’t get spotted, but just in case..” he reached forward to tug your hood back up, this time swooping it so far it covered your eyes entirely . You felt like a fransican monk in stylish streetwear but you laughed and went along with it and Jimin loved you just a little bit more for it.

Once again, a simple task had taken longer than necessary for the both of you. They’d had to weave you through hallways and stairs and back rooms in an attempt to avoid the press and fans flocking in the lobby and valet parking. Jimin was sweet, whispering in your ear like this was a covert spy mission to distract you from how long this was all taking.

Forty minutes later, you were finally in your hotel rooms. Jimin had kissed your nose and told you he needed to get out of these clothes and clean up but he’d be right back with you. You took the opportunity to promptly collapse on your back on the luscious bed, limbs splayed like a high and dry starfish, and let all the tension of the day drain from you.

Your skirt, tights and heels were quickly replaced with soft pajama shorts, your bra and blouse immediately discarded, but found yourself crawling back into Jimin’s hoodie. It smelled like him, and the oversized cosiness of it made you feel lazy and warm-and you were 100% down for that. Dragging your bag over to your bedside, you dug around until you found your makeup wipes and began to scrub off the day. Legs crossed beneath you, you settled into your routine. You hair had been fortuitously flopped up into a bun, and your eyeliner was being gently smudged away as a happy tranquility descended over you.

Half an hour later, the door clicked as your Jimin made his way into the room. The press tour had been a lot- it had presented a lot of challenges you never expected, but that didn’t mean there were no rewards. One of your favorites was seeing Jimin like this- fresh from the shower, just a natural boy.

Your eyes danced over the clothes he’d snatched to throw on. Over how unfair it was that he somehow looked even better when he didn’t try- an oversized white T-shirt with a too wide collar showing off his pretty throat and chest, and soft black joggers- the epitome of comfort- that did nothing to hide his dancers stride or his perfect backside. Stupidly pretty boy.

So unfair.

“Hey, baby girl” he smiled, flopping on his belly beside you. His weight made you bounce a bit, giggling to yourself. His face was bare enough for his dusting of freckles to show, and all his pale honey hair flopped forward heavily into his eyes. As vain as he always seemed about his hair, by the end of the day on tour he was just perfectly too tired to style it and you adored it. It was so god dang boyish and cute, and You loved how you got to part it out of his eyes like a curtain every time you kissed him on the forehead like you did just now.

“Why do you still have all your jewelry on? I’ve never understood that” you reached forward to trace a finger lightly under the chain on his neck.

His smile is airy and light as he rolls over to face you.

“Do I? I honestly just forget it’s there.im so used to it all now” He’s so winsome and innocent as he scoops his hair out of his eyes to smile up at you. There’s really no reason to though- his grin is pressing his cheeks so high and tight that his crescent eyes shut anyway. You dip forward from your hips with a smile to blow at his bangs.

“You really are an old pro by now huh? How do you do this all the time? and how do I keep up with you?” You ask easily, shaking your head softly at the ethereal creature on your duvet.

“Do what? Get my hair played with by a pretty girl? It’s not that hard. They’re lining up around the block for it really. But None of them are ever as good at is as you though.....Plus, your services come much cheaper. Professional cuddlers really make you pay through the noise these days.” He settles back against your lap, the picture of contentment as you play with the strands.

“You punk,” you tease, popping him in the forehead. “For your sake, I will ignore the fact that you just called me easy.” A wicked eyebrow arched over your features as you stuck your tongue out at him.

“Not easy. You just don’t charge what your worth.” He said smugly, cuddling into your lap.

“Impossible, that’s what you are.” You sigh.

“Impossibly in love….with your heart.” He quips. Oh god that was corny. Unashamed, he presses on, beaming up at you with puckered lips, fingers crafted into two hearts.

“Ew! That was gross.” You pretend to wretch at his cheesiness, choosing to ignore the goofy swirl of warmth in your belly at his words.

“We both know you love it, y/n. You can’t fool me.” He says smugly.

“Oh can’t I? I could if I wanted to.” You defend.

“And why would you want to? Hmm? Why would you want to hide something from me?” His eyes flit up to you, suddenly a bit more serious. It’s the first time you notice he’s taken his contacts out- the beautiful chocolate eyes you fell in love with looking solemn up at you.

“Who says I am?” You shift beneath him, gaze suddenly infatuated with the rooms decor. God that orchid arrangement is ostentatious.

“Even Jin can tell. So you know it’s obvious.” He deadpans.

“All knowing Jin huh? Idk, I mean he’s pretty perceptive. I wouldn’t undercut him.” You ramble.

“Y/n….” he flips up, to see you at eye level. “You know if something’s bothering you, you can talk to me, right? If we can’t even talk to each other, we’re not gonna get very far. What is it, Jagi? Where have you been lately?” He taps your temple lightly, his face soft to show you every word is genuine.

“I don’t… um, I mean… there’s nothing wrong. Per say… I just…”

He pins you with a look that says spill and your facade begins to crumble. “Y/n… I didn’t give you this because I don’t know you.” His thumb brushes over the glittering detail of your ring. “You’re not telling me something.” At this, you melt. Just flop over and dissolve into a pile of mush as his honesty makes your heart squeeze. You hate when he’s sweet. You hate when he’s right. You thought you’d hid it better than this….

“Besides,” he continues, “Even if I didn’t know you, you’re a shit liar, babe. Those big eyes show everything. They just don’t give specifics- so spill.” His smile is kind but his eyes hold a challenge- he isn’t going to drop this. No way in heck is he letting this go. Brows furrowed, your resolve begins to crumple.

“Jimin….”

“Y/n…. Spill.”

With a heaving sigh, you acquiesce.

“Fine…” you huff. “I have no idea what I’m doing here! I’m an absolute disaster.” Your head hangs as you begin to pour heart out, hands flailing, downturned eyes completely unable to meet Jimin’s.

“I constantly feel like I’m in the way. I’m struggling to keep up with everything and I don’t- I don’t know what to do with myself. And all I can think of is - is this what my whole life is gonna be? Do I either have to go half the year without you or drop my whole life and feel lost and terrified to follow you around the world with no purpose of my own? I’m not part of the big hit machine, but everyone else here is. And everyone here is working so hard and I’m just… what? Here on vacation? Getting in the way and following my famous boyfriend around while he works? I feel like such a groupie… I feel like such a… a nuisance.”

“Stop.” Jimin clutches at your wildly flailing wrists. “Baby, stop. My groupie? Are you serious right now?”

“Yes! I am. Jimin, I love what you do. My God, you are so incredible when you sing and dance- the way you move- don’t make that sexual, you know what I mean- you…. you are the most amazing performer I’ve ever seen. You have worked so hard for this for so long. I remember when you were so stressed that you were barely eating or the nights I’d text you at 1am to tell you goodnight and find out you were still in the studio. And it’s paying off for you. Which is great because I don’t know anyone else who deserves this worldwide praise like you do- but baby, I’m a freelancer. I put in the effort but my work is never thriving. I can’t even begin to be in the same eschalon as you. I still have two roommates back home.”

“So? I have six,” his eyes are so warm but his brows are still knitted together, trying to follow what’s really underneath all this.

“Not because you have to. Not because you’d be on the street without two other people supporting your rent! I’ve got all these things I love to do, right? But they don’t pay the bills for me. My businesses have never turned into what I hope, but there are 14 year olds on Instagram who decide to sell something they make on whim and a month later it’s so successful that they’re verified…. and I’m… I’m just….”

“Baby?” Jimin dips forward to lift your chin. His eyes find yours and he smiles…. he simply smiles at you- warm and kind and lightfilled like nothing you’ve said has scared him the way it scares you. It helps you finish what you’ve started to say.

“I don’t want to hold you back!” It all rushes out in one clumsy exhale as you shut your eyes tightly, bracing for impact. “I want to be good enough for you. I don’t want to have to depend on you. I want to bring something to the table too. You’re Park Jimin. You’re already a legend. You deserve the whole world...you deserve a girl who works just as hard as you. Is just as successful as you. But I have so many dreams and hopes that just haven’t worked out. They’ve all failed so miserably compared to you and I…. I just… I want to be a wife you can be proud of.. I want … I want to be proud of me too.”

and that’s when the tears fell.

Silent. Unspectacular. Hidden but insistent as you fall in on yourself and Jimin’s heart breaks. He had no idea.

He’s always admired you so much.... He had no idea you thought so little of yourself and it makes him ache. He sees the whole universe when he looks at you. Surely you saw it too.

But right now, you didn’t. You’d been able to come on this tour because business had been that slow that you being gone for three weeks wouldn’t have made a difference. In his excitement to have you by his side, Jimin had offered to cover your share of rent for the month you’d be gone with him and that had been that. He was ecstatic to have you with him . He’d rattled off about it dreamily for weeks before you left. But as excited as you were to see his world with him, for the first time, it made you realize just how small your world was without him. It had bothered you ever since. This was Jimin’s first glimpse of it, and it wrecked him.

“Jagi…. baby, come here.” His airy voice is pleading as he scoops you into his chest. Your nose burrows into his neck, skin squeaky clean from the hotel soap, and you cry. Feeling hidden, unaccomplished and ashamed. You’ve never felt more exposed in your life- you never wanted to tell him any of this. You couldn’t bear the idea of how he’d look at you if he knew, but oh how wrong you were.

“Baby,.... I’ve always been proud of you.” His voice is gentle in your ear, almost a whisper. No one else exists in this moment besides the two of you. He presses his cheek to your forehead, his fingers lost in your hair as he holds you. “You were my best friend when I was a trainee. I felt like a wreck then- I was so stressed out I could barely breathe. But you always told me everything would be okay. Always. You’d remind me why I was special and that the world would see it one day.” You felt his cheek swell as he smiled. “But can I tell you something?”

“What?” You sniffled, a snotty mess beneath him.

“I never believed you.”

Your eyes shot up to meet his. “What?”

He chuckled softly, his thumb delicately brushing a tear from your cheek.

“Nope. Not a bit. I loved hearing your words when you built me up, but I didn’t believe you. Not even when you’d get all starry eyed when you saw me dance or I’d sing to you.” He confessed.

“I never got starry eyed over you.” You mumbled, sniffling and hiding against his skin. Smiling, he gently pinched your cheek and held it.

“Liar.” He kissed your pink face and scrunched his nose at you. “But I’m serious, back then, I wanted what you said to be true. I really did, but I didn’t feel it. Not here. Definitely not.” He brought a hand up to his chest and placed it over his heart.

“I wanted the band to be successful so badly. I knew I could dance and perform, I knew what I could bring. But I thought my singing held us back. People would post videos of me missing my notes or of me tripping and falling on stage. I was smaller than everybody. I’d get ranked least attractive...I felt like the weakest link all the time. And that's what I believed. That’s the voice I listened to. More than anything. Even more than you. Because that’s what felt true. Not the sweet things from my best friend or even the nice words from fans or the other members. We were working so hard, but we never knew if our dreams would happen. People try every day and it doesn’t come true. I didn’t want to be the reason it didn’t come true for everyone else.”

You gazed up at Jimin as he wandered through his memories. Brow pinched and beautiful mouth frowning at the edges as he remembered a time when doubt consumed his world.

“But then there was you. You were so talented and kind and everybody liked you. Everybody. I fought Taehyung to get to close to you. He still won’t let me forget that he saw you first. But I didn’t care, I had to get to know you. You were so incredible and so out of my league. This impossibly pretty girl who I’d had a crush on forever …. I didn’t even think you’d talk to me. Do you have any idea how long it took me to introduce myself to you?”

Curled against his body, you looked up him in awe. He - liked you then? Before you even knew him? How had he never told you any of this? You thought you knew him inside and out, but it seemed Jimin had his secrets too. Eyes wide and soft, you pressed against his chest as you listened.

“But once I did, once we were friends, you’d tell me how amazing I was- all the time! Me! I don’t think you ever understand how insane that was to me. How much much it mattered when you’d say how one day the whole world would see how special the band was- how special I was.

“You’d ask me to sing for your over the phone. You made me laugh when I hated everything. You’d get furious when anyone would criticize me, and you’d make the biggest deal out of all the small accomplishments I thought didn’t matter. You were so kind to me when I was a nobody, when I thought I was small and when the world finally figured out who we were, you already knew because you’d been the biggest fan all along.” He looked down at you, eyes shining with a pride so bright it was hard to look at directly.

“And even after all that, I was still shocked when you let me take you on a date. You were my best friend- but I still thought you could do way better than me. I was nuts about you, don’t get me wrong, but I mean, I was such was a mess, and I....I am talking so much. Like way too much. I know that, but it’s just….. y/n, I need you get this. You saw me when no one else did. That’s why you feel like home, y/n. That’s why I knew I didn’t want anyone else but you beside me for the rest of my life.” He kissed the back of your hand.

“So…. if your life doesn’t look how you want right now, that’s okay. We’re still young. You have so much time. Where you are is normal. I’m the exception, babe. You can’t compare yourself to that. What’s happened with the band is a one in a million fluke. It cant be your standard, baby. If that’s your measuring stick, it’ll destroy you.....But i know this-if anyone can achieve their dreams, it’s you. Without you, I would never have achieved mine. So, if I can help take care of you now, I’m gonna do it. I don’t even have to think twice.” He shrugged easily. A happy lazy smile on his lips. “But i know you. You want to earn your way too. I know you’ll get there. But….promise me, be nice to yourself now. Don’t throw yourself away- for me.”

Cradled in his arms, you looked at the hand Jimin extended to you, pinky crooked and ready to hold on forever. “Promise me,” he whispered, the sound warming your bones. Silently, trouble melting from your shoulders, you sighed. One heave, long and slow enough to process all the love he’s just showered upon you. How could you do anything less than give him your forever? Trust him with your now when he believed in you so much?

“Promise.” You breathed, eyes wide, still dotted with tears and you slipped your pinky around his, holding on for dear life. He melted when you did, scooping you in tighter and pressing his lips to your joined fingers.

“My Jagiya.” His smile beamed down at you, and you felt yourself grow warm in his light. “Hey. Listen, I know I’ve talked a lot, but I’m serious about taking care of yourself. It’ll make life so much easier on the way… I promise. For tour, you don’t have to prove your worth here. Everyone loves you and loves having you around. The stylists all think you’re so pretty. The boys on staff all blush whenever you’re nice to them. Everyone here thinks the world of you. Please let this be a vacation from you feeling like the world is on your shoulders. Just rest here. Or do your art here. We can pick up some art supplies in London and you brought your camera. Jungkook and Tae would love to help with that. And no, you wouldn’t be in the way. People love helping you, y/n. You just have to let them. God I’m talking so much.” He bugged his eyes playfully. Wiping your eyes, you giggled at his silliness.

“Ugh…. baby. I love you. I want you here. We’ll have a proper vacation soon, but while we’re on tour- talk to me. You’re not in the way. You can hang out with us and come to practice and take photos and make art. This is a good thing. We’ll figure out how our world will look when we get married. I’m not willing to give you up. So we’ll figure out how to make us both happy, yeah? It’s that simple” his eyes are starry with promise. It makes you believe him. It makes you realize you’ve been looking at this all wrong.

After several beats of silence, you finally ask, “I’ve been way in my head over this, haven’t I?

“Yes! Dear god, yes.” Jimin slumps exhausted against the headboard. Faking offense, you smack his chest and he rolls with laughter, trapping your hands again and pulling you into him. “You think too goddamn much, woman!” he bellows. “But honestly, it’s just cuz your brain’s so big.” He teases, poking you in the forehead. “Guess I can’t have the smartest girl in the room without her short circuiting and forgetting she’s the most magical thing in the world.”

Sniffling, you protest, “I don’t think anyone’s smarter than Namjoon. “

“And he thinks nothing of himself too. Honestly. A pair of fools, both of you.” His eyes roll.

“Not bad company then. Maybe I should go ask for his advice too.” You bounce your eyebrows teasingly, and Jimin’s jealous streak flairs gloriously as he tackles you on the bed.

“Hey!” He puffs his chest out, eyes squinting in mock fury. “I didn’t rebuild your ego for you to run to another man.” He growls playfully.

“Namjoonie! Come coach me out of my self doubt!” You call in a seductive, breathy tone. Jimin is having none of it.

“And I did not sneak you out of that photo shoot to pretend flirt with my friend. You’ll pay for this.” He challenges.

“Come and get meh” you tease, slipping out from under him just to have him lunge after you. A sharp squeal echoes through the room as you bounce across the bed with Jimin hot on your tail.

“Aaaaaagh!!!!” Jimin lets out a growl as he snatches you around the waist, flopping you both down into the mattress. “You’re gonna pay for that,” he snarls, eyes devilish as he bites at the outer edge of your ear.

“No, I won’t,” you giggle. “Didn’t you hear? Park Jimin has a soft spot for me.”

“Oh does he?” His nose drags across your throat.

“Yeah, I’m his favorite,” you stutter out, suddenly breathless at his touch.

“Hmm, we’ll see about that.” His eyes flick up to yours, and you think he’s come to repossess your soul. Dear god, his eyes. His breath is warm and swirling close, and you try to gather the last of your wits to ask a question before you’re lost beneath him altogether.

“Jimin… baby. Hey.” His attention has fully been lost as his mouth becomes preoccupied with the curve of your thoat. “Jim-oh.” Crap, why is he so good at that? Stuttering, you push through the haze his touch had created, attempting to regain your focus. “ S-stop that… Jimin, I’m trying to...I’ve been meaning to a…”

“Why do you talk so much?” He asks, the tip of his nose playful against yours.

“Jimin,... I’m serious. I need to ask you…”

“What, Jagi?” Letting out a huff, he rocks back to look at you. His voice is calm, teasing, but Whatever self control he’s got is about to snap- you can tell from the way he’s pulling his bottom lip into his teeth, the way his sweet eyes have become so satisfyingly predatory. He’s as hypnotic as a snake right now, fully ready to consume you, and your dumb butt is trying to talk about his feelings. Why are you doing this to yourself exactly?

Pushing your hands against his chest to get some breathing space, you pull back to ask,” I’m sorry my timing is so stupid. Truly, I am. Trust me. But…. I mean, I haven’t bothered to ask how you’re doing. It just feels so inconsiderate of me. I’ve been too wrapped up in my own problems.” You roll your eyes, annoyed at your own thickheadedness.

Jimin’s glassy giggle rings through the air as he dips his forehead to yours, his luscious hair brushing wispy against your skin.

“Me? Oh baby girl. That big heart of yours. I’m fine. This is nothing. Come find me when we’ve been on the same tour for a year and a half. Just a month in? It’s still just all the fun stuff.” His eyes are bright and judgment free, ignoring the fact that he’s flourishing where you’ve been drowning.

“Oh… well, if it ever does get overwhelming, you’ll tell me, right?” You ask, still concerned and trying to save face.

“Trust me- you’ll be able to tell.” He mimics his own angry eyes and you both fall into giggles. “But yes, Jagi.” He drops down to kiss your nose. “I promise I will tell you…. Pinky promise.” He reaches for your palm pressed against his chest and weaves your fingers together- wrapping your pinkies together and linking your thumbs, kissing them gently to lock in his vow. Your eyes flutter soft and loving up at him as he does.

“Good.” You whisper. “Now…. where were we?”

Jimin smiles, triumphant as he stalks close to his kill. “You were about to prove why you were my favorite.”

“Oh was I?”

“Absolutely.” Jimin grips the back of your leg, and in one quick snatch, yanks you to him. Your eyes blow wide as you you yelp helplessly. God, always forget how strong he is, and how much you like it when he shows it off. Satisfied with your submissive reaction, his grin grows impossibly cocky as slots himself on top of you, tongue wetting his impossibly full lips as he finally begins to lean in when...

“JIMIN!!!! Jimin!!!!! We’ve got to do an after show Vlive!!” It was Hoseok, banging a ruckus on jimin’s hotel door.

“Oh my god, are you serious? I’m gonna kill J-hope.” Jimin’s forehead crashes into your neck defeatedly.

“Come on, Jimin! Get off y/n already so we can get finished! ARMY’s waiting! Namjoon tweeted we were gonna start fifteen minutes ago!! Check your phone for once. We all texted you, bruh.” Hoseok blasted through the door.

“Yah!!! All right! All right!! I’m coming!....stupid Namjoon.” He muttered under his breath. “I haven’t properly kissed you in days. Not cool, bro. Not cool.” Jimin pouted. His deep set eyes lost under the furrow of his brows as he brushed his thumb along the curve of your lip, forlorn and pent up.

Teasingly, you caught his thumb with the tip of your tongue and pulled it into your mouth. Warm and soft, you let it go with a gentle pop as you broke the suction and jimin’s eyes blew wide. “Go… I’ll be here when you get back.” You whispered, eyes bright and enticing.

Jimin wove hasty hands into your hair, his breathing ragged. “ wow....How the hell am I supposed to leave you after that?”

“Because…. I said so. And there will be more when you come back.” You winked, loving being in control now. He wasn’t the only one who could play the seduction game.

“Oh my god.” Jimin, swallowed roughly, his eyes heavy lidded as he tried to regain his motor functions.

“Now go, I’ll order room service for you to Hobi’s room. You never had dinner. Go give army a treat, and I’ll treat you when you come back to me.” You kissed his palm as your voice took on the sultry edge that always made Jimin melt.

“Can we do the thing? You know the one where..”

“I know what you’re talking about, Jimin,... and the sooner you go, the sooner you find out if my answer is yes.” You winked, before mouthing “its yes” silently as you nodded at him.

“Yup! There it is! I’m gone!” Pressing a smacking kiss to your forehead, Jimin bounded up from the bed as you fell into a fit of laughter. As he turned back to smile at you from the doorway, your eyes raked over him one last time before snagging on something that made you howl with laughter.

“Jimin- Wait! seriously??? Already? You didn’t even kiss me yet! Put your hands in your pockets! Or only be on camera from chest up!” You cackled at him. Confused, he followed your eyeline to-

“Oh god, is it that… yup. No, it is. God, Jagi, you’re dangerous when I finally get you out of that head of yours.” He reaches down to adjust his joggers, laughing bashfully at the mess you’d made of him.

“Gotta make it up to you somehow,” you shrugged from the bed.

“Hey, no…. I’m serious though. I’m glad you’re feeling okay now. You trusted me to tell me your heart, and that means a lot to me. You sure you’ll be okay if I go?”

“I’m sure. I have a vacation to finally start enjoying.” You smiled, stretching out across the bed. As you shifted, your (Jimin’s) hoodie crept up, showing off a sliver of your stomach and Jimin licked his lips again.

“My god. Look at you. I’ll be gone thirty minutes tops.” He bolted back, planting a kiss that made something along your spine tingle. “Wait for me. I’ll be back” he smiled, peeling himself away to leave before jhope returned with his racket.

“You better…… hey,” you propped up on your elbows and called out to him.

“Yeah?” He looked back, eyes alight with love.

“I love you, park Jimin.”

He blushed, genuine and sappy, eyes crinkling soft along the edges. “I love you too, y/n l/n. And hey, We’ve got this. The whole world’s gonna be ours. We’ll figure it out. We’ve got time.”

Your felt warmth pool in your eyes. You threw a pillow at him so he wouldn’t see you cry. “God, you’re such a sap.” You smiled.

“You know you love it.” He winked. “Bye, baby girl.”

He was right. You did.

fin.

277 notes · View notes

soveryanon · 4 years

Text

Reviewing time for MAG161 /o/

- I… really wasn’t expecting to begin the season with the quiet heartbreak of “what was lost, and what could have been” with tapes explicitly used as time capsules. I really appreciate how this episode was… cruelly poetic? in the way it was shaped through oppositions: Jon and Martin, inside and outside, an observation of past moments and plans for the future.

I was wondering a bit, too, if concretely, we would still remain connected to the Institute somehow (given that circumstances have changed and that Jon&Martin are currently far from it), and yes: most of the episode was recorded moments which happened there, in the Archives, and were deeply grounded in the place (Jon’s unprofessional professional setting, Gertrude trying to make a move against the very essence of the building) so… there is still a deep connection. Everything happened there, had its roots there.

- Big big sense of “Aouch” with the awful irony in their casual exchanges and banter:

(MAG161) ELIAS: And make a wish. ARCHIVIST: If I wish for you all to go away, do you think it’ll work? TIM: He’s so grumpy today, isn’t he Martin? MARTIN: Uh– Oh, well, uh– TIM: [CONSPIRATORY] Do you think it’s his looming sense of mortality? […] So, what did you wish for? [STATIC] ARCHIVIST: I can’t tell you. ELIAS: He wished for a little bit of peace and quiet. […] TIM: Now, alright, alright; fine! Look: I’m turning it off. Any last words for your future selves? ARCHIVIST: Yes. “Fire Tim!” TIM: [LAUGHS] [CLICK.]

… Given that a) Jon lost them and was very conscious of it:

(MAG159) PETER: … Where are your friends, Archivist? [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: Tim and Sasha are dead. [FOOTSTEPS] PETER: [DISTORTED] Yes. [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: Daisy and Basira are… probably dead. [FOOTSTEPS] PETER: [DISTORTED] Because – of – you. [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: Georgie and Melanie have left me. [FOOTSTEPS] PETER: [DISTORTED] And? [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: Martin’s gone. [FOOTSTEPS] PETER: [DISTORTED] You’re alone, Archivist. The last one standing. I did warn you, I did want you to leave but… perhaps it would be better if you stayed a while. After all, you can’t hurt anyone in here.

And b) Tim and Jon used to be getting along so well that “Fire Tim!” was understood as a joke, while… the prospect (and impossibility) of quitting due to supernatural binding would become very real and contribute in their official falling-out:

(MAG065) TIM: I– I– I can’t do this anymore! ARCHIVIST: Then quit! If you hate it so much, leave your post in the Archives. Permanently. TIM: You’re firing me? ARCHIVIST: … I’m offering you a chance to quit. No notice period, I’ll even make sure you get the rest of the month’s paycheque. [PAUSE] Just say the words. [STATIC RISES] TIM: I want to. ARCHIVIST: So do it. TIM: I… … can’t. ARCHIVIST: [SOFTLY] Why not…? TIM: I… I… I–I can’t! I don’t know… Why can’t I quit?! ARCHIVIST: I–I don’t know. But I don’t think I can fire you either. TIM: What? ARCHIVIST: It’s this place.

(Yeah, no wonder Martin pointed out that Jon didn’t look super fine listening to the tapes again and again and again, when they’re concentrated Guilt juice.)

- It was… the first time ever… that we heard the original team all together in the same room…

(Plus Elias, technically: so, all the original main characters from season 1.)

It was a gigantic surprise because I had mused about the possibility of hearing a tape from the past, but without Sasha – I would have never expected her VA to come back? And it was so powerful to hear the four of them together, bantering and joking and being… at their natural, since apart from Tim, they didn’t know they were being recorded? And it’s not really putting a new light on Jon’s relationship with his assistants: we’d had glimpses implying that he was in good terms with them, aside from Martin (he trusted Tim to not have pranked him with MAG011’s statement, Sasha had double-checked some of Martin’s research, Sasha could waltz in and discuss with Jon about the pronunciation of “calliope” during a statement, Tim could point out mistakes to Jon and convey a need for him to calm down when Jon was getting too tense and aggressive, and Jon would listen and relent), but to be shown this way was such a precious gift?

(- It’s not the first time Jon was hearing “again” the voice of real!Sasha, since he had listened to her tapes at the end of MAG078 when he found them back… but still, this was even more precious here, because they were at their natural. It was a memory of Sasha! The real Sasha!)

- When did this scene happen? Some bits of the dialogue seemed to imply it was at the beginning of Jon’s tenure, some others make me think it could be towards the end of season 1:

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Mm! I’m sure. I notice you didn’t jump out at Martin when he had a birthday. TIM: No, he’s way too jumpy as it is! MARTIN: Wha–?! TIM: We were worried he might damage himself! […] ARCHIVIST: Well, thank you anyway. This is all… very touching. TIM: We just wanted to do something to lighten the mood, you know? ARCHIVIST: Yes, I’m… [INHALE] aware it’s been a rough start. [EXHALE] SASHA: That’s not what this was about; we just thought you could use a chance to unwind. […] ELIAS: He wished for a little bit of peace and quiet. ARCHIVIST: Was it that obvious? ELIAS: Oh, I wouldn’t worry, Jon. It’s an Archive: quiet is very much the course du jour.

“Rough start” and Elias promising quiet sounds like early Archives days… except what Elias says is a blatant lie anyway (he was very aware that the Archives were regularly attacked in Gertrude’s days, as he pointed out in MAG160), and Martin being jumpy could precisely match with Prentiss looming over the Archives:

(MAG033) TIM: It’s getting bad. I mean, Martin keeps showing me his tongue and asking if it “looks infested”.

Biggest thing that makes me lean towards this being set near the end of season 1 is Tim’s teasing about fire in the Archives, which is almost verbatim how Jon had defensively snapped to him about it:

(MAG036) TIM: Er, what is it? ARCHIVIST: A lighter. An old Zippo. TIM: You smoke? ARCHIVIST: No. And I don’t allow ignition sources in my archive!

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: I… Right– TIM: Yay! ARCHIVIST: –yes, thank you, I do hope you’re not planning to light those candles…! TIM: … Oh, goodness! [SHAKES A BOX OF MATCHES] A source of ignition? In the Archives? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] SASHA: [CHUCKLES] TIM: Uh oh! ARCHIVIST: Tim.

It wouldn’t make much sense for Jon to snap about the concept of “ignition sources in my Archive” if it had already happened anyway during his birthday? So I’m leaning towards Tim’s quip being a direct reference to MAG036, ergo putting the scene between that episode and MAG038 (the worms attacking), so in mid/end of July 2016? (It would also fit with the idea that they had gone for ice cream for Martin recently.) But yeah, many interpretations could work very well depending on the details you favour, or how you choose to interpret them.

(After MAG036 would also mean… that this scene would be taking place shortly after Jon got The Web’s lighter.)

- I’m EMBARRASSED at Martin being an anxious mess, teased here and there and not really managing to assert himself…………

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Mm! I’m sure. I notice you didn’t jump out at Martin when he had a birthday. TIM: No, he’s way too jumpy as it is! MARTIN: Wha–?! TIM: We were worried he might damage himself! MARTIN: Hey! Well… I preferred going out for ice cream anyway. […] TIM: How… did you– … Martin, that was a secret! MARTIN: I didn’t say anything! […] TIM: He’s so grumpy today, isn’t he Martin? MARTIN: Uh– Oh, well, uh– TIM: [CONSPIRATORY] Do you think it’s his looming sense of mortality? MARTIN: Uh– [STUTTERING] I, I don’t th– […] SASHA: Martin? [GLASS POURED] MARTIN: Oh, uh! [NERVOUS CHUCKLE] I mean, I don’t… normally… drink wine, you know, ta–tannins are a proven headache trigger, and so… SASHA: Martin. [GLASS POURED] MARTIN: Oh, u–uh, yeah, sure, maybe, just a… a drop, eh… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] ARCHIVIST: You know that there’s a lot of tannin in… tea as well? MARTIN: What? […] TIM: [CHUCKLING] What, are you afraid we’re going to get sued over the “Happy Birthday” song? MARTIN: Oh! Oh, well I am now!

He barely talked during the scene, and it was mostly “Oh, Martin…” bits of sentences… Not super good re:Sasha&Tim insisting for him to drink when he was trying to dodge it, though ;; (What was Martin aiming for, and what did they know about it? Was Martin genuinely worried about headaches, was he trying to avoid alcohol and hiding himself behind the tannin excuse (if so, really not good guys!), or was Martin trying to hide that he wasn’t used to wine, most likely because of his poor upbringing…?)

It really highlighted the difference with present!Martin who… just flat-out refuses, or points out when Jon is going too far. He’s less anxious about speaking his mind, now, not trying to go with the flow even when he’s uneasy with it (and it’s SAD that TIM&SASHA COULDN’T SEE HIM AS HE IS NOW!!).

- … The fact that Tim brought wine in the Archives made the end of season 1 even funnier:

(MAG039) SASHA: I’m still not sure why you have this. Drinking in the archives? MARTIN: What? No, no, it’s for worms. ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: For pulling the worms out of people. Like now. SASHA: You, er… what? MARTIN: I used to carry around a knife, but I started thinking that, well, cutting into someone laterally wasn’t really the most efficient way to get them out, and besides which, they seem to be quite slow burrowing in a straight line so, given their size, th–the corkscrew just seemed to be the better option.

Sasha suggesting that Martin could have been Drinking In The Archives, leading to Jon getting offended… while they had a friggin’ birthday party there, complete with Sasha insisting that Martin should drink with them.

- DO YOU THINK THAT MARTIN’S PRECIOUS CORKSCREW… WAS ACTUALLY TIM’S… FROM THAT TIME…

(MAG161) TIM: Well, after the party at least. Wine, anyone? ARCHIVIST: Tim, it’s [CORK POPPING] eleven in the morning. TIM: Pfft! Yeah, at your birthday party! [GLASS POURED] ARCHIVIST: I really don’t think it’s appropriate– ELIAS: I’ll allow it. In fact… I’ll join you.

Heavy sob at the fact that back then, Tim had instigated the drinking inside, and Elias had allowed it… while it became a “Eff You Elias/Beholding/Institute/All the things happening to us” tradition to go out for drinks in the middle of the day, in season 3 and 4, without Tim because he was too depressed (and then researching on the Circus):

(MAG098) MELANIE: Right. Fair. Listen, you really look like you could use a drink. Hum, me and Basira were just about to pop out. So… do you want to join us? MARTIN: It’s like one in the afternoon. MELANIE: Are you afraid of getting fired? MARTIN: … Huh. I’ll get my coat.

(MAG106) BASIRA: Hey, are you ready for that drink? […] You know, speaking of “not cool”, didn’t Martin say he was coming today? […] Well, I should probably go check in with Martin. Y’know, see if he’s in for drinks. MELANIE: So you can double-check your gossip? BASIRA: I don’t gossip! I have the mind of an investigator.

(MAG108) MARTIN: No… no, it’s just [Melanie’s] work’s been… look, she’s always been quite, you know, conscientious, but then recently, everything’s… BASIRA: Okay, look. I don’t know what the situation is, she won’t tell me, but she’s not doing well. We were meant to go for a drink last week, but… I think it has something to do Elias.

(MAG136) DAISY: Now I’m making the choice… to get some drinks in. Coming? ARCHIVIST: I d–… I… [SIGH] … yeah? Okay. DAISY: Melanie’s out, but I’ll go get Basira. ARCHIVIST: Is she… W–will she want to join us? DAISY: If she doesn’t, I’ll rip her throat out. ARCHIVIST: Uh… DAISY: It’s a joke, Jon. ARCHIVIST: … oh. Hahah…! Yes… Uh, I–I’ll get my coat.

(MAG150) MELANIE: If you need me, I’ll be trying to get Daisy drunk. ARCHIVIST: [STATIC] Good luck. It only ever happened once in 2006, she drank a– … Sorry. Didn’t mean to.

Your legacy, Tim…

- I’m so glad about Sasha’s talents as a hacker being put at the front again!! It was implied in season 1 (since she was handling police records, and Jon had noted that her ~computer problems~ prevented them from accessing those in season 2, unless Tim was stepping out with a more, uh, flirty approach), but confirmation AND demonstration that she was using her talents against Jon too!

(MAG161) ELIAS: So. How old is the birthday boy? ARCHIVIST: Uh… thirty-eight. SASHA: [TUTTING] Liar. TIM: [CHUCKLES] ARCHIVIST: How would you know? TIM: What, does someone need to change their password again! ARCHIVIST: I… what? TIM: [LAUGHS] ARCHIVIST: Sasha, have you been going through my computer– SASHA: Definitely not! No idea what he’s talking about. TIM: ‘Course not! SASHA & TIM: [LAUGHS] […] ARCHIVIST: Hang on – have you been recording this? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] TIM: Oh, yeah! I… just thought it might be nice, you know, something to look back on when we’re all old and sick of each other…! SASHA: You probably should have told us, Tim. TIM: [CHUCKLING] What, are you afraid we’re going to get sued over the “Happy Birthday” song? MARTIN: Oh! Oh, well I am now! SASHA: It’s… just a bit of a privacy thing. ARCHIVIST: Oh! Hypocrite.

She used to crack Jon’s computer! And he knows it! (That “again”!!! :D) The bantering between “Liar” and “Hypocrite”!! Jon&Sasha were friends!! I love how she liked him and how we can see that… Jon wasn’t exactly their boss – he was mostly a friend that they loved to tease!

(And gods, Sasha pointing out to Tim that his use of the tape recorder wasn’t great privacy-wise… while he would throw the same argument at Jon in season 3:

(MAG114) ARCHIVIST: I listened to all the tapes. I, I had no idea how much of a… a mess I left this place in, I–I–I’m sorry. TIM: Bit of an invasion of privacy. ARCHIVIST: I assume that’s a joke? TIM: [BITTER LAUGH] Isn’t it just?

Sasha… ;_;)

I love how she was Tim’s partner in crimes, too!! He had mentioned that he used to get along with Sasha the most:

(MAG114) TIM: You know how long that thing pretended to be Sasha? ARCHIVIST: Oh god… TIM: And I had no idea? I knew Sasha for years, we… I don’t know Martin as well as I knew her; I barely know what Melanie and Basira look like, or that weird murder-cop.

And yessss, they had the unruly children vibes to them here!

- Re: Tim, I can’t handle how strongly it was shown that he used to treasure Jon? He handled every aspect of the party! He even recorded them all as a memory for their older years:

(MAG161) MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: SURPRISE! [PARTY WHISTLE BLOWING] ARCHIVIST: JESUS! TIM: Happy birthday, boss! […] ELIAS: Anyway. Uh, did somebody mention cake? TIM: Uh, yeah. You did. ELIAS: Yes, I did, didn’t I? [SILENCE] TIM: [SIGH] Alright, alright, well. I guess the cat’s out of the bag now anyway – look… just give me a second. [SHUFFLING] [CUTTLERY CLICKING] TIM: Happy birth– ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: –day to–… […] TIM: … Oh, goodness! [SHAKES A BOX OF MATCHES] A source of ignition? In the Archives? […] Oh? Woops! [A MATCH IS LIT] Sorry; my hand slipped. And again. [CRACKLE OF A BIRTHDAY CANDLE WICK] And again. And… a couple more times, here – I’m so clumsy today; that is a lot of fire! […] Wine, anyone? ARCHIVIST: Tim, it’s [CORK POPPING] eleven in the morning. TIM: Pfft! Yeah, at your birthday party! […] ARCHIVIST: Hang on – have you been recording this? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] TIM: Oh, yeah! I… just thought it might be nice, you know, something to look back on when we’re all old and sick of each other…!

He was planning for their friendship to last on the long run!

We had had hints and glimpses that Tim&Jon used to get along very well since they had a good awareness of each other’s limits, and we know that Tim had come to work at the Archives at Jon’s request:

(MAG033) ARCHIVIST: No. I don’t have time. I still have a mountain of haphazard statements to get through, not to mention that I need to keep this wretched tape recorder on hand – just in case I encounter one of the files too stubborn to work on anything else, and when I do, I have to actually– TIM (BACKGROUND): Oh, woah– ARCHIVIST: –read the damn thing, which is… TIM (BACKGROUND): –woah… woah! ARCHIVIST: … Fine. It’s… fine. I just… haven’t been sleeping much these last few months, what with all this… worm… business.

(MAG065) TIM: No. No, you listen for once. I was fine in research, happy. Then you asked me to be transferred here, and suddenly it’s all monsters and killers and secret passages, oh my! And the worst thing? The actual worst thing is that no one here has my back. With any of it! Elias doesn’t care; Martin just wants a tea party; and Sasha… god, and you! You’re treating me like I’m somehow to blame for it all, like I didn’t suffer the worst right alongside you! ARCHIVIST: Well, excuse me if my experiences of th– TIM: Your experiences? Fuck you! I got eaten by worms because of you! ARCHIVIST: Well, what do you want? You want sympathy? TIM: You know what, yeah! A little bit of basic sympathy would have been nice! ARCHIVIST: Jane Prentiss was not my fault, I did not bring her to the Archives! TIM: Oh, but you went off the deep end afterwards, didn’t you? Everything went to hell, and when you actually needed to be in charge, you just hid down here and played with your tape recorder. ARCHIVIST: Well, what would you have me do?! TIM: Anything! Anything that wasn’t turning into a paranoid lunatic would have been fine. Anything that showed you could actually do your job!

… Which makes Jon’s behaviour towards him in season 2 even more heart-breaking and Tim’s bitterness so understandable. Tim had tried to keep up a light atmosphere after Prentiss’s attack (asking Jon if he had trouble with the police, being supportive in his own way when he assumed that Jon was beginning a relationship with Basira). From Tim’s point of view, it wasn’t just that his “boss” was suspecting him of being responsible of Gertrude’s murder and of trying to murder him too: it was a friend thinking Tim was wishing him harm, and turning his back on him on every front. That… might be a harsh reminder for Jon to listen to, in present time.

(- Down to the little detail of Tim playfully calling him “boss”, when… it would turn sour and bitter by the end of season 3:

(MAG161) TIM: Happy birthday, Boss!

(MAG050) TIM: Okay, so, seriously, I don’t get why she keeps coming back round here outside of the investigation. ARCHIVIST: She’s, uh… I’m… I’m helping her with some of the investigation. Off the record. TIM: Oh. OooOOH. Say no more. ARCHIVIST: Tim, wh– what are you… TIM: Don’t worry! I’m cool! Good work, Boss~

(MAG114) ARCHIVIST: Hello Tim. TIM: Oh god… ARCHIVIST: Come in, please. TIM: [SIGH, THEN FAUX POLITE] Good to see you, Boss. How’ve you been? ARCHIVIST: I’m not going to lie to you, Tim. It’s been a difficult few months. TIM: [DEADPAN] Good. […] [SNIDELY] So, what’s the plan, Boss?

(MAG116) ARCHIVIST: Do I need to be worried about you? TIM: You reading my mind again, boss? ARCHIVIST: Watching your face!

(MAG119) ARCHIVIST: Tim!! [STATIC] What do you see? TIM: I see my asshole boss! W– wait… wait…

… At the end of everything, under compulsion, Tim’s honest perception of Jon was “my asshole boss”… and not a friend, anymore.)

- Additional AOUCH of Tim using a tape recorder to capture a fond, funny scene with people he treasured…

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Hang on – have you been recording this? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] TIM: Oh, yeah! I… just thought it might be nice, you know, something to look back on when we’re all old and sick of each other…!

… while Tim was the one who would grow to hate the tape recorders the most:

(MAG098) MARTIN: Have you seen [Jon] since…? TIM: [GRUNT] Kind of. We tried to talk, but he, he reached for that– Ah, he, he wanted to turn on his recorder. I freaked out a bit, and I said some stuff: if he wanted to talk, no tapes, I just, I just hate that thing.

- GODS about Jon accepting to unwind just to tense up again at Elias’s arrival, trying to be Professional and impressive by aging himself up:

(MAG161) SASHA: That’s not what this was about; we just thought you could use a chance to unwind. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I suppose it… couldn’t hurt. [KNOCK–KNOCK] ELIAS: Knock-knock? […] Nothing escapes my notice, and I like to keep an eye out for this sort of thing. TIM: Well, it’s… good to see you. ARCHIVIST: Yes. Ye–yes! [CHAIR SCRAPES] Uh… Come in. ELIAS: So. How old is the birthday boy? ARCHIVIST: Uh… thirty-eight. SASHA: [TUTTING] Liar. […] SASHA & TIM: [LAUGHS] ARCHIVIST: That’s really not appropriate. [SIGH] […] TIM: Wine, anyone? ARCHIVIST: Tim, it’s [CORK POPPING] eleven in the morning. TIM: Pfft! Yeah, at your birthday party! [GLASS POURED] ARCHIVIST: I really don’t think it’s appropriate– ELIAS: I’ll allow it. In fact… I’ll join you. [GLASS POURED] ARCHIVIST: Oh! O… kay, hum… A–al–alright then.

(So Jon, who “was 8 in 1995 or 1996”, aged himself up by around ten years, and was actually turning 28 or 29, uh. Jon Being A Retro Thing confirmed, down to liking rum-raisin, rip Martin “likes things with low-fi charm” Blackwood.)

(Additional thing about Jon infodumping about emulsifiers to Martin: emulsifiers are used to mix together two elements of different nature… like… them…)

- A bit intrigued by Jon not remembering going out for ice cream for Martin’s birthday:

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Mm! I’m sure. I notice you didn’t jump out at Martin when he had a birthday. TIM: No, he’s way too jumpy as it is! MARTIN: Wha–?! TIM: We were worried he might damage himself! MARTIN: Hey! Well… I preferred going out for ice cream anyway. ARCHIVIST: You went for ice cream…? SASHA: Yes, you were there…! MARTIN: You had rum-and-raisin and taught us all about emulsifiers. ARCHIVIST: … Oh. … Right, yes, I–I remember. TIM: Liar.

(Martin remembers it all, and that’s incredibly gay of him.)

Is it that Jon hadn’t picked up on the fact that they were actually celebrating Martin’s birthday back then? Or is it that Jon has a tendency to forget unpleasant memories – he… didn’t do much social and liked his quiet, that part wasn’t a front, and he had, for example, forgotten his childhood bully’s name, too… Or is it a genuinely strange memory loss and is there something more sinister behind it?

- They credited Ben as “Jonah Magnus”, and yet we had never heard him at this level of… comedic villain? Almost like a parody? He was punning SO HARD and sounded like an impulsive idiot, it was a delight:

(MAG161) ELIAS: Knock-knock? TIM: Double-Boss! SASHA: Elias? ELIAS: I’m not too late for cake, am I? ARCHIVIST: There’s a cake…? TIM: How… did you– … Martin, that was a secret! MARTIN: I didn’t say anything! ELIAS: He didn’t have to. Nothing escapes my notice, and I like to keep an eye out for this sort of thing. […] Anyway. Uh, did somebody mention cake? TIM: Uh, yeah. You did. ELIAS: Yes, I did, didn’t I? [SILENCE] TIM: [SIGH] Alright, alright, well. I guess the cat’s out of the bag now anyway – look… just give me a second. […] So, what did you wish for? [STATIC] ARCHIVIST: I can’t tell you. ELIAS: He wished for a little bit of peace and quiet. […] TIM: Happy birth– ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: –day to–… ARCHIVIST: Oh, okay… ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: –you… ARCHIVIST: Mm–mm. ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: Happy birthday to you… ARCHIVIST: Right! ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: Happy birth– ARCHIVIST: Yes…! ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: –day, dear– MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: –Jo~on… ELIAS: –A~rchivist… ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: Happy birthday to you! […] TIM: Wine, anyone? ARCHIVIST: Tim, it’s [CORK POPPING] eleven in the morning. TIM: Pfft! Yeah, at your birthday party! [GLASS POURED] ARCHIVIST: I really don’t think it’s appropriate– ELIAS: I’ll allow it. In fact… I’ll join you.

1°) Elias invited himself for cake and wine, but mostly cake. That INSISTANCE about the cake was pure gold, Melanie should have poisoned one of those instead of his coffee and the idiot would probably have fallen for it.

2°) The gratuitous use of his powers just to Be Smug about ~understanding~ what Jon was wishing for, ELIAS WHY.

3°) The Eye puns, you’re cancelled and forbidden sir (“I like to keep an eye out”).

4°) I just can’t fucking believe the not even sneaky “Archivist” during the birthday song, the question is mostly HOW they didn’t pick up on Elias being a supernatural agent before the end of season 2 if he was at his shittiest like that all the time.

(Tim’s “Double-Boss!” gets a free pass because yeah, two bosses in the same room, and he had mentioned the “getting two spooky bosses” thing in season 3… But dang right about Elias being “double” by himself because Jonah-Elias.)

- I’m not 100% sure of that moment but:

(MAG161) TIM: … Oh, goodness! [SHAKES A BOX OF MATCHES] A source of ignition? In the Archives? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] SASHA: [CHUCKLES] TIM: Uh oh! ARCHIVIST: Tim. ELIAS?: [SIGH] TIM: Oh? Woops! [A MATCH IS LIT] Sorry; my hand slipped. ELIAS?: [HISS] TIM: And again. [CRACKLE OF A BIRTHDAY CANDLE WICK] And again. And… a couple more times, here – I’m so clumsy today; that is a lot of fire!

I think it was Elias hissing, and not Jon groaning.

Which, you know.

Tim, using fire in the Archives and teasing about it.

Someone was having bad flashbacks of Gertrude pouring petrol all over.

- Second tape, “what could have been”: both because it opened a shift in perspective (what if Sasha had been chosen as Head Archivist instead?), and the prospect of a smoother transition from Gertrude to the next Archivist, a version of events in which they would have been warned plenty:

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “Of course, I had to bide my time, get a measure of you before I began to push; learn how you worked. So I decided I would wait until something came for you, and see how you reacted. Attacks upon the Archives were not uncommon during Gertrude’s tenure, and while she was always prepared… I made sure you would not be.”

And at the same time, would Jon have believed any of it? If Gertrude had mentioned The Web, probably; but… given that Gertrude was shown collaborating with Leitner afterwards (although the recording of their exchange was an accident), it could also have backfired spectacularly instead. Would Jon have believed an old woman in cahoots with Jurgen Leitner to be trustworthy, when a book from his library had wrecked Jon in his childhood?

- The concept of Sasha as a potential next Archivist was a gigantic surprise, and yet! And yet! It fits! It makes sense!

* One of her passions was literally watching people, heyo little Beholding:

(MAG026) SASHA: It was the day before yesterday when I first saw it. When I’m heading down the stairs in the morning, I sometime like to spend a few seconds looking out of the window at the people on the street below. I’ll move my head so that I see them through the warped glass, and they’ll distort like a funhouse mirror. It’s a bit daft, but I have a pretty dreary commute down to Victoria, so I take my fun where I can get it. Well, on that morning I paused before the window, and noticed one of the warped figures below was… off, slightly.

* SOB over the fact that… Sasha was the first to point out that they should quit, and that she didn’t really want to:

(MAG026) SASHA: I should really quit, you know. We, we all should. I don’t think this a normal job. I, I don’t think this is a safe job. ARCHIVIST: You’re probably right. Do you want to quit? SASHA: No. I’m just… I’m just too damned curious, I suppose. You? ARCHIVIST: No. Whatever’s going on, I… need to know. Get some rest.

Martin confessed that he had thought about it in MAG039, Tim tried in MAG065… but she had been the first, and Gertrude was precisely inviting her successor to try! ;_;

* BIG BIG SOB because… she was the first one to point out that Elias was quite the dodgy sort:

(MAG039) SASHA: … Did I ever tell you I first joined the Institute as a practical researcher? I had to analyse and investigate all the stuff in here. Take notes after sleeping in the rusted chair, write in the memory book, all that sort of thing. I transferred after three months. Would’ve quit, but couldn’t afford to back then. Never understood why they keep this stuff secret. I mean, we’ve, we’ve enough here to send any sceptic packing, but it’s just locked away. I… I asked Elias about it once, but he just muttered something about funding and mission statements. He’s good at changing the subject, isn’t he?

* Martin was mostly a victim of Prentiss; Sasha took risks by accepting Michael’s offer (to protect the others), actively and knowingly pursued danger, leading her to discover their most reliable weapon against Prentiss’s worms: the fire extinguishers. Technically, she got in contact with two entities (Spiral+Corruption) in one go? She could have gotten marked so fast? In fact, she concentrated most aspects you could expect from a typical protagonist: she was curious, bold, followed Michael, annihilated Timothy Hodge’s swarm of worms, was the first one of the team to get physically hurt (a worm had gone through her shoulder); she took care of removing Jon’s worms in MAG039, barged out to save Tim, went to Elias for help…

(MAG039) MARTIN: And… there we go. Recording again. Did you get it? [PAINED CRY FROM ARCHIVIST AS SASHA EXTRACTS WORM WITH A SQUELCH] SASHA: There. And I just want to point out that I didn’t make this much of a fuss. ARCHIVIST: [BREATHING HEAVILY, AGGRIEVED TONE] I think your removal was substantially cleaner. […] ARCHIVIST: [MUTTERING] There’s nothing we can do. SASHA: Ah, screw this. ARCHIVIST: What, Sasha, NO! [DOOR OPENS] SASHA: Tim, look out! […] MARTIN: Ah, yeah. Sure. So, um, Sasha tackled Tim and there was kind of a struggle, but she made it out of the Archives. That, that was about two minutes ago and she’s gone to get help. P–probably. I mean, she, she couldn’t… she wouldn’t just run so…

While you could remove Jon from the season 1 climax and barely anything would have changed, since he simply watched and recorded and followed others. Which, at the same time, made Jon good as an Archivist/record(er) of Fears, but…

* (Aouch that Sasha, who was meant to be Gertrude’s replacement, was the first one to meet Michael…)

- At the same time: how come Gertrude was expecting Sasha to become her replacement?

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: … Right. If you’re listening to this, then it is likely that… [INHALE] No; let’s not beat around the bush. If you’re listening to this, it means I’m dead. And you have been chosen to be my replacement, as Head Archivist. Hopefully, this means you, Sasha – but if someone else is hearing this and Elias has made a different choice, for some reason, then these words are still very much intended for you. […] If it is you I’m talking to, Sasha, hopefully your background in Artefact Storage will lend a certain degree of… credence to my words. But others may have to take it on trust. All I can do is assure you I am deadly serious.

* SNORT that Gertrude stole a page from Gerry’s book (badum) with the “dead(ly) serious”.

* … With the reminder that Sasha had worked in Artefact Storage: is that a Requirement for Jonah in a way, a place where he usually picks up people from? Elias Bouchard had begun working in Artefact Storage in 1991, and he ended up as his next host…

* I can see multiple possibilities: Gertrude saw a bit of her younger self in Sasha (MAG145: “I was very new to it all, of course. I mean, I was, what? Can’t have been older than… twenty-five. Would you believe that you were the first proper ritual attempt I’d encountered? Eh! I really thought you were unique, special, an infernal cult raising their demon Messiah to bring about hell on Earth…! Eh, you can imagine all the heroic fantasies that that played into. So: I began researching what I thought was a counter-ritual of sorts. Like I said, mm, I was young. Naïve.”), and assumed that Elias would go with continuity and pick someone like her; Gertrude was perceiving Sasha as the most competent of the staff, and assumed she would be the best candidate (totally missing that Elias was searching for someone who wouldn’t be ready); Elias purposefully gave misleading signals to let Gertrude assume that he was taking an interest in Sasha as Archivist potential; or… Elias was genuinely planning to pick Sasha, and had a change of heart.

* If it was that last point: it’s ~very strange~ that in the end, Elias wouldn’t pick Sasha, who was supposed to become the next Head Archivist, and picked, instead, Jon, who was Web-touched. ~Very strange~. Was the new Head Archivist truly Elias’s choice, or The Web’s, huh…

- Damnit, no name for James Wright’s predecessor even though it could have been the occasion:

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: … Oh, yes. On the subject of Elias: trust nothing he says. He was originally known as Jonah Magnus, the founder of this Institute, and I have known him also as James Wright, the previous Head of the Institute.

“James Wright” became head in 1973 according to MAG049, and Gertrude had been working at the Institute for around fifty years, so she must have known Jonah’s previous iteration as well. Unless Jonah genuinely lived as a filing clerk for a few years while in control of James Wright? (MAG029: “Elias was working as a filing clerk at the time [1972]”) I… have trouble picturing him agreeing to let go of his seat and allowing someone else to run the place, even for a few years.

- New Cool Name for The Eye!

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: You – unfortunately – have unwittingly made the decision to become one of those incarnations, for the Institute serves a being known variously as “The Eye”, “It-Knows-You”, “The Beholding”, “The Ceaseless Watcher”.

(No wonder they didn’t get along well with The Stranger, since its cool name was “I-Do-Not-Know-You” according to MAG087 and MAG101.)

- … Amongst the things Gertrude didn’t share, it’s interesting to compare what she told “Sasha” and what she told Elias a few minutes later (?), in their exchange from MAG158’s tape:

* Nothing about the Panopticon hidden in the tunnels and Jonah’s body being down there, even though she had understood all about it:

(MAG158) ELIAS: What exactly were you hoping to achieve here? Why not come at me directly instead of burning everything first? GERTRUDE: I was rather hoping the fire would occupy you while I did just that. ELIAS: I see…! How long have you known? GERTRUDE: About your body? Not long after you took your new host and we had that little… chat. Wasn’t exactly a huge leap to the Panopticon after that. The hard part was figuring out how to actually reach it. Took me the better part of a decade. ELIAS: So you burn the place down, use it as cover to reach my body, and then we die together.

It would have taken her successor so long to understand that the Panopticon was still standing, and hidden down there, even if the MAG161 tape had reached them…

* Gertrude didn’t share that there is one way to escape the Institute/Elias’s clutch: gouging your eyes out. At this point, she had known for years:

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: You will also be unable to relinquish the position, or quit the Institute, finding you are supernaturally compelled to remain. In fact… it occurs to me that attempting to do so is probably the quickest and easiest way to establish the truth of what I am telling you – so I suggest you do so at the earliest possible opportunity.

(MAG158) GERTRUDE: I wasn’t actually planning on dying. ELIAS: And how exactly were you planning on achieving that while you’re still bound to the… ha. Oh, I see. Very clever. [CHUCKLE] I thought Eric was the only one to figure that little morsel out. GERTRUDE: Knowledge has a way of surviving. You, of all people, should know that.

… and yet didn’t tell Sasha/her successor in her official testament tape. Gertrude…

* No breakdown of the entities à la Gerry, which could have been a useful tool at first: Gertrude didn’t mention leaving notes to explain them, or even… Gerry’s page in America, which could have done the trick.

* Gertrude… wasn’t straightforward about her suspicion that the rituals were doomed to fail:

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: These… beings, these… gods of fear, their followers believe that they have… rituals. Grand projects, which, if successful, would allow them to enter our world, reshaping it in… [EXHALE] unthinkable ways; moulding it into a dimension where terror is as natural as… gravity. You… are now one such ritual. I do not know the exact details of it, but be wary of whatever Elias asks you to do. […] You are entering a new world, a place I’ve lived for most of my life. A place… [SIGH] A place that will often demand a high price from you. Pay it without hesitation, because one way or another, the world is now on your shoulders. [SIGH] I wish I had more time to explain it to you; but time is short, and hopefully my actions tonight will ensure this tape never needs to see the light of day. But if you are hearing it, then… good luck. Do what you have to do.

“their followers believe” does imply that it’s not a clear-cut objective truth… but she was still warning Sasha of the danger she would pose as a potential ritual, and setting her up to stop rituals, instead of telling her to not fret too much about them. Bit of pride on Gertrude’s part, since she had dedicated most of her life to stop them and didn’t want to admit that the prices “she” had paid were senseless sacrifices in the end…? (It was sad re: her regrets, but also… “Very Gertrude”: Jan and Michael Shelley, for example, had paid most of the “high price” she mentioned.) It kind of feels like Gertrude was really trying to preserve her legacy a bit, even though she knew, at this point, that she had been wrong…

- Not sure if it will be relevant, but Gertrude was convinced that Jonah used eyes to spy on people:

(MAG054) ARCHIVIST: Oh. And… I looked through a handful of books on her shelf. They were very well taken care of – with the exception that… any time a person’s face was featured on the cover, their eyes had been cut out, and very carefully removed.

(MAG113) ARCHIVIST: Found anything yet? MARTIN: Er… er… Bunch of… eyeless paintings? MELANIE: [JOVIALLY] Snap! Eyeless dolls.

(MAG154) ERIC: You were almost there, you know, with your theory that James could watch us through any eye, even an illustration. So what did you do? How did you sever that link? GERTRUDE: … My… God!

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: He was originally known as Jonah Magnus, the founder of this Institute, and I have known him also as James Wright, the previous Head of the Institute. He has certain… abilities of clairvoyance, which allow him to perceive out of any eye – real, or symbolic – so be wary.

And that’s not exactly how Jonah himself described his powers?

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “But it left me a gift: for sat in that watchtower, I could see… everything I turned my mind to.”

So I don’t know if it was a bit of pride from Jonah (not pointing out that there is One Weakness in his power: if no eye around, his powers are shit), or Gertrude operating off an assumption that wasn’t exactly the truth.

- Really curious as to how Gertrude came to the conclusion that an Archivist was a potential “ritual” by itself:

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: There are now things that will actively be trying to kill you, due to your new role as Archivist; and… Elias has plans for you that are little better. […] You – unfortunately – have unwittingly made the decision to become one of those incarnations […]. But, there… is another part of being the Archivist. These… beings, these… gods of fear, their followers believe that they have… rituals. Grand projects, which, if successful, would allow them to enter our world, reshaping it in… [EXHALE] unthinkable ways; moulding it into a dimension where terror is as natural as… gravity. You… are now one such ritual. I do not know the exact details of it, but be wary of whatever Elias asks you to do.

Was it because of her experience with Agnes, since Agnes was precisely conceived as an “incarnation” and the central piece of The Desolation’s ritual? Was it a deduction coming from Elias’s behaviour towards her (if he wasn’t trying to get rid of Gertrude so far, then it meant that her function was necessary outside of her consent or the path she had chosen)? Or did she manage to do historical research in old Archives like Jonah had done…?

- Still unclear whether or not Gertrude had a back-up plan for The Dark (as Elias suspected in MAG160) or a guess as to how to undo a ritual if she had been wrong and it were to succeed:

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: If my guess is right, the Church’s ritual should be collapsing at any time now, so… immediately. LEITNER: And if you’re wrong? GERTRUDE: Then a bit of gas will be the least of our worries.

We’ll see if there is something on that front, I guess.

- AHAHA that we got a confirmation that THIS is what Gertrude had been doing!

(MAG001) ARCHIVIST: Combine that with the fact that most of the Institute prefers the ivory tower of pure academia to the complicated work of dealing with statements or recent experiences and you have the recipe for an impeccably organised library and an absolute mess of an archive. This isn’t necessarily a problem – modern filing and indexing systems are a real wonder, and all it would need is a half-decent archivist to keep it in order. Gertrude Robinson was apparently not that archivist. From where I am sitting, I can see thousands of files. Many spread loosely around the place, others crushed into unmarked boxes. A few have dates on them or helpful labels such as 86-91 G/H. Not only that, but most of these appear to be handwritten or produced on a typewriter with no accompanying digital or audio versions of any sort. […] It is going to take me a long, long time to organise this mess.

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: I’ve managed to keep the Archives in a state of chaos for decades, as I believe his plan would benefit from their organisation. But I leave that to your judgement. Certainly, the longer he is ignorant of how much you know… the better.

So the disorganisation was absolutely on purpose, as suspected, which makes Jon’s hissing about Gertrude in season 1 all the funnier… and at the same time: it doesn’t feel like the mess put a dent in Elias’s plans at all in the end – since he didn’t really need an organised Archives for his plans, but a marked and powerful Archivist/Archive? (And Beholding, in itself, has nothing to do with understanding: “You who watch and know and understand none”.)

What it might have done, though, is (let’s hope!) make Elias twitchy on a very human and personal level, since we knew that he had habits and regularity:

(MAG098) MELANIE: Uh, Martin, have you seen Elias? MARTIN: Oh, uh… No, but Tuesday lunch he normally meets with the Library staff, I think.

(MAG103) ARCHIVIST: […] and it’s Wednesday afternoon, when he does his scheduling. So I’m… hoping he’s distracted. … He, uh… He loves scheduling. DAISY: … Rrrright.

So I hope the state of the Archives still made him deeply uncomfortable.

- It was the first time that Gertrude and Leitner were heard interacting together on the same tape! (… Unknowing aside; though that time, it was their corpses, not… really them.)

- Unclear if Leitner knew about “Elias” being Jonah Magnus, in the end! He knew why Gertrude had been recording, but did he hear the content? If he knew about Jonah, he really really should have told Jon when he explained that Elias was a Beholding agent in MAG080… (But since when does Jurgen Leitner make sensible decisions.)

- The first time was full of dark irony, but oooooh, Leitner…

(MAG161) LEITNER: Then you recording all that was meaningless anyway. Besides, I’m not afraid of him. GERTRUDE: Bravado? [CHUCKLES] Really? LEITNER: Hm–mm… It’s not bravado… GERTRUDE: [SHARPLY] We’re wasting time. Do you still have the Ruskin book? LEITNER: I do. Though I don’t relish the thought of using it. Makes it rather hard to breathe, like your chest– GERTRUDE: You know– LEITNER: –is being… GERTRUDE: –the gas main, little way out in the tunnel? LEITNER: I do. GERTRUDE: I need you to move it. LEITNER: I, hum… That’s… I mean, that’s not just earth, there’s pipework and all sorts of–

As Melanie would say: “Famous last words” (it’s ~not bravado~ when he said he wasn’t afraid of Elias, and Leitner complaining about pipework of all things…).

I love that he was complaining about the use of The Seven Lamps of Architecture, when Gertrude was currently trying to neutralise Elias and prevent his plans – he was using it quite easily in season 2, so… wasn’t that bad? And yet, he found ways to complain about it. Leitner, please.

- Amongst the new information casually thrown at us:

(MAG161) LEITNER: Right. … Did you mean to leave the tape running? GERTRUDE: Oh, good grief! Forty years I’ve been using them, and I swear, I’ll ne– [CLICK.]

Gertrude had been using them for 40 years at this point. The oldest recording we heard from her was from 1996 (MAG077), about the Not!Them, and she had noted that cassettes seemed to be spared by its effects – so I had assumed that she may have begun to record because of this, for 20 years? But apparently, no, she had started much earlier than that.

* Back to Jon’s first questions about her tapes: why are there so few, then, if she had been recording for so long? Why did she record certain statements and not others? (Was it mostly the statements about rituals or related?)

* So, “forty years” means that she began recording around 1975 => she didn’t begin to record as soon as she became Archivist, since on the same day she said that in front of Leitner, she had been in the position for roughly fifty years (Elias in MAG158: “I suppose we both got a little complacent. Fifty years is a long time! ‘End of an era’.”). It matches with the history of actual tape recorders, though they had begun to be more popular towards the end of the 60s… but curiously, “forty years ago” in 2015 also means… that Gertrude began to use a tape recorder around the time Hill Top Road burned (1974) and The Web tricked her into binding herself to Agnes. Mm-mmmmmmmmmm…

- Anyway, GERTRUDE X AGNES RIGHTS.

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: Paper burns well. [GURGLING LIQUID] Petrol burns… better. LEITNER: Aha! I always forget about your pyromaniac streak. GERTRUDE: Mm. Remind me to tell you about Agnes, sometime…!

Gertrude sounded almost fond (or at least playful) when mentioning her? It really seems to confirm that Gertrude&Agnes getting tied by the The Web’s ritual affected both: Agnes loved observing people, fire became Gertrude’s main weapon; The Lightless Flame avoided hurting Gertrude afterwards, and Gertrude extended her protection to Jack Barnabas. I wonder if we’ll get more about Agnes&Gertrude and/or if they had been in contact…

(Also, “remind me to tell you about x sometime” is some death flag, Gertrude…)

- OKAY, TAPE RECORDERS TIME (and insert here the usual “one day, I’ll finish&post that draft from 2018 about them”).

* I’m a bit surprised that there was no double-click at the beginning nor at the end of the first tape: it’s usually either a succession of tapes (the usual when Jon listens to Gertrude’s: it clicks off, then his own recording clicks on for him to give commentaries, so double-click after the first tape for the click-off / click-on), either a recording inside of a current recording (rarer: for example, Jon listening to the real Sasha’s tapes near the end of season 2, or to Daisy’s statement before going inside the Coffin). No double-click for the assistants tape, although the delimitations were clearer with Gertrude&Leitner’s as framed inside of Jon&Martin’s scene in the cabin:

(MAG161) [CLICK–] [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] MARTIN: Careful! […] TIM: Now, alright, alright; fine! Look: I’m turning it off. Any last words for your future selves? ARCHIVIST: Yes. “Fire Tim!” TIM: [LAUGHS] [CLICK.] [APOCALYPSE SOUNDSCAPING] ARCHIVIST: [SLOW BREATHING] […] MARTIN: You, uh… listening to the tapes again? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] How many times is that, now? [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: They were sent to me, Martin. […] Just… [A TAPE IS LOADED] Listen. [CLICK–] [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] GERTRUDE: … Right. […] Oh, good grief! Forty years I’ve been using them, and I swear, I’ll ne– [CLICK.] [APOCALYPSE SOUNDSCAPING] ARCHIVIST: Can you imagine…? If we’d had this… […] No it’s not. [CLICK.]

Which means that it was prrrobably the same thing as with the beginning of MAG157 (which begins with Jon listening to Martin&Peter’s exchange from the previous episode): the tape recorder “observing” Jon listening clicked on for itself after the one playing the assistants’ tape, when it had already been running for a bit. Which means that there was actually more assistants content on that tape than what we heard! We’ve been robbed! Screw you, MAG161’s Visiting Tape Recorder, you could have clicked on sooner!!

* Big usual questions of “who is listening through the tape recorders and/or what is the thing pushing them to click on and off”! Interestingly, both of the tapes Jon was listening to made it clear that a person had chosen to start recording…

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Hang on – have you been recording this? TIM: Oh, yeah! I… just thought it might be nice, you know, something to look back on when we’re all old and sick of each other…! SASHA: You probably should have told us, Tim. TIM: [CHUCKLING] What, are you afraid we’re going to get sued over the “Happy Birthday” song? MARTIN: Oh! Oh, well I am now! SASHA: It’s… just a bit of a privacy thing. ARCHIVIST: Oh! Hypocrite. TIM: Now, alright, alright; fine! Look: I’m turning it off. Any last words for your future selves?

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: … Right. If you’re listening to this, then it is likely that… [INHALE] No; let’s not beat around the bush. If you’re listening to this, it means I’m dead. […] LEITNER: Right. … Did you mean to leave the tape running? GERTRUDE: Oh, good grief! Forty years I’ve been using them, and I swear, I’ll ne– [CLICK.]

… Only to highlight, both in the trailer and in the first episode of the season, that the tape recorders manifesting or “choosing” to record Jon were doing that on their own, without him being actively responsible for it:

(Season 5 trailer) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … What? What do you want? … The world is…! It’s over. You’ve won. What can you possibly still need to hear?

(MAG161) MARTIN: Hey – when, when did you start recording? [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: I… didn’t. MARTIN: [TENSE EXHALE] ARCHIVIST: I only brought one, and I’ve been using it to play the tapes. MARTIN: Oh. [INHALE] That’s not a great sign. ARCHIVIST: No… No it’s not. [CLICK.]

So: they’re still a Mystery, but we’re probably getting an answer about them soon-ish (at least by the end of the season) if there is such an insistence on it.

* My Big suspect is still The Web, though I’m less sure after season 4 (too many things seem to point in The Web’s direction, so is that a red herring…?).

… Towards the beginning of season 4, I had joked a bit that, what if it was Gertrude or Sasha?, and I’m considering it a bit more nowadays, especially with the insistence on Sasha to start the season with: Sasha as Jon’s assistant (complete with the reminder that her forte was with computers; “Binary” explained quite clearly that tape recorders are digital, too, and had a whole story about someone stuck in an artefact not made to contain and process a human psyche), and Sasha as a potential Archivist in a what-could-have-been scenario (so, Sasha as a Beholding candidate). Leitner had also pointed out that he didn’t know what happens to the Not!Them’s victims, and that one should assume them to be dead:

(MAG080) ARCHIVIST: And Sasha… The real one? LEITNER: Was that her name? I’m afraid she’s gone. Whatever it does to those it takes, they don’t come back. She’s dead. Do you need a moment?

… which wasn’t a definite and absolute “the Not!Them kills its victims and that’s it”. So… Sasha as a floating conscience recovering more and more autonomy when the Not!Them got temporarily sealed in the tunnels? Tape recorders began to manifest autonomy in season 3, though MAG080 was a weird case already (two were running until Elias’s entrance), and the first highlighted case of a tape recorder refusing to stay off… was to listen to Tim in MAG082 as he was interviewed by Daisy (so in potential danger), then to Tim&Martin at the end of the episode… and once again to Tim at the beginning of MAG090 (when he had come back from Malaysia and was paid a visit by Elias). Martin was mostly recording on his own accord, Jon sounded in control of his recordings at this point too… MAG161 made it casually clear that Tim&Sasha were getting along extremely well, which Tim had already acknowledged (MAG114: “I knew Sasha for years, we… I don’t know Martin as well as I knew her”), and we saw Sasha getting very protective of him when she hurried out to save him in MAG039… It would make sense that the Supernatural Tape Recorders would favour him of all people, at first, if she was behind them… (But then, it would break my heart into little pieces, given Tim’s distaste of the tape recorders, him spitting that he did “hate that thing” and hiding himself in the second half of season 3 partially in order to avoid them T___T)

Potential counterpoint, though, for both Gertrude and Sasha: the recording of Gertrude’s death(? MAG087 still doesn’t make sense if she was killed-killed back then!!) in MAG158 began while Gertrude was already pouring petrol all over the Archives, implying that she hadn’t been the one clicking it on – so it might have been started… another way, and could be our first chronological example of an “autonomous” tape recorder.

* “Who is listening in through the tape recorders?” is not fundamentally the same as “Who is using them to provide information to characters in-universe?”; so “who sent MAG161’s tapes back in MAG160?” is another question, a bit more concrete, especially since Jon and Martin mused about it:

(MAG160) ARCHIVIST: There’s… tapes in here, as well. D… did she say anything about tapes? MARTIN: She… didn’t mention it? But… I–I didn’t check it until after the call. ARCHIVIST: Mm.

(MAG161) MARTIN: You, uh… listening to the tapes again? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] How many times is that, now? [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: They were sent to me, Martin. [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] There’s got to be some reason… MARTIN: [SIGH] Gloating, Jon. [CREAKING SOUND] Elias won, and there were some tapes he’d kept for himself, and he wanted to gloat. So, he sent them!

Gertrude’s tape is interesting, because Elias can’t have heard the content of it in any way before the end of season 2, since we hear Leitner on it and, more compromisingly, the mention that he’s been navigating the tunnels. Elias kept insisting that Leitner had been a surprise to him:

(MAG080) ELIAS: Well. This is a surprise. […] I’ve wondered for so long who it could be down there. Who was helping her. I honestly never would have guessed. LEITNER: How did you know I was here? ELIAS: I didn’t. You’re very well hidden. But Jon is not, and he failed to take the same precautions I’m sure you took for granted with Gertrude. I knew he was talking to someone. And it turns out to be Jurgen Leitner himself. [SOFT CHUCKLING] What an honour.

(MAG092) ELIAS: So. For the avoidance of any doubt. I killed Gertrude Robinson because she intended to destroy the Archives. And I killed Jurgen Leitner because he was… an unnecessary complication. Likely to tell Jon too much, too early.

(MAG102) ELIAS: I have been trying to give you the information you need. ARCHIVIST: Sure, when you’re not bashing its head in with a pipe. ELIAS: Leitner was… I will admit I possibly… overreacted to his sudden re-emergence.

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “Jurgen Leitner was a surprise, of course, and I was forced to… improvise. I had no idea how much Gertrude would have told him, and he could very easily have derailed everything if you learned too much too fast. I… justified it to myself, saying I was going to have to send you out into the world anyway if you were to encounter more of the Powers, but I can’t honestly pretend it wasn’t a… rather rash move.”

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: Jurgen! [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] I told you to stay in the tunnels. [CHAIR SCRAPES] LEITNER: Your message also told me it was urgent. GERTRUDE: If Elias is watching right now…! LEITNER: Then you recording all that was meaningless anyway. […] GERTRUDE: You know the gas main, little way out in the tunnel? LEITNER: I do. GERTRUDE: I need you to move it.

Which means that Elias hadn’t listened to this tape in particular before the end of season 2. Where did Gertrude store/hide it and what happened to it afterwards? There is a possibility that it was just dumped in with Gertrude’s other tapes (I… don’t think that Elias had listened to them all anyway?) and it was passed from hand to hand since the end of season 1… to finally get back into Elias’s after Leitner’s murder:

(MAG040) MARTIN: When I finally found a door, I thought it might actually get out, but instead… It was a small room. Square. There was dust on everything. Cardboard boxes were piled around. They were full of old cassette tapes.

(MAG043) BASIRA: I’ve got a shot corpse, three boxes of cassettes, and Daisy, who’s the CID now, which… I suppose means it’s technically her problem, but… she’s now the only detective who’s already sectioned, so she’s always way too busy. As far as I know, neither of us have even had a chance to actually start listening to the tapes. […] ARCHIVIST: I have convinced Basira to give me access to the tapes. It won’t be many, or often, as they are currently police evidence and thus hard to subtly remove, and she can’t necessarily guarantee the ones I get will be the most pertinent to the case, but it is still a significant victory.

(MAG075) BASIRA: Here. [BOX HITTING A TABLE] ARCHIVIST: Are those the tapes? BASIRA: As many of them as I could get. […] Well they’re sure as hell not going to solve Gertrude’s murder, so you might as well have them. Before… I don’t know, maybe I still had enough police in me not to just steal from Evidence, but now…

(MAG116) ELIAS: During the… “difficulties”… ARCHIVIST: [AGGRAVATED SIGH] ELIAS: … with your initial absence, Jon, I took Gertrude’s tapes into my safekeeping. ARCHIVIST: Yes, I thought as much.

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: [LONG SIGH] So. Funny story. Turns out when Daisy broke the lock to get into Elias’s old office, well, she did a good enough job that it’s not… obviously broken. So it hasn’t been replaced yet. So I had a look around. [SIGH] M–mostly as I remember, but… There’s a box of tapes and statements in the corner. Obviously those Elias either didn’t feel he could trust me with yet, or maybe just the ones he was checking himself.

(MAG154) ARCHIVIST: I’ve found a– [SIGH] I went back to Eli– er, Peter’s office. To that box of tapes; started rifling through. And I started to try and pay attention to the ones I… wasn’t drawn to. The tapes I instinctively wanted to discard.

So Gertrude&Leitner’s tape could technically have been amongst those – Elias probably wouldn’t have left Eric’s so easily accessible if he’d known about the content (“How to cut ties with Beholding and escape the Institute for dummies”), so he probably hadn’t listened to all of them by the time of his arrest in MAG120… so he could technically be the sender here, there is nothing in the canon invalidating that he couldn’t have had access to this tape given what we know of the journey of Gertrude’s boxes of tapes.

Regarding the assistants tape, Tim was explicitly the one recording the scene. So either Tim had forgotten about it… either someone/thing stole it by the time of season 2, since it contains a recording of the original Sasha, and existed when the Not!Them wasn’t yet identified as such. It was a private tape, it doesn’t contain sensitive information about the Institute unlike Gertrude’s – what happened to it, for it to be now sent to Jon? Same thing, Elias technically could have grabbed a hold of it… but it’s a silly scene, it doesn’t contain super sensitive information, and I feel like he would have gloated about it in his previous statement in a “I left you a little souvenir of the past!” way?

* So. The sender could be Elias, but I don’t think that it’s him, mostly because of what they have in common and what they seem to be saying: Sasha and mostly… fire. Fire in the Archives, the concept of setting the Archives on fire.

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: –Yes, thank you, I do hope you’re not planning to light those candles…! TIM: … Oh, goodness! [SHAKES A BOX OF MATCHES] A source of ignition? In the Archives? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] SASHA: [CHUCKLES] TIM: Uh oh! […] Oh? Woops! [A MATCH IS LIT] Sorry; my hand slipped. ELIAS?: [HISS] TIM: And again. [CRACKLE OF A BIRTHDAY CANDLE WICK] And again. And… a couple more times, here – I’m so clumsy today; that is a lot of fire! ARCHIVIST: I’m really not comfortable with– SASHA: So blow them out, then. ARCHIVIST: Oh. [FIRE CRACKLING] … Right, yeah–

(MAG161) LEITNER: Right… What are you going to do? GERTRUDE: Paper burns well. [GURGLING LIQUID] Petrol burns… better. LEITNER: Aha! I always forget about your pyromaniac streak. GERTRUDE: Mm. Remind me to tell you about Agnes, sometime…!

… And also something very new with Gertrude: it seems that… she wasn’t only planning to set the Archives on fire as a distraction while she was going after Jonah’s real body in the Panopticon, as she had told Elias when he caught her pouring petrol:

(MAG158) GERTRUDE: Shame, really; I used to be able to torch a building in half the time. [SIGH] Age catches us all. … Well. Almost all of us, Elias. ELIAS: You were the one so… insistent on staying human. […] What exactly were you hoping to achieve here? Why not come at me directly instead of burning everything first? GERTRUDE: I was rather hoping the fire would occupy you while I did just that. ELIAS: I see…! How long have you known? GERTRUDE: About your body? Not long after you took your new host and we had that little… chat. Wasn’t exactly a huge leap to the Panopticon after that. The hard part was figuring out how to actually reach it. Took me the better part of a decade. ELIAS: So you burn the place down, use it as cover to reach my body, and then we die together. [CHUCKLE] How… poetic. Doesn’t seem like your style at all.

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: [SHARPLY] We’re wasting time. Do you still have the Ruskin book? LEITNER: I do. Though I don’t relish the thought of using it. Makes it rather hard to breathe, like your chest– GERTRUDE: You know– LEITNER: –is being… GERTRUDE: –the gas main, little way out in the tunnel? LEITNER: I do. GERTRUDE: I need you to move it. LEITNER: I, hum… That’s… I mean, that’s not just earth, there’s pipework and all sorts of– GERTRUDE: Find a way. I need it to be directly under the Institute, or… at least, closer. LEITNER: I’m more likely to rupture it and fill the place with gas. GERTRUDE: Hm! That would also be acceptable.

SHE WAS PLANNING TO EXPLODE THE BUILDING AND THE TUNNELS?! That’s what the gas would have done when in contact with the fire! So did she bullshit to Elias about knowing where the Panopticon was, to hide her actual plot? She had already blown up a suspected Archive with a gas main:

(MAG053) GERTRUDE: It’s taken a long time to track down someone still living who found the Serapeum of Alexandria. It’s not a full confirmation of my theory about ancient iterations of the Archive, but I’m certainly feeling validated for pursuing it. […] Regardless, I have further follow-up of my own to do. My biggest concern right now is whatever creature Mr Heller encountered down there. It was… 56 years ago. But if it’s still alive, I should be careful. What was it? A guardian of some sort or perhaps… perhaps it too was… once an Archivist. […] ARCHIVIST: I’ve found a news article from March 1998, six months after this statement was taken. It reports an explosion in Alexandria, which destroyed several buildings in the vicinity of Pompey’s Pillar, and killed 17 people. Official investigation determined it to be a gas mains explosion, but… I wonder. Gertrude Robinson is not who I thought she was.

And… we know that Leitner moved the gas main, and that it’s still waiting under the Institute…

(MAG068) ARCHIVIST: Supplemental. I’m in the tunnels. I was exploring and I got lost. I haven’t gone down any of the stairs and I– I think I’m still under the Institute. There were a couple of spiders, so I changed routes and found, I think it’s a gas main. Must be for the whole building. But there’s someone coming and I– I don’t know who else would be down here, except… I mean, whatever’s down here.

… because Jon was redirected towards it by friggin’ spiders, in the episode preceding the one about Annabelle Cane’s emergence as an avatar.

Complete with Elias’s Knock-knock (MAG081: “Then, on page five, the words ‘KNOCK KNOCK’ appear next to the door in the same style as the words of the title. Mr. Spider’s arms are suddenly straight and still by his side. The text comes again: ‘WHO IS IT, MR. SPIDER?’”), Elias insisting so much about the cake (MAG081: “‘IT’S MR. BLUEBOTTLE’, the text reads, ‘AND HE’S BROUGHT YOU A CAKE’.”), Tim joking about “a source of ignition? In the Archives?” which was Jon’s exact recrimination when he unpacked and discovered the Web lighter (MAG036: “And I don’t allow ignition sources in my archive!”), it really feels to me like it’s The Web that sent the tapes? There are so many little connections and narrative irony, it sounds like something a “Story-Spinner” would send…?

If it’s indeed The Web: I… am not banking on the tapes being a guideline to explain how to get rid of Jonah. It could still be gloating: look, we made you aware of the gas main under the Archives; look, we had sent you the Web lighter; you had all the cards in your hands and yet you didn’t grab your chance when you had it, and it’s your own fault that Jonah was still around when he tricked you into reading his incantation. It could still be that kind of message.

(+ Big problem in the Archives about using the gas main… is the New Fire Suppression System (MAG039, Elias: “On Jon’s insistence I recently changed the Archive’s fire suppression system to use carbon dioxide. Should have done it years ago, really–”). IIRC, CO2 is precisely good to counter leaking gas fire?)

- We’re getting a few indications about the current state of the world:

(Season 5 trailer) MARTIN: Uh, o–okay, eh. [PAUSE] How are you feeling today? ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE] Define… “today”. [CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: “How are you feeling in general”, then? ARCHIVIST: … Unchanged. [PAUSE] I don’t know if it’ll ever change again…! […] MARTIN: OH! Woah…! Oh… Wha… [HIGH-PITCHED] What, but I–, I–I made that, if– I… Wh… I thought it was– ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry, Martin. MARTIN: [PANTS] ARCHIVIST: [WITH AN EDGE] Things don’t work like that anymore…! MARTIN: Like what?! ARCHIVIST: Like normal. This is no longer a world where you can trust…! MARTIN: What, t–tea?! ARCHIVIST: … Comfort.

(MAG161) MARTIN: You should get some sleep. [CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] can’t. I–I–I can’t, I–I don’t think I do anymore… “Sleep”. [EXHALE] How long’s it been, now? MARTIN: I don’t know. It’s not like there are days to count anymore. All the clocks have stopped, and… [DISTANT HOWL] ARCHIVIST: Well, I haven’t yet. I get… tired, but it doesn’t feel the same. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] Probably for the best. Sleep doesn’t look… pleasant. MARTIN: Nnno, it’s… it’s not. ARCHIVIST: I couldn’t wake you. […] I’m just… I’m mourning a world I killed…! MARTIN: I know… ARCHIVIST: And we’re all trapped in its rotting corpse…! […] MARTIN: [DRY HUFF] What about food? ARCHIVIST: What about it? When’s the last time you thought to eat, o–or even felt hungry? MARTIN: [FAINT] What…? Wha… Uh… I don’t know. ARCHIVIST: No. Whatever is sustaining us now doesn’t need us to eat. MARTIN: That… that can’t be possible– ARCHIVIST: It’s a new world, Martin, the natural laws are whatever they want them to be. And I suspect they don’t much care to keep humanity fed and watered.

* So time and necessities have been affected – I was wondering if the “eternity of torment” promised by Elias meant that everyone would be kept in a state of not-being-able-to-die, it might be the case…? (Which adds another concern if (if.) they managed to undo that apocalypse: would time catch up to everyone, suddenly, thus annihilating everyone in one-go…?)

* The most characteristic element of Elias’s office, sound-wise, was the clock/metronome in the background. If we were to go back in that office at some point, would it have stopped like all the others? Or not?

* This episode showed Jon listening to the recordings of fixed points (his own birthday, a representation of time passing as a personal experience; Gertrude&Leitner the day they tried to neutralise Elias, resulting in Gertrude’s death and, ultimately, in Jon rising as the next Head Archivist) at a moment during which “time” is not experienced anymore as a stable and sure thing (they can’t track days anymore, the clocks have stopped)… and yet, time is indeed still going, still there as a continuum? There is a past, there is future, there is a “right now”, down to the case number (“Case ########–1”): no date, yes, but if you’re counting 1, 2, 3, etc., then there is still a logic, still a progression. The main difference, right now, seems to be that time is less tangible, less grounded? More subjective, but without the regularity of the world going around them? I wonder if time will get further twisted, or will remain… a constant “undetermined”.

- I’m squinting a bit at the fact that Jon insists that this apocalypse seems to resist any change (and mentioning the day before the invocation as “the day before the Change”), and pushing to preserve their current status quo:

(Season 5 trailer) MARTIN: “How are you feeling in general”, then? ARCHIVIST: … Unchanged. [PAUSE] I don’t know if it’ll ever change again…! [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLE]

(MAG161) MARTIN: I know. But we can’t stay in this cabin forever…! [DISTANT HOWL] ARCHIVIST: Why not? It, it’s quiet here, an–and I have you…! […] MARTIN: Well, that as may be, we can’t just stay here forever. ARCHIVIST: What could possibly be out there that you want to see?

… when the one thing that had been characterised by “change”, last season, was Adelard’s definition of The Extinction:

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “This is a fear of extinction. Of change. It used to be part of The End, perhaps, when The End of humanity was to be the end of all things; but now, the fear is not of a rapture or a revelation; it is of catastrophic change. A change in our world that will wipe out what it means to be “us”, and leave something else in its place. […] The Extinction. The Terrible Change. The-Future-Without-Us.”

So, hum… Given that Martin still thought in MAG158 that The Extinction as an aspect of Fear might legitimately be on the rise, I wonder if he’ll try to dig further in that area, and cause something worse in the process (although that doesn’t bode great at all for humanity: Simon had warned that, anyway, the world would just keep going, that “ends of the world” and cataclysms had happened and would happen again).

- I wonder if the dreams, and specifically Martin’s, will become a Big Slap In The Face by the end of the season (making us go back to the mention from this ep and going “OH NO, THE FORESHADOWING/HINT D:”)…

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Well, I haven’t yet. I get… tired, but it doesn’t feel the same. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] Probably for the best. Sleep doesn’t look… pleasant. MARTIN: Nnno, it’s… it’s not. ARCHIVIST: I couldn’t wake you. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: I’m sorry. […] Well, just as well I don’t remember my dreams. ARCHIVIST: I do. MARTIN: Uh– What? ARCHIVIST: They… I see most of the suffering around here. When it’s quiet, it just… it’s like… I can see it, like I’m watching all of it. MARTIN: You haven’t been opening the curtains? ARCHIVIST: No, I don’t need to. “It” can see us here, and… [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] And I can see out as well. MARTIN: O–kay, we’ll just file that under… ominous, for now.

Is it the same for everyone (no comfort found in sleep, sleep being as unpleasant as awareness)? In Martin’s case, does it mean that he has lost Beholding’s protection as a member of the Institute (since he was going to The Lonely), or does it mean that, anyway, the rules have changed and Jon will see people’s dreams indiscriminately, including Basira’s? What about Melanie’s, since she cut ties with Beholding? … Do Jon and Martin have the same definition of an unpleasant dream…? (=> is it the “Martin dreams about Jane Prentiss” kind of unpleasant, or the “Martin dreams about being back into The Lonely and feeling fine there, and it’s the waking up part which is unpleasant” kind?).

- It seems like Elias was kiiiiind of (absolutely) right about the concept that Jon would be perfectly tailored for this world… as Archivist:

(Season 5 trailer) MARTIN: Are you still… [SIGH] “feeling it”? Seeing everything? ARCHIVIST: Yes, I, I’m trying not to, but… all of the fear, th–the anguish, i–it just… [INHALE] It keeps coming at me in waves, rolling over me, filling my head with such… awful sights. MARTIN: … I’m sorry. That sounds… [SMALL EXHALE] That sounds horrible. ARCHIVIST: … I wish it was, Martin. I really wish it was. … But it feels… right. [MIRTHLESS HUFF]

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: They… I see most of the suffering around here. When it’s quiet, it just… it’s like… I can see it, like I’m watching all of it. MARTIN: You haven’t been opening the curtains? ARCHIVIST: No, I don’t need to. “It” can see us here, and… [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] And I can see out as well. […] … Besides… G… [SHAKY EXHALE] Grief… is healthy. I–if nothing else, it pushes away the other feelings that that… thing wants me to experience. […] It’s so… It’s so loud, out there? The agony, the–the terror, I can see it all so much more clearly…!

;; For “the other feelings that that thing wants me to experience”: Jon got a bit more aware of the influences that were pushed on him during season 4 (leading him to discover Eric’s tape), I’m really impressed that he managed to establish what he didn’t want to embrace and what he considered as himself and his own feelings, his own ethics? Despite his jab at Martin for not falling into despair “like me [Jon]”, it doesn’t feel like Jon has utterly given up, since he’s still refusing to embrace the Beholding part of himself – if he had absolutely given up, whether or not he were enjoying the apocalypse wouldn’t really matter, right? Yet, he’s still fighting on that front, still hasn’t decided to stop feeling guilty like Helen did.

Regarding his relationship to The Eye, it sounds like an extension of what used to be his dreamscape, where he couldn’t escape The Eye anywhere, hated it, and yet was completed by it:

(MAG120) ELIAS: It opens, and he walks slowly down the steps into the earth; but even as it closes above him, the great shadow still Sees him. There is nowhere in this universe that it would not blot out the sky. […] But the Archivist is not afraid. His only fear is that even here, at the centre of the world, barrelling towards a flightless, infinite tomb, still, he will be watched. Still, he will watch. […] So he watches her, trying in his single-minded focus to ignore the attention of that impossible thing that covers the sky and fixes its gaze on him with such force it would choke him – were he breathing. […] And at last, the Archivist looks up. At last, he looks into The Eye that sees all, and knows all, and clutches at the secret terrors of your heart. The Ceaseless Watcher of all that is, and all that was; the voracious, infinite hunger that tears at his soul, invoking him to discover, to observe, to experience all and everything and forever. It stares into him, and it stares out of him, and he is falling into the devouring eternity of its pupil. He wants to cry out in horror, but he cannot. He. is. whole.

(Down to the “it stares into him, and it stares out of him” symbiotic relationship since Jon explained that his awareness of the suffering is linked to what “it” can see.)

It’s heart-breaking that Jon’s resistance towards embracing his monsterhood… came with a form of self-harm (rummaging in the past), yet grounding him away from his instinct to enjoy the chaos. Glad and sad that Jon&Martin had that tiny argument about what counts as “healthy” in the current circumstances – it’s not the time, not the circumstances anymore indeed… and yet, it has always and never been the time before, anyway. I’m curious about how Jon directly qualified his listening to the tapes as a form of processing his “grief”, since there has been that theory of TMA organised as the five stages of grief floating around, it worked very well for the first four seasons… and the last phase would then end with “acceptance”. He’s not there right now, but that could be the inner journey in season 5…

- We’ve yet to see if Elias was right and will be spared, but at least, Jon is indeed in a position of power in the new setting:

(MAG161) MARTIN: Uh, yes. Still: better than outside. [CREAKING SOUND] [EVIL MOO / BÂÂ IN THE DISTANCE] MARTIN: It sounds bad. ARCHIVIST: [MIRTHLESS LAUGHTER] It is…! [SILENCE] MARTIN: … Are we still safe? ARCHIVIST: Y–yes, it… it doesn’t want to harm me. MARTIN: And me? ARCHIVIST: I won’t let it. […] … I just wish it didn’t feel like whatever’s out there was waiting, too. MARTIN: Yeah… [SILENCE]

(I can’t decide if it’s a moo or a bââ, and I can’t decide which I would love more: evil cow because there is no comfort anymore, or evil bââ because of Jonathan “Bâââ” Sims from MAG125. The cry is really faint but heard multiple times through their exchanges!)

So: at least on Jon’s front, he’s not targeted by things out there, and sounds confident that he would be able/powerful enough to keep them away from Martin.

… I wonder how aware Jon currently is of the risk of losing Martin, and how much it weighs in his protests against the idea of leaving the safehouse. On the one hand, he might not be able to protect Martin efficiently if they were to travel outside (and… as Peter had pointed out to him in MAG159, Martin is “the last”); on the other hand, heading towards more populated areas means receiving more suffering from many more people, so the prospect of leaving indeed sounds like a lose-lose for Jon on both fronts. Still: as soon as they leave the cabin, what will begin in retrospect is probably… the story of how they will lose each other in some way or another. (Unless they die together.)

- Regarding Jon&Martin, I love the togetherness, the fact that Jon agrees to show his vulnerable sides and to explain himself! Martin is not enduring things anymore, snaps and protests, and the contrast between his s1!self (unable to assert himself and getting walked over by everyone, not in a mean way but still… very casually) is so blatant!

(MAG161) MARTIN: It just… It hurts me to see you wallowing, like this. ARCHIVIST: [SHARPLY] Well, some of us weren’t able to cut ourselves off from the world before it ended. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: That’s not fair. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SOFTER] No, it’s not, I’m, I’m sorry, I just… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] [INHALE, EXHALE] It hurts. MARTIN: I know. […] ARCHIVIST: No, it’s– [SIGH] I love you, I just… I need more time. [SILENCE] MARTIN: It’s alright. [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] [CREAKING SOUND]

* … I wonder if Martin’s absence of reaction following Jon’s “I love you” means that he was already used to it, or if he didn’t react because… he doesn’t have many emotions left, himself, after his Lonely-fication.

* Jon’s accusation seemed very targeted, and ;; Martin had explained that Jon was the only person left for him, in MAG158, I… think it might still be genuinely the case? And that Martin is able to think about a solution or a path precisely because other people’s suffering doesn’t matter much for him and he doesn’t empathetically feel for them? Martin still has a moral compass (like in MAG158, when he pointed out that he did care if people were to die following Elias’s death), but… I’m not sure he’s doing it “for people”.

* There was a brusque turnaround from Martin pointing out that the safehouse was “better than outside” before Gertrude’s tape, to Martin pushing Jon to leave in search for a solution with him: did Martin suggest they could go on that journey because Jon looked sad, and that Martin is mostly… trying to fix this problem? (Jon looks sad because of the end of the world, therefore they must find a way to revert the world to its original state, and Jon won’t be sad anymore.)

* I’m a bit worried over the push-pull relationship between Jon&Martin right now, especially with Martin’s past involvement with The Lonely… Jon shuts him down quite a lot, and although Martin snaps and Jon relents and apologises, Martin is still put in the position of being his caretaker at the moment (going to check on Jon, reminding him that his guilt is misplaced, etc.): it… is a bit uncomfortable given Martin’s pedigree (trying to take care of his mother and being constantly rejected). Jon was quick to apologise and tried to ease it, but I’m a bit worried on that front.

* It doesn’t seem like Martin had realised that his biological rules have changed when it comes to sleeping or eating; is it a Martin-thing (due to his having a supernatural connection with The Lonely and/or with Jon), or is it the same for all of humanity now?

* Big scare that Martin could be (unknowingly?) feeding from Jon – what could be Lonelier than someone obsessively listening to tapes from a past that has been lost and can’t be reached anymore? When Martin said “It hurts me to see you wallowing”, was it genuine, or an attempt at self-convincing that he’s not thriving on it (and feeding from it)…?

- In the series of contrast between Jon and Martin: “waiting”.

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: No, it’s– [SIGH] I love you, I just… I need more time. [SILENCE] MARTIN: It’s alright. [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] [CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: [SOFT EXHALE] MARTIN: It’s alright, I’m good at waiting.

And it’s a skill that Martin indeed learned to perfect, forced by circumstances: from being besieged by Prentiss to convincing Tim to wait for the Jon-intervention, to waiting for the opportunity to trap Elias, to the months spent playing Peter like a Cheap Whistle:

(MAG022) MARTIN: This went on for thirteen days. Every time I thought it might be safe to try and leave I’d hear that knocking at my door come back. Luckily there was no problem with my water supply, so I had plenty to drink. I’m just glad none of them thought to come up through the pipes. I eat a lot of… ready meals, cans, that kind of thing, so… I had food, although after the first few days I had to start rationing. If I ever see another can of peaches… [SHUDDERS] But… I–I think the worst part was the boredom.

(MAG117) MARTIN: These last couple of years, I’ve always been… running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but… but now it’s my trap. And, well. I think it will work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but… it felt good, weaving my own little web.

(MAG158) MARTIN: And then… [SHAKILY] Jon came back, and… and suddenly, I had a reason: I had to keep your attention on me. Make you feel in control, so you didn’t take it out on him. […] So I… played along, waited to see what your endgame was. And here we are.

(ThisIsHowWebMartinCanStillWinTM, since Breekon had described The Web as “knows too much to truly be a Stranger, but hides its knowing well enough to endure”.)

… Meanwhile, Jon used to hate waiting and staying inactive:

(MAG031) ARCHIVIST: Hunted. … Yes… I think I’m starting to know the feeling. […] It’s… been two months now… since Martin returned… and we. Became. the ones. being… hunted. Are we being hunted? … Martin’s still living here, and I’m leaving less and less. The worms keep turning up, we kill them, but there are more each week. … What is she waiting for…?

(MAG115) ARCHIVIST: Maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s just this… stillness, the anticipation. I– We know what’s happening, we know what we have to do about it, we even have something approaching a plan for once. And while it’s a welcome change not to be desperately praying for a deus ex machina, I don’t really know how to handle the waiting. […] So I suppose I’m safe. But everything just feels like… killing time, running down the clock. I don’t think I like it. God, do I– do I miss being chased? That’s depressing. No, it’s… I just miss feeling like I’m moving, like I–

(MAG130) ARCHIVIST: … It’s been two weeks since I heard from Basira. I’m not waiting any longer. I’m getting Daisy back.

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: What the hell is The Watcher’s Crown? So far the only mention of it I’ve had is from Gerry, and he didn’t seem to know much about what it actually meant. [PAUSE] And he’s gone now. But if it is the grand ritual of Beholding, then I– … I mean… I need to know about it. Right…? I feel like I’m on a deadline, like I’m running out of time somehow – and I don’t even know where to go! What to look for, o–or… [EXHALE] Just casting around blindly for more clues to just… drop into my lap. Everyone else is… running towards something, or running away, and I… [SIGH] I don’t know what I’m doing. [PAUSE] [SIGH] I’m just tired. Think I might go lie down for a while. Get a cup of tea [HUFF]

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: … [SIGH] I’m just worried about Martin. … Christ… Every other Avatar gets to have their feelings… burned right out of them, but me? I’ve… just got to sit in mine. … I know he said he had everything under control. I need… to trust him; whatever he’s doing with Peter, he’s… he knows what he’s doing. Probably. I just– … [DEEP INHALE] [VERY FAST] I need him to be okay. I just do. … If I… Knew… what his plan was; if I knew what Peter was doing; if I just– [WHISPERING] … Can I…?

And used to jump into action in order to find a solution at every turn. So seeing him asking for more time, and suggesting that they could stay in the safehouse “forever”… Ooft. Someone has been burned one too many time after MAG160.

- We don’t know the exact amount of tapes that Jon received, but he implied there were more than what we’ve heard:

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Have you heard the Gertrude one? MARTIN: What? ARCHIVIST: The Gertrude tape. [A TAPE IS LOADED] There’re a–a few of them, but this is my favourite.

* So, multiple ones, possibly multiple ones with Gertrude specifically? Given that we heard Gertrude&Leitner together for the first time, I wonder if we’ll hear a Gertrude&Gerry one at some point, or a Gertrude&Adelard, or a Gertrude&Agnes (depending if she was sincere when she told Arthur that she had never met her… though, epistolary conversation through letters and/or tapes could work!), or Gertrude&Emma-the-third-assistant, or Gertrude&Elias just after Jonah had body-hopped, or even before…

* Anyway, BOLD CHOICE to begin with Jon’s “favourite” because it means that if we listen to the other tapes in the next few episodes… we’ll know they’re not Jon’s favourite.

- Really, I really, really appreciate how the episode brought up sharp contrasts in multiple aspects, but mostly expressed by the opposition between Jon&Martin: staying indoors and listening to the past and to what-could-have-been, going out and searching for a solution that might not even exist to fix the future. It’s an interesting case where the episode title, “Dwelling”, refers to two different things… that are after all one and the same: the house Jon doesn’t want to leave, and the memories of the past that he keeps listening to as a way to push back what the new world is trying to force on him. The same bubble, both physical and metaphorical.

We’re kicking off with a status quo, so what will be able to break it? Jon getting enough “time” to accept to leave and begin searching on his own, without any push? One of the monsters trying to attack Martin? Basira and/or Melanie&Georgie finding them? The Not!Them, Julia&Trevor or monster!Daisy? New tapes or statements left for them to invite them somewhere? (Elias barging in with Regrets because he’s not as immune as he hoped would make me laugh a lot, but I think he would rather choke on his own eyes than admit that he was wrong in any way. ^^)

Title for next episode seems very… down to earth… and absolutely not ominous… absolutely not… Aside from the obvious, what could be the second meaning…? Something about what happened to the village? … Title could work in a way for Salesa (or Peter?!) content, though not banking on it.

#tma liveblog #mag161 #tma season 5 #tma spoilers/#the magnus archives #long post/#loooong.

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