#also wanted to use at least somewhat new clips why do i make things harder for myself

[agustd3]

bangtan gif challenge ☆ ↳ your favorite color + your bias → pink & yoongi

#i cried making this i thought it would be easy #btsgif #dailybts #btsedit #yoongiedit #min yoongi #bts #gif #also wanted to use at least somewhat new clips why do i make things harder for myself

[aminiatureworld]

Interest II

Characters: Kaeya, Xiao, gn!reader

Word Count: 3,020

Warnings: Swearing

Premise: Sometimes emotions can be confusing. In those times it can be easier to shut down. After all, wouldn’t finding the truth out be scarier?

In which the reader assumes their character is disinterested, and pulls away.

Author’s Note: I wrote a lot tonight! It was nice to write for multiple characters again, made me feel like the good old days, or something. 

Hope I’m finally getting back on schedule and hope you enjoy!

Kaeya

If Kaeya flirted with you, he also flirted with all of Mondstadt; or so you kept telling yourself.

You liked the cavalry captain, you liked him a lot. It was easy to like him, as easy as breathing air. The thickets of romance, the awkward looks, the stilted conversations, the dying words. None of those things existed in Kaeya.

If there were roses there were thorns too, and though you tried to convince yourself that this emotion, this easiness was something good, there was a part of you that fought back at the idea. The reason things were so easy with Kaeya was because of one simple reason. He didn’t like you. Or not the way you liked him. Kaeya flirted with all of Mondstadt after all, and you were merely one library assistant in the middle of an entire country. Your existence wasn’t one for the history books. Not compared to the man that you’d managed to fall hopelessly in love with anyways.

At first you tried to ignore those voices, that cynical side of yourself that existed only, it seemed, to make you unhappy. You weren’t necessarily an optimist by nature, but you were a bit of a hopeless romantic, and flirting or not you at least hoped to get your point across. Delivering Kaeya’s library requests first, always going up to him at lunchtime to talk, even giving him a special gift for the Windbloom festival. You really did try, you didn’t think that the opposite could be argued. Still things continued on as relatively normal however, Kaeya’s flirting never seeming to grow particularly towards you. Eventually it became harder and harder to avoid the voice in your head sneering you were wasting your time. Or maybe you were just tired.

Either way the answer seemed to be obvious. You knew when the answer was to count your losses and move on, and surely this was one of those times. Kaeya wasn’t going to see you as a partner, he just wasn’t. That didn’t mean he wasn’t kind, or that your conversations with him weren’t lovely, or even that you weren’t still in love with him. Still, wasn’t it time to move on to kinder winds? You wanted a clean break, wanted an end to your painful waiting; didn’t want to experience that clench in your heart when you watched Kaeya flirting with someone else as the point just drove further and further home. You wanted reprieve, and the only way to do that was to admit the obvious. This wasn’t going to happen.

So you gave up, or did your best attempt at giving up. You still spoke to Kaeya, the gods knew you probably couldn’t stand not speaking to him. You still tried to keep as light as before, tried to retain the dynamic, for something was better than nothing. Yet your days of simply chasing after him were over, and as you settled into you schedule of new normalcy you found, though things weren’t necessarily easier, at least they seemed simpler. Besides, how much had really changed? Kaeya most likely didn’t notice.

“Kaeya, the manuscript you requested on Liyue trade history came in yesterday. There were also a few other things that came in, though Lisa told me they’re classified.”

“Oh Lisa, always a stickler for rules. Would you like to know what I requested?”

“Like you would actually tell me,” you snorted. “No, I’m fine. It’s none of my business.”

“Aw,” Kaeya pouted slightly, crossing his arms in front of him. He seemed to be doing that more often these days, though maybe you were simply imagining it. “Where’s your sense of adventure darling? You seemed to have lost it somewhere.”

“I’m just following rules,” you pointed out.

Something had shifted about the conversation at some point, and you were suddenly feeling an undercurrent that hadn’t been there before. Finding it uncomfortable you quickly removed the space between you and Kaeya, reaching out to place the brown paper wrapped books into his hands. Taking them Kaeya lifted an eyebrow. Turning around he went to put them on his desk.

The momentary reprieve in atmosphere you felt quickly died, as before you had time to turn around the cavalry captain was back, this time leaning closely towards you.

“What is it?” You asked. This was certainly Kaeya behavior, but it still startled you nonetheless.

“You’re acting funny.”

“What? I’m acting completely normal.”

“If you say so.”

But the tone conveyed that Kaeya didn’t agree one bit. A smirk painting his lips he turned around, though something bitter seemed to flash behind his eyes, and for a moment you wondered if he had somehow caught on to the secret you’d been hoping to keep to yourself.

After that things seemed to continue on as normal for a few weeks. If Kaeya’s books were secretly transgressive, they certainly weren’t doing anything actively, and life as an assistant librarian to the Knights of Favonius retained its languid, unhurried pace. Still a part of you had never forgotten about that weird snippet of conversation, one which was doing a surprisingly good job at eating away at you.

You were almost relieved when Kaeya brought the matter up again.

“Is something wrong darling?”

“You asked me that two weeks ago Kaeya.”

“Really? It’s been that long? I must be neglecting my duties,” he let out a careless sort of laugh, before his eyes steadied. “I was hoping that this time I might get a more honest answer.”

“So you think I’m lying to you when I’m saying nothing’s wrong?”

“Yes.”

“But I’m not! How could I be lying to both you and myself.”

“I find that doing such a thing is a surprisingly easy task. Nevertheless, even if you aren’t lying, there is something wrong.”

“And what would that thing be, Mr. Expert?” For some reason this conversation was aggravating you. Maybe because you couldn’t decide whether or not he was right.

“I don’t know, I was hoping you could tell me. I can’t say sorry for something I’m not aware of, I don’t know what I did. You do though. So the sooner you tell me what’s wrong the sooner things can go back to normal.”

“What do you mean by normal Kaeya? If anything this is more normal. Not that things have changed that much. I’m sorry I don’t deliver your books first, if that’s what you’re complaining about. But frankly, I don’t see what you’re so upset about? You’ve got plenty of other friends, so why are you complaining to me?”

Maybe it wasn’t your best use of logic, but your ability to circle around the focus of the conversation, the unspoken emotions that still burned through you, was somewhat lacking.

“This is not normal. I’m not talking about library books, I’m talking about friends. Or maybe avoidance. You’ve been avoiding me lately, even if you aren’t doing it completely. It wounds me, you know. My dearest companion, what did I do to earn their ire?”

“You did nothing.”

“That’s obviously a lie.”

“It’s not.”

“It is,” Kaeya voice was clipped, matching your same tone. Even now he was shifting himself to better fit the atmosphere in the room, something you normally valued so deeply.

“It’s not. It’s really not! That’s the problem Kaeya, don’t you see?” Tears that had threated the corners of your eyes were now burning across your vision, as your emotions finally broke through the paltry excuse for a dam you’d been building. “You’ve done nothing, you’ve never done anything. You’re always nice, and flirty, and a bit shameless. And that’s fine! It’s not your fault that you don’t feel like I feel for you. I don’t want to make you feel guilty. You flirt with everyone, and that’s fine. I don’t care! I really don’t. I don’t want to burden you. Still, can’t you just let me feel upset by it? Can’t you just let me give up? Do you know how painful it is not to give up? Why won’t you let me at least do that, but no! Instead you come in here talking about how everything’s different, as if I’ve offended you, or as if you worry would change anything. Of course it won’t! And it shouldn’t! But damn it Kaeya, I just want to be upset!”

By this time Kaeya had closed the space between you two, wrapping his arms around you and running soft, slightly cool, fingers through your hair. You nestled into him, despite yourself. You were so tired and so angry, and right now it didn’t really seem to matter who you cried on as long as you were crying on someone. Letting yourself be carried away by your emotions you let your ragged breathing unleash itself inside the walls of Kaeya’s office.

Eventually you calmed down. Though you expected Kaeya to step away when your breathing evened out, instead he remained there, continuing to run comforting fingers though you hair, his other hand gently cradling your shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that was the reason.” It was simple, direct. Undeniably Kaeya.

“What else would be the reason,” you grumbled.

“I don’t know. It’s why I asked. Thank you for answering me.”

“You forced me into it.” There was no true venom behind your words. You were sure Kaeya knew that.

“Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“No.”

“Not yet?”

You shook your head. “Not yet.”

“That’s alright. Now’s not the best time anyways, since I ought to look my best. Not that I don’t look amazing already, but I should dress up for an occasion such as that. Still, I hope that eventually you’ll allow yourself to live in a way that doesn’t make you unhappy. Sometimes we can’t do that. This time you can.”

“Maybe.”

“Good. I’ll be waiting for you darling, and you know how impatient I am.”

“What if you have to wait for a long time?” You were feeling quite contrary.

“Then I’ll wait. After all, I’ll have quite the reward for my patience.”

You smiled into Kaeya. Despite yourself, you knew it wouldn’t be that long.

 Xiao

With Xiao, the question was always boundaries. How far is too far? How far is not far enough? It was an endless maze, even if it was a maze you would gladly continue to explore, sure that the light at the end must lead to something truly beautiful. Still, you didn’t exactly need your emotions to come in and complicate something already so difficult to navigate.

At first you tired to ignore, to take a page from the book the yaksha you’d so hopelessly fallen for had written. Yet if was much harder than it ought to be, for loving Xiao seemed to come as naturally as breathing, and no amount of looking for faults seemed to be doing much to change that. After all, everyone has faults, and nothing could change the innate goodness you saw in Xiao, the wonder and light that he carried with him, despite his millennia of hardships.

At first you thought to tell him, to cross that border, find that boundary and test it with all the patience it had taken to test and cross those other boundaries.

“Xiao?”

“Mmm.”

“I, I have something to tell you.”

“What?”

“I, I made you some Almond Tofu!”

Xiao let his eyes widen with characteristic surprise, before leaping down nimbly from his perch to take the dish you brought out from behind your back. You watched as he ate it happily, warmth running through your veins. Nevertheless a part of you cried in frustration, perhaps even pain, for you knew you had failed to do what you had set out to do.

It wasn’t simply that you feared losing Xiao’s friendship, feared losing his respect. It was the boundaries, those invisible lines you were so careful not to step over. Xiao needed those boundaries, you knew he did. Though he had told you very little about his past, what he had told was horrific, and you hardly doubted that Xiao’s survival, his failure to spin into madness, was because of those walls he’d carefully constructed around himself. You wanted him to shed those walls yes, to slowly emerge from the darkness which he held around himself. But you weren’t ready to push him to do so, or not very much at least. It wasn’t truly in your nature to do so anyways.

So you expressed your feelings as best you could, with tofu and flowers and all the kindness you had to offer. When you weren’t working, spending your time sewing for a high-end Liyue shop, you were with Xiao. A part of you assumed that it would be enough, that if you gave Xiao enough of your time and enough of your attention the barriers would magically break down. One day you’d wake up and they’d be gone and you’d be happy, having never pushed things too far.

As nothing truly seemed to change however you grew slowly discouraged. You weren’t really aware of your flagging hopes, not really. It was more that you were busy, you were so busy. Besides, Xiao hadn’t expressed much sadness over losing your company. Perhaps he was secretly relieved, perhaps you had pushed too far at some point and he hadn’t told you. Maybe it was best that you give his boundaries time, and not push it too far.

Even looking back it was hard not to call the logic sound, or at least sound to you. In some ways you and Xiao were cut of the same cloth, and though that brought with it an understanding, it also brought its own set of issues. Neither of you were willing to walk over the line that the other drew, even if you could not see where they had actually drawn it. Even if not doing so was painful, the fear of what pain might come if you did was too great a discouragement.

So you began to slowly fade away, without being entirely aware that you were indeed doing so. You were busy after all, and Xioa was most likely too. He was still a yaksha after all, a being whose life was almost completely disconnected from your own. Surely it wouldn’t be that surprising if his views were similar? Maybe you truly had crossed a line, and that was why he never seemed to enquire after you. Or maybe it was that you hadn’t mattered all that much in the first place.

It was a wet, cold autumn day. You sighed slightly as you unlocked your door, having gotten drenched by protecting a bold of fabric you were bringing home to cut and pin. Letting out a huff, you opened the door and went to take a nap. You must’ve been tired, for it took a few seconds for the screech of surprise to leave you mouth at the sight of the unexpected intruder waiting for you.

“Xiao! You scared me!”

You stared at the yaksha, very much surprised by the sight of him. Your surprise had very little time to register though, being quickly replaced by concern for the storm so clearly gathering in Xiao’s eyes.

“You were gone for so long.”

“I’m sorry Xiao. It’s just been so busy you know, everyone’s preparing for the change in season. Besides…”

“Besides?”

“I didn’t want to bother you. I mean, I know you also have a job, and though I want you to find happiness outside of it, I don’t want to pressure you.”

Xiao’s facial expressions evidently conveyed that he was not impressed. Searching for the right words you let your gaze drift towards the floor. You weren’t sure that you were ever going to be ready for a conversation like this, but certainly not in the state you were now. Still, you owed Xiao some sort of explanation. Of course you did.

“I’m really sorry Xiao. I should have found time for you. It’s completely my fault.”

“That’s not what I want.” Xiao’s tone was gruff, frustrated. You found the frustration mirrored within yourself.

“What do you want?”

“I,” Xiao flushed. “I don’t want you to apologize. I’m not blaming you for anything. You shouldn’t apologize for nothing.”

“Sorry,” you mumbled.

Xiao shook his head. For a moment he just stood there, eyes stormy. Slowly though he reached out to take your hand. You found the act surprisingly comforting. You had missed Xiao’s hands, delicately built, calloused beyond believe. They felt comforting and warm and safe, and you wished you could never let go of them. Drawing strength from that you slowly raised your gaze slightly.

“What do you want, Xiao?”

At first Xiao said nothing. Perhaps he was staring at a line, contemplating whether to cross it. You had half the mind to apologize again, but managed to stop the words from coming out. You knew that it was just a force of habit. Besides, Xiao hadn’t said anything yet. A small spark of hope burned inside you, the hope that something might go well.

There was a gentle tug on your wrist and suddenly you were in Xiao’s arms, his hair gently tickling your nose.

“This,” he mumbled. “I want this.”

For a moment you felt yourself freeze in shock, but soon enough you found yourself melting into his embrace, wrapping your own arms around him. Xiao was warm like a heater, warm beyond that too. It was as if there was something in his soul. Gentle, flickering, it brought you happiness that you never thought you could imagine. You wanted to bask in it forever, it was worth any twists and turns you might have to take to reach it.

“Don’t disappear again.”

“I won’t.”

“I should have come earlier.”

“It’s alright. Hey, Xiao?”

“What?” Xiao’s arms tightened around you slightly. You didn’t want to talk much more either.

“What do you think of me?”

Xiao let out a soft snort. “I thought that was pretty obvious.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

It was more than you could have ever hoped for.

#genshin impact #kaeya x reader #kaeya alberich #xiao x reader #xiao #alatus #Genshin Impact fanfiction #scenarios #fanfiction #my writing #requested #gn reader

[btsxmalereaders]

1:31 AM

Pairing: Im Jaebeom x male reader

Genre: angst

☆ Requested

Word Count: 2,08k

🎵 �� 지내야해 1:31 AM

[I am always drowned in the thoughts of you. I get exhausted from crying, but I look for traces of you again...]

The patter of the rain hitting the window has been the only thing that has set the gloomy place for the last couple of hours.

The catheter placed with an uncomfortable sticky tape on the back of your hand feels heavier and heavier. Your eyelids shutting even when you try to keep them open. You're tired despite only spending all the time laying on that stretcher.

Some nurses come from time to time to make sure you're comfortable and you only nod tightly to the questions they make; a routine that you don't have the energy to hate.

Of course, not all days are like this. Sometimes you wake up in a good mood and the personnel would take you out to the small garden behind the hospital, pulling your wheelchair since you're still weak, but it is still something. You would smile and take the sun on good days like those, and if a familiar visited,  they would bring you your painting tools for you to clear your head and have a good time.

But you haven't had good days, lately.

Your friends called you constantly and, when you had enough energy to respond, you tried to put your best smile for them.

You didn't see it as a bad thing, though. They didn't need to know that you were going through thick.

But there was someone you couldn't lie to.

"The receptionist told me 'You can see your fiancé now.'" Jaebeom says as he walks towards you, placing a cute bouquet of flowers on the small table next to you. He looks stunning and always walks in with the hugest smile on his face to greet you. Probably to lift up your mood, too. "Was that an insinuation?"

You can't help but giggle at that, "Maybe. But also they wouldn't let you in if I said you were only my boyfriend. And I don't want to keep this lie."

"Then I better hurry up, right?" He smiles, placing a kiss on your forehead and dragging the chair next to you, taking seat as he grabs your hand tightly. "As soon as you are discharged, I'll put a ring on your finger. I promise."

You keep the big smile to him and cup his cheek with your free hand, being careful because of the catheter. "I've missed you."

"I've missed you so much more," He murmurs. His semblance suddenly changing. "We've been really busy with the tour now that it is starting soon, I'm sorry. I wish I could see you everyday."

"It's okay, love. I understand."

A silence sets in after that. Jaebeom closes his eyes and enjoys your touch for a moment while you observe him in detail; every mole, every mark on his skin, his warm breath against your wrist and his grip on your hand, as if he would never want to let you go.

When he opens his eyes again they're full of tears. You don't even recall when was the last time you've seen him cry.

"Why are you crying? What's wrong?" You ask, sliding your thumb across his cheek to erase every trace of tears falling down.

"I'm sorry," Jaebeom softly whispers. "I hate that I can't do anything else for you."

You sigh, bringing him closer and moving a little, making a space for him to cuddle with you. "Come here. Don't cry."

He does as told, hiding his face in the crook of your neck, calming his nervousness with heavy breaths. It breaks your heart to see him like this.

Your boyfriend gets to calm himself as minutes pass by, with the help of your hand tracing circles on his back, and sweet words whispered to his ears.

You two get to talk properly afterwards, telling each other about how your days have been, although Jeobeom did most of the talk and you only listened, occasionally commenting about it and also asking about your friends.

"As usual, the boys send you greetings and hugs, but only I get to do that, right?" He chuckles, kissing your forehead for the nth time and making you blush. "They might even pop up at the videocall tonight since we'll be rehearsing."

"That's good, don't tell them I said this, but I actually miss seeing their faces and hearing their voices everyday."

Jaebeom laughs at that. "No wonder why I see Bambam sending you voice notes all the time."

A nurse comes back a moment later to let you know that the visiting hours is now over, so Jaebeom stands up and kisses you goodbye, "Don't forget that-"

"-we have a date. For dinner at half past eight. As we do almost every night. Of course I won't forget."

He smiles at you and kisses you again. "And that I love you."

"I love you too." You murmur with a smile and see him walk out of the room.

The nurse changes the serum, as usual, and you only stare at her, not knowing if you should ask...

"Is everything alright, ____?" She asks.

You've known her for a while now, it's almost as if you two were friends, but still, you were still undecided about something that has been in the back of your head for a couple of days.

"Noona, could you do something for me?"

GOT7's tour was about to kick off two weeks after that visit, although it wasn't the last one. Jaebeom did make sure to visit you whenever he could; after rehearsing or even skipping his time to have meals to rush in to the hospital -thing that you obviously scolded him for, but he promised he would get something in his way back-. He also made sure to show you clips of the rehearsals and some videos with messages from the boys for you, which you truly loved.

However, even if that lifted your spirits, it wasn't enough to make you feel better from the terrible days you've had. Not only you couldn't move and hang out as you did weeks ago, but you were feeling so weak that most of the time you would spend it sleeping. In one of Jaebeom's visit you two were talking until you fell asleep, and next thing you know he was saying goodbye again with a worried expression on his face.

And the worst thing is that you didn't have to be a genius to know the reason why. The disguised words you heard from your doctor were enough confirmation for you to know what was about to come.

And you definitely weren't ready for it.

"So? You got good news for me?" You ask the nurse once you see her entering the room.

She tilts her head and sees the hope shining in your eyes, despite looking so small and weak. "Yes. I talked with the doctors and they gave the authorization."

And that was enough for you to feel happy for the rest of the day.

"Are you sure you are okay?"

Unlike other days, today you have woken up happy and eager to go out. You suppose it is normal because you have anxiously waited for this day to come

You nod as an answer and the nurses carefully help you to get ready. 

To say you were nervous was an understatement. You weren't even sure how did the idea come to mind, but you were really determined to do it. And as you get in the van, you quickly send a message to Jinyoung to let him know that you were on your way there.

You've thoroughly planned all this; after all, it was a surprise for Jaebeom.

Of course he couldn't believe his eyes. He froze in his place while the boys almost ran to hug you; Jinyoung pushing the chair behind you and telling them to be careful, but you were too happy to even care about the bone crushing hugs you were receiving. It was all you wanted.

Jaebeom walks slowly to you and gives you a hug when they're done, letting out a sigh he didn't even know he was holding.

"Really? H-how did you even- Are you okay?" He asks, concerned, to which you laugh and nod.

"I'm good, hyungie. The doctor allowed it and I've been wanting to see you out of the hospital." You murmur, holding his hands. "And what kind of boyfriend and ahgase I'd be if I didn't attend your first concert of this new tour?"

They all seem very happy because they haven't seen you in a long time, so it's not surprising that everyone is around you all the time in backstage, asking you lots of questions and updating you on everything that happened since the last time they saw you, although no big news since you're used to chat and videocall them quite often.

While they are fascinated to have you there, Jaebeom seems to be more quiet and with a worried expression, indecipherable. You wonder if he knows or at least suspects about the reason behind it.

The concert finally starts and after more worried looks from your boyfriend, you decide to see from the first row the entire show. Even Yugyeom got you a lightstick for you to cheer them up, and Jaebeom stressed that whatever you needed you could ask anyone from the staff.

It goes pretty well, and you didn't feel uncomfortable or bad at all, but that didn't stop your boyfriend from making sure you were indeed okay every time he could; approaching the side of the stage right where you stayed and nodding in your direction from time to time, and the fans close to you were respectful and careful with your space.

Jaebeom gets somewhat sentimental while performing some songs, and when he stares back at you, you know it. He knows it.

So the first thing he does when the concert is over and gets to backstage is kneel in front of you and cry on your lap.

The boys don't understand the situation, but they leave you two alone for a moment, thinking that maybe their leader was too emotional tonight.

"What are you hiding from me? What have the doctors said?" He gets to babble while the tears are covering his face.

You're hurt from seeing him crumble like this in front of you, so you cry too, holding his hands and tracing circles on their back, trying to calm him down.

"Nothing you don't already know," You say. "You've seen me. I'm not doing well, and... I just had this feeling, I had to see you again, one last t-"

"No." He stops you. The lump on his throat making it harder to speak. "Don't say that. Please."

"Hyung, I'm sorry." You murmur, now caressing his back and placing a kiss on his head. "Please forgive me."

Before going back to the hospital, you say goodbye to your friends, who seem to now be understanding of the situation, but being too shocked to even say anything about it. They hug you more and try to lift the mood making lighthearted jokes that genuinely make you laugh.

Jaebeom doesn't want to separate from you anytime; he's either holding your hand or leaving kisses all over your face, letting you sleep on over his chest on your way back and whispering words to your ears.

"I'll come to see you again later today, alright?" He promises as you lay on the bed and get comfortable. "Sleep for now. I'll be here when you wake up."

He kisses you with so much love, not knowing it was the last time he would do it.

He didn't expect to receive that heartbreaking call that soon.

Just when he was getting ready to see you, he received the news, and he couldn't stop crying and shaking for a long moment. His friends were there, trying to calm him and themselves down; hurt by hearing they've just lost you and feeling so wrecked and weak. 

Naturally, the next shows were postponed, which raised suspicions and fear among the fans, who saw you just a few hours ago.

Jaebeom has never felt this empty and pained.

A part of him ruthlessly ripped away.

He can’t believe it,

That when he opens his eyes you won't be next to him.

Even if those memories make it hard on him,

It’s on his head again.

Even if he clears out all those memories,

He will always be drowned in the thoughts of you.

#kpop x male reader #kpop imagines #kpop x reader #got7 x male reader #requested #got7 male reader #drabbles #got7 scenarios #jaebeom #jaebeom x male reader #jaebeom x reader

[eagles-translated]

Answering Eagles questions before the season 3 finale (Part 2/2)

I've received a bunch of questions since 3x08 and 3x09 dropped, so I compiled all the questions into two posts. I had to split them up because Tumblr only allows 10 images per post. Anyway, keep reading to see my answers and enjoy! 👇

There might be some kind of collaboration between Amie and Ludde like last season—we have only heard snippets of Ludde's song submission to the music school and it wouldn't surprise me if we saw Amie perform the song in its entirety in the last episode. I touched on this a little in part 1 of answering these questions.

It seems like Amie singing at the end of the season has become kind of a recurring theme. She performed “Follow” in 1x08 and “Second Sight” in 2x10 (on the radio, but my point still stands). I wouldn’t be surprised if they followed this trend by having Amie perform a new song in the season 3 finale.

I'm not sure if she'll recommend Ludde to the record label, though. I honestly still feel like Amie's whole storyline with sending in a rather basic demo written by two teenagers with little to no experience and then getting praised on it with comments such as "it's going to be a real summer hit" felt so unrealistic to me. Maybe they only said that so Amie would accept their offer or something, but that's still very strange because she would have still said yes without a doubt.

I can understand that they thought Amie was marketable as a person and there was this bonus with her having gone viral before on Felicia's Instagram, but that demo did not seem good enough for me to be immediately released as a single and then have them decide on the spot that Amie would be given a contract.

I mean, come on. It never felt earned because we never really saw Amie struggling with her songwriting journey to achieve this dream. Sending in one demo to one record label and having them immediately want to make a whole album with you just doesn't happen in real life unless the song is extremely good or you have a very unique voice. Amie is really talented but there are hundreds of people just like her, if not thousands. I was never convinced by her getting signed so quickly in season 2.

I understand that they wanted to establish her as a successful artist, but that felt so rushed. I was so sure that the record label would screw her over and steal the song rights to record it with another artist who was already established, and that we'd have to see Amie work even harder to achieve her dreams. But we didn't get that at all. Where was the struggle?

Anyway, I'm getting a little off-topic here. To be honest I have a lot of problems with the writing sometimes, even if I still love the show and its characters. Of course I wanted to see Amie achieve success (and I was happy when she did), but the journey there was so bizarrely easy.

She didn't start to seriously work on making her music career become a reality until season 2. Amie had dabbled in music prior to that, like when she auditioned for the school band and did that performance of Follow, but she didn't truly start to work towards it until season 2 when she decided to have her work sent to professionals in the business. And then, just five episodes later, she gets contacted by the record label in Stockholm.

To put this into context—season 2 took place somewhere around March, and episode 5 around three weeks into April. So when Ludde first started helping Amie it took less than two months for her to get signed. You could argue that the song was just that good or that Amie is just that talented, but it never felt like a realistic storyline to me.

So, back to your question! I need to stop getting so sidetracked while answering these haha. I don't think it would be realistic for the record label to hire a teenager with no professional songwriting experience, likely a very small portfolio of his own work in both size and variety, having a criminal record, and on top of that being infamous in the press for abusing his ex-girlfriend. If Amie offered the ultimatum to her label that she'll only return with Ludde, who has an incredibly bad reputation right now, it feels like she would be running the risk of losing the contract entirely.

There's only so much her label can put up with. We've seen Amie ignore their calls with no intention of reassuring them that she's coming back soon. Honestly, with the way things are looking right now it makes the most sense for the contract to be dropped. By Amie or by the label, I don't know.

The episode description for the season finale says that Ludde will get some sort of justice and it could be about his music (or something related to whatever Andreas is doing).

I believe Amie will be doing a live performance of Ludde's song at a New Year's Eve party in episode 10 but I doubt that Ludde will be picked up as a producer. If he actually does I would find that to be a very unrealistic plot point, to be completely honest with you.

This is an issue I had with 3x08 and 3x09 as well. I had a hard time actually enjoying the moment between Felicia, Klara, and Amie knowing that her family was getting increasingly worried for her and even thought for a short moment that Felicia was lying dead at the bottom of the ocean. All that could've been avoided.

To add, it didn't make a lot of sense to me that when Klara finally decided to call someone she called Amie instead of Elias. An ex-friend of Felicia's instead of her brother who could've helped a lot more. What was Amie supposed to do when she showed up at the hotel, exactly?

I know there was the thing with Klara only knowing Amie's number off the top of her head, but there is no reason why she couldn't have gone down to the reception while Felicia was sleeping and asked to use a computer just to get a quick message to Elias. Like, "hey, Felicia attempted something bad but she's safe with me, we're at this hotel in this room but she didn't want me to call anybody, I don't know what to do". That would've been so much better than keeping quiet about the situation for nearly 24 hours.

I know that Klara probably has trauma from leaving her dad at the hospital after his suicide attempt and that she probably didn't want to go against Felicia's wishes. I understand the first part 100%. But Felicia was in a very bad place emotionally and was thinking that her whole family hated her when that wasn't the case. I feel like in a situation like that you kind of have to be the bad guy just to ensure the family that Felicia was safe. Even if everything turned out alright in the end, it could've gone so much worse if Felicia had wanted to be kept hidden for longer.

The ending of 3x08 was super tough to watch and I can't imagine the feeling of thinking your only daughter/sister drowned herself after you just yelled at her and showed no support. Klara couldn't have known any of this, but I feel like she should've at least contacted Elias if she wasn't taking Felicia to a hospital.

Elias calling Amie would've been an easy solution to this whole debacle but we would've lost the drama. It's still somewhat of a plot hole though, like you said.

Thank you for reading that whole post @detectivejulesohara!

The clip you're referring to was posted on Yandeh Sallah's Instagram account, so not in a trailer for this season.

I think that was either just fanservice or it will appear in season 4 since it was posted in May of this year, and I believe the filming of season 3 had already wrapped by then.

It might indicate that Elias and Amie will be a couple by season 4 (this actually seems very likely regardless if this is actually part of a scene or not).

I think Elias is getting increasingly frustrated with hockey and the fact that he doesn't really have any other ambitions to strive for. He was raised with nothing but hockey surrounding him and it's in his blood. Elias got drafted to the US at around the same age as Mats, but Elias left after a year because he just wasn't progressing.

That must feel like a huge step back, and on top of that Mats was probably thriving in his successful career around the age that Elias is now. It's a tough difference in success to have weighing on your shoulders when you're in a team that's second to last in the rankings.

There's even the accusation in the press that Mats paid for Elias to advance in the rankings, and I'm sure that's going to affect his career negatively.

I think Elias overworking himself could also be the result of him feeling like he has to prove that returning to Eagles—a small club that is probably having their worst season ever—was in fact the right choice and not the death of his elite hockey career. That choice was very questionable from the very start and his agent advised against it. Even Mats found it strange. Elias said that he didn't really have a choice most likely because of the clause in his contract, but then he also claims to Mats that things just turned out that way.

Ludde: You don’t regret coming back [to Eagles]? Elias: I didn’t really have a choice.

The idea that he didn't have a choice in the matter doesn't seem accurate. His agent told him there were other alternatives like Jokerit (a professional ice hockey team based in Helsinki, Finland) and that they could find something better than Eagles. Elias seemed kind of defeated already and the decision to return to Eagles didn't feel thought-through at all. It's almost like he just didn't care.

Agent: [...] Jokerit has called and I’ve had a great conversation with them, so they’re on. Elias: You know what? Let’s skip all the trouble. Let’s go with Eagles, it’ll be great. Agent: What? Elias: I’m so tired of moving all the time anyway, plus I’ll be close to my family. Agent: Wait, I thought that you— Eagles has big economical problems, and… Sorry, but their season started awfully. We can get a better team. You understand, right? Elias: Yeah, but we can’t get a team that needs me as much. Plus— If they say they want to see development, I’ll give them that. Agent: Wait— They’re under the line. We’re talking about qualifying down directly. You can’t in earnest believe you’ll change that on your own. Elias: It’s perfect. I’ll only go up, as you like to say.

It also seems like he's maybe realizing that hockey isn't everything and that there are other things he might want to explore and pursue in his life. I think Elias is feeling kind of stuck right now. He's been training his whole life for one purpose which is a professional career in hockey, and maybe he feels like Mats wouldn't allow him to quit. That option doesn't exist to him.

Like you said, Mats had that comment where he labeled Ludde a "quitter" and Elias stressed the fact that there shouldn't be anything wrong with losing interest and deciding to pursue something else.

Mats: Can you imagine that he’s just quitting? I mean, I’m completely— He really didn’t strike me as a quitter. So fucking close. [...] Elias: [...] Ludde, he’s… He’s not a quitter, he’s just didn’t want it anymore. That should be fair.

However, quitting is seen as failure to Mats. Mats dropped everything when he got drafted. He left his relationship with Petra seemingly without a second thought, because hockey comes before everything for Mats. Felicia even mentioned back in season 1 how her father was just a voice in a telephone for most of her childhood. He barely had any presence in her life because he was busy with hockey.

When Klara tells Elias that he's always putting hockey first, he gets angry but he doesn't outright deny it. In fact, he kind of changes the subject to shift attention away from Klara's claim.

Klara: This— You haven’t changed at all. You’re always putting yourself first. Elias: Excuse me? Klara: Yes, it’s either you or hockey. Elias: Stop! What the— Klara: I can’t take this. Elias: Are you leaving now? I wasn’t the only one you dumped. You’ve been acting like shit to Felicia. Yeah, and Amie and Ludde too, for that matter. You haven’t thought about that? So don’t come here and say I’m the egoist.

This is kind of an interesting thought—that maybe Elias subconsciously knew that was Klara is saying is true to some degree and that he has been putting hockey first. He decided to get on the train to the draft combine in Seattle instead of staying with Klara, and a year later he realizes that things didn't turn out the way that he'd planned and he returns to Eagles.

Maybe Elias is trying so hard to be someone who he just isn't, and it's affecting so many aspects of his life negatively. He lost Klara, he had to repeat almost his whole last year in high school because of moving to the US, and now he seems to be stuck in Oskarshamn. He's previously expressed to Amie that this isn't necessarily where he wanted to end up.

Elias: [...] Hey, is it just me or is there something about this town that… It sort of feels like no matter how much you try to get away, it… It pulls you back somehow.

It's kind of strange that he doesn't want to be in Oskarshamn, and yet he was the one who chose to return. Maybe he somehow feels like he has some purpose there because it keeps pulling him back. He just doesn't know what that purpose is.

Elias tried coming back to Eagles to turn things around for them, and they did win a game against the Capitals but that victory was later tarnished by the fight that broke out between the two teams (and to add to this, the loss of Ludde who used to be one of the star players and Klara as a sponsor). That kind of overshadowed their whole victory. Elias was very determined to do something to help and it very much feels like he needs Eagles to succeed—he needs to sort of "redeem" himself.

Elias: [...] Can I do anything? Can I go talk to— I could go talk to the sponsor. Mats: Let’s deal with it later. I’ll solve this. You have to go to school now. Elias: But we can finish talking— Mats: You can— No. Try to think of something else. Alright?

I think that Elias's desperation for Eagles to do well could absolutely lead to him eventually deciding to be a coach. He doesn't really seem to want the life that Mats had after seeing how success turned out for him—a broken family that he barely cares about because hockey occupies his mind more than caring for his children or repairing the relationship with Leila.

I think Elias being a hockey coach could suit him, but I would also love to see him exploring things outside of hockey—maybe even his interests outside of sport entirely.

I kind of agree with you on this. Klara has apologized to Felicia and been forgiven, but we've never seen her properly apologize to Amie for filming that video of her and posting it on social media. Amie and Ludde were in the wrong, yes, but that video being posted was humiliating for both of them. They had to deal with the ramifications of that for months after with the whole school judging them in silence.

To be fair, the video was posted a long time ago in the show's time frame (nearly two years ago if I'm right?) and they all kind of moved on from it. To add to this, maybe she felt it would've been kind of awkward to apologize with Felicia in the room.

Felicia was so hurt by that video being posted and I think it would feel very weird for her that Klara would apologize for posting the video when it's the sole reason Felicia found out what had been done to her. Without that video, she would've probably gone a few more months without being told what happened at the Halloween party.

I'm waiting for a Klara and Amie reconciliation in this season finale. I feel like this is something that should be discussed between just the two of them, and maybe they'll sneak in some blessing from Klara with the whole budding Elias and Amie relationship? I'd be happy with just a reconciliation, though, but I'm unsure if we'll get one. I have a feeling they'll start the season finale with a time jump and I don't know if Klara is even going to be in Oskarshamn by that time.

If we don't see them reconnecting in the season finale I will be pretty disappointed, to be honest.

Thank you! I really appreciate you too @lunawedlers (your gifsets are absolutely magical)!

This question was sent in a while ago but as season 3 had just started airing I was very excited to see the development of Elias and Amie, mostly because the director had been hinting on Twitter that something would happen between them this season. I've been really interested in them ever since 1x03 and so far the wait has been worth it.

I think all episodes have great visuals, but if I had to pick one I would probably say 3x06. All those shots of Elias and Amie on the walk through the park, the drone shots, and then the view from that bench spot were so gorgeous visually. That answer is more of a scene rather than a whole episode haha, but I think they really made the beauty of Oskarshamn stand out in those shots.

I think Amie will have some sort of performance in the final episode of a new song and that Elias will be watching her! After reading the episode description for the final episode and seeing that there will probably be some New Year's Eve party going on, I have a feeling that Amie will be performing. She's always had a performance of a new song in every season finale and this one should be no exception.

They tricked us a little in the season 3 trailer with us thinking that Elias would be at one of Amie's concerts in Stockholm, but now I'm sure that this scene fits in at the New Year's Eve party.

I think we should keep our expectations low for a kiss between Elias and Amie. They just started developing their relationship, and I like the slow pace they're going in. They're not rushing anything. I also have this feeling that their development has deliberately been so slow because they're sort of "saving the best for last".

Elias and Amie are fan favorites and their relationship has been very talked-about from the beginning. I can see the writers maybe having decided to push their relationship more towards the end of the show, which is why we haven't really gotten any Elias and Amie content until now. That's frustrating if you're impatient and I've seen some people thinking that maybe Elias and Amie won't happen at all, but I don't think we need to worry at all. The fact that Elias and Amie's development has been so slow should indicate that they're much more likely to be endgame.

A kiss in episode 10 could definitely happen, but I don't know. Maybe they'll drag it out further. As I've said before, if they don't get one in season 3 they will absolutely be getting one in season 4. I've noticed that it's always best to keep your expectations low when it comes to this couple.

The episode description for the season finale said this about Elias, which some have interpreted to be about Amie.

New Year’s Eve is here. [...] But is Elias brave enough to say what everyone else already knows?

This could mean anything, really. I'm actually leaning more towards this being about an individual thing rather than Amie being involved. It could be about Elias admitting that he's been overworking himself and not eating properly, or coming clean about the fact that maybe he doesn't want a career in hockey. This is something that everyone else already knows, so I think it might be about hockey.

Felicia has observed the overworking, Mats has told him to stop with it, and Ludde might've had some inkling about it while he was still on the team. Even Amie has probably also noticed that he's been spending a lot of time at the gym lately.

I could absolutely be wrong about this though.

Thank you for the question @lunawedlers!

This is a hard one because season 3 has had so many strong episodes already, and usually my favorite episode ends up being the season finale because it's basically the culmination of the whole season. I really loved 2x10 for this very reason since the ending montage was so well done.

If I had to pick between 3x01 - 3x09 though I would probably have to say it's a tie between 3x04 — Date night and 3x05 — Wounds! These two episodes showcased what Eagles should be all about so well, which is relationships plus the struggles you go through as a teenager in a small town, and then of course hockey. The hockey game episodes are really good, even if I don't think 3x05 topped 2x05 (the game where Ludde got tackled and knocked out).

I loved the contrast in Date night of the budding relationship between Elias and Amie and then that fight between Felicia and Ludde on the cliff. That whole scene between Felicia and Ludde on the cliff was actually really beautiful, especially when the sun had gone down.

It was interesting to see how this sweet gesture from Felicia turned into a fight between the two of them. I thought that was very realistic, because no matter how big of a gesture Felicia made to apologize there were still underlying problems that they needed to talk about.

I also loved the "non-date" between Elias and Amie in this episode. It was cute to see them goofing off before the movie started and then talking about it on the way home. I liked how Elias could connect to her on how they had both returned to Oskarshamn.

The recent episodes that dropped last week (3x08 and 3x09) were very strong and discussed some important subject matters, but I had a few problems with them that I discussed in a question above. They were dark, but not necessarily bad because they needed to happen.

However, I have to say that I prefer Eagles when it's about hockey and teenage relationships. 3x04 and 3x05 made me kind of nostalgic for season 1 and I liked the vibe they both had.

I agree, but I think we could maybe get a combination of both! Relationships can have all these romantic and sweet traits like you described, but also be more passionate and show public displays of affection.

I think Elias and Amie fit the more laid-back and sweet characteristics, but we have yet to really see what Amie is like in a relationship. We've seen her with a crush on Ludde and we got a glimpse of that thing she had with Robin (which was apparently a relationship but I did not pick up on that at all), but we don't really know what Amie is like in a relationship. Maybe she's never really had a "real" one, either.

Nevertheless, I'm excited to see what's in store for Elias and Amie. I'm very positive that they will eventually become a couple in season 4.

#eagles svt #svt eagles #after writing this i kind of want to do a separate post discussing the writing in eagles because i have a lot more to say about it

[skinsharpenedteeth]

Prompt Fill - “Guess I’m stuck here until the storm breaks”

Sweet, sweet Nonny... I’m not sure this is what you were looking for when you sent this prompt to me what seems like 8 thousand years ago... but this is what you got. I hope you enjoy it. 

Enjoy it on AO3 here! Words: 9.6k Rating: Explicit (smut and fluff)

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               A glance out of the cabin window showed the last hour of daylight retreating under the heavy, slate colored sky. Alex’s weather app told him it would be a full moon tonight, but he doubted he’d get to see it since the app also warned there might be a winter storm. The sky felt heavy over the cabin, like a weighted blanket ready to descend over him, and he couldn’t quite get the chill out of the house. He’d brought wood up to the porch to keep the fireplace going all night in case he lost power and he was already wearing his thermal gear under his jeans and long sleeve shirt. He’d just have to wait and see how bad it would hit. He was sipping a cup of coffee when the first pattering of rain and crack of thunder outside started up. A pair of headlights caught in the falling water and Alex squinted through the dark blue dusk to see if he could tell whose car was coming up his drive. As the car drew closer, he could hear the engine over the rain hitting the cabin’s metal roof and felt his stomach tighten in anticipation.

               Alex made for the cabin’s front door and opened it as soon as the lights from Michael’s truck switched off and the engine died. A quick flash of lightning and the gentle taps of rain became intermixed with the pings from small pieces of ice. Alex watched Michael hop out of his car and hold onto his hat as he jogged the distance between the truck and the porch, the sleet coming down seemingly harder with every thump of his boots against the hardpacked dirt. When he jumped under the porch overhand, Alex took in the glittering, melting ice stuck to the fabric of his coat and hat and the way his breath whooshed out from his mouth in puffs of steam. It was so desperately charming, he almost smiled when Michael looked at him somewhat sheepishly from under the dripping brim of his cowboy hat.

               They hadn’t seen each other one-on-one in weeks. There was always Kyle or Max or someone else standing nearby to interrupt their covert stares and smooth over their stilted conversation. It was awkward now that they were both single and unsure how to proceed with building a more solid foundation between them. Much like the sky earlier that evening, there was a pregnant quality to their interactions that neither of them knew how to handle the weight of. But they kept trying. They kept trying to use the pieces of them that worked together to their best advantage while slowly fixing the ones that were broken. It was why they hadn’t allowed themselves to be alone in a while, why they had tried to always have a third party with them. Now there was no third party and not likely to be one available. Michael stood on his front porch and it made Alex feel slightly exposed to have him there with nothing to divert his attention.

 Alex took in Michael’s appearance as objectively as he could. Besides his thick wool patterned coat and signature black cowboy hat, he was wearing a white thermal smudged with black grease and red brown dirt under a red plaid flannel shirt. His jeans were one of his rougher pair with holes and tears everywhere making Alex exceedingly glad he could see matching white thermal leggings underneath. The skin of his hands looked dry and dirty as they rubbed against each other trying to generate warmth while Michael waited for Alex to finish his inventory. It didn’t seem to matter to Alex what Michael wore or didn’t wear, he always found himself one impulse decision away from pushing him against something sturdy so he could get his mouth on him. When Alex met his eyes again, he caught the knowing grin Michael barely hid behind his half-frozen fingers.

               “Sure you want to be here, Guerin? The weather’s getting bad,” Alex asked in a clipped voice, a little embarrassed that Michael had been letting him check him out without interruption and that he seemed to know what Alex had been thinking. Michael’s grin grew wider as if Alex’s brusque manner amused him and Alex tried to squash the part of him that answered Michael’s reaction with a different type of heat.

               “Well, you invited me so I came. Oh and you left this the other day. I didn’t know if you needed it,” Michael answered casually, pulling out a flash drive from the inside pocket of his coat. Wind was rocking the sage brush and trees around the cabin as Alex buried his hands between his upper arms and ribs for warmth while he stared nonplussed at the drive in Michael’s outstretched hand. He looked back up into Michael’s eyes hoping he looked unimpressed but feeling like he probably looked mad. Mad seemed to be his default expression and the cold was making him hunch his shoulders in a vain effort to block the wind from sneaking under his collar. He’d be shivering soon if he didn’t get back inside and he wouldn’t be going in there alone.

               “You didn’t have to bring that back to me. I can’t do much out here with it. I barely have cell reception,” Alex complained, meeting Michael’s eyes again while leaving the drive hanging between them in Michael’s outstretched hand. Michael shrugged, seemingly unconcerned, and pushed the drive into one of Alex’s front pockets when he made no move to take it from him. Alex drew in a quick breath at the unexpected touch and felt himself blush a little when Michael stepped forward, keeping his fingers hooked into Alex’s front pocket.

               “I figured since it was on my way home,  I'd at least drop.this off,” Michael explained, voice low as he waited for Alex’s response. Alex was nodding automatically, but then he registered what Michael had actually said and looked up at him in confusion.

               “What?” Alex asked. “How in the hell is this place on your way home? I’m a good fifty minutes from Roswell.”

               “I was working out at one of the ranches on a broken tractor. They’re seventy minutes from Roswell,” Michael responded, emphasizing how close he’d been all day to Alex without him knowing. Alex huffed out a sound of exasperation and then a squeak of surprise as Michael took a step towards him. Alex automatically took a step back, and then another, as Michael backed him against the door jamb. The frozen rain was near torrential behind them and Alex could see the ice starting to build up on Michael’s truck. The ground was already grey and white with accumulation. Michael turned his head and followed his line of sight, taking in the conditions past the end of the porch.

               “Looks like I’m stuck here until the storm breaks after all.”

               Alex gave him a sharp look and was only met with a mischievous grin for his effort. Michael reached around him and opened the door, brushing past him into the warmth and brightness of the cabin. Alex stayed on the porch for a moment longer to collect himself, not sure any of this was a good idea, but sure he couldn’t just kick Michael out to try and drive in the ice. He took in a long, cold breath that seemed to put some steel in his spine and began to turn to go back into the cabin.

               “Hey, grab a log or two. Your fire’s getting low!” He heard Michael call from further in the cabin before he could so much as shift to take a step inside. Huffing out a laugh at Michael’s audacity, Alex walked over to his pile of wood and grabbed an armload before going back into the cabin’s interior. The door made a small slam behind him as he kicked it shut with his foot before going to the hearth to deposit the firewood pieces. Michael was sitting cross legged in front of the flames, hands held out to catch their warmth, looking far too at home in Alex’s space for comfort. His boots, hat, and coat were already put up next to the door over the drip tray and Alex felt his chest tighten pleasurably at how they looked next to his own drier pieces. When Alex turned back to look at Michael again, he felt his heart give a hard thump at the sight of him. He looked softer in the firelight, hair floating from the bursts of hot air that were pushed from the fireplace by the wind coming down the chimney and a warm, orange glow was catching the honey and gold tones in his skin.

               “Any other orders, master?” Alex asked in a teasing voice as he loaded a few sticks of new wood into the fireplace. Michael gave him a positively filthy grin and Alex ducked his face back towards the fire, the butterflies in his stomach fluttering as he waited for whatever suggestive, wonderful thing Michael was going to say or do next. This was a thing they did now; they teased and teased until one of them broke. It was hot, but they’d made great strides to try and talk over the phone or text before seeing each other so they knew the rules.

               “Got any food in this place?” Michael asked instead, throwing Alex off balance when he didn’t immediately respond with innuendo. Alex stood up slowly, using the movement to help him gather his thoughts as he brushed his hands off. Michael stayed on the floor, watching Alex expectantly, relaxed in that too-casual way he adopted when he was nervous about something. Alex couldn’t fathom what it would be that Michael would feel anxious about, so he answered the question instead of the body language.

               “Nothing made. There’s coffee though,” Alex offered, pointing over to where his coffee pot sat on the counter still half full. “Mugs are in the cabinet above. I’m going to check the weather to see how long this is supposed to last.”

               He retreated to the back corner of the cabin where he had the best bet of picking up a satellite under Michael’s inscrutable gaze. Staying out in the cabin had the same drawbacks as it did benefits. There was a landline still connected for emergencies, but that wouldn’t help when trying to connect to the web. He tapped the weather app on his phone and waited as it tried to download the newest alerts and weather conditions. Alex was aware of Michael getting up off the floor and moving around the cabin towards the kitchen area. The cabin wasn’t big, only three rooms and a bathroom. ‘And the bunker,’ Alex reminded himself, trying not to think of the pink bed and wardrobe beneath their feet. He could offer it to Michael if he had to stay over but… it felt weird to do anything with it except try to ignore that it existed. He still hadn’t come to terms with the idea that Rosa was Jim Valenti’s daughter and Kyle’s half-sister. A flash of color on his phone brought his attention back to the present and Alex looked down to see the radar covered in white, blue and green cloud formations over New Mexico. He scrolled down to read the weather bulletin and cursed inwardly.

               “See something you don’t like?” Michael asked in a concerned voice as his heavy footfalls echoed around the suddenly too tiny living space. Alex swallowed at the picture Michael painted as he moved around the room barefoot and casual with Alex’s second favorite mug in his hand. Alex wanted to push him down onto the couch and cover him with his body, burrow his face into that spot behind Michael’s ear that smelled so strongly of ozone and summer rain it almost covered every other scent that clung to his skin from a life spent elbow deep in engine grease and bourbon bottles. He could almost feel the way Michael’s moan would feel through his skin, vibrating against Alex’s mouth as he-- Alex shook himself out of the daydream before it took the erotic turn he knew it was headed towards and smiled a little too brightly at Michael who merely raised an eyebrow at him in return.

               “Uh, looks like it’s supposed to last the rest of the night and into part of the morning. Should clear out around three,” Alex stammered, looking down at this phone again as he remembered to answer Michael’s question. Michael hummed in response, still watching Alex intently as he sipped his coffee. “So I guess you are staying the night.”

               Michael looked around the cabin speculatively, his eyes running over the worn couch and sitting chair, the half-full bookshelves, the small kitchen table and chairs, and turned back to Alex with a strange smile on his face.

               “I mean, I figured I’d take the couch, but where do you sleep?” Michael asked with a raised eyebrow and grin.

               “OH! Uhm, so, off the kitchen? There used to be a breezeway out there that I closed in to put in a bathroom and it has a door that leads through to my bedroom. I… I hadn’t really thought about the sleeping arrangements,” Alex lied, though he didn’t think he was fooling Michael one bit. The lights flickered as Michael nodded at him through another sip of coffee.

               “Shit, tell me you have a generator?” Michael asked, eyes glued to the ceiling like he could see through the metal roof to the sky beyond. Alex could hear the wind whistling around the edges of the house and the constant, dull roar of ice and rain hitting the windows and metal sheeting. He sucked on his teeth for a moment before giving Michael a sheepish grin.

               “I don’t. That was going to be my next big purchase for the place,” Alex admitted with an apologetic shrug as the lights flickered again after a roll of thunder. Michael widened his eyes and met Alex’s for a moment before abruptly turning and going to the fridge.

               “What are you doing?” Alex called after him, pushing his phone into his back pocket and following Michael into the kitchen. Michael was bent over with his head hidden behind the door and giving Alex a very nice view of his ass.

               “We need to go ahead and make something to eat in case we lose power. Are omelets okay with you? That’s about all you have stocked for in here,” Michael called over his shoulder. Alex had settled with his shoulder against the wall as he watched Michael paw through his meager cold foods.

               “I’ve got canned soup and bread? We could make soup and sandwiches?” Alex suggested. Michael paused and stood halfway up with his hands full. He squinted over at Alex in distrust.

               “What kind of soup?” he asked, seeming to hold a lot of stock in the answer. Alex walked over to the pantry and opened its doors to see what he’d bought last.

               “Uhm, vegetarian vegetable, chicken noodle, tomato bisque, lentil.... and I think there’s a ten-year-old can of chef boy-ar-dee back here somewhere?” Alex listed off as his eyes scanned over the various cans he had. Michael was making him realize he probably should’ve gone grocery shopping before heading up here for his self-imposed long weekend of disconnecting from the real world. He felt a line of heat behind him and then Michael’s chin dropped onto his shoulder as he looked into the pantry as well.

               “Okay. I can work with this,” Michael said in a distracted tone. Alex shifted so he could look into Michael’s face and felt oddly sad at how serious and calculating he seemed about the food supply.

               “We’ll be fine, Guerin. This will only last for a day or two tops and I’m sure we can find ways to distract ourselves if the hunger becomes too great,” Alex teased, trying to lighten the mood. Michael gave him a shocked, pleased expression that Alex took a minute to comprehend and then promptly blushed over.

               “Yeah, I’m sure we can,” he mumbled at Alex before turning back to the kitchen. He’d laid out bacon, eggs, salsa, and cheese on the countertop before following Alex to the pantry. He started pawing through the lower cabinets next to the ancient gas stove and Alex swallowed roughly when his shirt rode up past the waistband of his jeans and showed a strip of smooth, tan skin. Clearing his throat, Alex tugged at his collar subconsciously before turning around quickly to grab a random can of soup from the pantry and shut the doors. There was the sound of metal on metal as Michael pulled out a skillet and a pot for the soup.

               “How’s fried egg sandwiches and soup sound?” he asked over his shoulder at Alex as he turned on the burners.

               “Yeah, sounds great,” Alex answered, walking over and setting the can of soup down next to the stove. He watched Michael pick up the can and read the label, snorting to himself in amusement before he pulled the tab on the can of soup and poured it into the pot.

               “Here,” Michael said, turning and catching Alex’s eye as he held out a spoon, “you get to watch the soup while I make the sandwiches.”

               Alex plucked the spoon from Michael’s hand with a nod before hopping up onto the counter by his side of the stove. He watched Michael separate bacon slices and put them in the hot pan to start cooking and immediately hummed in pleasure at the smell.

               “How do you like your bacon? Crispy or kinda floppy,” Michael asked as he nudged the pieces around so they wouldn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

               “Crispy,” Alex replied. Michael shot him a smile before stepping over and taking back the spoon from where Alex had set it next to his thigh. “HEY!”

               “You’re not doing your job, private,” Michael scolded him with a smile before stirring the soup in the pot. He set the spoon down in a spoon rest and then turned back to his bacon, flipping each piece.

               “I can’t help it! I don’t think I’ve ever watched you cook before and here you are making bacon and drinking coffee and… ugh. I think I’m developing a domesticity kink,” Alex joked, leaning back on his hands and enjoying the smug sense of pride at seeing Michael’s cheeks pink up at the compliment. Michael grabbed his mug of coffee and took a quick sip, glancing over at Alex quickly to see if he was watching before looking back down at the bacon. When he was finished, he held out the coffee cup towards Alex who looked at it with a raised eyebrow.

               “Since I’m the cook, you can be the helper. Make me some more coffee?” Michael asked. Alex slid down off the counter and took Michael’s cup from him before turning to the pot of coffee and pouring the last dregs into Michael’s cup. He fussed with the cup, making it the way he knew Michael liked it, before holding out the finished product to him.  Michael took the cup absentmindedly as he plucked the cooked bacon out of the pan and set them on a bunch of paper towels to drain. He cracked two eggs into the pan, salting and peppering them each, before he took the time to sip from his fresh cup. Alex had already turned away, clearing out the used coffee grounds from the coffee maker and preparing a new batch when he felt a hand wrap around his waist and pull him against Michael’s body a split second before he could feel the scrape of stubble against his chin and coffee on his tongue. He relaxed into the kiss, his hands sliding up Michael’s chest to bury themselves in his curls, keeping him locked in the moment until the taste of coffee diluted to where they tasted the same. He let go of Michael’s curls reluctantly and opened his eyes slowly.

               “Sure you don’t want to just get married and live happily ever after?” Michael asked, tone dreamy and slow after their kiss.

               “That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” Alex breathed in reply, before softly pushing Michael back from him, “But I might change my mind if you burn the eggs.”

               Michael looked over at the eggs before quickly grabbing the spatula and flipping them. He laughed lightly before turning back to face Alex.

               “Good catch,” he congratulated Alex. Alex had also turned and started working on refilling the coffee reservoir, a small, pleased smile stuck on his face. He could’ve responded with something witty like ‘That’s what they call me!’ but it felt cheap after their little flirtation, so he kept working in silence. Michael turned back to the food and before the coffee pot was done refilling, they were moving towards the living room sofa with their plates and bowls.

               Michael sat back down on the floor in front of the fire, his food in front of him. Alex started to pass him to sit on the couch when he felt a tug at his jeans. Alex stopped and looked down into Michael’s upturned face.

               “Bring me my coffee?” he asked, sticking out his lower lip and making his eyes look comically sad. Alex snorted out a laugh at him and nodded, moving to set down his things before returning to the kitchen. He grabbed both their coffee cups, topping them off with the fresh coffee, before returning. He handed Michael his before sitting on the couch. Part of him wanted to join Michael on the floor, but the idea of having to navigate getting settled with his prosthetic and the food made him decide he’d take the couch for now.  They ate in silence, listening to continued pinging of rain or ice on the roof and the crackle of the fire.

               “Sounds like it’s slowing down a little? It’s been a while since I’ve heard thunder,” Michael commented after swallowing a bite of soup. Alex listened again for a moment before nodding. He could still hear the faint whistling of wind around the sides of the cabin, but it wasn’t the same howl it had been earlier.

               “A little, yeah,” Alex agreed. Michael was almost finished with his food and Alex looked down at his mostly full plate.

“Hungry?” he teased.

“So hungry. I barely got lunch. I was trying to get through with the tractor way before the storm and it was like one thing after another. It wasn’t the easiest fix in the world. One of those little pieces that breaks and looks like something else so you have to work through twenty other problems before you get to the one that caused them all. Ugh, it took so long to get through it all,” Michael groaned as he pushed his food to the side and stretched his long legs out in front of him. Alex watched him stretch his arms over his head, fingers intertwined and pushing towards the sky. That urge to tackle him and cover his body with Alex’s was back, but he needed to eat. When Michael relaxed, body reclining back onto his elbows and eyes half-lidded while he watched the fire, Alex felt his fingers twitch to comb through Michael’s hair until he fell asleep on the floor.

“Do you mind if I take a shower?” Michael asked, eyes looking more awake as he turned to consider Alex who was still slowly eating his sandwich and daydreaming about making Guerin and himself feel good.

“Yeah, I mean—no! I don’t mind, you can take a shower. Want to borrow some clothes so you don’t have to put your dirty ones back on?” Alex asked, already pushing his plates onto the seat next to his on the couch. Michael scowled at him.

“Trying to say I’m dirty?” he asked, head tilting down to look at Alex through his eyelashes as he wiggled his eyebrows.

“Only your mind, Guerin,” Alex sighed, pushing up out of the seat to stand. “Come on, I’ll get you set up.”

Michael followed him to the bathroom and then through to the old bunk room he’d turned into a master bedroom. The room had its own fireplace as part of the original design. He’d indulged himself with the décor a little. He’d gotten a Queen-sized bed and put it against the wall so that he could lay in bed, spread out, and look over at the fire. The bed frame had a tall headboard wrapped in dark, espresso brown leather. Alex had let Isobel talk him into buying slate grey, velvet shams and grey cotton sheets so soft he felt like he was slipping between clouds when he got under them. The blanket was a deep winter Ikea duvet with a dark moss green linen duvet cover. A modern style side table sat next to the bed with a gold and cream globe lamp. The room wasn’t huge, but it had enough room for a standing wardrobe finished in a dark mahogany and a dark honey gold sitting chair between the bed and the wall opposite the fireplace. He hadn’t put anything on the walls yet, but Isobel assured him she’d find something for him. He was half worried, half anticipating what she’d find for him. Michael stood in the doorway looking around at Alex’s bedroom while Alex opened the drawers inside the wardrobe and pulled out a navy set of thermals for Michael to replace his white ones with. He also grabbed out a pair of thick socks. He bundled the items together and handed them over to Michael who had finished his survey of the room and was watching him casually.

“Towels are in the closet by the shower,” Alex informed him as Michael took the clothes from Alex’s outstretched hands. His fingers brushed over Alex’s as he did and Alex felt electricity sing through his nerves at the feel of it. Michael tucked the clothes under his arm and made no move to leave, just watched Alex watch him back.

“Sure you don’t wanna come and join me? Save some hot water for tomorrow morning?” Michael suggested cheekily as he gave Alex meaningful up and down.

“Tankless water heater,” Alex countered smoothly, crossing his arms and moving to lean against the door jamb across from Michael. Michael stepped into his space, fingers edging under his shirt to touch Alex’s bare stomach. Alex sucked in a breath at the coolness of his fingertips but didn’t tense or move away. Michael must’ve taken it as encouragement, because he bent his head closer until his lips were inches from Alex’s.

“Maybe I just wanted to see you naked and wet for me?” Michael whispered, hands moving further under Alex’s shirt until he could cup his hands around Alex’s waist, thumbs rubbing softly over the tops of his hip bones. Alex felt the yearning between them pulling him in, making him feel like he was swaying closer with every inhalation to what they’d been dancing around since Michael had stepped onto Alex’s porch. It was intoxicating to be so close to Michael and know down to the marrow of his bones that Michael wanted him, to know what he wanted from him.

“Why don’t you show me exactly what you want from me?” Alex replied, dropping his hands to his side and enjoying the feeling of Michael’s hands skimming up his ribs and continuing until Alex’s shirt was the first piece in what would be a soft pile of clothing on the floor. Michael tossed the bundle of clothes Alex had given him towards the armchair before he shed his own shirt and added it on top of Alex’s on the floor. Alex watched him as he reached out and began roughly undoing Alex’s jeans and pushing them down to pool at his knees. Alex was halfway hard and getting closer to fully hard every second. Michael stared him straight in the eye, but his hands… his hands never seemed to stop moving. He let the back of his knuckles from one hand graze over Alex’s length while the other moved to grip Alex’s neck, thumb caressing the tendon behind his ear. Alex felt a shiver go through his body, liquid heat pooling in his belly at the way Michael watched his face and licked his lips at the small, involuntary gasp Alex let out when he felt Michael cup his balls in his hand, pulling gently, the tug going straight to Alex's molten core.

“Get down on your knees and finish getting me naked,” Michael finally said, removing his hands from Alex’s body and stepping back to give him room to move. With his pants still trapping the lower part of his legs, Alex had to be careful getting down, but he managed it. He looked up the line of Michael’s body, enjoying the view of him standing over him and watching expectantly for Alex to follow his directions. Slowly Alex moved his hands to the waistband of Michael’s jeans, fingers skimming over the top edge before he started working at the button and fly. He could see how turned on Michael was through the dark denim and he suddenly wanted nothing more but to put his mouth on him. 

His fingers curled under the waistband of the pair of thermals Michael was wearing under his jeans and began to peel down the denim and cotton layers. He was only faintly surprised that Michael wasn’t wearing underwear under his thermals, but Michael so rarely wore underwear that he didn’t know why he let it surprise him any more. He bent forward and kissed the base of Michael’s cock, breathing in deeply the musky smell of his sweat and sex. He was mostly hard, cock head beginning to bead with precum where it pushed past his foreskin. Alex’s mouth flooded with saliva at the sight and he ached with the need to get Michael in his mouth so he could feel him pressing against the back of his throat. But Michael hadn’t told him to do that. He’d told him to get him naked so Alex sat back on his heels and worked the jeans and thermals off Michael’s legs, depositing them in the pile of clothes by his hip, and then took off his socks, giving them the same treatment. When Michael was gloriously, gloriously nude in front of Alex he smoothed his hands up his thighs to grasp at his hips, looking up to stare into Michael’s face while he bent forward slowly run a flat tongue from root to tip over his cock in question. 

“I’ll let you have it in a few minutes. Finish getting undressed so we can get into that fancy shower you had built,” Michael replied with a grin, holding Alex’s chin and pressing his thumb past his lips to let him suck and swirl his tongue around it in lieu of what he actually wanted. Alex hummed in approval and moved to get himself untangled from his jeans and prosthetic. Michael held out his hands for Alex to grip to help him stand once he was disrobed. When they were once again eye to eye, Michael grabbed Alex and pressed their bodies together, his mouth capturing and plundering Alex’s, making him moan and melt into the other man’s warm embrace. He felt Michael’s hands slide down the slope of his spine, parting and grabbing onto handfuls of his ass. The kneading pressure of Michael’s hands was heaven as he massaged the muscles, occasionally pulling and exposing Alex’s most intimate spot to the cool air of the bathroom and sending goose flesh over him. Michael tore himself away from Alex’s mouth and in a quick as lightning move hefted Alex up into his arms. Alex felt his legs part and squeeze around Michael’s waist as he fought down his knee jerk reaction to try and take control of the situation. Michael’s solid grip held him steady as he looked up into Alex's shocked face, grinning cheekily. Alex laughed at him and bent down to kiss him, arms draping over his shoulders as Michael turned to start them towards the shower. 

When he’d had the bathroom built, he’d given himself all the luxury he could afford in a place where he wouldn’t be living full time. He’d put the toilet and vanity along one wall, a wide walkway, and then the shower and linen closet along the other wall. It was all close enough he could get around without his crutches if he needed to with stylized hand rails everywhere. 

The shower, his pride and joy, was a beautiful dark stone with black iridescent glass tile insets and a long bench that stretched end to end. It had fog resistant glass on the outside so he could see into the rest of the bathroom which satisfied the paranoid, hypervigilant part of him that he so often warred with when he was alone. He’d had an overhead rain shower put in along with his regular shower and hand held nozzle combo. Alex figured if he was going to use this place as a space where he could get away and disconnect, he wanted it to feel like someplace he didn’t want to escape from.    

Michael set him down slowly once they were in the shower stall, slow enough that he could continue until he was sitting on the shower bench. He watched Michael turn and start fiddling with the dials until the overhead rain shower started, warm water immediately falling around them.The soft, warm water felt good against Alex’s skin and he sighed in contentment as he waited for Michael’s next move.  Michael grabbed the shower gel and took the two steps back to where Alex was waiting. 

“Hold out your hands,” he instructed. When Alex complied, Michael squirted some of the gel into his palms and then some into his own, before placing the bottle back into one of the shower insets. He sat on the bench next to Alex and leaned back, motioning for Alex to climb onto his lap. Awkwardly, Alex did, knowing Michael wouldn’t let him slip or fall by the gentle pressure of his TK against his side. When Alex was straddling him, Michael immediately began moving his soap covered hands over Alex's skin. 

“Come on, baby, clean me up,” Michael encouraged him as he grabbed Alex’s hips and pulled him forward to grind their bodies against one another. Alex let his hands fall onto Michael’s skin, moving them in slow circles over his shoulders and back before sliding down towards where his flushed, eager cock jutted between them. Alex wrapped both his soapy hands around both their cocks, pressing them together and creating a tight, slick grip for them to fuck into. Michael started rolling his hips, hands directing Alex’s in a similar rhythm as he swore under his breath. When Alex took up the movement on his own, Michael’s hands pushed inwards until Alex felt his cheeks spread wide over Michael’s lap and then the pressure of his fingers rubbing over the outside of his exposed hole. 

“Fuck, Michael,” Alex swore, body rocking forward so he could rest his forehead against Michael’s shoulder as his fingers teased at his tight rim. Alex kept rocking his hips, eyes drawn to the way his and Michael’s cocks looked slipping through his fingers. 

“As soon as we’re all squeaky clean,” Michael teased, pushing the tip of one finger into Alex and causing him to swear and writhe. He wanted more. Alex began moving his lips, planting soft kisses on Michael’s shoulder as he rode the mounting tension between their bodies. Alex let one of his hands come up to clutch at the back of Michael’s neck, pulling their mouths together in a feverish kiss. Michael rewarded him with a quick tweak of his nipple, a sharp pain that made his gasp against Michael’s lips. 

“I think we’re clean enough for now,” Michael commented a little raggedly. He reached to the side of them against the shower wall and with a quick flick of his wrist turned on the hand held shower wand and brought it over to rinse hot water over their bodies, clearing away any lingering suds.

 “Hold onto me again,” Michael said after he hung the wand back up and turned off the water in the shower. Alex slid his body forward, wrapping his arms around Michael’s neck and his thighs around his waist. With a gentle heave, Michael stood up and carefully walked them out of the shower. He set Alex down by the sink and grabbed a towel from the rack, blotting it gently over Alex’s skin before turning him around to face the mirror. Alex watched their reflection as Michael met Alex’s gaze over his shoulder and grinned mischievously before he sunk down behind him. 

“What are you--? Oh!” Alex exclaimed at the gentle pressure against the middle of his back encouraged him to bend forward onto the cool granite of the countertop. He felt Michael’s bent leg slide under his right one, giving him a place to rest his residual limb. Warm, broad hands spread his cheeks open and Alex felt a rush of heat that straddled arousal and embarrassment at knowing what Michael was looking at. 0He wished he could see Michael’s face, know what he was thinking by the set in his eyebrows or the quirk in his mouth. Alex had gotten into his head waiting and had missed the whisper of movement from Michael behind him until the sharp tickle of Michael’s stubbled cheek across the sensitive skin of his crease made him jump and squirm. 

“Shhh,” Michael soothed before licking a broad stripe over him. Alex felt like his breath had been stolen from him at the feeling so he wouldn’t have been able to make a noise anyway. He felt another long, flat swipe and his brain immediately sank back into quiet. This was something Michael was excellent at. Alex personally hadn’t found much that Michael was mediocre with when it came to sex, and certainly nothing he was flatly bad at, but eating ass? Michael was excellent at eating ass and Alex didn’t care how he’d gotten so good because it tended to elevate him to new planes of existence whenever Michael got him still enough to let him take his time to do it. 

The first few licks were always broad and wet. Michael’s tongue didn’t press, only passed over Alex’s hole, the stubble on his chin following after and occasionally scraping gently over Alex’s oversensitized skin. Next, he started pressing, still with a broad flat tongue, pushing at the tightly furled ring of muscle. One of his hands snaked between Alex’s spread legs to grasp and stroke at his cock in a light grip while he pushed forward with his tongue. 

“Fuck, Michael, fuck….” Alex moaned, pressing his hips back against the pressure, head dropping to rest against his arms. He covered his head with his hands, fingers tangling in his hair and tugging as he felt Michael’s hand spreading sticky precum around the head of his cock while he pulled his mouth back to suck and nip at the skin around Alex’s hole. Alex reached over to a stack of small shelves on the countertop and opened the bottom drawer, blindly feeling inside until his fingers found the small bottle of lube he kept there. He grabbed it and reached behind himself, tapping Michael’s shoulder, internally loathing that he was distracting him while he interspersed sucking kisses and presses of his tongue behind him. Michael grabbed the lube from him and Alex felt him pull back away from him. 

“Mm, thanks babe,” Michael murmured and Alex heard the telltale click of the cap. A moment later, Michael’s hand was back on his cock, slicked and smooth as he spread the liquid over Alex’s length. Michael returned his mouth to Alex’s ass without another word, but his grip tightened around Alex’s shaft, making it hard for him not to fuck forward through Michael’s grip even as Michael started pushing more insistently with his tongue. Now pointed, it riggled past Alex’s rim and back out, sliding through the tight muscles and forcing him to relax. By the time it became easy for Michael to fuck his tongue in and out of Alex’s loosened hole without meeting resistance, Alex was becoming a shaking, needy mess on the countertop. The hand on his cock and the tongue in his ass was so much, plenty to make him cum wet and sticky onto the floor, but Michael hadn’t told him he could. He wanted Michael to give him permission to cum and so he shook and moaned and writhed back against his face and tried not to meet the crest of no-turning-back. 

“Fuck, Alex, look at you,” Michael said finally, backing away after having to squeeze quickly against Alex’s frenulum to keep him from blowing his load. Alex was sweating and panting, ass pink from Michael’s stubble and intimate attentions. Alex felt Michael push a finger past his rim, steering clear of his prostate while he came down from his almost orgasm, but still stimulating him. He pulled his finger back and came back with two, slicker than spit and giving an easy stretch. A high pitched, whimper pulled out of Alex’s mouth even as he relished the almost pain of his overstimulated body’s response to Michael’s ministrations. “Yeah? I wish you could see how needy you look right now. You’re practically fucking yourself on my fingers while your cock is dripping on the floor.”

Alex flushed with embarrassed arousal at Michael’s observation. He hadn’t been aware he had started moving his hips, but at Michael’s words he noticed that he had been, had been chasing Michael’s fingers and silently begging for more. He stilled and whined causing Michael to chuckle behind him and kiss one of his cheeks sweetly. 

“It’s okay, baby. It’s so fucking hot to see you this needy and ready to be filled. I like watching you fuck yourself back against my hand, like seeing you try to take what you need from me,” Michael continued talking, fingers finally taking a swipe against Alex’s prostate. Alex cried out, biting down on the skin of his forearm at the overwhelming feeling that washed through him. It felt so good but was almost too much and it was the edge of too-much that was his favorite. Michael reached for his cock and began jacking him off, fingers loose as they moved over him, and then his fingers were back with another teasing swipe over his p-spot, and then another. Alex could feel his face flushing, chest heating up as he fought the urge to cry and beg for Michael to just fuck him already, to just make him cum and end the torture, but he didn’t. He needed more. Michael knew that and he’d give him what he needed.  

“So sensitive,” Michael murmured against his skin before nipping softly at the skin near where his fingers were buried in Alex before licking over the spot and smoothing away the sting. “But not yet, love. I want you crying for my cock before I’m going to let you cum.”

He pulled his hands away from Alex’s ass and cock, laying them on either side of his outer thighs and smoothing his palms over the skin as he slowly stood up behind him. When he grasped Alex’s hip with only one hand, Alex chanced a look up into the mirror in front of him. He could see Michael behind him, staring down at his body as he stroked himself. Alex licked his lips at the sight of Michael’s flushed cock, ready to feel it stretching him wide. Michael caught his eye in the mirror and smirked. 

“Stay right there, baby. I’ll be right back,” he instructed before turning and leaving Alex bent over the counter waiting for his return. He didn’t take long and when he came back, Alex could see the black, bulbous plug in his hand. He felt a rush of anticipation. Michael picked up the lube from the counter and let Alex watch him coat the plug with it before positioning it at Alex’s entrance. Alex felt the hair on his body rise at the cool, slick silicone resting against him and then Michael was pushing it slowly into him. His body accepted it easily, ready to be filled by something, but it didn't make him feel quite full. When Michael pressed at the plugs base Alex felt the electric zing of the plug pushing against his prostate, his back arching automatically at the sensation.

“It’s not the biggest one, love. I know it’s not enough, but I want you to still feel a stretch when I push into you,” Michael said somewhat apologetically as he bent over Alex’s body and kissed his shoulder blade. He pulled Alex into a standing position and handed him his crutches. 

“Go kneel on the bed for me, facing the headboard, hands behind your back,” Michael directed him, eyes hot as they traveled down the front of Alex’s body before he took a step back to let Alex pass him. Alex moved as quickly as he could, the plug in his ass jostling at every foot fall and making him want to whimper and take himself in hand as he fucked the plug in and out of himself. It wouldn’t be enough though, he knew that. He could get there, he could make himself cum like that, but it wouldn’t satisfy the intangible need that letting Michael get him to the same place would. 

He set his crutches to the side of the bed and rolled onto the mattress. He pushed himself to the center and then assumed the position Michael had requested. Alex felt the bed dip behind him and then the heat of Michael’s body near his. He felt the whisper of cotton soft rope against the backs of his hands.

“Still want to be tied up?” Michael asked, lips catching on the shell of Alex’s ear as his chest hair tickled the skin of Alex’s shoulders. Alex swallowed and nodded. 

“Blindfolded?” Michael asked next, and Alex felt Michael’s hard on brush his clasped hands and he fought the urge to reach and grab and touch. Instead, he nodded again and tried to wait patiently, eyes already closed. Michael’s hands were gentle as they positioned Alex’s forearms against one another behind his back and then he did a quick single column restraint. The press of the rope against Alex’s arms was comforting, taking away the chance for him to mess up their game by being too impatient. Then came the satin mask over his eyes, throwing the world into total darkness instead of the semi-darkness that just closing his eyes had given him. 

“Baby…” Michael sighed reverently after he finished. Alex could hear the utter adoration in his voice, imagined he could feel the caress of Michael’s gaze as he looked down at Alex's naked body ready and waiting for him to do whatever he liked with. Fingers glided over Alex’s skin and he felt the bed move as Michael knee walked around to kneel in front of him. “How does it feel?”

“Good,” Alex replied, stretching and moving his arms as far as the restraints would allow. Michael rested his hands to either side of Alex’s neck, thumbs settling into the notch behind Alex’s jaw, and then he was licking his way into Alex’s mouth. Alex opened to him easily, letting his tongue draw him in and the hands on his neck make him feel safe and steady. As they continued to kiss, Michael’s hands slid down over Alex’s chest to rub and pinch at his nipples. When Michael pulled back, Alex was breathless with want. 

“Fuck, your mouth, Alex. Already so red and I haven’t even fucked it yet,” Michael said, the praise washing over Alex and making a wave of heat rush through him. Michael started to slowly push him down, and Alex used his core strength to keep himself steady as he let himself be put into whatever position Michael wanted. 

As soon as Alex felt the first sticky touch of Michael’s cock to his lips, he opened his mouth and began to suck him down. He used his lips to push at the foreskin and his tongue swirled and collected all the precum that had gathered on him. It was bitter and tangy and Alex pushed himself further down Michael’s shaft, loving the weight and solidity of him in his mouth. After the first few passes, Michael’s hands were back on him, grabbing the rope binding his arms and using it to keep Alex steady as he began to shallowly pump his hips and fuck Alex’s mouth. Alex relaxed his jaw and let Michael have his way, loving the feeling of him taking control over his body. Michael slowed as he thrust deeper into him and Alex prepared himself to relax and let Michael push past his gag reflex and fill him. He let him work his way in, Alex swallowing reflexively around his girth as he held his breath and let Michael use him. 

“You’re doing so good, baby, fuck. You look so good taking my cock like this. You deserve a reward for doing such a good job,” Michael said after he backed away, pulling out to let Alex pull in a few much deserved breaths. When Alex was ready again, he opened his mouth and waited for Michael to feel his cock back into him. Alex thought the reward was his getting a quick breather, but then he felt Michael’s torso curl around his head and then the plug in his ass was being tugged and pushed lighting up his prostate once more. He moaned around his mouth full of Michael and felt his cock give a heady throb at the pleasure rolling through him. Michael started to time his thrusts into Alex’s mouth with the thrusts of the plug in his ass and Alex felt himself getting lost in how good it felt to be so full both places. He lost himself in the feeling of it and found himself sinking past the breakers in his mind to the deep end where he was calm and full. He could just accept everything coming at him and not think about it, not worry about how far Michael would push him. 

A grunt above him was the only warning he got before Michael pulled himself completely back from Alex’s mouth. He whined at the loss of Michael’s cock in his mouth and felt Michael’s hands under his shoulders helping him sit back up. Michael’s mouth was back on his in a moment, feverish and urgent as he chased the taste of himself from Alex’s tongue. Alex’s lips felt almost numb from the constant motion of Michael’s cock rubbing against them and it felt strange to be kissed when he couldn’t fully feel that part of himself. 

“Fuck, you’re so good, baby. You’re so good,” Michael was mumbling against his lips as he took Alex’s cock in hand. It was almost too much. Alex was so close to cumming and Michael’s hand was hot and perfect and too much and not enough. He felt his breath whistling roughly between his teeth as his body tightened and he fought his approaching release.

“Don’t worry, baby, I’m going to take care of you. I know, I know,” Michael said, releasing Alex before he got too close. Alex felt Michael’s hands on his face wiping his thumbs gently across his cheeks and realized he must be crying. He turned his head quickly and captured one of Michael’s thumbs, tongue swirling around to see what his tears tasted like on his skin. 

“Fuck, you’re perfect,” Michael breathed adoringly, leaning his forehead against the side of Alex’s face while Alex continued to swirl his tongue around Michael’s thumb. Michael gently extracted the digit from Alex’s mouth and moved around behind Alex. The plug in Alex’s ass was pulled out and then there were Michael’s fingers again, filling him and retreating wetter than before. “I’m going to undo your hands so you can steady yourself, but we’re keeping the blindfold on.”

Alex felt his arms released and stiffly he brought them in front of him. Without a word he pushed his body forward until his head rested on his folded arms, back arched and ass high as he waited for Michael to fill him. 

“God, Alex, you look like a fucking wet dream right now,” Michael praised as he ran a hand over Alex’s bowed back. Alex felt the thick length of Michael’s cock nestle into the crease between his spread cheeks and he moaned, pushed back against the feeling even though he wasn’t positioned to enter him yet. “I know, baby. I got you.”

Michael made good on his promise, pulling back and pushing the blunt tip of his cock against Alex’s shiny, winking hole. He pushed slowly, knowing it was still a stretch for Alex’s muscles to take him. Alex’s body lit up at the feeling of Michael filling him. His mouth opened in a panting, soundless cry of ecstasy while Michael just kept slowly pushing further into him, spearing him open until Alex felt the gentle bump of Michael’s hip against his. Alex was happy for the pause after Michael filled him, happy to have a moment to flex his inner muscles around the immense pressure inside of him that made him feel feral and pinned and utterly perfect. Then Alex started rocking, unable to stay still any longer, needing to feel Michael’s cock making room for itself inside of him over and over again. 

“You’re so greedy when you get my cock in you,” Michael gritted out, but Alex could hear the amusement and pride in his voice as he let Alex fuck himself back onto his cock until his movements were jerky with desperation because Michael hadn’t moved at all and it wasn't enough. He’d let Alex take and take and take, but it wasn’t enough. The angle was wrong and as good as it felt, he needed… he needed… 

“Okay, I’ll stop being mean,” Michael finally said and then he began to move. The first thrust had Alex’s stomach tightening but then Michael pressed his hand on Alex’s lower back and changed the angle of his hips and on the next thrust, Alex swore he saw white. Michael set up an increasing tempo that pushed his cock over Alex’s prostate and finally gave Alex what he wanted. Alex cried out under him, little punched out mewls of pleasure muffled against the duvet, and Michael pushed his shoulders further into the mattress as his thrusts got rougher and more pointed making Alex’s body tighten like a stretched coil. 

“You can cum when you want to, baby,” Michael said, his voice ragged with exertion. He pushed his body on top of Alex’s, hand pulling one of Alex’s legs high towards his side as buried himself deep into Alex’s body, thrusting short and fast against him. The weight of Michael on top of him and the perfect angle of his rolling hips finally tipped Alex over. His body seized around Michael’s, cock swelling and releasing onto the cover, and then relaxing as Michael’s final thrusts stuttered and then stilled as he emptied himself into Alex’s body. Alex felt an arm wrap around his middle and while still joined together, Michael rolled them onto their side, spooning himself as close as possible to Alex’s body. Alex felt the dull throb of his muscles around Michael’s slowly softening cock and the slick, wet feeling of the skin between them. He hummed in pleasure, lifting a leg to push his hand between them, feeling where they were still joined and the thick, sticky mess between them. 

“You like that?” Michael asked, tone curious but without judgement. Alex opened his eyes and realized he could see Michael looking down to where Alex’s fingers were rubbing gently at where the cum and lube leaked out of him. The blindfold must’ve worked itself off at some point because Alex didn’t remember either of them removing it. He met Michael’s eyes and nodded, turning his torso to meet his mouth in a gentle kiss. The move unfortunately dislodged Michael from Alex's body and he hummed in disappointment. Michael’s fingers were there in an instant, pushing into him and keeping him partially full while he came down from his orgasm. 

“You’re so amazing, Alex,” Michael said, pressing kisses to Alex’s lips, cheeks, nose, jaw and anywhere he could easily reach. Alex sighed in contentment, letting Michael litter his skin with praise while he drifted. At some point Michael withdrew his fingers and then his body. Alex watched bemused as he went to the bathroom and grabbed a towel, cleaning them both up before wrapping the clean part of the duvet over Alex’s body. He kissed the sweaty spot behind Alex’s ear as Alex drowsed on the bed. 

“I’m going to start the fire in here and go take care of the one in the living room for the night. I’ll be right back,” he said and Alex hummed his acknowledgement before letting himself be pulled into sleep. 

#malex fic #malex #rnm fic #roswell nm #michael guerin #alex manes #smut and fluff

[b4kuch1n]

The Future Is In Space! (and so is the rest of you)

Okay, so. Gordon should’ve seen this coming. 

And he did, to be fair: Joshua’s always loved space. Joshua loved the idea of flying cars when he was a tiny little thing, if the fact that all of the toy cars he had were thrown with intense force at one point or another meant something, and he clapped at the night sky once when Gordon got them both stuck at a gas station in the middle of nowhere due to… circumstances… which was super, ultra, uber cute as fuck . Especially because Gordon had just applauded him for singing along to a song on the radio when they parked, and that was very possibly the first time Joshua registered clapping as a possible positive reaction to something he likes, or whatever like that. Gordon Freeman has a PhD in theoretical physics and theoretical physics only.

The point is that Gordon loves Joshua so fucking much. No, the point is that Joshua has always liked space. He chose for himself a set of space-themed PJs when Gordon took him to the mall, and he likes food with weird colors because that’s “alien food”, and he has given away all of the toy cars he had to make space for toy space ships of many sizes, and Gordon has had to have a conversation with him once about upending a dusty fish bowl onto his own head so he could look like an astronaut. He doesn’t do that anymore, because Joshua is genuinely a really smart kid who just needs the required pieces of information to put things together by himself. 

Gordon loves him so much. 

Gordon also has only experienced a single year of relatively radiation-free, sludge-free, organic, non-Black Mesa- poisoned air and also freedom (to an extent) since. You know. Almost dying and also losing his right arm in Black Mesa. Where he jumped into a few portals, one of which leading to an alien world called Xen, where he had to kill what seemed to him at the time a spiteful god against his own existence. 

That, and not the Joshua-loves-space part, is the part he didn’t see coming. Hadn’t. Still doesn’t, if he can be honest for a minute. There are days it still doesn’t feel real, just to contrast nicely with the days when what’s left of his right arm and his right shoulder hurt, and days when power outage hit unexpectedly and the lights went out without warning, and days when he fights to not let some stupid fucked up slights against him go because that’s just how the world is that’s how things are now keep your head down and don’t think Gordon just shoot just let your trigger finger pull itself in you are in a comedy of error a laugh track a monkey on a leash just dance just move your feet j

Hey, no digging your heels in there. Throw yourself off your rhythm, Gordon. Joshua. Joshua loves space. Joshua is going to an elementary school now. Joshua just came home from a “career” day, and the parent invited to speak is a retired astronaut. 

Joshua said: “I wanna be an astronaut when I grow up!”

Joshua likes numbers. Somewhat. He’s not averse to them, at the very least, and homework’s kind of bullshit from the concept to the execution but when Gordon and Tommy and Coomer sit down to keep him engaged while he does it he has fun with math homework. He likes video games, he likes the puzzles in the youth magazines they signed up for at his school, he likes messing with shape blocks and pulls out some cool combinations Gordon doesn’t see coming sometimes. Joshua is a smart kid that enjoys a fair challenge. Joshua is totally astronaut materials. 

Joshua is going to space. 

Joshua is absolutely going to space. 

Xen is, coincidentally, also in space. 

Gordon is calm. He totally has a good poker face. He performs well under pressure, especially very specific types of pressure, e.g. when there are rules in place he can cling to and ground out an appropriate plan of action. He could improvise a presentation in class in a pinch, because he knew what presentations are and what he’s been working on and what the teacher expected. He could jimmy his car out of an ice patch, because he knew how cars work and how ice acts. He can smile and say “That’s great, Joshie! You just gotta work hard for it, and then you’ll be in space in no time.”

Gordon has an image he can provide to show how he feels.

[Picture ID: a drawing of Gordon Freeman standing in front of his son Joshua, cut off at their chest. Gordon is a tall man, a bit heavyset, with tan skin and mid-back length, messy curly brown hair that’s greyed at his temples due to stress from surviving the hellhole that is Black Mesa and Xen. He’s wearing his comfortable worn-and-faded t-shirt, which is orange with a very faded graphic printed on the front. Joshua is a young boy with brown skin and short dark curly hair, brown eyes that’s brimming with light and happiness, and a wide happy smile. He’s wearing a light green t-shirt. Gordon is smiling at him, with another shot of his face enlarged and superimposed on the drawing right next to his head. This Gordon is screaming. This Gordon is screaming his heart out, and his face is scrunched up while his mouth opens wide, and he’s screaming a silent scream and he will never stop.]

---

Contrary to how it appears to everyone, Benrey doesn’t live full time at the Freemans’. 

Well. He does “sleep” there. If he actually sleeps. That’s one of the questions that Gordon has had ever since Black Mesa that he never got to or bothered to ask, and then when they had to defeat Benrey in the final boss fight he thought that was it with his chance to ever ask. And then Benrey came back and the situation took a hard left into throw-the-whole-suitcase-out awkwardness and Gordon thought it better to never bring those questions up ever again. It’s. Ongoing. Like his climb back into being a normal, mostly law abiding, neutral good citizen, who has no ties to that research facility that blew up and opened a portal to hell in space. 

It helps that Benrey really is just… a dude. Now that he’s not eighty feet tall and clipping through walls anymore, he can definitely pass as someone who just really loves to mess with people for a laugh. Which… well, Gordon’s judgement of character is probably better discarded in the kitchen trash compactor now, but he’s not gonna lie and say that’s all Benrey seems to him. He doesn’t even mess with people for laugh, not really. He is just. Like that. He’s an alien, but in the sense that’s… 

Well, to Benrey, humans are alien. So that’s that. 

And also Black Mesa did stretch the definition of ‘human’ in the physical sense pretty thin. So, again, that’s that. It all fits together like sliced pita bread. 

The other thing that helps is that Gordon has the tendency to forget about risks or consequences when they are not directly in front of him, which he sometimes overcorrects, but this time around it helps move the sentiment into the philosophical window pretty quick, and then he can throw a brick through that one, because philosophy sucks ass. Gordon’s moving along well! He only had to change prosthetics twice because the first two were in order too heavy for his shoulder and too energy consuming, and all three are fully covered by the overlords that didn’t want Black Mesa to become a Thing in history, and now he works remotely for a uni that just lets whatever happen. It’s chill. It’s mostly chill. 

He could’ve just chugged along never thinking even an inch deeper about Benrey’s Benrey-ness again, and Benrey makes that easy, because Benrey loves walking around and looking at things and being a bit of a spectacle with a straight face. Okay, Gordon doesn’t know for sure if Benrey loves doing those things, because he’s not Benrey. He just knows that Benrey does those things, frequently, and with an expertise that baffles even him, who knows full well how Benrey is. Well enough. Awkward territory, all of this is, really. The Point Is that Benrey actually doesn’t appear at home too much! He plays games through the night sometimes, sure, and ever since he called second dibs on any cereal in the apartment he always appears at the right time to claim that, but the whole thing is. Balanced. Benrey doesn’t seem to have physical personal belongings outside of the PS3 and four copies of Heavenly Sword he lugged back one day (the rest of the game library everyone kinda chimed in here and there to build up, because console is common ground fair use for everyone, while PC is where Gordon streams and also works, so it’s off limit), and he rarely uses utensils to eat anything, so to anyone but the team it’d seem like he’s barely there at all. Except for his presence of course. That’s… a lot harder to negotiate.

Gordon’s gotten very, extremely good at it though. It’s his life. Things fit together, mostly. He can deal, he has been dealing, and it’s even been fun. It’s definitely really funny here and there. 

Gordon’s about to break the equilibrium. Introduce a nasty new specimen into the scene.

“Bro I knocked for a hot minute,” Benrey says, at the same time as Gordon’s blurting out, “I need to go back to Xen.” 

“Huh.”

“Wha- Why do you knock? You’ve never knocked. You’ve literally only ever broken in.” 

“Wanna… start now.” Benrey intones in that exact way, and then knocks on the door again. It doesn’t even sound good. These doors are all made with the weird thick composite that makes a dull plastic sound when knocked on. 

“Don’t do that, just use the doorbell if you want to-” Gordon catches himself. “No matter. I need to go back to Xen. As soon as possible, but anytime in the next… twelve years… will work.” 

Benrey just looks at him for a long time. An extended minute. Maybe even two. 

Gordon is just staring back. 

“You’re at. The door.” Benrey says, in a low voice. Gordon blinks. “Rude… rude little boy Freeman, huh.” 

Gordon takes a deep breath. “Benrey-”

“Gonna let me in? Soon? ‘s bad etiquette… greeter… doesn’t even let guests in. Bet your wares aren’t even good.” 

“Alright! Alright.” Gordon snaps, but he also does step back for Benrey to walk in, which. Really, that’s never been necessary. Benrey’s always come in and out as he pleases. Usually Gordon just walks out into the living room and Benrey’s already on the couch playing whatever game catches his eyes on that day. The decorum of knocking and walking in is simply never present. 

Well, Benrey does knock on Joshua’s bedroom door. But that’s it. 

They walk together into the living room, then Benrey situates himself on the couch, and Gordon settles on the carpeted floor next to the table to observe him. He’s never seen Benrey actually fold his limbs up into the position he’s usually already in when walked in on before. It’s mostly normal movements, which still catches Gordon off-guard a bit.

“Nice couch you’ve got here,” Benrey says, and pulls out his phone to fiddle with. It’s a Nokia 2700 Classic, with a theme downloaded from the Ovi Store, and a firefighter-themed 2D platformer that does get insanely hard in places. Tommy got him a snazzier Blackberry a while back, but he refused that one. Gordon didn’t really get it, but. Whatever. 

“It’s always been here,” Gordon replies on reflex.

“Liar… Gordon Lie… man.” Benrey seems to need to chew on that one for a second. “Gordon Lieman. This building’s like. Ten years old.” 

“That’s practically forever dude.  That’s longer than they sent me to MIT for. Joshua’s not even that old.” 

“He’s gonna. In… seven… years.” 

Gordon remembers what he needs to talk with Benrey about again. “Goddamnit,” he slaps his own face - not with the hard prosthetic this time, thank you very much. Took him six months of HEV training and a year with a prosthetic to get it to heart. “Okay, so. Xen.”

“Wait. Math’s wrong… eleven. Years.”

“Don’t distract me! Xen!” Gordon throws his arms up, finally making Benrey actually look at him proper. “Joshua wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.” 

Benrey puts his phone down. 

“Yeah,” Gordon scrubs his face, with his flesh hand. “So I need to… do something about Xen. I have a plan. I need to find materials, and then I need a way to Xen…” 

“What’s an astronaut.” 

“A- no.” Gordon sits up straight. “No, you’re fucking with me. You’re doing this on purpose. I’m fucking about to go nuts, dude.” 

Benrey looks him up and down, makes sure his head movement is clear in the dark living room, lit only by the lamppost outside the window. “Yeah,” he says, “no shit. You wanna go back to… Xen… and stuff. Freeman lost his mind.” 

Gordon opens his mouth to retort, but then closes it with a click. “Okay,” he mumbles after a moment of thinking it over, “okay. I get where you’re coming from.”

“Haha, get it. ‘cause I’m from. Xen. And shit.” 

“Not funny, dude.” It is a bit funny. “But I’m not- okay, so, listen, Joshua’s a determined kid, alright? He’s smart, and he’s healthy, and he likes space. He’s… the chance of him becoming an astronaut is not zero.” Gordon pulls his legs up to his chest. “If it’s up to me, it’s gonna be a hundred percent, ‘cause that’d make him so happy. But even if I’m not the one writing the almighty script I’m still gonna do my best to help him if he’s serious.” 

Benrey continues looking at him. “Uh-huh.”

“And… that includes. Never letting him near Xen.” 

“Mm.”

“And I know, I know Xen’s like. Ten fucking floating rocks at least a million Texas lengths away from Earth, but it’s still there, y’know? It’s still there. You’re from there! You know it’s still…” 

“Yeah?”

“... I. Want to blow Xen up.” 

Benrey settles into the draw-me-like-a-French-girl pose. “Sounds good. How’re we doing that.”

“Well, we’ll need explosives that can actually detonate in Xen’s climate, and acquiring that’s gonna put me on so many shitlist-” Gordon almost physically grabs his own hand to yank himself back to Benrey’s answer. “Wait. Are you really just… relenting? Are you actually in this now. Benrey?”

“Say more about the explosive though.” Benrey blinks innocently at him. “Please? Explosive cool. Maybe illegal. Super cool though.” 

Gordon is not doing the frog mouth thing. He’s not. He’s totally not. He sighs a long sigh; there, no more rude expression. “I am only thinking about using explosives, because it’s costly and we’re gonna have to transport it. So you have nothing to snitch about. Who would you even snitch to, anyway? Fucking- we are under an indefinite two-way nondisclosure clause, if any of us ever open our mouth to a stranger about that we’re gonna get sacked, but. Wait are you even involved in that? You came back after we signed those papers. Well Tommy’s officially ‘representing’ us, so it’s all tangential kinda, so maybe he can just add you, but why would you-”

“No explosive run huh… What’re you gonna… use. Then.” 

“-subject yourself to the law- alright, yeah uh. To be honest I was thinking raw force? Because I do have around twelve years to make this work, and Coomer has insane strength that has leveled a Xen island before, and Bubby is… I think he just isn’t aware that there’s supposed to be a limit to human strength at all. They forget to put that in when they pumped him with knowledge juice. He can- wait, Bubby can just make fire. He can maybe negate the climate conditions for us, so explosives are still in the question here, and- Darnold, last I heard he’s doing some ‘Sour Patch Kids but real’ stuff… sounds like seriously corrosive stuff… We can. We can have a plan.”

Benrey is on his phone again. “Nice.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Gordon dry swallows some dust from the carpet. He realizes he’s gripping on it pretty hard with his prosthetic; he’s close to ripping a chunk of it out. He takes a deep breath and relaxes the plastic hand. “We’re gonna need to make and test the explosives, and we’re. I need to tell everyone. Convince them to help. And we’ll need a portal back to Xen.”

Benrey’s still clicking away on his phone - probably playing that firefighter game again - but he’s looking at Gordon at the same time. Gordon looks up just in time to catch the sharp grin disappearing from his face. 

Alright. Maybe Benrey does love doing Benrey things. At least one of them’s actively enjoying this.

---

Gordon’s well aware how ridiculous he is. Is sometimes seen as. Perceived as. Terminologies.

Mostly he copes fine with that. He’s lived it for as long as he’s alive. Most decisions he makes are met with a raised eyebrow at the sublest and outright laughter at the rudest. Transitioning, that was a long, long period of his parents going from “haha funny joke but don’t tell it in public yeah” to “oh shit that’s for real huh? That’s for real” to confused, but silent, silence. Him applying for MIT and seeking a scholarship was definitely the career advisor at his high school laughing uncomfortably for a long time, because Gordon’s never held down a project properly, has he? How’s he doing this? And then him adopting Joshua officially was at least ten separate conversations with Joshua’s grandparents patting him on the back, it’s okay if you don’t! We can care for him. It’s nice to have children around the house again! We know you’re busy! We know there’s things youngsters like you want to do before getting tied down with children. Trust us, we know. You don’t have to . 

Gordon knows. He’s never had to make any of the decisions he actively made, but one, that’s why they’re decisions and not punishments , and two, in many ways including cerebral, he did. Kind of have to. In many ways those are the only steps that make sense for him to take. They were the foundation to who he is as a person, with a sense of self that must be supernaturally obscure, because he’s. He’s got a lot of things to balance. A lot of tight ropes to walk. 

Gordon’s many things, a lot of those he doesn’t fucking recall himself. Maybe that’s by itself absurd enough. He’s had a lot of time to learn, and a bit of time to relearn, being okay with being absurd. 

Black Mesa “helped”, in the same way it spared the rest of him when it got his arm cut the fuck off. It’s a horror comedy. It gave him a bit of a new perspective on absurdity. 

“Don’t you dare,” Gordon grouches, because he’s learning. He’s always learning. “Don’t use the a-word.” 

Bubby puts his arm together in front of his chest. “I’m not about to! Don’t presume you know what I will do.” 

In a way Bubby’s incredulous look stings worse than Benrey’s deflection, Gordon reasons, because Benrey has emotional (?) stakes in Xen’s existence. Maybe he has an external heart or something that’s still beating and keeping him alive on Xen, though Gordon hopes he’d’ve at least been transparent about that when they talked about blowing the place up. Bubby though, Bubby doesn’t have emotional ties to many things altogether. Bubby’s also a tube baby who sets himself on fire with his thoughts. Himself and other people and/or objects. Not as absurd as Benrey being Benrey, but absurd enough to be way above Gordon on the a-scale, and thus has no rights to call Gordon absurd. 

“You have to admit though,” Bubby says after a moment of silence.

Gordon takes a deep breath. “No, actually, I don’t have to admit shit,” he says, with what he can call patience with just a little bit of definition stretching, “you ever thought of that? I actually can just never admit that blowing up a whole planetoid system is a bit out-of-the-box thinking of me. I can just say that it’s totally normal and expected behavior of me, and what’re you gonna do with that? Huh? Do go on.” 

“Oh don’t be pissy at me,” Bubby huffs, and goes back to staring at the buoy bobbing on the water surface, tied to his fishing line. “You’re scaring away the fish, Gordon. Everyone knows you don’t talk and stomp around on the piers while people are fishing. It’s rude.”

“You’re literally only trying to see if you can set a fish on fire as a prank,” Gordon points out, more for his own sanity than to prove anything to anyone, least of all Bubby.

Benrey looks like he’s ignoring Gordon and Bubby’s exchange, just sitting at the edge of the piers, legs swinging evenly, but Gordon well knows he’s listening in. If not because he’s somewhat invested then because most things that frustrate Gordon is great entertainment to him. 

He is, maybe, a bit, somewhat invested though, must be. He brought Gordon to where Bubby and Coomer are camping, afterall. No reasons else to do it, especially when they have time to wait for them to come back to civilization. Twelve years, in fact. 

Gordon can wait (he can forget, but in his book that’s the same as waiting, really), and he doesn’t begrudge Bubby and Coomer’s “honeymoon trip”, which has consisted thus far of them trampling about in ~~nature~~ , e.g. deep ends of the world that they do not and should not have access to, but somehow end up in anyway. Gordon only knew because Coomer’s grown fond of taking pictures, and once in a while if they get wifi he sends everyone some. The most memorable one was a pitch black square except for two dots of light in the distance, with the geotag pointing to them being in the Mariana trench. 

They’re having fun, and Darnold and Tommy take effort to “decontaminate” them between trips, as well as make them learn wildlife interaction guidelines (Bubby probably already knew, but he didn’t care, and still nobody’s sure if he cares now), so Gordon doesn’t mind. Has no reason to mind. Until now, but only a tiny bit. 

They decided to stop in a seaside town somewhere up North three days ago, and wifi’s spotty at best but Coomer still managed to send them pictures again - of him fighting a dolphin and Bubby making fun of a goat skeleton in a museum - and then Gordon got tired of staying up thinking about Xen at night and shot his shot. It took them another day to check their message again, and Bubby replied saying “don’t third wheel other people, weirdo” and Gordon just sighed and resigned himself to staying up way too late for another week or so. But then Benrey asked him to go to GameStop with him, which. Admittedly that was suspicious as hell, but Gordon reasoned Benrey knocked and asked to be let in the other day, so what the fuck, right. And then he stepped through the GameStop’s door, noticing the glass being darker than usual, and ended up on this piers where Bubby’s been trying to have a laugh at some poor fish’s expense.

Bubby made fun of him for third wheeling again, despite Benrey also being right there, and despite Coomer not even being there. 

“Did you guys have a fight or something?” Gordon asked, because maybe he can be a little bit spiteful. He’s allowed. 

“No,” Bubby grumbled. “Harold impressed Gregory with his punching power, so he’s invited to the Punching Tournament. I don’t like being in water for a long time so I stayed. Their sandwich’s not even good.” 

Gregory turned out to be the giant squid that lives a few kilometers off the shore, and another few kilometers under the sea level.

“I’m gonna issue an a-word ban, actually,” Gordon declares, when he comes back to where Bubby’s sitting on his journey to wear a track into the piers. “I think that’s more conducive to real conversations.” 

He’s being distracted, he knows. And maybe he’s letting himself be a bit distracted, so he can have a minute to improvise a script. Benrey just fast traveled him here, he did not prepare any materials, he doesn’t even have his notebook with him. That’s where all of his plans are! And his doodles. Mostly his doodles, but that’s a part of his thinking process, so he’s allowed. 

“Alright, Mister Fucking-Insane-Person,” Bubby shrugs.

“Doctor.”

“Oh, my bad! Doctor Fucking-Insane-Person.”

“Also that’s a ban dodge and you know it. Also you still don’t have any rights to call me anything! I refuse to submit in this matter.”

Bubby turns around fully to put his hand on crossed legs and stare at Gordon. “You sure, Gordon? Are you very sure about that, when you warp out of thin air to where I am missing my husband very much and not torturing fishes for fun, saying things about blowing Xen up ? Is that not ragingly absurd, Doctor ?” 

Gordon takes another deep breath. For his own benefit. For his own wellbeing. “Okay, one, Benrey warped me here, I was not responsible for that. Two, you’re trying to set fishes on fire, and your husband is punching more fishes while a giant squid cheers him on, probably. And three, which part of blowing Xen up is absurd, now? Feel free to elaborate on it. I’m all ears.”

“The very idea of it!” Bubby exclaims, accidentally shoving his fishing rod off the optimal position, chasing away the few fishes not shunned by his radiating malicious intent yet. “Who even thinks of that?”

“Me,” Gordon snaps back, “and you guys kinda ruined what ‘absurd’ even means at all for me, so don’t try me at it.”

Bubby shuts his mouth with a click, but his brows are still furrowed in the exact way that claims, loudly even if soundlessly, that he thinks that’s stupid.

“No, go on, Doctor Bubby,” Gordon presses. “You’ve got the quiz. Try your hand at it again, go ahead.”

“Alright, then, how are we even doing it? If we’re doing it. And there’s no we yet, mind you.” 

“I- okay.” Gordon holds his hands up. “I’ll admit I do not have the specifics yet. But logistically at least, it’s entirely possible. We’ll need,” he calculates a number real quick, “thirteen hundred pounds of column charge slurry, but if we have something high corrosive we can wrap up safely until detonation we’ll need even less. We can. Make that much. If we have Darnold’s help. We need access to Xen itself, which Tommy has the biggest chance to get. We’ll need to put the explosives deeper into the ground than surface level, so we’ll need to dig some holes, but with Doctor Coomer’s strength we can take care of that. And then we’ll need to trip it, and that might pose a problem in Xen’s climate, but we can manage a chemical fuse, or. Y’know. Just burn it hot enough to explode, which.” 

He ends that speech with a vague and a bit jerky wave of his hand towards Bubby. 

Bubby just blinks. “Huh.” 

Benrey snickers under his breath, either at a fish or at Bubby’s reaction, Gordon doesn’t know. He wouldn’t even be able to guess, since Benrey still has his back to the entire commotion.

Gordon catches himself holding his breath, so he consciously exhales slowly. It’s okay. It’s whatever. He has twelve years. He can take some detours if necessary. He can forget, even. Maybe.

“That Doctorate turns out to be for something, huh,” Bubby continues. “That does sound pretty plausible, afterall.”

“Huh,” Gordon’s turn to blink. “Wait, that’s it? You’re in now?” 

“Yeah, sure,” Bubby swings his arm out, “even though I’d like to be testy for a while longer, I also want to blow things up. Outside is very large, but it severely lacks opportunities to see things explode, so I’ll have to make it happen myself now.” 

That’s a tiny bit worrying, but Gordon’ll take it. He’s used to Bubby being a tiny bit worrying anyway. Wouldn’t be Bubby without it. 

“Now shoo,” Bubby turns around to fiddle with his fishing rod again, carefully moving it back to the optimal position, “you chased all the fishes off. Gonna have to start my work from the beginning now. It’s hard work tricking fishes, you know.” 

“Don’t tell Coomer,” Gordon warns, “I want to let him know myself.” 

“Sure, sure.” 

“I’m serious.”

“Aren’t you ever.” 

Gordon figures he’s done all he can on that front. 

Benrey catches up with him when he’s walked away dramatically for a few minutes and is now at the main street of the town. “Rudeman.”

Gordon did forget him at the piers, so that’s on him. “Sorry, but also, do you have a plan to get us home, or what? ‘Cause I don’t have my car and I’m not hitching a random ride if I can help it.” 

“Gotta... find a GameStop first. Score some Sports Champions 2 for the. PS3.” 

“Alright.” Gordon nods. “Wait, do you need a GameStop to transport us? Is that a thing?”

“Huh,” Benrey just looks at him, and then pulls out his brick phone.

Gordon rolls his eyes, but then catches a glimpse of the screen, and sees the digital clock. “It’s- fuck, it’s almost five! Joshua’s almost home.”

“Oh look, no GameStop on the… roadside. What’re we gonna do.”

“Benrey, you- goddamnit,” Gordon frantically pulls his phone out of his pocket. He tries to yank his right arm out of Benrey’s hold to hold it steady, but Benrey doesn’t yield. “Fucking, let me,” he unlocks it and finds Joshua’s number, which is on top, because he added ‘01’ before his name, because he’s had plenty of experiences with arranging files so they don’t disappear on him, “c’mon, c’mon… Hey Joshie! Are you at school right now?” 

“Hi Dad, yes,” Joshua answers, at the same time Gordon registers that he’s walking, Benrey pulling on his arm. 

“Sorry I called in the middle of class, buddy, but we’re gonna. I’m gonna be a bit late home, okay? I’m outside right now, but I’m on my way- oh, no, we.”

They’re in his living room. Gordon puts his arm, just released, on top of the couch. This is his couch. The bowl of cereal he finished right before Benrey dragged him out’s still on the table. The PS3 lays silent in the TV cabinet, as it’s always been. He does go around the table to put his free hand on all of these things just to be sure. 

“Dad?” Joshua asks from the other end of the line. “Are you okay?”

“I.” Gordon dry swallows. “No, yeah I- I got home. Me and Benrey were out for a bit and we got? Lost? But we found our way back, and I’m. I’m home now. I was really worried I wouldn’t make it back in time to open the door for you, so I called! But I’m home now.”

“That’s good!” Joshua says, even though Gordon can still hear worry in his voice. Sweet kid, his boy is. “Thank you for telling me in ad-advance.” 

“I’m sorry I interrupted your class. Dad’ll be more careful next time.” 

“It’s okay. What are we having tonight?” 

Gordon takes a deep breath, holds it in for a moment, and then breathes it out, slowly. “We can have mac and cheese again, or we can try our hand at naan and make some soup to go with it,” he says, willing his voice to calm down. “We still have the yeast Ms. Juney gave us last month, right? We can go get bread flour when you’re home.”

“Okay.”

“Go back to class, buddy. See you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah. Can we have chowder tonight too?” 

Gordon laughs. “We’ll look into it, but sure! If we can find the ingredients for it. Alright, bye now. Love you, honey.”

“Okay,” Joshua says again, and when Gordon’s about to move the phone from his ear, he adds, “Love you too, Dad.” And then he hangs up. 

Gordon goes to the couch and sits down. He’s maybe cradling his phone a bit. It’s still warm from him gripping on it way too hard. Deep breath in, deep breath out. 

“That went well, huh,” Benrey says, from the hallway. Gordon looks up to see him closing the door behind him, what looks like a copy of Sports Champions 2 for the PS3 in hand. 

Gordon laughs, again, for real this time. “That’s- where'd you even get that?

---

They did make naan, or a version of it. Joshua likes messing with flour, Gordon caught him walking his fingers through the bowl, leaving tiny “footprints”. They couldn’t agree on a fish to put in the chowder, so they shelved that plan and bought some canned beef-and-vegetables soup instead. The naan turned out… fine. They tasted enough like naan, and Gordon only burned like two. Which was maybe thanks to the apartment’s stove top burning a bit less hot than it did the last time they used it; Gordon made a mental note to check on the gas or. Whatever one does. When that happened. He just needed to look up a number, call it, and stand next to the (hopefully) professional who would come while they did their work. 

Benrey sat at the couch while the Freemans cooked and ate their dinner, either being on his phone or scrolling idly through the PS3’s library. Joshua asked if he could try and throw naan pieces into Benrey’s mouth from the kitchen table, which Gordon allowed, but with the preset limit of only three pieces, and the condition that he picked up the ones that missed himself. He then asked Benrey very politely if he could open his mouth to catch the bread, and then made a lot of mental calculations before throwing each piece. The first one missed, but the other two were snatched up by Benrey in a somewhat shark-like display, which Joshua clapped excitedly for. 

Gordon heard Benrey come to the kitchen table, which Joshua was wiping off with the designated kitchen rag (the fourth one this month alone; it feels like someone’s eating them as they’re replaced sometimes), while he was cleaning the dishes. “Hey lil’ gamer dude,” Benrey said, and Gordon could hear him rustle around in a pocket of his puffy vest. “Scored big in the. Minigame.”

“Thank you,” Joshua replied politely. 

“Here’s your price,” Benrey said. Gordon assumed Joshua was holding out his hands to receive whatever Benrey gave him, because he couldn’t hear any noise that thing made, just Joshua’s little excited gasp. 

“It’s like the... Intarna-Internation… nal… Space Station!” 

“Huh,” Gordon could hear Benrey blink, “that’s what it is…” 

“Yeah! These are, here, they’re solar panels! They charge the batteries in here.” 

“Nice.” 

“Thank you Benrey!” 

“Yeah, GG.” And then Benrey shuffled back to the couch, if Gordon interpreted the noises correctly. 

Joshua held onto the price trinket until he asked Gordon to put it in the tool cabinet, along with the cake moulds and decoration kit courtesy of Gordon’s hectic MIT years. It was… Gordon could see why Joshua thought that was where it should go. It could be considered a cookie cutter, if the shape weren’t kinda suboptimal for a cookie. It also did look like the ISS, with wings and all. 

Nobody in this household’s baked anything sweet in this apartment for at least a year, but. Well. Never say no to free, reusable stuff.

  Gordon’s phone vibrates when he’s just sat down at the kitchen table again, a mug of garbage instant coffee in hand. He abandons it to go get his phone from where it’s charging on the living room table.

It’s Coomer. “It’s Coomer,” Gordon says out loud. “That’s weird- he’s. He doesn’t call.” 

“He’s calling. Now.” Benrey says from where he’s sitting, on the couch. Gordon takes a deep breath and doesn’t deign it worth a rebuttal. He accepts the call instead.

“Hello Gordon! I heard you want to blow Xen up.” 

Gordon pinches the bridge of his nose. “Bubby told you.” 

“He did! In great details!”

“I- alright, whatever, I didn’t expect actual results with that one anyway.” Gordon remembers about his coffee. He comes back to where it’s waiting for him on the kitchen table, and takes himself a generous sip, letting it burn his mouth. “Fuck!” He sets the cup down maybe a bit forcefully. “Oh that’s a bad decision. What did- what did he tell you?” 

Coomer takes a moment to gather his thoughts, leaving a blank minute where sounds of the wind and waves on the shore come through his mic. Gordon hopes he isn’t thinking about sleeping out there tonight, for the full nature flavor or whatever. “ A large part of his speech was about explosion! And how big and grand it would be. And also about how much he fucking hates Xen!” 

“Glad we agree on that front,” Gordon mumbles. 

“So am I! I also fucking hate Xen!” 

“That’s. That’s fair, really, it’s a garbage place. But- did he, like. Have you heard anything about the actual plan? Did he tell you anything about the actual plan I definitely mentioned to him?”

Coomer pauses for another moment, probably to recall. “Nope! Not a word about a plan-”

“I fucking knew it,” Gordon mumbles.

 “-though that is very thorough of you, Gordon!”

"Okay, listen,” Gordon picks his mug of coffee up and starts pacing. “I actually don’t… have all of it yet. I know me and Benrey are in,” he flicks his gaze to Benrey again, who does nothing to deny the statement, “and Bubby’s now in as well. I still need to- okay, the plan’s basically that we find or make enough explosive for the ten asteroids on Xen, we bury it at the core of said asteroids, and we blow that up so it blows Xen up. I have- I don’t know the specifics of how to make that much explosive yet, but I’ll convince Darnold somehow, and if he sits this one out then we’ll borrow his lab when he’s not using it. And I’ll ask Tommy about a way back to Xen, his. His dad’s done that plenty. He doesn’t seem to like Xen much, right? That’s the impression I got, so we can spin this into us doing him a favor or something. And then we transport the explosive to Xen, I can borrow a truck for that, I know someone, and then we dig into the ground there, that’s where we can really use your superstrength, and then we put the explosive in and. Set it on fire. Bubby, uh, agreed to take care of that.” 

Another beat of silence follows Gordon’s speech. He seems to have been making that one a lot recently, mostly to himself, in his room, while writing things down in his notebook. He finds himself chewing on his own lip, so he makes himself stop and takes another gulp of the coffee, which has thankfully cooled down to gulp-appropriate temperature.

When Coomer speaks again, he seems to have chosen his words carefully. “I will need to ‘sleep’ on this, Gordon. You are right in your assessment that you do not have your plan together yet!”

Gordon takes a deep breath. “It’s okay,” he says, as much to Coomer as to himself. “It’s true. It’s half-thought up right now. I still need to figure out- figure out Darnold and Tommy and Mr. Coolatta. I, yeah,” his voice’s dropped to a mumble by now, “I think I need to sleep on it too.” 

“Gordon.” The rustles that accompany Coomer’s voice gives the impression that he’s sitting down onto the pebble-littered beach as he speaks. “I would like to see Xen obliterated, and I think we can get it done.”

“That’s,” Gordon stops on his pacing in the kitchen, “That’s not. It’s okay if you’re not interested, Coomer. You don’t have to walk it back on me.”

“Please do not question my fucking hatred for Xen, Gordon.”

“O-okay.”

“But I am not in favor of hazy dreams anymore. I have gotten to see a lot during my ‘honeymoon’, and now I have broken free, and mere words on a script cannot placate me. I would like to see proof that it’s possible before I participate.” 

Gordon takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

“I believe you can do it, Gordon!”

“Thank you,” Gordon says, a little bit dazed, while Bubby’s voice comes through from a distance at the same time, “Are you reciting poetry again?” 

“In what distant deeps or skies, burnt the fire of thine eyes?” Coomer answers. “On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?”

“Stop praising that tiger while I’m right here!” 

“I’ll,” Gordon says before Coomer can get fully caught up in Bubby’s antics again, “I’ll come back to you with. The details. When I’ve hashed it out. Thanks for,” he exhales, “thanks for holding out for me, Coomer.” 

“So it is, Gordon, so it will be!” 

Coomer hangs up there, and Gordon sits down at the kitchen table again. He finishes the mug of coffee in one long gulp. It’s gone a little bit more room-temperature than he likes. 

“Sleep on it,” he mumbles, “good advice.” 

“You should. Do that.” Benrey says from the couch. “Sleep good for body for soul.” 

“You know what, when you’re right,” Gordon says, and stands up and goes brush his teeth. He then sits down at his work table and writes down questions until four in the morning.

---

Gordon used to suck at making phone calls. He’s kind of a champion at it now.

Funny thing is there’s an epiphany to it as well: he didn’t grow up with cell phones, so making phone calls was a hierarchical thing for him until he was like. Twenty years old. Kids used the landline when absolutely necessary only, and adults used it whenever they damn well pleased, because they paid for it and they had businesses to take care of . And Gordon was… not much of a rule breaker, surprisingly enough. Oh he fell short of where rules lay plenty, but he didn’t really intentionally break them. So he took calls when his parents said he could and when he absolutely needed to, and that habit persisted well into his adulthood. 

He might also just be not very good at holding his tongue when speaking and. That was no good for phone calls. Kiddies phone calls. ‘cause he just realized one day that adults said whatever the fuck they wanted on the phone really, and nobody chastised them for it, no divine punishment, no sudden death round. 

A sermon on self-love, that was; Gordon just takes phone calls now. Worst case scenario, he just turns his brain off and lets his mouth do its work. When people don’t presume they know better than him, they don’t presume he’s talking out of his ass ninety percent of the time. 

That’s- that’s what he thought. Gordon’s wrong, a little bit. He can be wrong. Has been wrong plenty before. He can correct himself, here, he’s gonna do it right now: worst case scenario, he has to recite his plan, conceived so far in total isolation from anyone he knows and whose opinions he cares about, to the person who’s the most skittish and averse to what his plan is bringing about among those people, over the phone, where he can’t see and gauge body language and facial expressions. 

Gordon would… like to meet Darnold face to face for this. But. It’s work. It’s, well, it’s closer to work than to play, given that he’s gotten mildly stressed out over it, and their lunch at the only Taco Bell in the whole desert is strictly pleasant, not-work talk only. And Gordon really, really enjoys those lunch dates, because he never has to think about damage control or having an identity crisis in the middle of one. They’re just nice, normal, a tiny bit shouty (the Taco Bell is usually packed and the acoustic’s not good, but it’s a Taco Bell, and it’s a ritual now), mostly jovial, lunch with a friend, eating subpar food he’s learned to enjoy. They don’t talk about what happened at Black Mesa, they don’t talk about work in general, they don’t even talk about soda outside of appraising the gaudy color combinations for any new sponsored drink. They talk about Joshua, about Darnold’s cat Lumbar Support, about Coomer and Bubby’s travelling, about new game releases, about Sega vs. Nintendo, about the weather. 

Gordon doesn’t want to fall short of where the rules lie, not this time. So he calls. 

“Doctor Freeman?” Darnold answers with the title, which sets the tone pretty well. Gordon takes a deep breath and steels himself. 

“Doctor Pepper.” He pauses. “Darnold. Hey. I, uh, I’ve got a thing I wanna ask.” 

“Go ahead!” Darnold goes quiet for a moment, to finish his sandwich, Gordon’d guess. He’s called in the middle of Darnold’s lunch break. “I must preface however that we’re working outside of office hours, and I can only advise you at the moment. Anything further will have to go through the… official channels.”

“Okay, that’s alright. I just.” Gordon worries his lips. He realizes he’s tugging pretty hard on his left sleeve; he makes himself let go. “I have a. Plan. That’ll need your expertise.” 

“I’d be delighted to help then! Feel free to share more.” 

“It’s about, uh.” Gordon takes another deep breath. He’s been consuming a lot of oxygen recently. “IwanttoblowXenup?”

Darnold goes, predictably, quiet for a moment. It doesn’t sting less when it’s predictable.

When he speaks again, it’s in a clipped, professional-but-barely tone. “Please say that again, but slowly.”

Gordon closes his eyes against the sunlight streaming in from the window in his bedroom. “I want to. Blow Xen up.” 

“Gordon,” Darnold sighs. “Doctor Freeman.” 

“I know.”

“Your megalomaniacal tendencies have grown since we last met.”

“It’s not- I’m not doing it for fun!” Gordon throws his free arm up. “Okay, this is genuinely a lot of effort and stress for something I’d do for pleasure, Darnold. I also couldn’t care less about fucking Xen - okay that’s not true, I’ve lost like a week of sleep over blowing it up, that’s not not caring, but like. I can’t. I need it to not be there,” he stands up from his bed and starts pacing, “and I have. A plan. Half of one. About that much. So it’s not hopeless-”

“Gordon, please slow down.”

“-as long as I have your help and- and Tommy’s, okay, I will. uh.” He taps on his thigh with his free hand too, for good measure. Go the whole nine yard with fidgeting, why not. “I. So, Joshua wants to be an astronaut,” he intones, and for the first time in a while he’s reminded again of how this started, how it took over his life for a hot minute, and it almost gives him the hiccups, “and. Y’know. Xen is in space. So it needs to not be there anymore. So I want to. Blow it up.” 

Darnold goes silent again. Gordon thinks he can hear the epiphany punch the air out of him. Fuck, he hates phone calls. 

“As much as I want to berate you about how you’re treating this matter and yourself,” Darnold resumes primly after a moment, “my lunch break is ending in exactly fifty-two seconds, and this sandwich will take me another two bites to get through. I’ll see you in the Taco Bell’s parking lot at three AM this afternoon, Gordon. Drink water.”

He hangs up. Gordon goes drink water.

Benrey clips into the apartment when Gordon’s on his third mug of iced water. “Whoa, hydration streak,” he says, settling himself on the kitchen table. 

“I can go a bit crazy,” Gordon mumbles. “I’m allowed a little bit of funk and insanity. This is my house.” 

“It’s… actually. MFA’s.” 

Gordon groans. “Don’t fucking remind me. I tried to forget that. Also it actually belongs to the NRC, since they apparently can just scare MFA into giving employees housing, which I’m really fucking horrified by, but I’m choosing to not think about it, and you can’t make me.” 

“It can be mine soon.”

“Do not attack and dethrone Nils Diaz.”

Benrey huffs. “Killjoy Freeman.” He shifts his pose so he’s sitting up straighter. “You wanna… try out Premium Water? Free trial for a week, you can manually cancel your. Subscription. After.” 

Gordon stares at him. “What’s Premium Water.” 

Benrey opens his jaws, wide, showing his teeth. He points inside as if there’s anything Gordon wants to find at all in there at the moment. Then he closes it with a click and stares back at Gordon. 

Gordon just sighs. “No, Benrey.” 

“Guaranteed beddy bye time, no charge,” Benrey blinks at him. “Black Mesa Sweet Voice™ a hundred percent effective. Five stars… satisfaction… rating.” 

“You’re fucking lying, because I’d never leave it five stars. You get three at best.” 

“Gonna catch you when you fall off the. Chair. Gonna be romantic.”

Gordon laughs. “No, not allowed.” He sighs and finishes the mug of water like it’s mead and he’s some Dungeons and Dragons elven ranger. He gives himself brain freeze. “Ah, fuck, oof,” he slaps his own forehead, “bad decision. Bad decision. Okay, I. I appreciate you asking instead of just going for it, but that’s the reality of asking, right? The person you ask can say no. And you’ve just gotta learn how to deal with it.”

Benrey just keeps staring at him, but he’s used to that now. It’s only a tiny bit unnerving. “How’s learning’s... satisfaction rate.”

Gordon sighs again. “It sucks ass. Fucking hate learning.” 

Benrey grins at him, and then he checks his phone and it’s already time to go.

“Drink this,” Darnold says immediately when Gordon climbs into the shotgun seat of his car, and holds out a beaker of bubbling purple liquid. 

Gordon just stares at it. “Darnold, what is this.” 

Darnold sighs. “It’s the Potion of Not Telling. I also drank a sample before coming here,” he holds up an empty beaker with some of the same purple liquid at the bottom. “It blows us up if we tell our employers what we’re up to.” 

Gordon ponders this very carefully. “Does. Tommy, for example. Does he count as my ‘employer’?” 

“No,” Darnold says. “‘Employers’ only cover people and/or establishments you’re currently under an employee contract with and receiving salary from.” 

“Alright,” Gordon intones carefully, and downs the whole beaker. It tastes like… the jello packaged like seahorses Tommy brings over sometimes. The red ones, specifically. It makes him feel a bit bloated, immediately, and he rubs his side a bit anxiously when he sits down in the car. “You’re actually under NDAs at all times, huh,” he says, as an opening line.

“Same as you, Gordon.” Darnold takes the beaker back from Gordon’s hand and puts it in with the other one. “Black Mesa seeked me out and offered to find me a position in a brewery, as well as fund any of my independent ventures, as long as I do not say a word about what… transpired… back there. The official record’s that I was stranded on an island with curious dino-esque creatures for four years, instead of worked in Black Mesa’s mixology department, and honed my craft with their help, using the fruits native to that island.”

Gordon laughs, and rubs his face with the prosthetic hand. It’s like putting your face on the car’s dashboard. “Sounds like them alright. At least yours sounds exciting, instead of fucking insane. They said I was ‘chasing an entropy in the desert’ and it ‘ate my hand’. What the fuck does that even mean?”

“We attempted feats of miracle, only it was not under their accountability,” Darnold says, “and we were punished for it. No matter, we have more important things at hand. What is this plan you’ve cooked up, Gordon?”

Gordon takes a deep breath, finding it easier than it’s been for a while, and relays what he’s got down of the blow-Xen-up plan to Darnold. They never look at each other meanwhile, both staring at the cars lined up haphazardly in the lane across from them, Gordon in a barren calmness as words leave his mouth, Darnold with his arms crossed in front of his chest, his whole presence compacted into a contemplative, silent piece. 

“That is an intense reaction to a faraway threat, Gordon,” Darnold says when Gordon’s speech is over. “Xen is not only at least a galaxy away, but also a few dimensions over, if I understand the briefing right. I haven’t thought about that wretched place for almost a year.”

“Sorry,” Gordon says, not really feeling any of it, but making the effort. 

“You don’t have to. I understand where you’re coming from.” Darnold taps idly on his own arm. “I was… extracted… swiftly from Black Mesa after I met you and your friends. I did not witness what happened after, but I saw… enough.” He takes a deep breath as well. “We can all have intense reactions to anything.” 

“Doesn’t mean it’s not maladaptive,” Gordon says. He’s gone to therapy. It was really good for helping him build a system that filters out the things that actually fucks him up and makes some sense of the rest, but it doesn’t lift him out of the comedy of his life itself. It can’t. That’s not what therapy’s for. 

“Indeed,” Darnold says. “But I can’t be the judge of that. My domain lies with potion mixing, and I dare say I am a true expert at it, but I can’t claim expertise at other people’s life. Especially not yours.”

“I get it,” Gordon nods. The world kinda bobs a tiny bit when he does that. “I. Know not to indulge my impulse mostly. But sometimes decisions come back to haunt me, and those are usually just about choosing one furniture over another, or tying my shoelaces in the bunny ears way instead of the circle way and having them undone in the middle of a meeting and stepping on them and falling on my face, but this time it’s. It’s Joshua’s life. And there’s just no limit anymore to what can happen, not since.” He swallows. “Black Mesa.” 

Darnold nods. 

Gordon blinks. “I know it’s a little bit crazy.” 

“It might be,” Darnold says, “but as a famous mixologist once said: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Even if that gain is just your peace of mind.” 

Gordon lets out the breath he isn’t even aware he’s been holding. “Thank you.” 

“You do not need to,” Darnold smiles, “I do stand to gain from this as well, since I really need to test this flavouring that’s supposed to land on pleasantly tart on the taste scale but goes into intestine-destroyingly sour territory instead. I need to know what makes it that corrosive, and testing on humans is entirely unethical.” 

---

Gordon got home before Joshua. Benrey’s also not home. He lays down on the couch and takes a nap. 

He wakes to a quilt over most of him, light turned on in the living room and in the kitchen, and silent chatter. His sense of smell kicks in a minute or so into him still laying on the couch, blinking up at the ceiling; he smells fish sauce and sugar cooking. 

“Tommy’s over,” he mumbles. 

“He awakes,” Benrey says, seemingly into thin air. Gordon feels the couch shift minutely as Benrey makes to stand up from where he’s sitting leaning back on it. “Good eatin’. I’ll go get the. Food. Coloring.” 

When Gordon’s gathered enough of himself to sit up, Benrey’s nowhere to be seen. Tommy’s shifting something animatedly on the stove, while Joshua carefully carries one bowl at a time to the kitchen table. 

“Hey Dad!” Joshua says when he catches Gordon’s eyes. He puts the bowl he’s carrying down to free his hand for waving. Gordon waves back. 

“Hey Joshie, hey Tommy. What’re you guys making?” 

“Caramelized pork b-belly!” Tommy says from his stove station. “And... sautéed vegetable medley.” 

“With rice!” Joshua adds.

“A perfectly balanced meal.” 

“I picked the vege-ta-bles!” 

Gordon folds the quilt to busy his hands. This one’s definitely not his. He may have one somewhere in the closet, but it hasn’t made an appearance in… six months. He thinks. “What did you get for us, buddy?” 

“Carrot!” Joshua holds up a finger. “It has a lot of vita- vitamin… A.” 

“Awesome,” Gordon says and goes over to the kitchen table to high five Joshua. “What else did you choose?” 

“String beans!” 

“Oh?” Joshua hasn’t been much for that. 

“Uncle Tommy’s gonna teach me how to eat them!” 

“A dash of- of flavour, packed in one Kn●rr’s Complete Seasoning packet, is all you’ll need!” Tommy switches to a lower voice when Gordon peers over his shoulder at the pan on the stove. “That is not true. Kn●rr is only… fit to be- be on the floor.” 

“Are- you’re not putting that in then?” 

“No, I just use salt and pepper.” 

Joshua giggles. Tommy extends a hand that Joshua can slap on in place of a high five. 

Gordon gets out the utensils - spoon for Joshua, chopsticks for him and Tommy - and brings the rice cooker to the table once the light’s jumped to orange. He plates the pork, scooping Joshua’s helping into his personal plate first, while Tommy finishes with the vegetables. Tommy lets Joshua choose which vegetables to go on his plate; Joshua bravely gets a little bit of everything. 

They eat dinner on top of companionable conversation, Gordon and Tommy taking turns asking Joshua about school and other things. 

“I heard you want to- to be an astronaut,” Tommy asks. Joshua dutifully finishes his mouthful before answering. 

“Yes! I want to go to space!”

“Do you want to meet- aliens?”

“Yeah!” Joshua’s excitement cools down a little bit as he scoops up another spoonful of rice with a piece of string bean carefully balanced on top. “I read the Wiki-pea-dia about it though. They say there’s no dis-discernable e-vidence of aliens yet. We sent the Voyager Golden Records an’ they haven’t… answered yet.” 

“That’s how p-physical mails are,” Tommy smiles while getting himself a piece of the caramelized pork. “It used to take… weeks... before we hear from our friends who are far away. And the- the universe doesn’t have a… an Everywhere Wifi Network yet.” 

Joshua shares a conspiratory look with Gordon and mouths not yet . Gordon laughs. Gordon’s clutching his bowl maybe a bit too tight. 

“You can become an astronaut and- meet aliens. In space,” Tommy waves his chopsticks with a flourish. 

“I’ll teach them what- what e-mails are!” 

“It’ll take a- a lot of hard work, and you have to be able to eat string beans.” Tommy takes an exaggerated look at Joshua’s plate, now cleaned of food. “Oh! Would you l-look at that! Mister Joshua Freeman is… perfect astronaut materials, according to… the NASA guidelines.” 

Joshua beams with a pride that knocks something loose in Gordon’s chest. 

They finish dinner and clean up together, then Gordon sends Joshua back to his room to do his homework, agreeing to an hour of video game after if he can get it done before nine. Gordon cleans the dishes while Tommy puts the kettle on and makes them both hot chocolate. 

“I bought some-something for Joshua today,” Tommy prompts. Gordon looks back to see him hold up the exact same cookie-cutter-thing Benrey gave Joshua the other day. 

“Oh- oh my god.” Gordon laughs. “Holy shit?” 

“Wh-what’s the matter, Gordon?”

“Do you guys have like a hivemind or something?” Gordon pulls off a glove to open the tool cabinet and pull Benrey’s gift out. “Benrey gave Joshua this. I don’t even- what’re these supposed to be? Where d’you guys even get them from?” 

“It’s the- International Space Station Biscuit Cutter!” Tommy puffs out his chest, slightly indignant, but definitely bemused as well. “They’re issued by- NASA, cut from the s-scrap metal of the hulls of… prototype spaceships. They’re very rare!”

Gordon stares at the one in his hand. “And now we have two of them.” 

“They’re… very valuable! You can sell them for a high price.” 

Gordon smiles. He puts Benrey’s apparently rare and expensive gift back into the tool cabinet and puts the glove back on. “You’ve gotta ask Joshua about that. It’s for him, afterall.” 

They fall into a comfortable silence, crumbled into grains only by the click-clack of dishes in the sink and the water running from the faucet. Gordon weaves himself into a solid piece of nerve, bracing, bracing. 

Tommy’s… better acquainted with the crazies of these things than most, maybe. He’s apparently said “fuck it” to the administrative work that his dad would’ve liked to hand back to him at one point, and just. Got a PhD in nuclear physics instead. Gordon’s been through something like that, and from experience he can tell that it would’ve taken real nerve to do it. He also can tell that no matter what it still rubs off on you, and you don’t recover from that kinda consistent exposure to idiosyncrasies, because you don’t ever feel like there’s anything to recover from , really. It’s just how it is, and the world’s off-kilter, not you. Like Benrey, Tommy’s world runs on a different axis, and he and the rest of them are, in many ways, looking both through strange eyes. 

Gordon’s a little bit jealous of that. He’s honestly not sure if he can ever fully get Tommy, but then. Plenty of people never get him, and here he is. He can learn to wear it as well as Tommy, one day. 

Right now though. Tommy’s important to the plan. Gordon knows that, in a theoretical way. Ha, theoretical… 

“I would like to not be insane,” Gordon says, more to himself, at the same time as Tommy setting his cup of hot chocolate down and saying, “Benrey… told me.” 

“Oh… I. That’s? Good?” 

“Wha- you’re not insane , Gordon!” Tommy waves his hand. Gordon can hear it, even if he can’t see it. “You’re… creative.” 

“Thanks Tommy,” Gordon says with a huff of laughter that he doesn’t think reaches Tommy at all. “I. I get it though. I got Bubby to turn around on it, but everyone else did say that it’s a little bit fucked up that I thought of doing that at all.” 

“But they… agreed on helping you anyway.” 

Gordon taps on the metal wall of the sink. “That’s… yeah. Well, other than Coomer.” 

“Doctor Coomer doesn’t think you’re crazy,” Tommy protests. “He just has... boundaries.” 

“That’s fair. He’s allowed that. He more than deserves that.” Gordon blinks. “Wait- why am I arguing down on my side? I need you to be on board for the plan to work.” He laughs, bowing down over the sink. He’s shaking a little bit. “Wow. I’m a little bit gone. Can I be a little bit gone?” 

“You’re… totally allowed, Gordon” He feels Tommy tug on his elbow. With a deep breath, he lets go of where he’s gripping on the edge of the sink with white knuckles, and lets Tommy lead him to the kitchen table. He dutifully sits himself down on a chair, lets Tommy take off the gloves, and holds the cup of hot chocolate Tommy pushes into his hands carefully. “It’s your house.” 

“It’s MFA’s.” 

“It’s yours,” Tommy says, determinedly, and Gordon takes a deep breath and sidesteps every implications that has. “You can have your fears, and… and your plans, and your hopes. For Joshua. It’s your place, Gordon.” 

Gordon takes a shaky sip of the hot chocolate. Tommy puts on the gloves and finishes washing the dishes for him. 

“Sorry,” Gordon says, mostly aiming at the dishes thing, but. He also just kinda wants to put that out there. 

“There’s nothing to be… be sorry for,” Tommy replies, amidst the noises of the dishes and the water running. 

Tommy talks while Gordon drinks his hot chocolate; in the end, whether he wants to or not, he’s accepted a bit of the job the Gman holds. Gordon knows this, that’s how Tommy vouched for and kept the Science Team from a much worse fate than relative freedom except for a story no sane man’d believe anyway. Mister Coolatta Senior seemed to be impressed by the choice, aside from all the worries that come with it. 

“He’s… he’s proud of me,” Tommy says, softly. “I know he only wants what’s best for me.” 

“He’s been awfully accommodating,” Gordon says, remembering about the movie night they had after Tommy’s birthday bash last year. That man pulled a gun on him. As if he’d walk out on Tommy, if Tommy’d asked for him to stay around. 

“He… doesn’t involve me… with his problems,” Tommy says. “Some parents do that.” 

Gordon can’t find anything to say to that, so he finishes his hot chocolate. 

“I got a vote when they brought Xen up the-the other day,” Tommy says, when the dishes have all been cleaned and put on the rack to dry. He pulls out the chair next to Gordon and picks up his cup of hot chocolate. It’s still steaming, somehow. “I-they were thinking it was- it’s too risky to leave a bridging point open like that. They want to… demolish it.” 

Gordon chuckles, and then it becomes a full body laugh, and then he’s curling up on himself, the empty cup between his hands. He shouldn’t clutch it like this, it might break. He’s broken the handle off of a mug before, when one of his old prosthetic wasn’t calibrated perfectly. He can’t stop laughing though. Not enough to let go of the cup now. 

“Holy shit,” he wheezes. “holy motherfucking shit. We’re doing it. We’re doing it? Xen’s fucking going down.” 

“It sure is!” Tommy says, and claps a polite golf clap for Gordon’s victory.

---

Gordon does have shit he needs to do for the online classes he teaches, but outside of it he’s still way too idle. He and Joshua go to the aquarium and the museum whenever the schedule works out, and once in a while they drive by Roswell to catch a plane taking off into the sky, and he does grocery runs and tries to clean around the house and do laundry on a timetable, and there’s always the PS3 Benrey dragged back that’s now public good, as well as his probably too long Steam list, but. Gordon’s shit at talking himself into and out of doing things. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel right to start doing something, so there’s a black hole of time between him thinking “I should get to this” and him actually doing it. And Joshua’s life isn’t just him; his son’s going to school now, and he’s made friends at school, and he talks to them on the phone and goes hang out with them on weekend afternoons.

Gordon’s not as good at holding onto time anymore, now that things’ve. Changed. 

So figuring the explosives out’s been good for him. It’s just what he does back in uni again, except without a supervisor, without having to write anything down properly (just legibly’s enough), and without peer review. It’s mostly math, but with the spirit of two middle schoolers stealing sodium crumbs from the school lab to throw into puddles. It’s closer to play than he expected. Closer than playing Horse Simulator 3D on the PS3. 

He and Darnold spend the day building the corrosion rate equation, pouring Darnold’s concoction on rocks Gordon figures have the same make-up as the ground on Xen. Benrey doesn’t bring the venture up often, but every other day Gordon finds clumps of dirt and random rocks that weigh suspiciously little for their size in his glove compartment. He brings those in for the pour test as well, and they build a simulation based on them. 

Balancing the corrosion with the heat’s a bit tricky; Gordon needs to know how hot Bubby’s ignition can go, since their number’s high. He was about to shoot Bubby a call when Coomer’s latest photo arrived. Gordon recognized the street in it. 

They put the project on hold for an afternoon so Tommy and Darnold can have the lab to decontaminate Coomer and Bubby. Gordon spends that afternoon getting the air fryer he ordered last week out of the box while Benrey reads the manual out loud wrongly. He calls Joshua to let him know they’re having guests over that evening, thankfully in the middle of the school recess this time. Gordon tries to remember Joshua’s exact timetable at school, he really does. It’s just not fruitful a task.

When Joshua arrives home, Gordon’s in the middle of arguing with Bubby over how much water’s left in air fried food. “Hey Granpa! Hey Bubby!” Joshua waves at Coomer and Bubby, “hey Uncle Tommy! Hey Doctor Darnold! Hey Benrey! Hey Dad!” 

Gordon steals the chance to close the air fryer while Bubby’s joining in with the “Hey Joshua!” chorus and distracted. “We’re making spring rolls and egg rolls!” He calls after Joshua, who’s in his room putting his backpack away. “You can choose the filling yourself!” 

The kitchen barely fits everyone, so comes dinnertime they move the living room table up next to the TV cabinet to make space for the spare straw mat, and lay out a tablecloth on top for good measure (Gordon’s had enough experience to remember to do that). They sit on the floor in the living room together, almost shoulder to shoulder, and at some point the conversation gets away from Gordon entirely. He just nods when Joshua points at something he wants and gets some in the bowl for him. 

“I’ve heard somebody wants to become an astronaut,” He hears Coomer say at one point. 

Joshua puffs out his chest proudly. 

“Doesn’t everybody at some point,” Bubby says. “I wanted to be an astronaut too, when I was forty.”

“Oh I have seen the photos,” Coomer continues, a gentle light in his eyes, “It is very beautiful out there.” 

Joshua asks for help with his homework after dinner, and Tommy and Darnold sit down with him for that. Benrey joins Gordon at the sink while he’s pouring dish soap into one of the large bowls they used. He doesn’t know what to do but blink at him, dumbfounded. 

“Check this out,” Benrey says, and spits lime green into the sink. When the light clears, the dishes have become spotless. 

Gordon stares at the sink. “I- you- th- is that- you can do that? ” He points at the plates. leaning on the sink’s edge. 

Benrey grins. “New… new skill acquired bro. Just got the EXP for it.” 

“You spent your EXP on dish cleaning ?” 

“We should conserve water, Gordon!” Coomer declares from behind him next to the kitchen table. “Water shortage is caused by corporate greed, but with certain individual actions we can improve the situation ourselves!” 

“Please don’t kill Mark Schneider.” 

“Worry not, Doctor Freeman! His death will not be by my hand directly!” 

Gordon laughs, helplessly. “Everything happens so much,” he laments, only semi-jokingly, as he takes off the cleaning gloves and puts the plates on the rack. 

“Keep up, Doctor Freeman,” Bubby says. 

“They certainly do,” Coomer says, much more nicely. “I’ve heard your plan is soon coming to fruition!” 

Gordon nods. “Yeah, it’s. Yeah. We were,” he swallows, “Darnold and I, we were about to ask for Bubby to let us test his fire. Figure out if he can reach the ignition point we need.” 

“Well now, that sounds like a challenge,” Bubby says. 

Gordon finds a price tag still stuck on one of the bowls that he’s very sure wasn’t there when it was brought out. “Benrey,” he groans. Benrey just gives him a shit eating grin. “You’ll need to hold a temperature for about three minutes, and then the mixture takes care of the rest,” he says to Bubby, while swatting Benrey on the shoulder. 

“Just three minutes, isn’t it.” 

“Do not try and stay for more. I’m serious. When it explodes it’s gonna turn seriously corrosive. You’re gonna be sludge ten seconds after it gets on you.” 

Gordon can hear Bubby blink. “Oh- oh. This is serious huh. We are blowing Xen up.” 

“We are, darling,” Coomer affirms. 

Bubby shifts on his chair. “I’ll need. A minute.” 

When Gordon’s done with the dishes, he turns back to the kitchen table to catch Bubby letting go of Coomer after a hug. “Son of a bitch, you went for it, you motherfucker,” Bubby says, a bit too loudly, fixing his glasses. 

Benrey sings a very high note over his voice. “Language!” Gordon hisses. 

“Oh, sorry.” Bubby pats his own mouth. “Forgive a man, I’m still working through it.” He switches to a mumble, seemingly only to himself. “It’s real. I’m gonna set Xen on fire. Gonna show Black Mesa what for. It’s really gonna happen…”

Coomer pats Bubby on the back lightly, making him almost hit his face on the table. “We’ll finally move fully away from the game, my dear Professor,” he says, and he’s smiling. He’s smiling very wide. 

“I can be your Professor,” Bubby mumbles. “I can blow Xen up.” 

“ We can blow Xen up,” Gordon corrects him. “Me and Darnold didn’t agonize over a- darn modifier for a week and a half so you can set our work on fire and take all the credits.” 

“Hush, let me process things, you rude bastard.” Benrey censors bastard with another burst of pinkish light.

“I can see the other end,” Coomer says, cheerfully. “Now, Gordon, I’ve heard you need help digging into the core of a few asteroids?” 

---

They mark a date for the excursion. 

He ‘woke up’ early, and made himself and Joshua an actual breakfast for a change while Benrey finished off the box of cereal that was open. “Dad’s got a work thing coming up,” he told Joshua while scooping extra egg onto his plate. “I’m gonna have to stay on site for a night.” 

“So you’re not going home tonight?” Joshua asked, taking the plate handed to him by Gordon, but making no move to go back to his chair. 

Gordon nodded. “I’ll be home tomorrow though, but you’re gonna have to stay at your grandparents’ tonight. I’m gonna come pick you up at their place tomorrow afternoon. You should pack a spare change of clothes and your pajamas to bring to school.” 

“Okay,” Joshua said. And then, “What’re you staying on-site for?” 

“I’m,” Gordon said, “Okay, you can’t tell anyone this, yeah? I’m blowing asteroids up.” 

He could see Joshua’s eyes brighten. It was visible . “ In space ?” 

“Yes,” Gordon laughed. “But it’s very experimental, which means…” 

“It’s not ready for the public eye yet,” Joshua whispered, almost reverently.

Gordon laughed again, and took off the mitten on his hand to ruffle Joshua’s hair. “You’re gonna be okay staying at your grandparents’ place? If you don’t like that I can ask someone else to come over instead.” 

“It’s okay,” Joshua said, finally content to go sit down again. “Can I bring my skate shoes?” 

“Sure thing, put them in a bag.” 

Gordon called Joshua’s grandparents to let them know to pick him up at five (Joshua chimed in to ask them to remind him about the roller skates), and then Joshua got his backpack and spare clothes and bag for the shoes and the house was once again vacant. 

They don’t have a vehicle, but Tommy sings and Bubby joins in and Darnold keeps a beat and after a while Benrey starts playing songs out of the shitty speaker on his phone. Gordon’s even spent the day before sleepless, but that’s kind of everyday now. He hadn’t anticipated having to get used to a day having twenty four hours again, but well. He hadn’t anticipated anything while going through Black Mesa, really. It wasn’t really ideal thinking-far-ahead environment.

Benrey seems bouncier when he’s on Xen. Gordon didn’t think about it, but when he steps through the portal he has a flash of that image from what feels like a lifetime ago: Benrey giant as the Earth itself, blocking everything else in sight, his form longing to catch up with his already immense, oppressive presence. Taller than any walls, any mountains, any barriers between himself and a measly human’s fleeting existence.

Gordon shakes his head. At his least incomprehensible, Benrey’s said it was “a show”. “Like. Cable TV. A television series,” Gordon’s asked. 

“Like a cutscene,” Benrey’s replied, as if Gordon was the one too slow for the course. 

Benrey now felt nothing like whatever that was that happened to him and the Science Team last year. Benrey now felt just… like a dude. Doing a barrel roll, while saying “Ooooo barrel roll” with a straight face. While his Nokia 2700’s still crushing whatever song it’s playing into oblivion. 

Gordon doesn’t deal in implications anymore, so he starts singing along to whatever everyone else’s singing as well, and focuses on carrying their homemade Xen-specific dynamite blocks to where they’re going to dig their largest hole into the core of this wretched piece of rock.

It takes a day, kind of; he doesn’t sleep, out here in the thin atmosphere of Xen, where the stars don’t blink and red light comes in a hue from inside the dirt. He doesn’t have to force himself to go lay down at midnight like back home, he just sits down, at the edge of the portal, when the explosives have all been installed, and watch Coomer and Bubby ready themselves.

They can hear Bubby’s cackles ringing in Xen’s air and also in their comms, as he lays in Coomer’s arms and they race the fire, starting from the outer ring of asteroids to the main Xen island. They jump from rock to rock, red light trailing after them while the dirt itself breaks apart, not with a boom, but with the sound of bubbles breaking after a wave crashes on the shore. Xen glows brighter than it probably ever has, in its disintegration. 

Benrey sings a few vacant notes, standing on nothingness; the light from his mouth blends in almost perfectly with Xen’s dying light. 

“You got all of your belongings outta there?” Gordon asks, half as a jab, half serious. “Didn’t leave anything important in your old apartment?” 

Benrey doesn’t answer, for a moment. When he does, it’s just to mumble, “oh look, there’s fireworks.” 

---

They got home early from it. 

Gordon takes a nap on the couch; he only wakes up from Benrey turning the sound up to max and then shooting a rocket at a truck in Far Cry 3. “Dude,” he throws an arm up over his face, and winces when it’s the plastic arm. “What the fuck.” 

“Go pick Joshua up,” Benrey says, definitely too conversationally, and barely understandable under the noises from the game. “Gordon. Sleepman.” 

“You’re slipping,” Gordon comments as he wrestles himself out of Tommy’s quilt. He forgot to give it back to Tommy, he realizes sleepily, picking up the phone he left charging on the living room table. It’s seven already. 

The drive to Joshua’s grandparents’ place is not a long one. He finds Joshua sitting at the porch of the little house, backpack and the bag with the roller skates at his feet. Joshua jumps up at the sight of Gordon’s car, and before he can walk through the gate he’s already found his arms full of his son. 

Joshua clings to his neck with a death grip. “I’m sorry I’m late,” Gordon says. “I was tired, so I took a nap, and forgot the time.” 

“It’s okay,” Joshua mumbles, “you were tired.” 

“I blew up so many asteroids though.” Gordon says, and Joshua laughs. 

They drive home after saying goodbye to Joshua’s grandparents (Joshua’s grandpa put a wrapped up pot pie in Gordon’s hands with an iron grip and a gaze that communicated clearly what would happen if he refused it), and Joshua agreed to take a detour to the Roswell airport for the night. Gordon absentmindedly texts Benrey taking the kid to watch airplanes, get your own food , and puts his phone away for the drive. The radio’s on, but Joshua doesn’t sing along. Gordon’s vocal cord’s still tired from Xen (no more, Xen-no-more it is, there’s just a vast of empty space inbetween dimensions there now) so he also stays silent. 

They get ice cream at a drive-thru on the way, and then they’re at the highway, parking on the roadside, looking over the rail at the airport. A plane leaves the ground there and goes into the air. Gordon’s struck by how different it is from a bird or a moth; nothing about the plane communicates any internal movement, it just. Moves. Up and up. Like a JPEG sliding across the screen under someone’s puppeteering with a mouse. 

Joshua stares at the plane, unblinking. “Is it dangerous in space, Dad?” He asks. 

Gordon taps his hand on the steering wheel. “It’s.” He starts saying, but stops to clear his throat. “It can be. There’s a lot of math going into making things that bring a human into space, and a lot of different people doing different parts of that math, and. Sometimes some people do their math wrong. Sometimes they try something new, and we don’t have the good math for that new thing yet. Sometimes new things break into the old math, and we need to. Work around that new thing.” 

“What happens if,” Joshua swallows, “someone does the math wrong?” 

“We try to catch it,” Gordon says. “That’s why there are so many people doing the math. So if someone gives the wrong answer, they can spot it early, and fix it.” 

“What if nobody does,” Joshua says. He’s still looking through the car’s window, at the stroke of cloud the plane’s long flown past. 

Gordon puts his hands on the gear stick. “That’s very, very rare to happen,” he intones carefully. “They have to check, over and over, before they send a ship into space.” 

Joshua turns from the window to Gordon. He looks at Gordon’s prosthetic hand, on the gear stick. “I’ve only found books about spaceships that have gone to space,” he says, quiet. 

Gordon turns over, and holds out that hand. Joshua climbs over the gear stick to give him another hug. “Experiments are important to those ships too,” Gordon says. “They give the people who make the ships important information to make them safe.” 

Joshua just buries himself in Gordon’s arms. 

“I’m really sorry I came home late and didn’t call you, Joshua,” Gordon says, and hugs his son tighter. “I won’t do that again. I’ll always call when I’m home late.” 

“I don’t have to be an astronaut,” Joshua mumbles. 

“Oh, no- nononono, listen,” Gordon says into his hair, with all the determination he can muster up. “Listen, Joshua, you become whoever you want to, okay? You don’t have to be anything, but you don’t have to not be anything either. That’s my mistake, you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re good. You’re good. You’ll be an incredible astronaut. You’ll be the first man on Mars. Jupiter, even.” 

“Jupiter is a gas giant,” Joshua mumbles. “There isn't any land to land on.”

Gordon nods. “That’s why it’s called landing , I get it.”

---

They drive home after, and Joshua asks to sit with Gordon while he and Benrey play Mario Kart. Gordon agrees, which means he has to clamp down on any curse he almost lets out when someone bumps him off the damn road, while Benrey does some magic or whatever on his screen. Who the hell knows. 

After their third match, Benrey elbows Gordon in the arm to signify a break. “Beddy bye hour,” he says, not even looking at Gordon, “for… babies. Hattrick means I make the rules.” 

“You didn’t come first in the second match,” Gordon argues, but quiets down when he looks down to see Joshua asleep leaning on him. “Okay, don’t fucking choose Toon Link for me again while I’m away,” he points a finger at Benrey, who’s residing smugly in the to-be-chaos of his own making. “I’m fucking serious.”

He carries Joshua to his bedroom and tucks him in, and then detours to the kitchen for some water. 

“Ooh, hydration,” Benrey comments idly. 

“What d’you know about it,” Gordon mumbles when he settles back down on the couch. He looks at the TV screen to find Inkling on one of the shitty bikes. “What the hell man, this bike sucks ass. Fucking Shit Taste McGee over here.” 

Benrey laughs. 

Gordon plays the game, while thinking about the sendoff party they’re throwing for Bubby and Coomer next week, before the grandpas go off gallivanting in yet another forbidden corner of the Earth. Coomer lovingly calls it their “honeymoon”, but Gordon has full faith this is gonna be what they do forever. Or at least until they’re bored of Earth, and start aiming for the Moon instead. Probably not a bad place to be in. 

“Thinking Xen thoughts, aren’t’cha,” Benrey says, while sending a shell after some poor computer character. 

Gordon grins. “Ha! Sike! I’m not even thinking about Xen.” He pauses, catching the full force of a fireball a Mario shoots at him. “I haven’t thought about Xen at all actually. Since I got home with Joshua.” 

“Achievement unlocked,” Benrey says, and extends a hand. Gordon stares at it. 

“Wh- huh?” 

“High five, idiot.”

“Oh,” Gordon says, and slaps that hand. Benrey’s eyes widen at the noise. 

“Yo that’s a. Crunchy noise.” He claps his hands together, and he’s laughing now, light flowing out in a thread of something like baby blue. “This rules,” he says happily. 

Gordon smiles, and then some motherfucker flings a shell at him, so he falls off the road again. 

He stays up way too late again, and time doesn’t stop slipping, and when Darnold gives him a vial of neutralizer for the Potion of Not Telling at their little party the week after it gives him something like mania and he hugs Coomer like an idiot while the old man slaps his back in a motion that’s supposed to be comforting. He sleeps that off as well afterwards, and wakes up to Tommy surfing the channels on his TV, complaining about lack of daytime talk shows. When he forgets about the scheduled blackout a month after, he still calls the concierge with shaking hands and then climbs into his bed like he’s four again and there’s a storm outside. He still thinks about Black Mesa, and about Xen. 

There’s just a little addendum now, that he can remind myself of. 

It’s weird how quickly it blends into everything else, but. Well. It’s weird everything . 

He makes cookies again, comes the winter, and teaches himself how to decorate cookies, just to have something to do. Joshua throws his pencil onto the notebook one day to go dig out the lumpy, supposedly-ISS-shaped cookie cutters from the tool cabinet. 

“Careful,” Gordon calls after him. 

Joshua toddles back with the cookie cutters in hand. “Can we have ISS cookies?” He asks. 

Gordon says yes. He also looks up a buncha references, prints them out, and tries to get the cookies exactly correct, making two “outside” cookies and an “inside” one, with schematics of the inner chambers of the ISS drawn on. Joshua loves it. 

“Here’s where the astronauts sleep,” He points at the spot that’s supposed to be the service module, and Gordon’s proud of getting that part right on the cookie.

He ruffles Joshua’s hair again. “Hey, maybe you’ll sleep there in twenty years,” he says, and marvels at the levity to that sentence. Just a little bit. It’s washed away with Joshua’s smile, and then they busy themselves with folding bags for the cookies instead.

#hlvrai #gordon feetman #joshua freeman #benrey #tommy coolatta #dr. harold coomer #bubby #darnold pepper #fanfiction #ask to tag #+ one art inside but it mostly has to do with the fic #I will. draw more from this fic and put them in as time goes on #the formatting's a bit wack bc I just copied the formatting from ao3 #I will come back to fix stuff up later #okay now I take more naps #have a good day! and also thank you for reading this fic if you do!

[stickyhoney]

Title: Fugitives

Chapter 1, Chapter 2

Summary: You have fled with the war criminal Steve Rogers, known as Captain America, to a small village in the north of France. After months of hiding, tensions and feelings have peaked.

A/N: This will be my first multi-chapter work, so be patient with me please. Also seeing all your comments and messages makes me so happy, so keep them coming ;)

Word Count: 1.8k

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Warning: Adult Language, Sexual Tension, fluff

Chapter One:

“Would you give it a rest already?!” The wooden door cracked against the hinges after your strong push. The echoes of the door hitting against the wall reverberated strongly throughout the small cottage that the two of you had called home for the past 3 months. Steve was strict on not using the word “home” however, even though America had turned its back on him, he could never call another country home.

“How many times have I told you?! We can’t talk to the locals!” His voice boomed against the confines of the kitchen. You could feel the vibrations of his steps under your feet. His stomps rivaled an elephant’s when he was angry.“You get to talk to the men in the village everyday! All I did was introduce myself to the women in the square.” Your tone leveled out by the end of your defense. You remembered you shouldn't have to defend your actions.

You were both knocking your boots off onto the floor, leaving dirt all around the doormat. Old hardened clumps of clay remained from workdays past, blades of grass from the garden out back. Steve hung his dark ballcap on the hook by the door, with a sharp snapping motion. “Do you think I choose to spend my time out there with those men? I do that to make sure we survive. Those are purely professional relationships, they know nothing of me other than my ability to split wood with my hands.” 

Flashbacks back to Clint’s family farm make your heart warm for a brief moment. The sound of his children squealing with joy, calling you auntie, haunted your memories. You let your hair down, shaking it until it falls to your shoulders. “Why can’t I work in the village like you do? Steve… I haven’t spoken to anyone other than you for months. I can’t keep on this way.” Your mind and heart were exhausted from these past months. You had left everything you had ever known behind, and adopted the moniker of “war criminal”. The feeling of isolation had been beating the both of you down, Steve was just better at coping.

“You act like you have a choice.” His voice was flat, his tone cold. Sometimes it startled you how much Steve had changed, he was nowhere near the sweetheart he once was. He was now a rugged, hardened, survivor. The long sigh you let out signaled defeat, at least for tonight. 

Dinner was the only time you could convince Steve to relax. It had been your secret mission to give you two a piece of home through food, even if you didn’t always know what you were doing. Tonight was spaghetti night, Steve’s favorite. Gathering ingredients in the garden had become an unspoken tradition between you. It was all so domestic, picking tomatoes from the vines and clipping parsley from the herb garden in the kitchen window. Your small garden and patio had become your haven from the daunting trials of your new normal.

The wooden spoon dragged through the thick marinara sauce you had made, causing whirls of hot steam to rise up to your nostrils. The comforting aroma filled the cramped cottage, every nook and cranny had been permeated with tomato and parsley. Behind you, feet dragged on the tiles towards you. “Huh, smells pretty good.” Your lips pull up into a faint smile, a giggle rises from your chest. “You sound surprised.” You turned around with the large pot of sauce to find Steve within a foot of you, causing your hands to release the pot. Steve’s arms quickly react and catch the pot inches from the ground, small drops of sauce splashing out onto the tiles. “God Steve! You can’t sneak up on me like that!” You drop down onto your knees with a towel to clean up the mess, somewhat embarrassed at your jumpiness. Ever since that night… it had been getting worse.

“I can’t fucking help you get scared so easy!” You rose back up to him, trying to keep your embarrassment hidden. “I’m sorry, I- I can’t help it.” You tried to sound strong, but your words came out timid and meek. Steve’s eyes softened after realizing what he had said, realization hitting his features. Pity was never something you wanted from anyone, especially him. “[y/n]...” His hand reaches for your elbow, in a sympathetic gesture. Tears began to well up, your face was reddening, so you moved your body away from his. Acting like everything was normal when nothing was, it was a lifestyle for the both of you. Dinner went by normally, with only a few words said, most of which were grunts of satiated hunger. 

“Ice cream?” Your eyebrow kicked up inquisitively, even though you already knew the answer. Steve was a sucker for ice cream, especially this certain kind you picked up from a vendor in the village. It was made from the woman's fresh blueberry patch. You made sure to keep a carton in the freezer. Steve places a hand over his non-existent food baby, and grunts. “You know I do.”

You struggle to stand after downing three full plates of spaghetti and two bowls of salad. “I’ve never seen a woman eat as much as you do. It’s unnatural.” You sat the carton down on the counter, and began to take bowls out. “Did you see Nat eat? She could eat a house full of food in one go.” You were giggling through the last few words until you looked back, a cold Steve with a deadpan expression. He always goes blank when the past comes into conversation.

“We’ve gotta let the ice cream thaw…” You skated across the tile floors in your socks, towards the living room. You wanted to get his mind off things, he had been a jerk lately. Even when Steve Rogers was mad at the world, he had never been so coarse with you.  There was one thing you knew that Steve loved… even if it was a hundred years ago.

Your fingers picked up the needle and lifted it across and down onto the black vinyl record. The cottage came with an old vinyl record player, it was hidden under an old white sheet in the corner of the living room. Steve never paid it any mind since it had been broken, but you had secretly been fixing it for the past month. The faint buzz of the needle connecting to the moving record reverberated through the silent house. 

“Strangers in the night,

Exchanging glances

Wandering the night,

What were the chances

We'd be sharing love

Before the night was through”

Frank Sinatra’s sultry voice carried you back into the kitchen. When you entered Steve had stood up and stood so rigid, that he reminded you of a soldier standing at attention. “What’s that look for?” You had bent over in pain from trying to contain your laughter. He looked as if his commander walked into the room. “What are you doing playing that music?” You knew he loved Sinatra, probably because it transported him to a simpler time when he knew all the answers. Get the bad guys, defend your country, get the girl. 

You stood back up, jokingly going expressionless, and standing more rigid than a wooden board. “Well soldier, I was anticipating doing some dancing.” You tapped the back of your heels together and stuck your arm out towards him as an invitation. 

“Something in your eyes

Was so inviting

Something in your smile

Was so exciting

Something in my heart

Told me I must have you”

“I don’t dance [y/n]. You know that.” His body began to decompress, the tensity of his limbs dissipating, his eyes lowering. You purse your lips into a playful pout, and place your palms out as if you were a beggar. “C’mon, make a girl happy. I’m sure you’ve got some move in you.” Steve breathed out a long sigh, and ran his hand back through his long dirty blonde hair. “C’mon, I promise I won’t bite…” 

You step in closer to him, your hands reaching for his wrists. He meets you halfway, stepping towards you. “I might be rusty.” Your left hand guides his around your waist while the right holds his out beside you upright. You chuckle under your breath knowing he was lying, he took charge and led the dance. 

“Strangers in the night

Two lonely people

We were strangers in the night

Up to the moment

When we said our first hello

Little did we know

Love was just a glance away

A warm embracing dance away”

After a few moments, you laid your head on his chest. The coarse material scratched against your cheek, but was soothed by the heat this man was radiating. He was like a damn furnace. His hands were worn from the daily manual labor that kept a roof over your head. Steve began humming along to the chorus, his deep vibrato sending vibrations through his chest. You couldn’t help but bask in his scent. His must and leather jacket mixed for a lovely combination, one that had become ingrained in your being. You knew he didn’t like using the word home, but he had become yours. 

Your free hand wrapped around his back pulling him in closer, your thumb tracing circles. It was the untold promise between you, keep things friendly. The promise was becoming harder and harder to keep, but the both of you knew why it was important to keep. Silence passed between you for a few minutes. "Thank you for this [y/n]."

The vinyl record fades into silence, the only thing the two of you were swaying to was the sound of the wind whistling through the weeping willows branches out front. "Oh the ice cream!" You jump out of his embrace and run towards the carton on the counter, the blueberry ice cream had turned to a thin consistency.  "Noooo whyyyyyy" you cried out as dramatically as you could. You turned back to see that Steve was gone, and heard his bedroom door shut quietly across the house.

#steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #steve x reader #nomad steve #steverogers #steve rodgers imagine #steve rogers fanfiction #rpf #marvel

[yndigot]

Qs that end in 1 (including 1)!

A distraction!

1. Do you listen to music when you write? Outside of a few stories that I’ve made playlists for or that have a particular song that’s driving them/vibing with them, I actually listen to podcasts -- news and documentary. I don’t actually absorb any of the content of the podcasts when I’m writing (whether it’s fiction or classwork), so I have a really specific playlist of news and documentary podcasts that work for me in this capacity, where I know I won’t be upset if I don’t hear/retain anything, but I also know the voices/cadence/music cues are soothing as white noise. It was really hard to handle this during the election because my news programs would keep playing clips of Trump’s voice, and that would snap me RIGHT out of things. They’re generally better now. International drivetime radio is a gift.

11.  Books and/or authors who influenced you the most Stephen King and Truman Capote were big for me as a teenager. I also read a lot of breathless-feeling poetry and flash fiction in my late teens/early 20s and went to a bunch of slam poetry events in high school, and while I can’t name the specific writers, that definitely had a big impact on me as well. As a religious studies major in college, biblical motifs became a big thing for me at one point as well, and definitely still creep in. 

21.  Who is/are your favourite character(s) to write? The characters I’ve written the most in fandom (though not necessarily in fanfiction -- often in RP) have been Thomas Barrow and Remus Lupin -- maybe Sayid Jarrah, John Watson, and Steve Rogers as well. How much any of them resembled canon by the time I was done with them ... who’s to say? I was having fun, though. Outside of fandom, I tend to write low achieving fuck ups who are a little too clever for their own good. No clue why that might be.

31.  Least favourite part of writing Filling in between the parts that are really clear in my head. Usually I’ll have tentpole ideas or tentpole scenes, and the miserable part is filling in the gaps.

41. Any advice for new/beginning/young writers? I love all that advice that’s like “throw out all the advice and just vibe!” and “the best writing is writing that actually gets done!” that encourages people just to throw some shit at the wall and enjoy themselves. That’s great. I never want to be the one telling someone not to pursue a hobby in a way that makes them happy. But if you want to be good, I really think that you will benefit from understanding grammar and structure and having a wide and very nuanced vocabulary. Even if what you end up doing is breaking the prescribed structure, I think your writing is better for knowing how you are breaking it and doing that deliberately and thoughtfully. If you’re not reading widely, if you don’t know how sentence structure works, if you’re not aware of what a run-on sentence is and how to use it in a way that’s strategic rather than messy, if you don’t understand what adverbs are and aren’t thinking about how you’re using them, if you don’t understand parallel structure(!) and subject verb agreement and how to keep track of what your modifiers are modifying ... etc. etc., then your writing will suffer. You can totally have fun, but without any of that, your writing will look sloppy to someone who DOES understand all that. Even people who don’t consciously understand will often pick up intuitively on the fact that something is off.

I feel like that comes across as elitist at first, and if you struggle with any of that, a good editor will help you immensely. But actually a lot of this can be learned and internalized just by reading and reading and reading. NOT fic, which can be sketchy on these structures depending on the skill of the writer. I mean that you need to read actual published work that’s been through a rigorous editorial process (I see a lot of sloppy work in pulpier published fiction, so I’m serious about the need for rigorous editing in the stuff that’s forming your ideas about structure). You may not know the terms for all that grammar and structure shit, but you will intuitively understand how it works much, much better if you are widely read. This isn’t to privilege elitist, “proper” English over other forms of English either. Dialects also have rules. It may be somewhat harder to find published literature in dialect, but good, published works that understand structure and are written in dialect do exist. If you’re just trying to have fun, there’s nothing wrong with that! But if you’re trying to be good, and especially if you’re trying to get published, then you really, really need to understand what you’re doing and why. Your decisions about diction and sentence structure and grammar should be conscious. You should be aware of what the rules and conventions are and what effect you have when you break those rules.

#ask meme #bless i needed this distraction #combeferre

[randomguywithwords]

Thanks For The Assist: Chapter 2 (Itsuka X Neito Story)

AO3 Link: Here

Chapters: 1

Chapter 2: Acceptance

––––––––

“How was the test?” Father asked as the three of them sat at the dinner table eating. 

“Ok, I think I did fine,” Monoma said as he picked up a slice of meat.

“How were you graded?” Mother said. 

“Fought some robots. You get points the more you destroy. The harder the robot, the more points you get. The field was massive, pretty much a life-size city, and I think they had at least 3.” Monoma explained with patience, though he suspected this expositioning was boring the other audience with information they already knew. 

Mother hummed her assent. “I’m not surprised. U.A has a ton of money. More money than they need, really…” She ended her statement in a mutter. It sounded like constrained resentment to Neito. It probably was, but understandable. 

“Isn’t the ministry diverting more money towards your school, dear?” Father said. 

“Yes, I suppose. After years of appeals by the school committee. Hopefully I can obtain better equipment to teach those kids.” Mrs Monoma sighed, looking back towards Neito. “But I hope you get in, Neito. I have to admit, it’s really once-in-a-lifetime, and U.A will make you a fine hero.”

“Thanks, mother.” Neito smiled. A fine hero. The phrase did not apply to him, not in the societal nor linguistic sense of the word. A hero relied on himself to get the job done, at the end of the day. With what he had, that was an impossibility. 

“None of the other kids gave you trouble, did they?” Father asked, and Monoma winced on the inside, thinking about the events transpiring just after the test. 

“No, they were nice people,” He said. It was no lie, by technicalities. There was that girl, after all. Kendo, was it? She was nice. 

Father seemed to perk up at his answer, gladdened. “That’s good,” He gave an approving nod. “I’m glad they weren’t like your schoolmates.”

Neito waved his hand like an aristocrat at a banquet. “Nah, I think maybe those guys were just ––” He struggled for the proper word. “Lame.” He ended, and grinned internally at the apt description of his dialogue. But that smile died in the next instant when he thought about what he had wanted to say. 

Flat characters. A character with one dimension, owning a singular character trait to serve a purpose in a story. That’s what he called them, but not Mother. 

“About time kids your age learned some maturity,” She said, her ‘teacher’ side emerging. “Not you, Neito – of course. You’re a sensible boy. Apart from your silly theatrics, but you’ll grow out of it.”

There it is, He sighed, on the inside – or, aside. That was how the plays would state inner actions on the script. But Mother doesn’t like plays, does she now? 

“Neito, tell us about the fighting,” Father interjected with a smile that was a bit too wide, “What quirks did you use?” 

Neito gave a response, but his heart was no longer in the conversation, having been chilled by Mother’s own lovely warmth that she had no idea she was radiating. 

–––––

The letter came a week later when his parents were at work. Neito opened it up in his room. After all, where else would he? Only in his room could he find solace. And on his bed, comfort, so he plopped himself down and opened the envelope. 

The contents contained a disc. A holographic. Taking it out and laying it on his bed, he pressed the blue button in the centre, producing a video on the wall.

It was the scene of an office, with a mouse sitting on a chair and a cup of tea on the glass table. He recognised the principal of U.A himself.

“Neito Monoma! Very good afternoon, or morning, or night, to you – depending when you see this, of course. On the off chance you are unaware of me, I am Nezu, principal of U.A High. This video is approximately 5 minutes long, but I will save you the suspense. You got in. Congratulations.”

His heart soared, and he pumped a fist in the air, breathing a sigh in much-desired catharsis. Had he been holding that in since the beginning? 

“You are, both celebrating – I would hope, and also wondering what the remaining 4 and a half minutes are about. Please do not ignore the rest of this video, because I want to review two things: your performance at the entrance exam, and your quirk. Take a look at this.” 

The video showed clips of Monoma from a birds’ eye view, running around and using his borrowed quirks, as well as him tapping random strangers. He noted how a lot of them turned their heads in evident surprise and puzzlement at him patting them on the shoulder or arm. And then the clip played of him taking a couple of points away from those guys. 

Nezu clucked his tongue. “Many in society would deem that as ‘un-hero-like’ behaviour, as it can be interpreted as stealing, or taking what does not belong to you. Criminal acts indeed, if the deed is severe and the stolen thing valuable. But, your quirk acts on that very principle of taking what does not belong to you.”

The (overwhelmingly intelligent, Monoma realised) mouse continued, “I’ve taken the liberty of reviewing your application and academics. You boast admirable grades in your middle school, and your form teacher commented that you were a highly observant, smart and mature student. I could go on, but you know what you’ve submitted. I will continue with that presumed knowledge.”

“You must have realised by now, or very early on in your career as a hero aspirant, that your quirk is unorthodox, having no use on its own. You require allies, or foes who you can lay a finger on, to fight. And even then, you must hastily adapt to whatever quirk you have under your control, for a period of time. Lots of limitations, Mr Monoma. A lot of challenges you have faced, are facing, and will face. And when you are initiated into my school, expect more.” Nezu took a sip of his tea.

“That’s not to say you will face difficulties many would describe as ‘hell’ at U.A. And neither does my previous statement imply U.A is not ‘hell’.” He paused. “Do excuse my roundabout mannerisms of speech. It is a bad habit of mine.” Nezu chuckled.

“Simply put, I have taken a personal interest in you, Mr Monoma, for your cunning, your intellect, and your quirk. Report to me after your first day of school. We will talk more then. Congratulations once more. Another letter will arrive tomorrow to inform you of the minutiae regarding your inception into U.A. Good day, Neito Monoma.”

The holographic faded out, and Neito was staring at a blank wall for a few seconds trying to process whatever Nezu had said.  

A buzz from his phone pulled him out of his hazy thoughts. He is...really smart. 

It was from Kendo. “Hi, Monoma, It’s Kendo! The girl with big hands. Wanted to ask you whether you received the letter from U.A.” 

He typed a response. “Yeah, I got a letter. What’s your verdict?” 

Fingers crossed. 

She responded, “I got in. >< You?” 

A smile spread across his face. “Same, that’s awesome. Congratulations.”

“YAY! :D We both did it! Congrats too! And I was so shocked that All Might was in the video! I nearly cried. Or maybe I did, idk. Sorry, I’m babbling at this point, but I don’t have anyone else to tell this to until my parents get home and I’m so hypeddd”

Huh? All Might? So Nezu specifically…

He typed, “It’s ok, I’m excited too. Though I don’t express it over text that much.” 

“Haha it’s ok. Can’t wait for the letter tomorrow. There’s so much to do! Hero costume, uniforms, books, all that. And term starts a month from now. Can’t wait!” 

“Wow, how’d you know all this?”

“Mainly from the internet. I was that hyped, y’know?”

He cracked another smile from her enthusiasm. It was oddly contagious, and he found himself more zealous to go to school. That was a statement he’d never think he could formulate in his mind. “I see. That’s cool.”

“Btw, if you wanna go celebrate with your family or friends, go ahead! I don’t wanna hold you back.”

“Nah, my parents are at work and I’m basically alone at home. Same boat as you. So, fire away.”

“Ah, ok!” 

The conversation continued with Kendo gushing about their new life, and Monoma passively followed along, inserting a few comments here and there. But he didn’t feel like he was stuck at a family reunion forced to endure his grandfather’s stories with a placating smile and affirming nods peppered in occasionally. She was actually interesting, and amusing, in a good way. 

The topic was centered around school and academics, with little butting into personal lives, and Monoma didn’t pry. She was still a stranger, somewhat, albeit she would be his new schoolmate – and perhaps classmate. He crossed his fingers again, hoping that Fate would tap him lightly on the head once more with her providence. 

He smiled when Kendo typed, “Hope we become classmates :D. Apparently there are always 2 first-year classes. So it’s basically a coin flip.”

“Heads.” 

“Rly? Do you always choose heads?”

“Yeah.” 

“I’m more of a switcher.”

“How do you decide when to choose heads or tails then?”

“Coin flip.”

“That made me laugh, thank you.”

“Why do you need to thank people for making you laugh? It’s a spontaneous thing.”

“That’s...oddly profound.”

“Or just a dumb statement made to sound fancy. Ah, sorry, I have to go now. But thank you for your time. It was great chatting :)” 

“Why do you need to thank people for chatting with you? It’s a spontaneous thing. Joking aside, thank you too.”

“Nice haha” Was her last message. Neito turned his phone off and lied down on his bed. A moment passed, and Neito took a coin from his study desk. It was a silly thing to do, but his room was his stage. He was performing for himself. 

He gave it a toss and caught it. 

Seeing the result, he grinned.

–––––––

Yeek, this took longer than it should have, sorry. Had a bit of writer’s block when it came to planning this thing and I wasn’t sure how to move on. Also the tone of this is especially terrifying for me because it’s definitely going to be (ironically) more light-hearted, with Monoma’s dramatic language and (side thoughts) occasionally inserted, but that brings the challenge of need. When to do that, when not to. This story is a personal challenge to change my narrative style just slightly. 

Anyway, I hoped you MonoKendo ppl liked it. A lot of people have told me it’s unfortunate the ship lacks content and I couldn’t agree more. But then again, that’s about 75% of the ships out there. (Fk it, 90%). So, here’s my contribution, alongside some other one-shots. 

Feedback’s appreciated :D

#bnha #mha #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #bnha fanfiction #mha fanfiction #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #neito monoma #neitomonoma #mha neito #bnha neito #itsuka kendo #bnha itsuka #mha itsuka #monoma #monokendou #monoma x kendo #kenmono #kendo x monoma

[sleepykittypaws]

The Christmas House

Original Air Date: November 23, 2020 (Hallmark) Where to Watch?: Hallmark will replay it multiple times this season, and for every season in perpetuity

It's impossible to review Hallmark's The Christmas House without noting that this time last year, then-Crown Media CEO Bill Abbott was personally taking phone calls from a SPLC-designated hate group, and pulling a Zola ad showing two brides chastely kissing from his network, at that hate group's behest. The ensuing firestorm of well-earned criticism following Abbott's bad judgement, is, without question, what brought us to today, with Abbott ousted, a woman of color, Wonya Lucas, now at Hallmark's helm, and a still totally G-rated holiday lineup that now regularly features former Hallmark no-gos like, interracial romance and LGBTQ+ inclusion, improving Hallmark's abysmal diversity record, one movie at a time. 

So, even though Hallmark had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, it's still hard not to be at least a little emotional that they're finally joining us here. The bigots are still having online temper tantrums about losing their all-white, all-straight safe space, but Hallmark's holiday ratings are up 7% year-over-year—a significant jump in a world where cable subscriptions are declining by 10-15% annually.

Now, what that progress looks like on a network known for being “clean,” conservative and about as unwilling to take risks as any channel on the planet, is another story. Frequent Hallmark star, and out gay actor, Jonathan Bennett, has been tirelessly talking about The Christmas House, since the day it went into production. And Bennett brings a lot of energy to this ensemble story, written by co-star Robert Buckley, of a family getting together to decorate their home one more time before it's sold. 

Buckley and Bennett play the sons of Sharon Lawrence and Treat Williams, a recently retired couple struggling with that fundamental shift in their relationship. Buckley is the star of a ridiculous court show, Handsome Justice, of which we luckily get to see a clip, and Bennett, a baker, and his husband, played by Brad Harder, are waiting to hear about an adoption, after several previous disappointments. 

Bennett and Buckley bring more humor than is normal for Hallmark to their portrayal of loving, competitive brothers, who clearly enjoy ribbing each other.

How conservative was past hallmark, you ask? Well, that Buckley's girl-next-door love interest is divorced, not widowed, is still a somewhat shocking twist in that world, as is the fact that both Buckley and Bennett are "allowed" to sport some facial scruff, rather than be clean shaven. Oh, and that the family next door is (gasp) Latino, is also something we likely wouldn't have seen in the Hallmark of yore. All of which is just mind-blowing, since those “days of yore” for this TV network were [checks notes]…2019, not 1968.

Lawrence and Williams are believable as a long term couple, and their life-change struggle to re-center their relationship feels real, but the way it's revealed is almost as anti-climactic as its resolution. The movie laid very unsubtle hints along the way—all storytelling progress aside, Hallmark movies are still written so you can half watch and not a miss a thing, allowing folks to join 20 minutes in, or do the dishes and come back without being confused—that Williams and Lawrence's wanting to have "one last Christmas" was about more than just downsizing in retirement. 

When Lawrence told the story of the clearly-actually-brand-new-and-from-Homegoods Santa pot, and what it meant to her, I thought Williams was going to later accidentally break Checkov's sentimental teapot and, in her anger, Lawrence would blurt out something about that's why they were separating, shocking their grown sons. 

And, honestly, as predictable as that would have been, it would probably have had more impact than what did happen…Lawrence just casually telling Buckley while stringing lights, and then nobody really mentioning it again, excepting oblique references during a single conversation between the brothers, and then Lawrence just announces at breakfast that they're not doing that after all.

Definitely feels like Hallmark's aversion to conflict in its stories is one of those provisions that is still firmly in place. (We saw a similar unwillingness to commit to actual marital difficulties, despite that being the central plot point, in Cranberry Christmas.)

Which is too bad, because Lawrence and Williams being much better than the actors usually used for these parent roles, could have handled a more realistic story well, and brought some real emotional beats to the movie.

As expected, Buckley's romance with Ana Ayora was the definite A-plot here, but why did their memory lane rekindling catalyst have to be close-up magic, the worst of all entertainment options? Was there no mime troop they could have been teenage members of? When it comes to magic, and jazz, I'm like Indiana Jones and snakes…Why'd it have to be magic?

Also, no way that 29-year-old guy they have playing "teenage" Mike grows up to be Robert Buckley. Nope! They definitely had to soft focus all the mostly unnecessary flashback scenes so that those actors, easily less than a decade younger than our leads, didn't quite look their age. 

And, c'mon, Buckley, who, again, is the star of his own TV show, gives the love of his life a necklace he bought…in high school? For real? I'm surprised we couldn't see her neck turn green in real time. At least get a gal a little upgrade. Sheesh! 

The whole rival real estate agent thing went nowhere. And what was that subplot even supposed to be about? Would have much rather seen a scene from the Handsome Justice episode where Buckley's character defended a dog accused of murder, than that whole waste of time. 

On the other hand, loved the Grift body spray mentions, and so glad we go to see that ad. Hallmark doesn't do subtle—"But will they get it?" is basically the network's motto—but this is one case of subtext just being text that worked.

Oh and, how did his parents buy a house on the Hudson river just by selling a nice, but fairly average, suburban home? Sure, they said it was a fixer upper, but anything on the water is gonna be way more pricey than where they were, and you've still got to have the cash to do the fixing. Also, you know the old adage about how nothing soothes a struggling marriage like a whole house renovation project, amirite?

Speaking of money…Why didn't Buckley just buy his folks the house right away if he didn't want to see it go? I mean, even if he's only a mid-level TV star, this wasn't some extravegent manse, and certainly wouldn't be an unusual thing for a well-off child to do for their middle-class parents. Why all the rigamarole with the weird guy and the rescinded offer? And, like, what was that all about? So many stories I'd have rather seen from this talented cast than some of the filler we actually got.

Harder didn't get nearly enough to do, but he and Bennett had decent chemistry and they got most of the best lines. The joke about "Will we decorate like this for our kids," and Bennett's emphatic, "No," cut the tension of an emotional scene well, with perfect timing, making it actually, laugh out loud funny—a Hallmark rarity. And when Harder appears in doorway after hearing from the adoption agency, and Bennett knows just by looking at his face what the call said, I got emotional.

That all the couples in this one got to kiss, including Bennett and Harder, is important. With the specter of last year's Zola debacle absolutely lingering over the entire movie, it's hard to think of a better, actual example of #LoveWins, than that moment.

I also teared up when we saw Bennett and Harder's family at the end, not only because it was a long overdue Hallmark milestone, but also because Harder's real-life son, Kael, played he and Bennett's on-screen adopted child, and is just so stinking cute.

Am I giving this bonus points for finally having an LGBTQ+ storyline, even if it was pretty far from the foreground? For sure. But Buckley and Bennett also brought humor and heart to this one, of a variety not usually found on Hallmark, and Lawrence and Williams also upped the ante on the quality here. Notable that Hallmark also sprung for two actual, name-brand holiday songs, so they were willing to spend a little bit of extra cash on this effort, which says more about their “commitment to diversity” than years of empty promises ever did.

Would have liked House even more, if Hallmark had been brave enough to swap the storylines; Bennett falling in love the boy next door, and Buckley and his bride waiting to hear about adoption, but barring that, do wish it had been bit more of a true ensemble (i.e. all three love stories had equal weight).

Despite quibbles, I'm still putting this on top of the 2020 Hallmark heap, at least for the moment, because I laughed, I cried and I felt good about the progress that has been made, no matter how long overdue it is.

As I've said so many times, representation really does matter, particularly on a channel like Hallmark, which caters to exactly the audience that most needs to see LGBTQ+ people laughing, living and loving, just like every other family.

Representation really can change lives. It opens hearts and minds. It can help those struggling within themselves feel seen and worthy. Really can not underestimate how transformative these normalizing glimpses can be, particularly for a network like Hallmark, with a large "conservative" audience. 

"Conservative" is in quotes, because there's nothing genuinely conservative about human rights, and respect for those unlike you. Empathy and acceptance for others should be a baseline standard for living in a society—not a political statement. 

No one has the right to deny someone else's humanity, and someone's choice to hold hate in their heart deserves no respect from Hallmark, or society at large. Really hopeful that some kid out there who feels excluded and awful about themself because their family and upbringing has told them everything they're feeling is wrong and sinful, can now see representation like this on their family's safe space TV channel, and know it's going to be OK.

It's a small step, but it's definitely a good one, and I'm really looking forward to the actual lead LGBTQ+ holiday romances coming soon, like Hulu's Happiest Season (Nov. 25), Lifetime's The Christmas Setup (Dec. 12) and Paramount Network's Dashing in December (Dec. 13), and hoping Hallmark joins that club in 2021.

Until then…

Final Judgement: 3 Paws Up

[nocturnegyser]

The Start of Clean Trash

Warren x Raccoon(reader)

A/N: I wanted to expand this little world a bit and make a story about the band Raccoon started, it’s also kind of a prequel to, “The Feels”, so plz enjoy but if it sucked plz be mean. (I can also take requests if u want...)

———

(y/n) has been at Xaviers for over a month, and has been doing relatively fine for the most part. Considering this is the first time she’s lived apart from her older brother.

(Y/N) also played guitar and always dreamt of starting a rock band, she could shred like Brian May and had the voice of Haley William, she was the perfect punk rocker.

She and Warren would occasionally would rock out together but never really perform in front of anyone, plus Warren was busy with X-Men training and (y/n) with classes.

That’s when (y/n) decided to start a band.

———

One day after classes, after getting permission to start a band from Charles, (y/n) was making posters for her band.

The poster read, “Wanna join a band? Join me! (y/n) anytime at the music room after 3:45pm to 6:45pm!”

(y/n) was hopeful about the turnout, expecting at least a few people to show up.

After putting up the last poster on the message board outside, “You think anyone’s gonna show up?” Warren asked.

“I’m hoping so, there’s gotta be at least one other individual here not too busy to join a band,” (y/n) responded

“Yea, sorry I couldn’t join..”

“Nah you’re fine, when responsiblites call, you answer.... at least I think that’s how that saying goes,” (y/n) snickered

Both headed inside for the time being.

Not too long after, a relatively new boy walked up looking at the poster

“....New band huh?.. that could be interesting.”

———

The next day (y/n) was waiting at the music room for what felt like hours, even though it had only been 29 minutes.

“Ugh!! Man.. I thought at least SOMEONE would have been interested. Oh well... I guess all that convincing was for not.” (y/n) said to herself discouraged

Almost at the same time as she began to lose hope, a tall boy came walking in the music room with a maroon instrument case.

The first thing (y/n) noticed was his big rat ears and tail, and secondly, his eyepatch.

“Uh... I was wondering if you were still holding auditions for the band?” the intriguing character asked

“Uh... yeah sure, of course. What do you play exactly?” (y/n) asked astonished that anyone came at all

“I play the bass,” the boy responded

“Oh wow! Exactly what I looking for,” (y/n) responded, both smiling a bit, “Tell me a bit about yourself, Mr.....”

“Palneski, Mars Palenski, I started coming here about 3 months ago.”

“Oh that’s perfect, I’ve barry been here myself, a month and a half now to be exact.”

“I’m an Aries, I began playing bass when my sisters boyfriend taught me...”

“Aww”

“Yeah, he ended up going to jail on running an underground poker ring.”

“Oh...”

“Yeah.. he was pretty cool, he made me this eyepatch”

Accidentally mishearing him, “He put you in that eyepatch??!!?”

“No no no! You misheard me, I said he made me this cool eyepatch, my dads the one who put me in it,” Mars then flipped his eyepatch up revealing a red bloodshot eye

(y/n) was a bit horrified but even more intrigued

“What happened there?... if you don’t mind me asking..” (y/n) asked

“Meh, pops went off the deep end one night on me and my mom, she had clipped her ears and tail before she met my dad, imagine their surprise when a freak like me popped out,” Mars revealed

“Well you’re not the freak in this situation,” she reassured him

“But other than that, I’d like to join your band if that’s cool”

“Yea yea of course, you’re the only person to show up so far so... show what you can do”

“With pleasure,” Mars replied, then plugging his bass that was pastel pink with purple paint splatters

Mars took a deep breath and began playing the baseline from Vulfpecks Sky Mall

(y/n) immediately knew what he was playing and was impressed he was pulling it off

Like every musician, there were things he needed improvement and missed a few notes but (y/n) hardly noticed or didn’t care

After his more than adequate performance, (y/n) stood up clapping with sparkles in her eyes

“You’re in! Welcome to..... I don’t have a band name,” (y/n) giggled

“Awesome! when are practices?” Mars responded

“Well that’s the thing, you’re the only one to really show up to this, we don’t have a drummer yet,” (y/n) responded.

“But if you want, you can help hold auditions for a drummer if you”

“Meh, not like I’m doing much, I don’t see why not,” Mars replied while packing up his bass

With that, (y/n)’s band finally has a start.. somewhat

———

The next few days proved to be fruitless.

No one showed up or wanted to join (y/n)’s or Mars’s band

“Man... you’d think with a prestigious enough music programs you’d think there’d be at least one other kid wanting to wail on drums,” Mars sighed

“Yeah... well I almost started this with another drummer but he’s got training,” (y/n) signed in response

“You know a drummer? who?” Mars asked

“His name is Warren, big metal wings, thuggish looking”

“Oh I saw him around, didn’t think you two hung out”

“Yeah, our schedules don’t always link up unfortunately,” (y/n) then staring off in thought about hanging out with Warren more

Mars noticed this and decided to speak up, “You like him?”

This caught (y/n) way off guard, “W-what??! what makes you say that??”

(y/n) now blushing

“I can tell by the way you stare off when talking about him,” Mars teased

“Well... it’s not that I LIKE like him, I just think he’s... cool, ok?”

“Yeah, cool. Got it,” Mars then looking forward himself a little surprised he was able to get that out of her

———

Finally, after almsot 2 weeks of waiting around, (y/n) finally had someone audition for drums

(y/n) and Mars were overly excited, (y/n) more than Mars

(y/n) immediately began interrogating the individual trying for the drums but they didn’t seem all that interested

“So tell us a bit about yourself,” (y/n) began, Mars was just sitting back in his seat with a semi interested look

“I guess I started drums in middle school band,” they replied

“Awesome, you ever play in a rock band before? Not that that’s a requirement, neither of us have either, we’re just curious,” (y/n) asked

“No, I don’t play to rock, mostly classical or school songs,” the already disinterested drummer responded

“Oh, well uh, we’re a rock band so.. I dunno if that’s-“ (y/n) began explaining before Mars cut her off

“Listen, we’re not looking for anything in particular, but I can tell you don’t wanna try out for this band, do you?” Mars immediately taking over

“Not really, I haven’t drummed in a while and honestly, wanted to drop it forever ago but my parents wanted me to try out..”

“So... you don’t want to join?” (y/n) asked a little sad

“No, sorry”

“That’s ok, let us know if you change your mind,” (y/n) letting them know before they walked out

“UGH!” (y/n) then slamming her head on the table

“We didn’t even get to hear how they sounded!”

“I’d imagine maybe not very good if they haven’t played since middle school..” Mars added

———

Immediately the next day, Warren was waiting in the music room for Mars and (y/n) with an audition ready, but not from him, his apprentice.

(y/n) stood there trying to take in what she was looking at

Warren Worthington III, one the the schools most intimidating residents/students and former horseman of the apocalypse... with a 5th grader drummer apprentice

Warren immediately began explaining what was happening, “Ryan here, decided he wanted to give your band a try, (y/n).”

(y/n) still standing there dumbfounded, sat down and began asking Ryan the usual

“So... tell us a bit about yourself, Ryan”

Ryan, very timidly began, “Well... I’ve only been going here 2 months and... and...”

Taking a deep breath, finall let out what he wanted to say, “I would like to join your band!”

Ryan now blushing

(y/n) finally grasping what was happening, understood what was going through Ryan’s head

“Ok, go ahead and play us something if you’d like,” (y/n) then motions towards the drums

This is the moment Ryan had been waiting for, the moment he spent hours training under Warren

Ryan began with a slow tempo Single Stroke Roll which transitioned into a picked up tempo Rebound Stroke

Warren had been watching from the door while (y/n) and Mars sat there in awe at what Ryan was able to do

after finishing, Ryan sweating and breathing harder than ever

(y/n) and Mars both immediately began clapping and both at the same time in unison said, “You’re in!”

Ryan having aspired to join a band of his own, finally happening, he bang crying and ran off the strage to go hug Warren to thank him for everything

(y/n) seeing this interaction made her heart flutter a bit

Seeing how good he is with kids, she began having thoughts

I wonder how he’d be with his own child, what kind of father would he be?

Immediately realizing what she’s thinking she began blushing

Ryan then decided to introduce himself to Mars and he took a liking to Ryan immediately and took him on as an apprentice as well

(y/n) walked up to Warren, both blushing a bit

“Thanks for giving Ryan a chance, (y/n).” Warren thanking (y/n)

“Ah, well, I was more than likely gonna let him join anyways, no one else was showing up, well one other person did but they weren’t interested”

Both giggled to themselves

I’ve never seen Warren giggle to easily (y/n) thought to herself

“Well.. I suppose we should get our newest addition situated and uh...”

“Oh, yeah for sure.. I guess I’ll just...”

“Yeah.. I’ll see you around I guess”

Both still blushing as Warren exited

———

Both Mars and (y/n) having gotten to know Ryan, (y/n) decided they should come up with a band name

“It should be something that represents all of us,” (y/n) stated

“How about... overnight heartbreak?” Mars suggested

“I never got my heart broken before... not by a girl at least,” Ryan responded

“The harmonies of The Gifted?” (y/n) already not liking her own name idea

“.....Well.. Ryan can manipulate water... you and me are trash animals..” Mars pointed out

“Trash animals??” (y/n) raising a question

“Yea, rats and raccoons are primarily found in trash cans”

“I’ve only been found a dumpster ONCE, and that was to find my tamagotchi I accidentally threw away,” (y/n) retaliated

“I’ve been found in multiple dumpsters, multiple times,” Mars said almsot bragging

Both forgetting Ryan was right there

“Uh well... I like cleaning so.. I’ve never been in a dumpster...” Ryan chimed in

“Cleaning huh...” Mars commented

“Clean... dumpsters.... trash animals..... cleaning trash animals....” Mars was saying random thought out loud to spark an idea for the other

“Clean.....”

“Trash....”

“Clean...”

“Trash”

“Clean”

“Trash”

“Clean Trash!!”

Both Mars and Ryan going back and forth before in unison coming up with a name

(y/n) immediately loved it and the trio had finally decided on their name

“This is gonna be fun,” (y/n) said fist bumping both Ryan and Mars

———

[in-tua-deep]

What animal do you think suits each of the umbrella kids the most?

okay what you don’t know is that i’m a sucker for a his dark materials au with daemons so i’m sorry if that’s not what you want but that’s what you’re getting lmao

forewarning: this is super self indulgent and i only have actual reasons for like maybe half of these 

Luther: a dog! If you want specifics probably an Anatolian Shepherd dog bc they’re big motherfuckers and muscular as fuck. I did toy with a big animal like a bear but ultimately I think a dog just because simply: Luther obeys Reginald without question and has incredibly loyalty to a man that never cared about his wellbeing. Plus, you know, the family would rib at him about being Reginald’s loyal dog and all that. Plus it’s a good set up for his rivalry with Diego that I’ll yell about in a minute. 

So yes, Luther’s daemon settles as a bigass dog. She’s pragmatic and can be cold and often tries to model herself after Reginald’s daemon. She can be somewhat self righteous and very blunt. She tends to say exactly what she’s thinking without sugar coating it and doesn’t care if Luther has to stumble to save face. “You think one of us killed dad.” Diego says. “No not ‘one of you’, specifically you, Diego. You have an alibi?” Luther’s daemon says in front of the family, god, and Five’s portrait on the mantle.

Diego: a wolf! This sets up a big rivalry between Diego and Luther as they have somewhat similar daemons except for the fact that Luther’s is a domesticated canine and Diego’s is a wild one. Luther often uses Diego’s daemon to say that Diego is too wild to lead the team and that’s why he’s in charge. It’s mainly because while Diego does his whole lone wolf act, he’s shown to be pretty protective of the people he considers his and really he does need a pack. Even though he tells Klaus no, he doesn’t bother enforcing it when Klaus insists on hopping in the car anyway. He wants to be leader of the pack, but is awkward when he tries to be in charge bless his heart.

Diego’s wolf daemon is a not-so-secret softie. She prompts Diego to interact more with his family and sends longing glances towards Detective Patch and her daemon. She doesn’t get along with Luther’s daemon and always bristles when she’s around, though Luther’s daemon tends to ignore Diego’s and act like she’s above it all which just makes the issue even worse tbh. Diego’s daemon doesn’t shy away from her instincts and refers to the family as her pack and is very vocal about both not killing Grace (though later she sits and whines when Diego does it) and letting Vanya out (Diego spits vitriol about Vanya but his daemon is suspiciously silent on the subject).

Allison: a burmese python! I will freely admit that i chose this 90% because of the feather boa in the beginning dance scene because I want Allison to have her daemon constantly draped around her neck and on her body, but snakes do tend to be associated with manipulation as well in some stories even though I can’t see it looking at their cute little faces?? But I mean Allison’s whole gig is manipulation so it fits even though I’m only justifying it after the fact lmao. 

Allison’s daemon is very laid back and rarely speaks up. Allison often accuses him of being lazy because she tends to carry him everywhere and he’s constantly on the hunt for warm places to curl up in. He used to ride on the back of Luther’s daemon a lot when Allison got fed up of carrying him. Uses the fact that he doesn’t have eyelids to stare people down when they’re being irritating. Generally does not appreciate the negative press that comes with being a snake daemon and secretly him and Allison both wonder if him being a snake was a factor in her not getting custody of Claire. (Allison didn’t appreciate what he settled as and they fought about it, there’s still some tension between them on occasion because of it)

Klaus: a black cat! I almost gave him a raven because reasons but I ended up with a cat for pretty simple reasons: Klaus is pretty much a stray cat in human form tbh just look at him. Also because cats stare off into corners like they can see the dead and damned so I thought it was somewhat appropriate, and black cats are considered both lucky and unlucky depending on where you like (which lemme tell you as a black cat owner who moved from a lucky to unlucky area was a wild thing to find out). 

Klaus’s daemon is very sarcastic and a lot less forgiving than Klaus himself is. They hold a grudge to say the least. While most daemons tend not to speak to people who aren’t their own, Klaus’s daemon doesn’t give a single shit and will talk to anyone they damn well please. Doesn’t get along with Luther’s daemon because they constantly talk shit about Reggie and Reggie’s daemon, but gets along very well with Diego’s daemon and has ridden on her shoulder more than once. Shares Klaus’s power in that they can see the dead but ignores them even harder than Klaus because they’re secretly freaked out that ghosts don’t have daemons. Klaus and his daemon also hang out with Ben’s daemon, who for reasons unknown didn’t burst into dust upon Ben’s death but she generally stays out of sight.

Five: one part of me says hare because of the cryptic value and eyes that look like they could kill you and also jumping jokes and another part of me says hummingbird for plenty of good reasons but an even larger part of me says that I don’t have to choose because I can just symbolically make his daemon unsettled. She wasn’t settled before the apocalypse and then he kind of… never really grew up. Part of a daemon settling is growing up and knowing yourself but Five didn’t have a chance to do that, he was too focused on his goal. They both dislike the fact that she’s unsettled because they think it’s childish, but it’s also very handy because it means she’s adaptable as fuck. Maybe she pretends she’s settled as a hare or something while they work for the Commission idk and it’s a little reveal when he’s back home. Maybe they’re also separated like a witch’s daemon due to the Commission?? unclear

Five’s daemon tends to fade into the background if you’ll let her. She tends to be standoffish but is exceptionally observant. She very rarely speaks to anyone outside of Five, even among the siblings, though she’s not above bluntly calling them out if Five isn’t around and she deems it necessary. She likes Vanya best, though she was also fond of Ben. She tends to be the voice of reason for Five and probably takes most of Dolores’s lines in telling him drinking is bad for him or that his equations are wrong. There’s probably a dramatic scene where she’s revealed to be unsettled where she turns into a big fuckoff animal and fucks up the Handler or something idk but otherwise she’s pretty content to remain a hare and do a good impression of the rabbit from monty python if people fuck with her.

Ben: something smaller and easily hidden. My heart says rat because they’re so fucking good and smart so that’s what I’m going to run with, and also because they’re often viewed negatively and Ben has a power that he also views negatively rip. Also I’m gonna be real the idea of Klaus and Ben’s daemons being absolute bros as a cat and a rat also amuses me so there’s that and this is my au i do what i want. 

Ben’s daemon was withdrawn before his death and even more so after. No one knows why she didn’t turn to dust when Ben died, but she didn’t. None of the other siblings knew that she survived because she asked Klaus not to tell, worried that Reginald would experiment on her to try and figure out why she didn’t vanish. She spent most of their time before Klaus left hiding in his room, and after she hides in his clothes a lot and likes when he wears items with hoods (like Ben used to) because she likes to curl up in them. Like Five’s daemon, she doesn’t talk much. 

Vanya: a spotted owl! I wanted to give Vanya a winged daemon that can’t fly for most of the duration of the plot despite having wings because of general symbolism reasons regarding Reginald “clipping her wings” by suppressing her powers with medication and all that. Honestly I mostly picked a spotted owl on a whim because I like owls (I was a guardians of gahoole kid) and I think that the hints of white on a spotted owl would be a cool allusion to her powers and also there’s some sick imagery in her powers activating and her daemons colors reversing so that he’s primarily white soooo i do what i want is the answer

Like I said above, Vanya’s daemon is a bird daemon who… doesn’t fly. He mostly spends his time on a perch that Vanya bought for him in her apartment. He doesn’t actually spend a lot of time physically on Vanya outside of when they’re travelling somewhere, and she usually puts him down immediately when she arrives at her destination. He usually just walks about the house but like a chicken can do a sort of jump/flap combo to get up to surfaces so he’s alright for the most part. I want to say part of Leonard’s manipulations was that he also has a bird daemon and they try and teach Vanya’s daemon to fly as well as for her to access her powers.

and outside of the main kids (these aren’t nearly as well thought out and are liable to change probably - 

Reginald: a fox. Cunning and intelligent and adaptable, she’s regal and stone cold, never speaking directly to any of the children and she often acts as if they don’t exist or are so far beneath her they might as well not. Her coat is always pristine, her dark eyes are always watching, and her teeth are dazzling and sharp and threatening even though the kids see her far more rarely than they do their father. She’s a ruthless pragmatist and often served as an observer during their training, after which she would whisper in Reginald’s ear and oftentimes there was a new and inventive torture waiting for them. Sometimes the kids feared her more than they feared their father. She’s only ever shown anything even approaching affection to Luther’s daemon, and even that was just brushing herself past the other daemon and allowing a brief touch.

Hazel: a big grizzly bear. They often both complain about the lack of accommodations for large daemons when she has to squeeze her ass into their tiny motel rooms or in diner booths and restaurant tables in general. Tends to just stay in the hotel room and allow people to assume Hazel has a small daemon since they’re separated and her bulk is often cumbersome for missions. Has 100% charged in as the cavalry and fucked people up though don’t mistake her whining for her not being very dangerous.

Cha-Cha: my heart says a mountain lion and so that’s what i’m going with. Large and can do a lot of damage given the opportunity with those claws, pretty sneaky and damn good at his job. Is probably the one who scruffs Klaus’s daemon when they kidnap him from the house. He has a wicked sense of humor that Cha-Cha doesn’t always appreciate and always goes with for missions because he genuinely enjoys their work, doesn’t understand why Hazel’s daemon would rather stay behind.

Grace: yes I understand that Grace is a robot and no that’s not going to stop me from saying that Reginald gave her a mechanical clockwork butterfly daemon because I say so and because I think his daemon would have insisted that it’s far too creepy to look and see a human without a daemon and he’s trying to make her as realistic as possible, right? The butterfly is technically an extension of Grace, however Reginald never gave her daemon a voicebox because he deemed it unnecessary. He usually just sits on Grace’s shoulder slowly opening and closing his wings. A plot point is Grace finally naming her daemon for herself because Reginald never bothered with a name for him either.

The Handler: The Handler doesn’t have a daemon. Five asks her where her daemon is in the flashback scene where she recruits him and she laughs and tells him that that’s a rude question and never answers him. The daemon never shows up and other people and their daemons are noticeably unsettled by this. Five’s daemon genuinely is frightened by the Handler and tends to hide behind him, which the Handler comments upon with a saccharine smile. They never do figure out what happened to her daemon (though one of the office workers shares a rumor with Five that the Handler killed her own daemon for questioning the commission).

Patch: a terrier! My heart says border terrier so that’s what I’m going with. Dogged and unwilling to let go when she feels like she’s on the scent of something, she’s a good police officer even if she has torn loyalty to Diego as well. He’s a hardy little thing and he encourages her to bend the rules so much so that it used to be a running joke that her daemon might as well be Diego’s. Her daemon doesn’t bother with the hostilities and is always pleased to see Diego’s daemon. For the most part they just watch their idiot humans snipe at one another and are content to chill until Patch makes Diego leave. Their daemons always cheerfully say bye to each other and that they’ll see the other again soon even

Dave: my heart says also a dog. Probably a farm dog. Australian Cattle Dog, maybe? because my heart also says that Dave was probably raised as a good honest farm boy or at the VERY LEAST his grandparents had a farm he spent his summers on as a child. Very loyal. She absolutely adores Klaus and his daemon and Klaus’s daemon curled up with her constantly. Touching another person’s daemon is a social booboo but out there in Vietnam both daemons saved the other’s human at least once. Dave’s daemon pretends that she’s more sensible than him and often would complain at Klaus’s daemon that the sexual tension was genuinely killing her and if they kept gazing into one another’s eyes on the disco floor she was gonna barf. Klaus’s daemon would just roll their eyes because it’s not like they as daemons weren’t all touchy feely. Klaus’s daemon could be constantly seen grooming Dave’s with their little cat sandpaper tongue and Dave’s daemon constantly rested her head on Klaus’s to go to sleep sO. The scene where Dave dies is doubly sad because you see her turning into dust as Klaus’s daemon howls.

Agnes: almost forgot Agnes whoops. But I choose… a canary! Why? Because they’re bright and pretty and sing nicely and she would forever be explaining that yes, her daemon is a canary but it isn’t a domestic canary so that’s why he has brown on him and isn’t pure yellow. That and I think it would be sort of cute if Hazel’s attention was caught by pretty birdsong initially so a songbird it is. Agnes’s daemon, when her and Hazel are together, likes to snuggle down into Hazel’s daemon’s fur and make a small attempt to preen her even though she’s like a million times his size. He’s absolutely fearless and doesn’t hesitate at Hazel’s large daemon like a lot of small daemons do which endears him to the assassin duo. Like genuinely I picked canary on an absolute whim but that same goes for most of these and no one can stop me.

is that everyone?? i think that’s everyone

EDIT: I FORGOT LEONARD which goes to show how much i repress his existence

Leonard: a great skua. Am I basing this on the fact that I wanted his daemon to be a bird for plot reasons and the first mean bird I could think of was that one dude who wanted to eat baby Mumble in Happy Feet? maybe. But yeah a generally normal looking bird with the capacity for great violence there we go that’s my reasoning thank you and good night. His daemon is unsettling to literally everyone except Vanya probably tbh and Vanya calls Allison out on daemon stereotyping because Allison has a SNAKE she should be BETTER THAN THAT. But yeah that’s all I got for tonight thanks for reading lads.

#ask me #anonymous #not what u asked for anon but you made me think of a daemon au sO #daemon au #tua #the umbrella academy #far tua long #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #Allison Hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #number five #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #reginald hargreeves #Grace Hargreeves #hazel #tua hazel #cha-cha #tua cha-cha #the handler #tua dave #dave katz #tua agnes #agnes rofa #eudora patch #detective patch #i think that's everyone #this was really self indulgent y'all

[ipurpleyou1993]

My thoughts on:

Melting Me Softly

Starring: Ji Chang Wook/Won Jin-ah/Yoon Sae-ah

- For those who do not know, this series is Ji Chang Wook's comeback entry since his military service ended. So, safe to say, many have high hopes for the series. 😊

- How hard is it to lose the one you love - in this case, death? Bez, it's super hard.

This gets even harder when you do not have proof of their disappearance and ONLY ASSUME that you've lost them.

Imagine the pain of having to mourn a loved one that you are still hoping to find alive in the back of your heart and mind.

This may sound like a spoiler but I literally cried on the second episode. ANG SAKIT! 😭🥺🙈

- Family FIRST. We all love our family. I love how this series shows us that no matter our age, we will all still be someone's child and sibling. We protect and love our own. And we will do all things we can to support them.❤️

- Pateince is key. 💯 So for the pilot episode, I had so many questions in mind already. I found it very confusing. Although I have to admit, it will all make sense as the episodes progress. Hence the first sentence - PATIENCE IS KEY. 🙈🤣

The Gist:

The series is about two individuals who entered a cryonics experiment during the 1980s for a variety show.

It was intended to be a 24-hour experiment but due to unfortunate circumstances, they woke up 20 years after.

In total, there were 6 participants in the experiment. But only two agreed to show their face for the viewership of the variety show.

One of the two participants to to agree is Ma Dong Chan. He is the male lead in the story and is played by Ji Chang Wook

Ma Dong Chan is a renowned director during his time. He is known to have the golden touch for all the shows he directed turned out to be certified blockbusters. He participated in this program because he is the kind of director to do all-bizarre things to prove a point. He believes that it is possible to change the world through positive and innovative media platforms.

The second participant is Ko Mi Ran. She is the female lead in the story and is played by Won Jin Ah.

Ko Mi Ran is every woman out there - she does everything for her family. Especially for her special needs brother. The reason she participated in the experiment is for her brother. You'll find out more when you watch it. 😉

The story begins after they wake up 20 years post-freezing. In 2 decades, everyone and everything changed, though for the two of them, it was literally just yesterday.

See how they cope with the change and how things progress from there in the series. 💜

What I liked about the series:

- First of all, JI CHANG WOOK! ❤️ We all know that Ji Chang Wook is a certified OPPA. No questions asked. From Healer to The K2 to Empress Ki, he made us fall in love with him - ALL THE FREAKIN' WAY. 😍❤️😊

I love how Ji Chang Wook got the role of an angsty director this time. It suits him - with his charming looks and seductive charisma. 😉❤️😋 This just goes to show that due to his great acting skills, any role just works for the man.

In reference to his director role, I love how he always says (as Ma Dong Chan) that he became a variety show director to give the people something to look forward to amidst all the negativity the world brings.

And when asked: Why do you go extreme measures for a variety show?

He always answers: Because I have to do what others are afraid of doing to make a change.

You see? He gave inspiring a new meaning. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

But seriously tho, it's so hard not fall in love with JCW. He's just... well look at that 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

- This is my first encounter with Won Jin Ah. I've got to say, the image of a frail woman suits her. She's sooooooo thin - LITERALLY. Hahahaha! I think one strong wind blow can affect her balance. 🙈😂🤪 But I appreciated her acting. Good job, girl! 💯

I like her character's feistiness, tho. She looks frail but her will power is strong. She will do everything in her power to support her family. Isn't she all of us? Hahahaha! Go for #GirlPower! 💜👍🏻💯

- I love the friendship of Ko Mi Ran, Kyung Ja and Young Seon. Despite the 20 year hiatus on their friendship, they still managed to chat and bond as if it was just yesterday.

Don't we all wish we have this kind of relationship? One that can withstand long pauses and boys coming in between. #SANAALL 😊❤️👍🏻

- The chemistry. ❤️ I've read reviews saying that JCW and WJA lack the connection required to make a kilig series. But I saw the chemistry. There's just so much push-and-pull going on that it makes the heart cringe and wonder - ANO NA BA TALAGA?!?!

- THE KISSING SCENE THAT WAS THE TALK OF THE TOWN!!!

SPOILER ALERT!

Check out this link👇🏻👇🏻

https://youtu.be/zveSVEdFuyI

Now we all understand why it trended that time. Who wants to go next?? MEEEEEEEEE! 🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️

- I SUPER LOVE THE OST - BGM included. 💯👏🏻🎉 Tell Me, Please by Yeonjung is my personal pick! 😉😊👍🏻

As previously mentioned, I love all the music pieces included in the OST. They're all full of emotions suited for every scene it was played. Kudos to the music team of the series. Gujab! 👍🏻👏🏻🎉💯

I also liked the snippet of Can't Take My Eyes Off of You on the first episode (with Ko Mi Ran dancing in her PJ's). Hihi. ❤️😊💯

Link will be provided below for easier reference. 😊

- I love beautiful relationships between FAMILY. I liked how the family relations were displayed in the series - it was genuine and sincere. Makes you want to be a part of their family. 😊

- I love the comedy stint between Ma Dong Chan and his niece, Ma Seo Yoon.

In reality, it's actually rare for older people to listen to kids her age. But she is well-versed when it came to technological advances, what's in and what's not, and just LIFE in general. I found it funny because Ma Dong Chan actually listens to her and she MAKES A LOT OF SENSE - actually, she's MORE SENSIBLE than the adults in her home. 🤣🤣🤣

- I also liked the funny realization Young Seon had about her husband and son. This can be considered one of the best scenes in the series - for me at least. Hahahaha!

In reality (in the series), it is not intended to be funny. But it came across as funny to me because...well...20 years has passed and it is history repeating itself - literally. 🤣🤣🤣

Cons:

- Honestly? I found the beginning of the series very NOISY. All the shouting was literally banging my eardrums while watching. I almost skipped the first episode because of this. 🤷🏻‍♀️🙅🏻‍♀️

Also, the first episode was trying to be funny - and when I say trying, it was very evident that they were trying. Good thing tho, Ji Chang Wook was able to comvince me to continue watching despite this. 💁🏻‍♀️

- The 20-year love story gap did not quite work for me. Was too awkward to watch. Personal opinion, tho. 💁🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

- The acting appears to be too theatrical for me. It's soooooo exaggerated especially with the scenes of Hyeon Gi and Hong Seok. 🙅🏻‍♀️

- The villain's existence is somewhat "short-lived" and all over the place.

You're kinda expecting a lot of action since the series progresses in such a way but then, it turns out to be a "meh" ending for the villain. Then, the continuation of the evilness seemed as though it was put there just for the sake of it. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I don't want to compare, but I'm so used to korean villains who are so agitating that they make you cringe on so many levels.

Soundtrack:

Melting Me Softly OST Playlist

Just a bonus clip since I really loved the scene this was played in 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

https://youtu.be/AiIBKcd4m5Q

There goes my thoughts. Happy reading and watching! 💜

CTTO - Photos/GIFs/Music

#kdrama #kdrama review #Melting Me Softly #Melting Me Softly Review #Review #Ji Chang Wook #Ma Dong Chan #Won Jin Ah #Ko Mi Ran #Go Mi Ran

[niallismymuse]

Chapter 1

At the sound of the alarm clock on her phone ringing obnoxiously, Tessa rolled over with a groan and grabbed it, pressing ‘stop’ quickly to get the incessant noise to cease. With a sigh of relief, she burrowed further under her covers and squinted up at the bright screen. Grumbling, she turned the brightness down and started to thumb through her notifications.

It was 9:01 AM and she had quite the to-do list to accomplish today. Some of it she was excited about – she had a video on the Shakespeare play Othelloto edit, and she was interested in really looking through the footage. It was part of a reading review series she had started a few months ago, in which she read a book or play or something similar, discussed it, and then poorly acted out a few of her favorite scenes. Unsurprisingly, it was a huge process, but mostly because she made it harder for herself by using accents when required andfinding clothing that would fit with the story. Luckily, she lived in LA, and there were costumes galore available. The series was well-liked on her channel though, making the whole process worth it.

She also had to answer some emails that involved sponsors and other work opportunities. Some of them she would delete after reading, and some of them she would respond to. God, she had so many emails.

Then there was the other thing she needed to do today: continue looking for a roommate. Tessa was really dragging her feet on this, and it was starting to affect her budget. She made a good amount of money, and she could definitely afford this apartment by herself, but it cut into her other funds. And besides, why would she need a two-bedroom apartment to herself?

She could always move out and into a smaller, cheaper apartment, but she was attached to this one. All of the little knick-knacks she had collected throughout her life were proudly displayed throughout it. Her bedroom was her haven, and damn if she didn’t like her natural-light kitchen. She and Jess had gotten solucky with it.

Speaking of Jess. Tessa opened up her messages and scrolled to find Jess’ name, and then clicked on the thread. Sure enough, nothing had changed – Jess still hadn’t answered her, despite the fact that it was a text that required an answer.

I still have a Christmas gift for you, want me to drop it off?Tessa had sent two days ago. It showed delivered underneath.

Jess wasn’t answering her. Tessa didn’t really know why. They had grown distant since Jess had moved in with Lyrica back in June, nearly seven months ago. She almost wondered if Lyr had been talking shit, but that wasn’t like her, and besides, Jess was the one who knew all of her dirty secrets.

It was like they were suddenly ten feet apart when, for all of their lives, they had been joined at the hip. It had started with Jess becoming ‘too busy’ and escalated to this. It sucked. Her feelings were hurt. She didn’t understand what she had done wrong – how could her best friend just drop her like this?

Tessa was ready to wallow in bed for another fifteen minutes, but another text suddenly came in, and her whole day brightened. It was from Niall. Niall Horan. The man she had met at Jess’ moving-in party, the pop-star celebrity…her friend. She and Niall were friends now.

She tapped to open it. Wanna get drinks tonight?The message read, and everythingin her stomach fluttered and flipped. She almost started to type out a message, but she restrained herself, not wanting to appear too quick to respond or anything else weird according to today’s social standards.

Yes, she was into Niall. That alsosucked, because as far as she could tell, he didn’t like her back. He was just as friendly as he was the night they had met, and boydid she have it bad for him. It was a huge crush. She liked his smile. She liked his laugh. She liked the way he laughed and smiled often, and how his blue eyes twinkled whenever he looked at her. She liked how he always talked with his hands. She liked how he didn’t ever really seem to get angry, and she liked how passionate he was about music.

Tessa justlikedhim, and she had done everything she could to get rid of those pesky feelings. She had even hooked up with a guy at a bar a month ago, because, as they say, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. It was a risky move on her part, considering she made her living on the Internet and was bound to be recognized by certain people. And while the sex had been perfectly satisfactory, it hadn’t gotten her mind off of Niall.

In fact, it had made her wonder what it would have been like to have Niall’s hands roaming over her skin, and Niall’s lips on her neck. Usually she saved those daydreams for when she was very wine drunk, but, well.

With a scream of primal, pent-up lust, Tessa buried her face into her pillow. Apparently, it wasn’t just rum and coke that got her going.

After taking a few minutes to gather herself, she answered him, replying with, Of course! What time? Before forcing herself to set her phone aside and get out of bed. She wouldn’t get all of her shit done in time for drinks if she lazed about all day.

With a quick stretch, Tessa headed into the bathroom and showered under a cold stream of water, teeth chattering the whole time. Somewhat ironically, under the freezing spray, her thoughts turned back to Jess. Maybe everything would be worked out at the annual New Year’s trip in three days.

They had a tradition with their friends where, every year, they would all chip in and rent a cabin at Big Sur Campground and Cabins, inside Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. They would drink and laugh and go on the trails, the restaurants, cook, anything and everything. It was a huge amount of fun, and despite the current iciness between her and Jess, she was looking forward to the trip.

Maybe she would invite Niall along. Ryan was always complaining about being outnumbered by the women – it was her, Jess and Lyr, and their other friend Melody – and he still would be, but he wouldn’t be alone.

Deciding to be nice to herself now that her thoughts were off of Niall and those hands of his, Tessa turned the water to warm and finished her shower. After getting dressed in some lounging pants and a thin hoodie, she set herself up at her desk and checked her phone. Niall had suggested 6pm, and she responded with a thumbs up emoji before setting her phone aside and getting to work.

After browsing through her emails, Tessa focused on editing her video on Othello, and to take a break a few hours later, she made some lunch. After munching on a sandwich, she finished up her editing for the day, which left only minor clips to work on tomorrow.

And that, essentially, was Tessa’s day. It was pretty boring and slightly lonely, and she didn’t look into getting a new roommate, but at least she had the night out with Niall to look forward to. At around 5 she started getting ready, dressing in a pair of jeans that really made her ass pop out and a nice, deep red-colored blouse and some cute booties. Because it was winter, she grabbed a black coat that didn’t clash, though she might not need it since she lived in LA. She did a little bit of makeup – just foundation and powder, a touch of blush and highlight, and some mascara.

She used to not know how to do anyof that shit, which was what actually had propelled her towards YouTube. She had seen so many makeup tutorials on the website and decided to make an anti-tutorial – she titled it, ‘I Don’t Know How to Do This Stuff’, attempted to put on eyeshadow and eyeliner, and it went kind of viral. That was back when she was in college; and to this day, she still couldn’t use liquid or pencil eyeliner properly.

Tessa just wanted to look nice – she wanted Niall to see what he was missing, but not in a desperate way.

After checking the time, she hopped into her car and plugged the pub Niall had said he would meet her at into her maps app. It was a fifteen-minute ride, and she arrived at 5:56. Without waiting a second more, she headed into the bar with her coat on and her purse strewn over her shoulder.

It was a bit of a hole-in-the-wall type of place, she could tell right away. It had that sort of vibe – and it wastucked into a place she didn’t expect, actually behind a Trader Joe’s, which was oddly convenient. Sometimes shopping sucked and getting a drink to calm your nerves after wasn’t a bad idea.

Tessa spotted Niall right away; there was hardly anyone else in the bar, and her eyes had a tendency to gravitate towards him. He was dressed in light blue jeans with a navy button-down, buttoned most of the way up but exposing some of that dark chest hair that she sowanted to tug on. Was he trying to make her lose her mind?

Woah, Tessa,she thought to herself, rein it in, girl.

With a huge smile stretching her lips wide, Tessa maneuvered around tables to get to Niall. When he spotted her, his eyes lit up, and he hopped out of his chair and came to greet her. He wrapped his arms around her, giving her a tight squeeze, and she couldn’t help but hug him back, her hands coming to press tightly against his back.

“Tess! So lovely to see ya,” Niall grinned and pulled away, and she tried to ignore how her heart fluttered at the nickname. Tess. Maybe out of someone else’s mouth it would have bothered her, but coming from Niall, it just sounded right. “It’s been a while, love. I’m glad we can catch up.”

He gestured towards the booth he had claimed, tucked in towards the back corner, and she smiled and led the way back. “It’s so nice to see you,” she replied, trying her hardest not to sound like she was gushing.

In truth, it had been almost a month since she had seen him. He had gone home to London for Christmas, and had arrived back in town yesterday, she believed. It was nice to think she had been one of his top priorities upon coming back to LA. “How was London?” Tessa asked as she scooted inside of the booth, setting her purse down beside her. Niall sat across from her, bracing his arms on the table between them.

“Fuckin’ cold,” he grumbled, “London is cold as shit this time of year, which is why I’m back in LA.”

“Mm, I can imagine. Is it terrible that I find this weather to be kind of chilly?”

“You should travel to London and see how you feel about this weather once you come back.”

They both laughed, and after a few more minutes of conversation, Niall left to order some beers, Stella Artois for her and whatever the hell he was getting. Niall had taken the card she had forced into his hand to pay, but he had a habit of paying forher, so she had no idea if he would use it or not.

God. Tessa took a deep breath in and slowly pushed it out, trying to settle her nerves. She was oddly nervous. And pining for him long-distance was so different compared to pining for him when he was right here in front of her. She was trying her hardest to keep her cool, but he was hereand so good-looking and kind and funny that she didn’t know how she was going to handle it. Hopefully the beer would help; she had forgotten the allure he had on her in person.

Once Niall was back, he passed her a beer and her debit card, flashing her a smile and a wink that made her cheeks flush and told her that he had, in fact, bought her drink. “You fiend,” she mumbled as she tucked her card away, “gonna go get my own drinks from now on.”

Niall chuckled and took a drink of his beer, and Tessa did the same, praising whatever gods above that alcohol existed. She could use a nice buzz.

“Did ya have a nice Christmas?” he asked, eyes intently focused on her. Tessa found herself studying him in response, noticing the stubble that adorned his cheeks and jaw, and how his shirt brought out the blue in his eyes.

“I did,” she answered, taking another swig after tearing her eyes off of him, “it was nice, quiet. I visited my mom, made sure everyone in the family got their gifts. How about you?”

“Mine was a little less quiet. Might have gotten quite a bit drunk,” Niall muttered, coughing into his fist. “Ya know, the holidays just bring out the drunk old man in me. I was almost ready to go to bed at like, 8pm.”

Tessa laughed. “You and I are alike in our old age,” she teased, “I get wine in my hand, and then I’m ready to pass out in like two hours.”

Niall snorted. “Tess, you can just about drink me under the table. I don’t believe ya.”

She lifted her beer bottle up. “Ah yes, with beer and maybetequila, on a good day. But wine? That fucker knocks me out. AfterI get super wine-drunk, though. That’s typically when I watch my murder documentaries.”

His eyes widened. “Your what? Are ya tellin’ me that you get drunk and watch murder shows? Doesn’t that, like, freak you out?”

Tessa shook her head. “Nah. As previously mentioned, I watch them and promptly pass the fuck out. So, I’m good, Ni.” She grinned; she had never called him that before, but he had given her a nickname, so she felt it fair. And it felt good, too.

“Christ, Tess. You’re mental.”

The bar started to fill up as they laughed and bantered, catching up. The more drinks she got in her, the bolder she became. When Niall told a joke, she even laughed and placed her hand on his arm, the classic flirty move. He didn’t seem to mind at all, merely smiling at her, eyes crinkled up at the edges. She let her hand rest there for a moment before moving on – she knew how to do this. That guy she had hooked up with a month ago had stood zero chance against her charms.

“Ya know, Tess, whenever I don’t see you for a while, I go and binge some of my favorite videos of yours.” Niall admitted hours later. There was a mottled red to his face and neck – he was drunk. Not badly, but enough that she could tell, and she knew he was definitely feeling it.

But Tessa was drunk too. There was a buzz in her brain, and she was livingfor it.

“Aw,” she pouted out, “that’s so sweet. I can’t believe you even like my videos. They’re ridiculous.”

“They’re funny,” he countered. “You’re funny, Tess. I can’t imagine anyone disliking you or your videos.”

“I do have a few haters,” she said after thinking for a minute. “Wait, do you want to see the first hate comment I got? I screenshot it.” Without waiting for his response, Tessa dug her phone out of her purse and scrolled back in her photos, squinting at her screen. After about a minute of searching, she found it and tapped on it. “Here! Look at this beauty.”

It had been posted under her first video; she cackled to see it now and passed the phone over to Niall. It read ‘so a fat bitch doesn’t know how to put makeup on. What else is new? Get over yourself’. It was the funniest shit to her, and she couldn’t stop giggling as she took her phone back from Ni when he handed it to her, but when she looked at him, he wasn’t laughing with her.

In fact, he looked kind of sad. He was frowning, lashes lowered, like he was studying the table they were sitting at. “That’s mean. You’re not any of those things, Tess.”

She blinked in surprise, caught off guard by this sudden change of emotion. “No, Niall, I’m a bitch overall, a badass bitch in fact. And also, I believe I’m average sized, but whatever. It doesn’t bother me. People are going to say that they’re going to say. The most I can do is laugh and move on.”

“Good. Good, I’m glad, because ya certainly don’t deserve that sort of treatment.” The venom in Niall’s voice surprised her even more; he looked upset still, that frown further etched into the crevices of his face.

“Ni, what’s wrong? It doesn’t bother me, really. Drunk or sober.” She reached across the table and grabbed his hand; a total Drunk Tessa move. But she wasn’t trying to flirt with him. She just wanted him to smile again and be happy. “I mean, you know this kind of hate. We both get it.”

He sighed and let her hold his hand, stroking his thumb over the top of hers. It made her shiver, in the best way. “I know. But that shit hurts too, especially when you’re young. I didn’t and don’t deserve it, and neither do you.” His voice was firm at the end, adamant. She could see how strongly he believed this in his eyes, felt it in the grip he had on her hand.

It felt like a moment where she could lean over and kiss him.

But she didn’t, and the moment broke when she smiled and murmured a quiet “thank you” and the conversation moved on.

Another hour later, and she was ready to call it. She called for an Uber on the app, and made sure Niall did the same, even though he protested. “You may be Irish, but it doesn’t make you immune to car crashes.” She had told him, and though sullen-looking, he had agreed and gotten one.

Hers came first, of course. Niall walked her out, and before she got inside the car, Tessa leaned in and wrapped him in another fierce hug. “I’ll see you again soon, yeah?” she asked, still not letting go.

Niall wrapped his arms back around her, rubbing her back gently. “Yeah, ‘course Tess. Ya know I love to see ya. Text me when you get home, okay?”

The concern in his voice made her heart melt, and before she could think twice about it, Tessa pulled away and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “Bye, Niall.” She smiled softly at him and got into the car, leaving him looking half-stunned on the sidewalk.

As the car drove away, she could have sworn that he reached up and touched his cheek right where she had kissed it.

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[wolfpawn]

Life Is a Game Of Risks, Chapter 9

Chapter Summary -  Tom takes time to assess his reaction to Alexianna's situation, including speaking to her, revealing more about her situation, and another conversation with a still irked Sarah, who adds a little more insight for Tom.

TRIGGERS - Past domestic abuse, Past emotional abuse, Past sexual abuse.

Previous Chapter

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Tags: @damalseer @hiddlesbitch1

It took half an hour of thinking through his thoughts before Tom got up the courage to bring up Alexianna's number in his phone and press the call button. At first, he thought she had seen who was calling and decided to not answer, but after a moment more, the line picked up. 'Hello?'

'Lexi, hi.'

'Hi, Tom.' Her tone told him she wasn't overly pleased it was him.

'I owe you an apology for my leaving so suddenly the other day.'

'Is your mum alright?' Her voice was clipped and to the point.

'Yeah, it wasn't an emergency at all, not really, she was renewing her vows for her China anniversary, or is it platinum, they changed it in recent years.'

'Okay, that is so cute.' Alexianna's tone became softer immediately. 'Aw, she and Paul were always so sweet together.'

'Yes, and apparently my procrastinating at getting to Suffolk meant she and Paul thought I would not come back in time for it, so they made Emma lie to me.'

'That's sort of mean.'

'I'm glad someone sees it the same as I did.' He smiled for a moment before his smile fell. 'I also owe you an apology for how I acted the other evening when I met...'

'I didn't hide her on purpose.' Tom let Alexianna speak. 'I know it is daunting, and I know some people do not want to have partners with kids from previous relationships, and I respect that, not everyone wants kids. I understand, but I never intended for us to go there at all, much less that fast, so I never got to tell you properly.'

'You never wanted us to...'

'I did not think you were interested.'

'I was, I am.'

'But when you saw Lily...'

'I was not prepared for her, that's all.' Tom inhaled deeply. 'I handled it wrong, and as a result, I acted terribly. I made myself out to be a prick of the highest order.'

'Not the highest order, trust me, you are a far cry from that.' Alexianna assured him.

'Can I ask...?'

'Yes, she is Jonathon's.' Tom assumed that to be her ex-husband since she never said his name before. 'He left when she was born, the day she was born.'

His eyes widened. 'How...?'

'During the pregnancy, he insisted on finding out the gender, I didn't want to, I wanted a surprise. They told us we were having a boy, and everything was fine, we got ready for a boy.' Tom frowned. 'When she was born...in the delivery room when they said they had got it wrong, it happens about five to ten per cent of the time, well he just left.'

'He left the delivery room?'

'I was in theatre, there were complications, so it was a section birth, and he walked out. When I rang him a few hours later to ask him to bring in the rest of the baby clothes we had bagged for the hospital, he never answered the phone. I got a call at two in the morning, he said not to bother him again. I had clearly been cheating on him.'

'How did he deduce that?'

There was a silence for a moment before she answered him. 'Real men don't have girls, apparently.' Tom's mouth fell open at her words. 'He called me every name I have ever heard and more besides for a whore and that was the last time I ever heard from him. It's been me and Lily since. Daniel picks up a lot of the slack, he came back from abroad to help for a while and everything. Marie was of no help.'

'I am so sorry.' Tom only then realised he was on the verge of tears. He thought of the little blue-eyed girl, cuddling into her mother, clearly elated to see her home from her day's work and study. He could not fathom a situation where a father would abandon their child based on its gender.

'You didn't do it, he did. She doesn't know about him, she never asks and I never tell. How do I tell her that?'

'And how do you lie and say anything else because then she will start wondering why he is not there and if she tries to find him and he rejects her...' Tom added.

'Exactly.' Alexianna seemed relieved he understood. 'I did plan to tell you, I swear, but it's not like it's the first thing you say to people.'

'Hi, I am Alexianna Hughes, I am a mother, thirty-one and an Aquarius.' Tom put his voice up a few pitches to attempt a female tone causing Alexianna to laugh.

'Yeah, something like that.' Her smile was blatant over the phone. 'Thank you, Tom.'

'What for?'

'Your terrible habit of making me smile.'

'I endeavour to do so frequently.' Tom grinned. 'When I get back, could I perhaps convince you to finally have a full cup of tea with me?'

'Always with the tea.'

'I am trying to get a full cup of tea before I work my way up to dinner.' he felt someone looking at him, turning around, he saw Sarah standing behind him, slightly startled to hear him on the phone. 'Lexi, I am sorry to cut this short, but I am being called back inside. I will ring you when I get back to London if that's okay with you of course.'

'I will talk to you then, tell your mum and Paul I say congratulations.'

'I will. Bye.' he hung up the phone and looked at his sister. 'Yes?'

'What are you doing?' Sarah demanded. 'If you are stringing her along...'

'You were right.' Sarah paused and looked at him in shock. 'You were completely right. I was being ridiculous and yes, at thirty-one years old, of course, Lexi was going to have a past. And me getting judgemental about it was wrong. Mom had three of us. Lexi only has Lily.'

'That's a really nice name,' Sarah smiled. She looked at her brother. 'What?' Tom shook his head but did not speak, his hands shaking, Sarah well able to recognise the sheer anger in her brother’s expression. ‘Tom, whatever it is, tell me, it will stay between us.’

'If you tell mum or Emma I will never speak to you again.'

‘I swear, on Sophie.'

'Lexi's husband was a prick. He was abusive and manipulative and when Lily was born and he realised she was a girl, he left and never came back.'

Sarah's hand went to her mouth. 'Did you know?'

'When I met Lily, no, she only told me that last bit of information on the phone a minute ago.' Tom revealed. 'I know I should not be talking about it but I have to tell someone.'

'Tom?'

'Who...who abandons a child because it's a girl?' he asked, his frustration finally bubbling to the surface as he paced his mother's garden. 'She is so small, she's a tiny wisp of a thing, as dad would say...and he left them. He left them in the operating theatre and never came back.' again the tears came to his eyes.

'Some people are like that Tom, I don't know what else to say.' Sarah stated, her own voice tight from her emotions on learning such information. 'We can't help the actions of others.' She touched his arm in a comforting manner. 'How did the conversation regarding the situation with Lexi go?'

'She said she understood if I did not want to have kids around, that she knew it wasn't for everyone and that she wouldn't blame me if I did not want any more to do with her.' Tom explained. 'She said she had planned on introducing her properly, that she had not intended to dump the news on me like that.'

'That is very understanding of her. And you are okay with it now?'

'It's not ideal, but I really like Lexi and you were right, she has a past and Lily is here, so I have to accept that or move on, I think I want to try and accept it.'

Sarah nodded sagely. 'Before you go any further Tom, I have to tell you this, because you need to make a properly informed decision.' Tom gave her a concerned look. 'Lily is going to be Lexi's number one priority, no matter what.'

'I know.'

'Your premieres, your jobs, your wants will always come second to her, no matter what.'

'If she was willing to drop her, I would be worried.'

Sarah smiled and nodded. 'Good, as long as you know that.'

'Why do you think like this, you and Yakov...are you alright?'

'Our marriage is fine, it has its ups and downs, they all do, but we are not planning on separating any time soon.' Sarah insisted. 'I have thought about that scenario though, after Sophie was born, I did worry that someday, I could be like mom and yes, I thought about how I would not be able to get someone if they saw I had a daughter.'

Tom was somewhat shocked that Sarah had told him such. 'I never thought...'

'No, we don't, do we? Not when it is nothing to do with us normally.' she sighed before looking back to the door. 'So you actually met her daughter, that's when you first knew about her.'

'The first mention of Lily was when she rushed out of a bedroom and jumped into Alexianna's arms shouting 'Mummy'.'

'That's a bit of a land.'

'It was, yes.' Tom nodded. 'But it explains a lot, her CV gap, her not getting back to college after the accident.'

'Accident?'

'She had a car accident when she was in college, she got banged up and then her husband came along.'

'Then came her daughter and her husband left.’ Tom nodded. ‘Does she talk to her mother still?'

'Her mother blamed her for her marriage failing.'

Sarah scoffed. 'Well, that's fucking rich.'

'I know.'

'At least you don't have to worry about the father getting involved, I bet that makes things more complicated.'

'How do I treat her?' Sarah shook her head slightly, showing him she was unsure what he meant. 'Lily?'

'Like a four-year-old child obviously. You remember Sophie at that age. Just make sure you don't spoil her to make her like you, that will only make Lexi's life harder.'

'The dog bag.'

'The Paw Patrol, what about it?'

'Everything in the house belonging to her is of that.'

'They focus on something. Sophie was Doc McStuffins.'

'Their home is shit.'

'What do you mean?'

'They live in a bedsit.'

'London is expensive, Tom.'

'But they are probably paying a Holy fortune for that bedsit where some other places they wouldn't have to share a bed.'

'Where is it?'

'Just inside Hampstead Heath.'

'She is playing the location game.' Tom frowned. 'You have to live in certain townland lines to qualify to send your kid to a certain school, Lexi is playing that game, Hampstead has better schools, better funded, fewer delinquency issues, she knew that and got what she could afford in that area to ensure Lily got into a good school, she is very smart.' Sarah explained. 'We did something similar, it's why we sold one house and bought one ten minutes away, it's in a better schooling zone.'

'Makes sense. She just never seems to catch a break.'

'She is not letting what happened to bother her Tom, she has accepted it and rolled with it to the extent that she is able to get up and get to college and raise her daughter right. Don't let it bother you.'

'But they share a bed, their home is tiny.'

'You do realise, a hundred years ago whole families shared beds, right? Not everyone's family could afford private schools and everyone having their own bedrooms.'

'Alexianna was privately educated.' Tom pointed out.

'Yes, she is used to more, I am sure at the beginning it was a slap in the face to her, but she is still kicking.' Sarah smiled. 'Come on, dinner's ready.'

#Life is a Game of Risks #chapter 9 #tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston fic

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Wan High Weeping (Part 35)

So my computer is still having issues. It basically nuked itself and so I lost a good portion of my outline for this fic and the entire document that helped me keep track of certain details (such as what professor taught which classes) and what event happened when. Basically I'm going in somewhat blind now. Like I'm relying solely on memory and mine isn't the best. So advanced apologies for any continuity errors, because I lost the documents that helped me prevent those. :/

Katara woke up feeling groggy and weak. She couldn't seem to recall how she had made it into her bed. She was at a party, wasn’t she? She was mad at Sokka, she faintly recalled. She tried to sit up, a wave of dizziness overwhelmed her. It occurred to her that she wasn’t in her bed at all. Everything was white from the walls to the bedspread to the gown she was wearing.

The gown!

She was in a hospital gown.

She closed her eyes, trying to recollect how she had gotten there. She remembered the party. She remembered the irritation. She remembered calling out to Aang and hanging out with TyLee. But it was all so distant.

She looked around the room for anyone who could help explain things to her. Finding no one, she reached for her phone. She checked her texts, all of them were panicked and desperate. Most of them had been sent to Sokka and Suki and then a few to Aang and one to TyLee.

She lifted a hand to her head, it hurt so badly. She wished that she knew how long she had been out for. Scrolling through the messages a picture began painting itself in her head, growing in clarity with each message. Jet had been following her the whole time and at some point she had begun to feel faint.

The rest was a black spot in her mind.

A black spot she could easily fill.

He had done it, he had gotten her.

She didn’t need the memories to push her to tears, the implication was enough. With trembling hands she checked to see if her social media pages had been tampered with, she could see Jet toying with those. But her accounts hadn’t been touched. So she looked at her photo collection.

A decision she grew to regret with a great depth.  

He had used her camera very generously. It was hard to conceptualize what she was seeing. Hard to believe that she was really seeing pictures of her own body strewn out with her shirt pulled up to reveal her bra and a skirt that was pulled just unsettlingly lower.

He had posed her.

He had taken the time to capture her in many different angles.

She didn’t want to know anymore so she set the phone aside and wept. He had done it, he’d gotten her. She was soiled and violated. She gasped out another sob. Why had she gone to that stupid party. She had known that it was a dreadful idea. How could she have let Sokka talk her into it? Why had he tried to do so in the first place?

How could he and Suki have just left her alone when they knew…

She didn’t understand and it was destroying her.

He hadn’t meant her any harm, but lord did he tarnish his reputation as the smart, role model older brother.

It occurred to her that he wasn’t even there.

She needed him so badly and he wasn’t even there.

She wanted to send him a text but the thought of unlocking her phone to see herself so exposed…

She couldn’t stomach the thought of it, let alone actually doing it. She’d have to ask someone else to go through and delete them. But, until she talked to the police, they’d have to remain on her phone.

She curled herself into a ball and sobbed harder.

There was a knock on her door and she heard someone speak. The words never quite computed. She didn’t want company that much. But she found it anyways in the form of Aang and Toph.

For a moment she could forget. “Toph!” She threw her arms around the girl. “Where have you been?”

“Well, I can’t exactly go to school.” Toph muttered. “I guess that’s okay though, because Wan High is basically a mental institution disguised as a high school and from what I’ve heard it’s been nothing but a mess.”

Toph wormed her way out of the embrace and Katara caught sight of her eyes. They had a foggy film over them.

“What happened?”

“So it was pretty crazy, right? I was in my room and suddenly I see this bright beam of light. Next thing I know, I’m lying on a surgical table and these aliens are looming over me. They told me that they were going to give me night vision. I didn’t realize that they meant that I’d only see darkness like it’s always night time.”

Katara sighed, but she was happy to let the tall tale take her away from a brutal reality.

“Anyways, because aliens do unethical things, I am now blind so I’ve been in and out of the hospital a lot. It doesn’t leave much time for school. Actually, I requested the room next to you.”

“Will you be able to see again?”

Toph’s face fell some. “They’re trying, but they’re also starting to suggest some school that work with blind kids. I’m learning to read braille and I might be getting a dog!”

“A dog?”

“I helped her pick him.” Aang remarked. “His name is Appa! He’s really big and I think that he’d be a good match for Toph.”

“I have a feeling that he wasn’t describing any of the other dogs very accurately. But I can’t see for myself, so I have to take Twinkle Toes’ word for it.”

“That sounds really exciting Toph! The dog part, I mean. You said you wanted a dog, right?”

Toph nodded, “I guess that’s one good thing.”

The door opened a second time. Katara expected to see Sokka and Suki standing in the doorway, mirror images of concern. Instead her parents walk in. Her mother’s eyes looked as swollen and red as her own. She hugged her tightly. “Oh God.” She whispered to no one in particular. “I knew that I shouldn’t have let you go to that party! You’re brother, he’s so irresponsible.” She was rubbing her head, looking wholly exhausted. She reminded Katara so much of herself.

“Mom, where is Sokka?”

“Your brother got himself arrested.” Hakoda replied. She couldn’t assess anything from his tone.

“F-for what?” Katara half-whispered.

“For beating up an underage boy.”

“That wasn’t a boy, that was a monster.” Kya grumbled.

“As far as the law sees, he’s an underage boy.” Hakoda replied firmly.

And Katara was teary eyed all over again. “This is all my fault.”

“Oh no. No, no, don’t say that honey.” Her mother’s arms were around her again, this time even tighter.

“But he was defending me.”

“And that’s what you’re going to tell the police when they take you in for questioning.” Hakoda replied.

“I can’t! Not today.” Katara winced.

“No, not today, they’re going to give you some time.” Kya replied.

“But the sooner, the better.”

.oOo.

Sunday was a dream in comparison to the mishap that was Monday. Sunday she got to see Aang and finally got to hear from Toph--good news no less! They hadn’t left her side until their respective families had ushered them home.

Monday showed her no friendly faces. She was faced with a few final tests, mostly concerning what affects the drugs had on her and then she was ushered away for the questioning that had been promised.

The officer, who introduced himself to her as officer Yu-Ron opened up their session with an offering of coffee. To which she shook her head, she wasn’t a big fan of the stuff. That had always been Suki’s thing. She watched him set the cup aside. “Shall we get right into this then?”

Katara nodded, she supposed that it was better to get things over with. The sooner she did, the sooner she could work to put it out of her mind entirely.

“Your friend, TyLee Boyang, she had given me a video of the incident. Do you have any evidence of your own. The video alone is very sturdy, but every bit helps.”

Katara nodded and handed him her phone. “Please delete them after you send them to yourself, I don’t want to have to look at them again.”

He nodded. “Understandable.” He took the phone from her. “Would you mind telling me what you remember of Halloween night?”

“A lot of it is really...fuzzy.” Katara replied. “I think he, Jet, drugged me. I saw him watching me throughout the whole party. Everytime I looked he was there. And then one time I looked, and he wasn’t. And that scared me. After that I started feeling, I don’t know...weird. Or maybe it was a little before that, I really can’t remember.”

“The hospital did find traces of Rohypnol in your system. That would account for the blackout and the memory loss.”

Katara found an ounce of comfort in that Yu-Ron seemed to think things were all adding up. At the very least, her story sounded as real as it was.

“I’m going to ask a favor of you. You do not have to do this if you don’t want to.”

Her tummy knotted.

“Are you willing to watch the video handed to me by Ms. Boyang?”

Katara swallowed. “If it will help get Jet locked up, I-I guess I can.”

“Very well. If you would like to stop at any time, let me know and you don’t have to finish watching it.”

Katara clutched the edge of her chair as he began playing the video. The voice that came through was muffled by static and fuzz, she couldn’t make out what he was saying but his intentions were clear enough. She watched him climb atop her. She could feel herself growing almost numb. The video played on and she watched him tug her shirt off. Somehow it was like watching a movie, it was too surreal. That couldn’t possibly have been her. She swallowed as a tear slipped down her cheek.

“Do you want me to turn it off?”

But the video was almost done, so she let the entire clip roll.

“He got me.” She spoke quietly. “He got what he wanted...he…”

“He didn’t get as far as you think. If it is any comfort, your brother got to him before he could do anything but take your shirt off.”

A weight lifted off of her chest and a lightness settled in. “He didn’t...uh...he didn’t you know…?”

Yu-Ron smiled reassuringly. “No, not quite. But this is still enough to get the boy locked up for a while.”

“What about my brother? He was just trying to help me.”

“I am aware.” Yu-Ron nodded. “We are building a case for that. Ms. Boyang mentioned that a Mr. Chan Haga was present too and that he did a good number on Mr. Akunin.”

It took her a moment to recall that Jet’s last name was Akunin. He had always been Jet to her.

“So you can get Sokka out of jail?”

“I can very well try.”

.oOo.

She still wasn’t up for school the next morning. She wasn’t up for seeing Suki at lunch. Suki who didn’t even bother visiting her at the hospital. She tried to give a little leeway; the father of her baby was in jail. She had to visit him. But, surely, she could have sent a text.

No, Suki was completely silent.

She knew Suki well enough to gauge that the girl knew that Katara was already mad at her. She knew Suki well enough to know that she was trying to give her some space. But this wasn’t a ‘give space’ kind of situation. This was a confrontation kind of situation. No, it was a situation where she very well would have let Suki’s mistake slid, so long as she lent her support.

As well as Suki meant, she was only digging herself in deeper.

As much as she longed for someone to talk to and confide in, she wanted to be angry at Suki. At the perfect person to seek comfort in. But Katara had self-respect. She wasn’t crawling back to Suki without an apology for abandoning her twice over when she needed her the most.

It looked like she would be powering through school alone.

Again.

It chilled her through and through as she dizzily packed her supplies. It didn’t feel right heading off to school as though it were another normal day. It didn’t feel right at all it was jarring and disorienting and she had a feeling her mom would have to listen to her weep the whole way to school.

She knew that, for the first time in their relationship, Kya did not know how to console her.

She didn’t know how to console herself.

She wished she could text Toph. She ended up settling on Aang. It was a shame that those two were not in her lunch hour. She wondered if she would be sitting alone and that doubled her rate of tear fall. God, she was an emotional wreck.

She felt like something half-alive dragging herself to class. She heard the late bell and braced herself for a jolly good time with June. But even she seemed to take pity on Katara’s soul, letting her pass by without a word. She dropped into her seat.

She refused to look up from her paper, it had been an outrage enough to see Chan sitting in the seat behind her unfilled one while Sokka was in jail. She had looked up only once, to catch sight of a very bedraggled Azula. Her hair obscured much of her face, but Katara could swear that she saw some bruising. She ran her fingers through her own decently messy, and dreadfully unwashed hair, she had to be imagining things.

The bell rang and she hustled out before Chan or Chu-Leng could catch her.

.oOo.

She slid into her usual lunch seat, dreading the moment when Suki would plop down next to her and pretend like nothing was wrong. Just when she was beginning to think that Suki wasn’t going to show up, she heard a lunch tray clamor on the table.

Katara made a point of not looking up.

“Hey, Kat.” Suki greeted.

Katara put an extra effort into enjoying her lunch meat.

“I’m gonna sit down, okay?”

She dug around in her lunchbox and fished out a star shaped sandwich and a note from her mother. If she read that, then she wouldn’t have to think about the girl who sat down next to her.

“Are you doing okay?”

Her mother’s note was longer than usual, reminding her that she was brave and strong and that she would get through this one. That the whole family would and that they would come out stronger still. Of course she sprinkled in more mundane commentary about having a nice day at school. She folded the note up and slipped it back into her pocket. Her elbow brushed against Suki. “I wish you stuck this close to me at the party.”

An audible glup let Katara know that Suki was well aware that she was in deep.

Katara almost caved.

“I didn’t mean to…”

“You knew that I needed your help. The only reason I came to that party was to hang out with you and Sokka!” She snapped. “I was wondering why you didn’t just want to hang out at home instead. It’s harder to sneak away from your friend to have sex when it’s just the three of you.”  So maybe it wasn’t the only reason, Aang was a pretty good part of it, but that wouldn’t help guilt Suki.

Suki’s head dipped. “I know, it was stupid.”

“Stupid, yeah. Funny how I got to pay the price for your stupidity this time around.” Katara flinched, she didn’t know where any of that had come from. She had never been this angry before. Not with a friend. She had never said anything like that to a friend before. She knew that she should apologize.

Instead she let an oppressive awkward silence befall them.

One that filled the entirety of the lunch hour.

.oOo.

Her second day back at school was no charmer either. June still didn’t interrogate her for her tardiness, but that didn’t alleviate the red that Chan’s presence put in her vision. His voice roused her temper more, even if his insults weren’t aimed at her.

"That's true, it's a gift that keeps on giving. Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen anyone eat like that! I don't know how you can eat so much at once."

 She couldn’t say why it bothered her so much to hear him say those words, really, Azula would have laughed if he were saying something like that to her. But still, his laughter drove her nearly mad. Perhaps it was because she could imagine him laughing like that knowing that Sokka was being punished for a crime he had a hand in. Katara lingered in the doorway as he added "There's something wrong with you."

 She could see that Azula had murmured something back as she seated herself.

 "Careful, you're going to break it!" Chan remarked, earning himself a high five. Azula mumbled something else and the laughter died away. Maybe it was finally occuring to him that he was an awful excuse of a boy. Katara took her own seat, rubbing at eyes that were so red they might as well be bleeding. She really needed to stop crying. But, lord, was it hard not to. Frankly, she just longged to go home.

She glanced at Azula.

Perhaps she should say something. Despite it all, she was beginning to feel awful for her. The stage of Azula so closely resembled her own, she couldn’t possibly be doing well. She almost did, but she lost her nerve. She didn’t want to risk one more bad thing.

.oOo.

She resigned herself to another lonely lunch. One that would leave her mind wandering. Aang was too much of a teacher’s pet to text in class, not that she wasn’t right there with him on that, but she really could use the conversation.  Toph couldn’t text and TyLee had just sent a text asking for luck with another round of questions with Yu-Ron. The poor girl must be exhausted. Katara knew that she was. The in depth interrogation she was subjected to after school yesterday had been an unpleasant surprise. But, apparently, their talk with Jet led them to question her again.

With Suki sitting at the other end of the table the questions repeated in her mind. She couldn’t even count on her fingers the number of ways they had phrased the same questions. She had an even slimmer ability to count how many different officers and lawyers she was introduced to. It was so completely overwhelming.

She practically begged the universe to slap her with some sort of distraction.

And a cruel genie the universe was.

"I heard about the party." "Heard about it?” Katara couldn’t keep the spite out of her voice. “You were there." "I left early…" Just like that, empathy hit her all over again. She recalled Chan’s remarks, she could see it in Azula’s posture, that they were getting to her. So she tried to sound less cold. "Right." A complete failure. "If it's any solace, he tried feeling me up." Katara didn’t know how to respond so she just let Azula continue. “I was just laying there."

She found herself twice as empathetic. But at the same time she couldn’t help but be a tad jealous. "I wish that, that was all he did to me." "He didn't actually…?" "No, TyLee stopped him." She really didn’t want to talk about this. Especially not with Azula. The girl who had probably the second biggest hand in spreading around the whore rumors. She caught Azula nod. "TyLee can fight when it matters." Katara smirked to herself at the opportunity, Azula had just granted her."Unlike some people." She uttered it just loud enough to coxa a reaction from Suki. She hated the involuntary stab of guilt that came with having said it, so she engages Azula some more.  "Why do you care?" "I don't think that you're a slut." The confession made her want to weep. Out of joy, relief, or something else, she couldn’t quite grasp. But she had to know. She needed an answer to a question that had been on her mind for so long. "Then why did you say it? Over and over again." Really, that one ought to be good.” "I don't know." Azula was speaking much too quietly, it sparked something in Katara. Maybe she should let up a little, the other girl was already having a hard time. But that small voice within reminded her that Azula wouldn’t have cared. A year back she probably would have still been harassing her even knowing her predicament.  "I guess I'm just a bad person." Azula finished. Katara's sighed, how was it that Azula was making it this hard to stay angry with her? Maybe it was simply Katara herself, who was being too forgiving for her own good. Regardless she replied, "you're not a bad person…" She didn’t know if she believed her own words, but she supposed that if Azula was taking the time to give her own version of an apology it had to count for something. She sighed again, she supposed that after everything, it would be hard for the other girl to not change. Before she could address the matter further, Azula diverted the conversation. “I liked your costume, it suited you." To be honest, it was a refreshing subject, one that led her to think about lighter aspects of her life. "thanks, my mom made if for me." A dash of dread crept in. Her costume was just about as kiddish as her silly mermaid backpack. And the fact that her mother had made it for her?

She waited for the mockery. "Is she a seamstress or something?” The question was innocent enough. She shook her head, "no, but Gram Gram was. Sewing is just a hobby." If only she had sewn the threads a little tighter. Maybe added some more straps... Mercifully, Azula cut into her thoughts. "That's one hell of a hobby." "Yeah! It's fun too, sometimes we do some sewing together.” Her gratitude for the interruption comes in the form of a more joyful tone. She hoped that maybe it would comfort Azula some to know that she was cheering Katara up at least a little.  “and mom teaches me about different traditional patterns!" Azula’s own expression seemed to turn, something that looked like it could be relief. Maybe acceptance. There was nothing vicious behind it, but something was intangibly unsettling Katara about it. The sudden shift wasn’t boarding well with her. But she couldn’t say why so instead she carried on the conversation. "Have you ever done any sewing before?" Azula shook her head. She was being much too meek. Much too soft-spoken. She considered that Azula could use something to look forward to. "Maybe, if you want, I can show you how. I could use a distraction." She was almost certain that Azula could take her mind away from Jet. But her reply wasn’t as enthusiastic as Katara had anticipated. "Maybe…" "Uh…yeah…" Katara trailed off. That was kind of a conversation ender. Had the idea really been that unappealing. "I am going to talk to Teo." "Oh, yeah, okay." Katara replied. Something needed addressing but she couldn’t place it. She was torn between asking Azula if she wanted to bring Teo to her table and asking her just what had compelled her to start a conversation anyways. Had this been something she’d planned for awhile and finally had the guts or the motivation to do so?

She didn’t realize that she had actually really hoped for Azula to say yes, until the girl had walk away.

The ominous feeling stuck with her. She chewed her sandwich, this one in the shape of a heart. She had trouble swallowing it, her stomach was doing flip flops. There was something so wrong. She took out her mom’s note. ‘Be strong today. Lots of love. Make me proud.’ It was just the sort of simple thing her mom would say.

She watched Azula walk out of the cafeteria.

Lots of love.

Azula didn’t seem to get much of that.

She drummed her fingers on the table nervously. She wanted to follow Azula out, but the thought of hall monitors made her skin crawl. She didn’t want to make more trouble for herself.

She clutched her mother’s note.

Make me proud.

She stood up.

TyLee had saved her, it was her turn to save someone else. Even if it got her in trouble. Even if Azula wasn’t in any danger at all. She supposed she’d rather look like a paranoid fool then…

Then what? What did she think was going to happen?

In the back of her mind she knew exactly what she was fretting.

She checked the bathroom first, it was empty.

Her next thought was to go to the parking lot. She racked her brain for the image of Azula’s car. It had been a while since the girl had pulled up to give her a ride. She supposed that she would know that car if she saw it.

She scanned the lot, trying to keep her fear from rising. She couldn’t afford to be frantic, lest she overlook the car. At last she spotted it. But she froze up. What if her presence just made things worse. What if Azula didn’t want to see her.

The panic was settling it, she didn’t know how to handle this one. She heard a ruckus and caught sight of Teo. He came to a stop and locked eyes with her. She pointed to the car and watched him wheel to it. She would let him keep Azula company, that was probably the safest route. Her job was to go back inside and get help.

.oOo.

She watched them load them load Azula into the ambulance. Her body was so pale, she didn’t think that Azula had made it. She didn’t know anyone living who had skin that shade.

Her arms were achy from trying to keep Azula from hurting herself further during her spasming.

Katara felt so defeated. She let herself become a victim and she had let Azula die. She should have talked to her sooner. She should have let her spite go when she heard Chan making his ridiculous jokes. She wondered it it would have made a difference if she would have told Azula that Chan was wrong. If she would have told her that she was still a pretty girl. The sort Katara envied. But then, who knew how long Azula had been planning this one.  

She looked at her mother’s note. “I tried, mom. I really, really tried.”

She wasn’t much up for physical contact, but she thought that Teo could use a hug. He was much closer to Azula, this was probably tearing him apart. Principal Roku, ever so stern, broke up the embrace and motioned them back to class.

For awhile they lingered in the hall and she vented to him about Sokka, about her case, and about how everything was just such a general mess."This school is such a disaster.” As Teo had noted.

"It was never like this at my old school."

She wished that she had begun talking to him earlier on.  "I wish I never met Jet." She concluded.

"Tell me about it." He replied, making her yearn even more for a time machine.

.oOo.

The rest of the day dragged by agonizingly slow. She thought about what she was going to tell her mother. Honesetly, she was at her wits end. How much misery could cling to and surround one person. She didn’t know what she had done to deserve this. Save for making one mistake, one simple mistake. Save for being too trusting.

She shut her locker and looked to the one next to hers. Azula’s locker was a mess of printouts and what looked like soda. She picked up one of the sheets and cringed. An Usha trademark that reminded her of Halloween all over again.

She is filled with regret all over again for not trying to help Azula sooner. For letting her spite get the best of her. She groaned to herself, maybe she ought to learn from this one. She whipped out her phone and asked Suki if she wanted to drop by her house in an hour or so. "Are you okay, Katara?" Katara jumped. When she turned around to see TyLee she replied. "I…too much is happening at once." Her voice was growing all weak. "What's going on?" It was hard for her to choke the words out. But finally she got the there. “She killed herself, Ty." And her tears flow, unchecked. It settled in, in full that she could have saved Azula but didn’t because she choose to harbor anger instead. It was just the kind of thing her mother didn’t like her to do.

"Who?"

"Azula." "How do you know!?" TyLee cries. "Teo and I found her." She answered miserably. "I…she talked to me before…" She should have seen it sooner. She really should have. Azula had made it pretty plan a number of times. At the very least, her distress had been obvious. "She talked to me too." TyLee replied softly.  She too had some tears to shed. "I was going to drive home with her today…" Her hiccuping matched Katara’s own.  "Is she really gone?" Katara wrapped her arms around her.  "I'm not sure.” She paused, she really hoped that she was wrong. “It sounded like it, but I don't know. They wouldn't tell me anything." She really didn’t understand why they were keeping her in the dark. She was one of the people who had found Azula! As if things couldn’t be any more miserable, TyLee noted, "I was going to drive home with her, Katara. We were going to go to my house and I was going to show her my new hamster and we were going to catch up…" Apparently, Katara wasn’t the only one with a heap of ‘if only’s’.  "We were going to be friends again…"

She somehow knew the feeling, she thought that she might have been ready to give Azula a chance.

.oOo.

Suki was snoring on the sofa close to her. On a normal day, sleepovers weren’t allowed on school days. But her mother didn’t put up a fight when Suki asked if they could have the extra time to talk things over. Kya had agreed, under the guise that Katara could use the company.

If she were being honest, even with the hours of chatter and discussion, Suki still didn’t give her a satisfactory answer as to why she thought it was a good idea to have her alone time with Sokka. Eventually Katara resigned to accepting, “okay, it was a horrible idea, I was just tipsy and horny.”

A horrible excuse, but at least it was an honest answer.

She was still furious but she didn’t want to leave Suki entirely alone to deal with her pregnancy concerns and the guilt.

Afterall, guilt was eating Katara alive, she wouldn’t ever willfully impose that on someone else. So Suki slept on the sofa in her living room and she took the floor. A bowl of spilled popcorn littered the room for her mom to fuss over.

The baby had Suki sound asleep and she was ready to turn the TV on to drown out mental images of her in only a bra and Azula on a stretcher. She feared that the two events would merge into one horrible scene courtesy of a nightmare, so she refused to sleep.

Her phone sounded. Instinctively she feared the buzz. She reminded herself that Jet was either in the hospital with no phone or in a cell. She picked it up, hoping for maybe Aang. Or better yet a message from Sokka telling her that they had decided to let him go after all.

She had received neither. But she supposed that the message she did recieve was a blessing in its own way. It was a simple, albeit, awkward thank you.

Katara looked at the clock. She wouldn’t be sleeping easy. She hadn’t expected anything of the sort, but she conversed with Azula for a good portion of the night.

#Avatar #Katara #Azula #TyLee #Suki #Sokka #Toph #Aang #Mai #Teo #Jet #Chan #Fanfiction