#anyway this post was brought to you by my inability to not note down every quote that makes me laugh
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I finally compiled my masterlist of mmni quotes
It's pretty long so it's below the cut
Lasers and Quasars
“I really think they shouldn't have a thing for brooms. I think it's unfortunate that our movie hinges on them having a broom fetish”
I Found it in the Bushes
“Sean, I'm Keith. Sean. Sean. Sean.”
“The actor playing the vampire is now openly laughing at the guy playing igor.”
-
“Yes dad.”
“I'm reminding myself. Sean.”
“Dad, Keith.”
“Yes. Thats me I'm Keith you're Sean.”
“I'm Sean you're Keith.”
“Yes”
“You're the fireman.”
“I've come to the conclusion that it is infact a fire and you should put it out. Good day.”
“The firemen in Versailles don't put out the fires themselves?”
“I'm just Piecing together to story of petunia. So she was a woman who did not believe in vampires but died at the hands of a vampire which meant that Keith delivered his life to try to kill a vampire but seconds before she died - of a vampire - he divorced her.”
“Nope, they're not allowed to.”
-
Who Bun It
“Are you alright? Your beak fell off your face. Must you possibly see a doctor.”
Flat Pack Attack
“May I have a moment alone with the boy?”
“What I like about Steve is only 2 seconds ago he was called ben.”
-
“No need to be angry, no need to grieve. Hello, Steve.”
“Of course I'll be upstairs preparing my finger.”
-
“It's Ben.”
-
“You look like you could use some advice well I'll tell you something extra special nice.”
-
“You have a feeling like the tightening of a sphincter. well that's probably just the feeling of amygdala”
-
“Theres a jar of preserves inside me. That's right I must get it out as fast as I can the only way I know how. I'm gonna use some of these things at the IKEA store to get it out of myself.”
“That was Delta Von Tassle: The Man With No Name (Self-managed).
-
From Russia with Gloves
“You've surely got a family koala. You could go away with them. You're such a good friend of mine.”
“Koalas are polygamous y'know... Polyamorous”
-
“You want to drive a speedboat to the amazon?”
“I love the full body glove, makes you're whole body look like hand and I like big hand.”
-
“I do”
“It'll take all bloody week”
-
“Sometimes I've wondered about slipping a hand in your pouch but then I've thought no, don't - resist”
“You are a useless man but you're damn fast on Expedia and I appreciate that.”
-
“Yes I've thought the same thing about you.”
-
“Im so sorry Georgina. You said they would all be adopted and looked after but instead they've been stuffed full of drugs and slit ear to ear. I don't know what to say really.”
-
“Together we got rid of the glove and now I'm ready for some interspecies love”
“It doesn't bother you that I'm all skin and no fluff....or a bit of fluff.”
-
A Cat in the Habit
“No, you don't have horses in america do you?”
“I love the moment where sister Penelope really thinks this scene has ended and the camera will cut away from me but then she is answered by God.”
-
“I've seen you up at that convent, riding around on your horse with your top off, all oiled up.”
“No no only camels”
-
“She's teaching me about how to be a person in the world. How to love somebody else. No matter who you are.”
“You know I like to be smooth dad.”
-
“How to do erotic drawings of men.”
“God can do all of that son.”
“Yes, God not massively known for his eroticism in his artwork”
-
“Celeste is it? I can smell you a mile off. Named after the sky but stinking of hell.”
-
“Perhaps instead of the harpoons, we could read scriptures from the ok! Magazine and pray for her.”
“You may try your harpoons but it will not work if you've a rogue nun on your hands.”
-
“Katie Price breaks up with her latest boyfriend”
“Victoria Beckham redecorates her kitchen”
“Pregnancies....galore”
Careless Whisper
“Well you know often these things first time round are tricky. Maybe you just need to give it another go. You know what they say, give things another go.”
“Listen I know you're my special special special boy”
“That's what they always say.”
-
“I'm 4 specials and nothing more.”
Dressed for Danger
“I must be alone with each and every one of you.”
“Do you need thin translucent cloth that is almost completely pointless? Well then you need muslin cloth”
-
“And if you must do that then you've gotta find us first cause we do that via the game of hide and seek.”
“OK 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1″
“Tony I see you behind the umbrella”
“Damn it you're good!”
“I know. I am French.”
-
“Yes you are moist and sad from crying”
-
“I am afraid you are in the midst of a murderer”
“This is not case closed. This is case wide open, like a clam.”
-
“I'm in the midst of a murder?!”
“Murderer!”
“In the - you are - as in -”
“I'm in the midst of a murderer?”
“No you are like-you are standing in the same room as a murderer.”
“There's a murderer in the midst?!”
“I am going to do scene 2 of the show. Celia opens the show and now you will show me what came next. And by showing me what came next, you will show me what went before.”
“Yes. Your midst! In our midst!”
-
A Cop in the Ocean
“I never stopped being dastardly in general did I?”
“Oh my god, a clown with a Squeegee”
-
“I guess not boss”
“No I just continued to be moist and dastardly but what I wanna do is get a whole crew of girlscouts fiddlin' cookies all over the good part of town.”
“Do a blood test on them and a urine test and you'll find blood in their system. Blood and- and drugs.”
“I can whip up some girl scouts for fiddling if you want that boss.”
-
High Tide School
“Kids have the spirit of a thousand... Enlightened Buddhists”
Suicide Squid
“I just believe fish shouldn't make people rich”
-
“Their horrid squid outward is my horrid squid inward.”
“Some people wanna be rich. Some people want fame. But others just wanna kill fish.”
-
“You were hurt, you were lost, so you killed all the fish. We've all been there.”
“It’s too late for us we are outward squid”
-
Now Museum Now You Don’t
“Don't try anything boys. My teeth are faster than a nun’s nugget”
-
“My teeth are definitely faster. Your nugget is essentially stationary.”
-
“Never try to take revenge on a small bitter man when its gone past his bedtime cause he will just make you go ‘shlum’ for 15 minutes”
“I'm not who I was and you are who you were”
-
Light Over the Rocks
“You know what they say, you know what I say your father he just-he just rubbed the rock and roll right out of me he ruined rock and roll for me forever when he ran off and left you and I and you and I, you”
“Us”
“Us that's the word I was looking for, us.”
-
“Y’know what they say about Oranges... They never stop being juicy. And that's why my hair is orange so I'm always juicy y'know what I mean. I've always been like this. Y'know what they say about lights... They're bright and they burn”
“Ooh dear oh dear oh dear. That's how it always goes down at the open mic night. Some people get recognised. Some people get left behind. But what do I know, I'm just Chesney Hawkes.”
-
The Quest for Escape a Lot
“How did you know my one weakness was nets Arthur?”
“Everyone's weakness is nets, tim. That's why they're called nets. It stands for not easily traversible.”
“What about the s?”
“System. Not easily traversible system.”
Look Out
“I only ever picked up sticks because I loved you. But now I'm scared. I'm scared, without any sticks, I'll have nothing. I won't be the same man I was before”
“Paul there is always a stick. The stick within Paul. Don't you know about it? Think about it, it runs all the way from your head to the bottom bit of the spine thing”
Enter the Elephant
“Well you know what they say about cockneys. Fly pluckers, the lot of em.”
“The Young one is foolish. Only a rash man snatches ovaries at a fight."
-
Love Behind Bars
“Yes you did your tax things and I did that thing where I stole... Hair... From the hairdressers... The floor...i took all the hair no one even wants that y'know”
“I know and here we are on the maximum security wing in prison”
-
“In what way is good mental health like a walnut latte? Like that-no! You can't just have a song and jig enough that it all makes sense. The next verse explains from a scientific point of view. How a walnut latte and mental health are in any way alike.”
“You know what, I always find walnuts so romantic. The way they look like a tiny brain. It makes me think of my brain connecting with your brain.”
-
“Well it makes perfect sense because, which camera are we on, okay you know I'm gonna explain this scientifically cause if you get a walnut and you like the taste of the walnut and it gives you endorphins which actually improves your mental health so if you're eating the walnut then you make your mental health better that's how a walnut oat milk latte improves your mental health”
Temple of the Red Giraffe
“I’m giving you the jewels”
“I thought you were burning my breasts off”
“No its a common mistake but I wasn't”
Nightmare on Bone Street
“You taught your dog to laugh?”
“pride comes before a fall remember”
“Yes he understands the rhythm of comedy very well.”
-
“yes but I don't believe in gravity”
-
“A wardrobe a wardrobe my kingdom for a wardrobe.”
“The lead less dog stops licking out the cream from that dead man. For God's sake get off the floor.”
-
Wishing for Wishy Washy
“I know most girls want ponies not a horrible sick old horse like me”
“Look at that horrible horse!”
“I've got an udder and I don't know why.”
-
When the narrative gets tough everyone else deserts Harry Kershaw to allow him to carry on on his own
“Congratulations on your womb”
-
Fraud of the Blings
“I've made the rope sentient.. Hello!?”
“You've given us our sense of purpose back. You've made us make sense again.” [just something Jonathan said that made me emotional]
“Help me I am a sentient rope. I have knowledge. For the first time I have knowledge. HELP ME! WHAT AM I WHAT AM I WHAT AM I WHY MUST THE ROPE EXIST. WHY DO I DANGLE SO?”
-
Over the Henge
“Yes, I remember our young days, days where we were young, young before we were old but after we were very young. We were young men not knowkng where to go. But we went there, then we came back from there. We were just young of course. Not old, young. Soon to be young - old. Soon to be old.”
“You do speak a tremendous amount of bollocks sir”
“As all kings must”
The Hound of the Wensleydales
“I was stuffed with a cheese puffed”
“Did cheese Radio just call him a ball bag? I think cheese radio needs to remember that this is a family show.”
-
“Yeah she's dead and it would appear The method of murder was cheese puffed”
Popes on the Ropes
“Vampires v popes that's how it's always been in the WWE.”
“Always and forever since BC”
“It's an old, old profession.”
“Popes were around BC?”
“That's right.”
“Yeah we were real forward thinking then.”
“All dinosaurs work for the catholic church”
“We knew it was coming.”
-
Zoomania
“We've got 8 minutes left and we've got story strands everywhere! We've got the elephant with a bomb on about to be dropped onto the earth, they’ve become gangsters about to kill people and our lead characters are frozen still.”
“Who's the tortoise pervert”
-
Singing in the Aisles
“Asda is a wizard it would seem”
A Dice with Death
“It is an unusual form of ventriloqy to begin with your mouth wider than when you were speaking yourself”
-
“It was all building nicely but now all of a sudden we found out that one of them is a cloud.”
-
“I’ve got my own show. I disappear into another man's box every night, I get confused, I don't know where I am, and then bang I'm in a curtain call”
-
“I am dissipating. Someone sprayed me with silver nitrate.”
“I am an elemental creature we cannot be together. Our children would be half human half vapour they would not survive.”
-
“No, I don't even know what that means!”
“It dissipates clouds.”
“What?”
“you need to know more advanced chemistry.”
“He's still putting his trust in the mass proposing ventriloquist”
“I don't think I do.”
-
Star Paws
“Of course the world needs intelligence but I'll tell you what else it needs, balls.”
“Which you come with many”
“I bring balls in spades not literally”
“Sir you can't keep your balls in the cupboard anymore you'll have to take them back”
“There we are”
“Did he just put his balls back on? So he's literally a man who has lots of testicles that's what's going on there.”
Angstronauts
“You make sure that this ship is ship shape ready.”
“Ribena shareth? Yee.”
-
“I was gonna touch your hand but then I thought it would be horrible cause they're so sweaty.”
“It's always in the shape of a ship.”
-
“Mine are like pickled clams.”
If it Wasn't for Those Pesky Kids
“It's unusual to blackmail someone during a press conference”
Abandoned Love
“I don't know what's weirder, that they didnt book or that the hats belonged to the premises”
“That's jazz.”
Good Guys Finish Last
“I convinced Dec that he should actually do the double act with a real ant but um...he said no. And that was a good call.”
-
“I am the sea! Deeper than a thousand lakes, wider than 10 lakes, sideways greater in measurement Than 40 lakes. I am the sea.”
“He ain't no friend of yours. He's been using you like toothpaste. Well it's time the toothpaste became the toothpastee”
-
Ipswitch it up
“These people with their newfangled things, internet, cars! I tell you what, I was very happy with the flip phone and a horse.”
Croydonosaurus
“That man-ladybird has been the only thing that I've had in my life the last 5 years that has made me feel again. It's why I'm so competitive with my daughter about love.”
“That doesn't seem healthy. Bringing a 6 foot ladybird into the family home.”
“I suppose it's about a 1 all right now.”
Back to the Tutor
“Nana you don't think my old friends will think it's weird or strange that my date is my grandma do you?”
“Before we went out to do this with a new team the one thing we said was let's keep it simple at the start. Already we have a half car assembled by a woman who is also the radio. Hold on tight everyone.”
-
“It's not weird or strange at all to have your - such a lovely busty lady as your date”
“No you're right. It's wasn't so much the busty as the grandma that I was worried about.”
Pier Today Gone Tomorrow
“You take a grudge and you nurture it like a small cat.”
-
No. No I don't think she's the strange one in this. It was the parrot, the sleeping bag man and the medieval princess in a tiktok office interviewing for the role of 'friend' they are the strange things! A woman trying to turn over a new leaf - that's pretty regular I'd say.
“What has happened. It was all going really well, I thought this was going to be a quick scene where we saw it was really hard for Mirabel to turn over a new leaf, but she puts some glasses on, suddenly everything changed and now she's meeting the mayor, the princess and a small gentleman in a sleeping bag.”
-
The Man Who Came in from the Cold Storage
“As we are in east London I got you some olives served on a bin lid with turmeric as requested.”
-
“You double killed Samson”
“Right,it's very very important - never thought I'd say this one - it's very important we don't shoot an unborn baby during the matinee. I think that's like, a theatre rule. If it isn't, it should be.”
-
“I don't care about Samson. His pool was tiny and not chlorinated.”
“But his heart was big and also not chlorinated.”
Fielding of Dreams
“Enjoying the fact that this is our life! There ain't no ups but there sure as heck ain't no downs. And that's fine with me.”
“I said one domesticated sheep. There's a flock of them. Ones a policeperson, ones a miserable old woman called Mabel and one appears to be smoking.”
“This really is the story of a child called felix who settled.”
-
Fire In the Hole
“A woman with independence is as strong as an oxen full of iron and a fire full of oxygen is as strong as that woman”
It's up to you, Newark Newark
“Here's a newark hotdog. It's made entirely of meat. Meat bun, meat dog, meat onions.”
“Here are the 4 horsemen. You are the apocalypse.”
-
“Dog meat?”
“Your old 15 year old hips can't handle it anymore.
“No no comma, meat, dog”
-
Ah I take olive oil every day.
Cause you have to. We just produce it naturally.”
-
“They see! We don't see. We don't see the pooing. I'm sorry I forgot about I forgot about the pooing. Pooing? Outrageous. That stops. That stops now and she goes somewhere private. But it's awful. And of course jiminys dad, is David really going to be proud of them now?”
“The books have gone away. How awful. They threw a family of books into the famous Newark River. He knows what it's like to have his mum kicked into outer space. That's how dark this gets, that's how dark sports get man.”
-
“Gillian wait - wooahhh”
“Susan quickly-”
“We gotta help we need to just- wooahha”
[general screaming and shouting]
“PAUSE. PAUSE. PAUSE. NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! I SAY NO!I CANT HANDLE THIS. I'M GETTING LIGHTHEADED CAUSE I AM SO DISGUSTED WITH THIS FILM AND THE PEOPLE IN IT. BUT OF COURSE THEY STOP FALLING OVER IN IT NOW RIGHT.”
“Gillian Gillian come on inside the medical tent.”
“And these were these were the highlights from day one at the games I mean I think it's fair to say that the Olympic games have been well and truly soiled in reputation. What an awful thing to happen”
Ashopocalypse Now
“My names Jack I'm a car mechanic and I've lost my companion”
“Control yourself Sybill Peacock Penis”
-
“Thank you for that précis”
“Who are you? Can you give me a précis of you?”
“I'm Jolene my husband is a slightly crazed military man who seems to have lost perspective on real human connection. Then there's a man whose actually a woman. There's a happy birthday prophecy. They're searching for me but I've lost them but mostly I'm looking for my daughter who loves Jane Austen and she got lost in a Waterstones I think she may also be somewhere else so that's who looking for.”
“It's time! For... Other characters.”
“We come from quite different worlds.”
-
Ashopocalypse Next
“Remembering when morrisons wasn't boarded up. People could go inside and-”
“Look at the fresh vegetables.”
“This sample isn't going to be enough to create an antidote. We're going to need all of your blood.”
“Moderately fresh yes.”
-
“All the brilliant characters we had and all we're left with is a guy who can't remember which character he is unless his peacock penis is out. I don't care anymore. Family friendly? I don't care anymore. We stop tomorrow. We stop tomorrow that's it. In for a penny in for a pound. Get your peacock penis out as much as you want. If you're not gonna try and stop it I'm not either. [...] what are you all applauding? Are you that culture starved that an umbrella penis gives you that much joy? What has happened to civilisation??”
“One second we'll - we'll need to get authorisation from the local council for that.”
-
Ashopocalypse Then
“You're one of those weird people aren't you?”
“Nothing weird about us. I'm simply a man who gets involuntary erections and this is Andrew Garfield”
“I'm a pigeon”
“Dressed as a Pigeon.”
The Day Harry Got Cut in Half
[Not a quote just a note that Lauren does a Scottish accent for 90% of her characters in mmni but the one time the film is actually set in Scotland she ends up doing a welsh accent.]
“Pray don't be fickle. Pray she won't be no pickle.”
#tag yourself#im 'Yes you are moist and sad from crying#or 'oh my god a clown with a squeegee'#obsessed with all of the suicide squid quotes tbh#I love how certain movies just have way more than others#like they were clearly just going off on one for that hour#there's definitely some important life advice and mottos in here - 'I just believe fish shouldn't make people rich'#and 'only a rash man snatches ovaries at a fight'#are definitely being incorporated into my moral codes#im obsessed with the pure unfiltered wisdom that comes from improv like this is humanity at its finest#anyway this post was brought to you by my inability to not note down every quote that makes me laugh#I would fully recommend doing that tho tbh I have a great time going back through my notes pages of things my friends have said#or quotes from things I've watched#anyway hope this is fun add your own if there's any I didn't include that you love#mischief movie night in#mischief theatre#mmni#mischief comedy#the goes wrong show
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Uncomfortable - Tim Drake (2/3)
Summary: [...] "Are you saying you are afraid of me?" "I wouldn't say afraid" Dick said, trying to sound casual "It's just the way you've been talking about everything these days. It makes everyone feel..." "Uncomfortable?" Tim asked, with a bitter grin, finally turning towards Dick "The probable consequences of what you all say and do to me make you uncomfortable, Dick?" [...] Extremely hurt Tim Drake living out of coffee and spite.
Wordcount: 930
Content Warnings: Angst; Deeply depressed Tim having deeply depressed people thoughts.
Notes: Sorry for the delay in posting, i feel like I'm almost selling my soul to finally get into college... Anyways, hope you're enjoying for now. Reblogs and likes are very much appreciated ❣️
Be careful and stay hydrated!
P.S.: Don't judge Timmy for being an asshole, specially about his "I'll simply close my eyes and ignore Cass" because, guess what, deeply tdepressed people ignore their loved ones quite oftenly.
Part 1 - Part 3
CHAPTER TWO - THE SOFA
Tim hated when Steph wasn’t around.
She and Cass were the only ones he wouldn’t ever deny to be in the presence. Steph knew her limits and always made sure to be whatever Tim needed her to be, and for that, he was very grateful. Cass too. Maybe it was part of her naturally silent nature. Tim could simply enjoy being silent alongside her, and, even if she tried to communicate with him through sign language, he could simply be an asshole and close his eyes, turn away or pretend he didn’t see.
He found himself being quite an asshole to them recently, and for that, he felt bad. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do anything about it. Tim simply hadn’t had the energy to try.
So he decided to spend more time alone. Good thing the Manor had more than enough rooms for him to hide. Obviously, he had to avoid the closets and the kitchen. Alfred somehow had a spider sense about them and appeared immediately after he felt in his bones that someone dared to get inside his beloved kitchen. So now he was seated in the sofá of one of the living rooms with his laptop, working on a case.
Everything was fine, until Bruce stealthy got inside the room and sat beside Tim, who pretended not to care.
Some years ago, he would be thrilled by his appearance - Bruce's emotional intelligence range was equal to a teaspoon, so when Tim was still little, every opportunity he had to try to win a piece of Bruce’s attention was unique. Tim could remember every frustrated bonding attempt he made towards Bruce.
He remembered how much he tried to break Bruce’s walls down and how everytime he got some success, Bruce was quick in building up some more. It took him some years to realise that no matter how much he tried, he would never be like Dick or Jason to Bruce. He wasn’t chosen by him, he didn’t try to be his father figure, Tim already had a father. His relationship with Bruce was purely professional.
Batman needs a Robin, and Tim was willingly going to do the job.
Just so all that he ever worked for was taken away from him by Mr. “I don't want to be THE Batman anymore” and given to an entitled brat who tried to kill him.
Tim could hear his teeth grinding against each other in anger. He hated this fucking family.
— Are you going to tell me what's going on, Tim? — Bruce asked, hearing his son’s jaw clench and his eyes stare at the screen in a cold peace.
— No, I am not — The young man said, slowly, feeling his guts filling with rage.
It was simply too convenient for Bruce to choose when he was able to care about the children he brought into his life and decided to call his children. Simply too convenient to choose when he was going to be an available father figure and when he was going to be distant, when he was going to suffocate you with his uneasy stare because of his inability of simply taking conclusions about what was in front of him. Best detective in the world my ass.
Bruce let out a deep sigh. He was tired.
— Tim, when you have a problem, you need to talk about it. We are your family, we want to help. — He said after some time.
— Well, it seems like my family gets “uncomfortable” when I talk about the problems, so I decided I simply won't talk about them at all — Tim answered, not caring about how bitter he sounded. He didn’t care that Bruce was tired. He didn’t care about any of that shit anymore — If I need help, I'll hire a therapist. I'm pretty sure I can afford It.
Bruce sighed again.
— I love you, Tim. Don't forget that.
Tim laughed bitterly, what scared Bruce. Once again, Tim found himself being an asshole. He had this particular laugh that freaked the whole family: a laugh mastered during the time when he was Joker Jr. He could see Bruce flinch in discomfort and his pupils filled with fear. They were afraid he was going to snap at any time. Good. They had reason enough to be afraid.
— You don't love me, Bruce — He simply said,closing the laptop angrily and getting up — Jason was dead, Dick was pissed and nobody else was stupid enough to try to get through your emotional walls. You had nobody else. You chose to keep me because you had nobody else. Batman needs a Robin and I were there to do the work, I got it. You don’t have to be a genius to know that.
— Tim, that's absolutely not true...
— I'm going to my chambers — Tim simply said.
— I am not done, Timothy!
— If you try to stop me, this will be the last time you'll ever see me around apart from patrol.I’m already emancipated, I’ll move out and Timothy Drake will never willingly cross paths with Bruce Wayne or any of his children again — The words came out of Tim's mouth like water from a tap. Absolutely fluid and cold. He had nothing else to lose, anyway, and he had already lived away from the Manor for many months before. He surely could do this again. Bruce couldn't say a thing. He was too shocked by his son's attitude — Do both of us a favour and stop pretending to care. We both know you don't.
Bruce was too shocked to even let out a sigh.
#timothy drake#tim drake angst#tim drake wayne#tim drake#red robin fanfic#red robin#batfamily angst#angst#i refuse to believe that bruce simply don't try to be a good parent#he is just a tired dad of six
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Relief of Duty
“No.”
The word, small, inconvenient to the assassin otherwise, stopped them cold in their tracks.
“No?” The assassin echoed. “Your majesty, I have a job.”
“No.” The king became quiet, the awful decision he planned to make clear in his eyes. “Not anymore, not right now. Take them to their rooms, be sure they don’t leave.”
The assassin had a habit of picking apart people, from the way faces wrinkled when they smiled, to the way they held themselves, down to the very tone in someone’s voice. Admittedly, it was harder with royals, who were raised to be unpickable. This king was different, however, because this assassin knew this king. His voice was familiar in any infliction he put on.
The assassin saw the smallest crack, and there it was, the remorse behind it all. Guilt was a wretched emotion.
“Your majesty.” The assassin kept a cool facade, they were good at that. “I have served you well.”
“I know. This is not a punishment.” He looked to his guards pointedly. “Take them.”
The king was tactical as he was guilty. Challenging an assassin to defy him in front of the guards, to fight some of his best trained men. They could do it, but in the end, it would only harm both king and assassin. So, the assassin bit their tongue.
“Your majesty.”
They were swept up to their rooms with sympathetic glances, light touches, an acknowledgement of something being horribly wrong here.
The assassin listened for any signs of retreating footsteps once they were properly shut in, but there were none. Their door was already locked, as were their windows. Which had to mean the king was planning this.
The assassin prided themselves on their ability to be calm in any situation, it was yet another useful skill. This situation, however, had the assassin going in blind.
The overly stuffed and out of use pillows were thrown every which way, abandoning a bed the assassin never liked anyway. The table provided for work and meals managed to lose a leg. The window always seemed one hit away from destroyed, but the one hit never came.
He did, though.
“Are you alright?” He asked, shifting his weight to both feet equally, standing taller than before.
To his credit, he didn’t flinch when the dagger was at his throat.
“What is this?” The assassin hissed.
“We both know you won’t use that.”
At the non-answer of the assassin, the king swept a glance across the room.
“You aren’t hurt are you?” His eyes narrowed on the broken table.
“What is this?”
The king, who leveled his gaze back to the assassin, raised his hand slowly, pushing away the point of the dagger.
With his tone softened, he answered. “A new assignment.”
The assassin scoffed, but didn’t bother raising their weapon of choice again. “What’s that? Waiting for the targets to come here? Is that when I can do my job?”
“No.” The king took the free hand of the assassin, looking at the newest bruise. “You came back hurt.”
“That’s part of it.”
“Not anymore. I can’t have you hurt. I won’t have you gone.”
The assassin pulled away from the king’s touch.
“That isn’t for you to decide.” They stepped back. “This is what I do. This is how I help the kingdom.”
“It is for me to decide. Help the kingdom in any other way, then.” Kings often do not plead, but he came rather close.
The assassin took note of the desperation. They hated it. “Your pride is showing. No one else can protect you the way I can, carry secrets the way I can. You know that.”
“I don’t care nearly enough for protection and secrets.”
The assassin let out a malicious laugh. “You cared when you hired me, let me into your court.”
The king’s jaw clenched. “If I had known-” he stopped.
Anger flared inside the assassin. “Known what? How dangerous it is to be me? Is his majesty feeling remorse for hiring an assassin to take care of his problems? Is the burden of blood on your hands too-”
“If I had known the extent of my feelings for you, I would have never let you out of my sight again!” The king’s breathing came uneven, his face struggling to be that same shade of regal impassive.
When the assassin stepped back, he stepped forward.
“No.” The assassin warned, raising their dagger. “You don’t get to keep people you find too pretty to be hurt. I’m not a prize.”
“I know.”
“Do you? You’re making a grand display of it.”
“I know.” The king stepped back. “This was just to address you properly.” He straightened once again. “As of today, you are relieved of your title, and henceforth all assassination attempts for any employers will be tried as treasonous.”
“You would stoop so low as to my livelihood?” They sneered. “You are the type of man you send me after. The kind who finds themselves bigger than those around them.”
“This is not me thinking I hold more over you.” The king managed to level the assassin’s gaze. “This is me wanting you alive. More than alive, safe, happy. There are places you could go. I could-”
“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare pretend that this is for me and not your peace of mind.”
The king flinched. “It is for you, for your safety.”
“It’s so you don’t have to get hurt if something happens to me!”
The king’s eyes widened, his lips twitched downwards, voice dangerously low. “You came back hurt. Bloodied and bruised. And then you asked for your next assignment, only halfway healed. Your lip is still cut.”
Absentmindedly, the assassin brought their hand up to their lip, running fingers over the future scar.
“Did you even bother to notice?” The king asked, trying another step forward, one the assassin countered with their tightening of the dagger.
“You so desperately want to turn this around on me, when it’s about you, your inability to let this-” The assassin motioned between the two of them. “this go.”
The king stayed still for a moment, trying to decide the best course of action.
He settled, eventually, on a question. “You want this to end?”
The assassin turned their back entirely, looking between the unbreakable window, the very breakable table, and the hardly used bed.
They hadn’t expected the king to ask this, and they needed to think for just a second.
“Do you?” The king asked again, watching as the assassin’s shoulders began to shudder.
“You take away my work, my living, because you want to keep me close, alive.” If simply existing could be angry, the assassin would personify it. “You don’t want this to end. Am I wrong?”
“No. You’re not wrong.”
A split second decision was made on both ends, the king reaching for the door, the assassin lunging to do the same.
A trained killer would generally come out on top, and this was no exception, the assassin yanking the king forward and pushing him back.
They managed out the door silently, the guards posted outside of it on the ground before they knew what was happening. The assassin put them on the ground before they knew what was happening.
And as much as the assassin would have liked to be sincere, they could not, and they would not. Not anymore.
“Forgive me, your majesty.”
#king x assassin#that’s a fun tag#maybe#I don’t know I was dreaming some classic enemies to lovers#this isn’t really enemies to lovers#that feeling when your s.o is unsupportive of your career choice#anyway#snippet#wip#king#assassin#writing#writing snippet
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Title: Lovebug (12/14)
Summary:
“It might be a bug.”
“A bug?”
“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so…Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?“
Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.
Link to cross-postings: AO3
Other Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Notes: Feedback is very much appreciated :D
It was one of those days where Levi could barely focus.
But it wasn’t anything new. A few days a year, his eyes would be heavy, his back would slump naturally and codes would blur together in some strange way even the most experienced engineers wouldn’t understand. Those days, he had attributed it to exhaustion, to sheer workload or the tension that accompanied impending releases.
It feels a little different. It was terribly unfamiliar and Levi could have almost sworn that it was worse than ever.
Still, he attempted to get back some inkling of control. He opened his workflow tracker, saw green then decided he could consider his priorities later. He opened his checklists and saw meaningless black ink on white spaces then he decided he could start elsewhere.
He opened up a few pull requests, only to end up approving a whole lot of them before even making sense of what fix the developers had been working on. Then, he then assured himself that maybe he could fix errors on the code once they were in production.
It isn’t good practice. A part of him warned. Really, how many times had he heard that from everyone else? How many times had he held those words like a badge and repeated them countless times to his fellow engineers?
But really, how did anyone particularly Erwin, the upper management, the executives, expect him to work after the meeting just that morning. They had dropped a bomb, a very painful truth that he had somehow managed to keep snug, almost invisible at the back of his mind for so many years.
The company ran on too much red tape and officialism. Hell, every fucking comapny ran on red tape, officialism and some tacky version of bureaucracy, all intricately engineered to please the richest stakeholders. Yet, Levi had been working corporate for decades, long enough to learn and just blindly accept them as inevitable parts of work.
Then and there, it was biting him in the ass. So painfully. Levi never expected something as grey and monotonous as office work and corporate politics to bite so painfully.
Ninety five percent chance. Erwin never told him the details of the contract termination but he had some consideration to at least inform Levi that Zeke was very much considering it. In that same meeting, he had casually mentioned the amount of time it would take to finalize it. If Erwin did tell him some specifics, Levi probably didn’t hear it, especially when he had been busy only barely keeping himself together.
Levi soon figured out, although he had been accepting them the whole time, a huge part of him would have gladly rebelled.
By god, he hated bureaucracy, he hated corporate synergy, he hated the concept of investor satisfaction. Most importantly, he hated the whole prospect of everything the past few months ending with some signed contract termination.
And the silent rage continued well inside him, as he mindlessly switched from one tab to the other, unable to make sense of much.
Maybe he had been too busy reflecting, entertaining those very unwelcome emotions.
Was he too soft hearted. Was he taking his job too personally demanding some personal closure? Was he too immature having been so emotionally affected by that memorandum? And maybe that inability to let out anything more than some professional query at his manager had him barely coping.
‘Coping’ came in many forms. It involved the slow realization he was merely an employee, albeit a head of an engineering team. Then another realization soon after that he was in no position to question the upper management’s decision.
It involved a very cruel realization that although he was the head of the emotions alarm project, the one who had developed it from the beginning and the only one who knew the application end to end, the emotions alarm was still corporate property.
By extension, by some fruit of corporate processes and the constant exchange of assets, it was Zeke’s property. All the assets, the codes Levi had created, the pull requests he had reviewed and merged, every long night he spent looking over bugs, had all been because he was paid to do it.
Zeke’s property. He acknowledged those two words and they echoed incessantly in his head as his eyes ran over the codes of the emotions alarm.
The emotions alarm wasn’t his. It was the companies. And when the contract is finalized, it would be all Zeke’s and Zeke would be the one to decide for himself how to work with that application.
Hire another head engineer to work with Hange… Hire other coders… That’s what business is.
He and Erwin had talked for a while after the meeting. Erwin had been careful with his words and maybe he had softened his tone just a bit, as if he had sensed Levi’s discomfort.
In his own state though, Levi could only stumble upon one conclusion. He was just as replaceable as every other employee. And the pain of having been too attached to a project, the impending loss of his own brain child had him catatonic.
Any comfort or attempt at alleviation seemed far off.
He wouldn’t be invited to the rest of the meetings. The fate of that project would be up in the air, mulled over by the top brass of the company, a few lawyers and accountants, then approved by Zeke. Levi on the other hand, would be ordered back to his office to focus on other tasks, expected to function like it hadn’t felt like some slow and painful end of the world, since the incident at the school a few weeks ago.
Any silver lining as he worked was shot down by his cynical side. The next few minutes, he continued to work, just for the bare minimum to get paid. He approved leaves here and there, He mindlessly looked through some code, ran a debugger he didn’t completely understand. He mindlessly scanned through the logs before he accepted, his brain was in no state to work.
Then he opted not to think beyond that. He closed all the windows on his desktop. He opened another folder towards the corner.
His own personal folder. Inside it were the same codes for the emotions alarm he had worked on for Hange’s birthday. But it felt like more of a personal project.
In its own little way, it pulled it out of that catatonic state. By some miracle, the gears of his head were turning again, slowly at first. Then they turned more quickly by the second, sending a rush of motivation through him. Maybe because the upper management still didn’t know about that side of the emotions alarm. Maybe it was because it still felt like a secret between him and Hange. And somehow, his mind was able to twist it. Levi had managed to convince himself, it was still his and Hange’s.
Hange is still here. She’ll come back.
"You know, I'm pretty sure conference rooms are for conferences.”
Levi bit back the surprise at Petra’s sudden visit. "Well we have five empty ones," he said. He had been working in empty conference rooms for weeks already and had silently rehearsed his own explanation already.
"You have your own office," Petra said.
"I know," Levi answered nonchalantly. Maybe most other days, he would have attempted something more engaging.
How engaging could he be though when his own brain child was close to being sold to an investor, its fate completely out of his control?
By some stupid corporate rule, he couldn't tell Petra that just yet. He looked up at her, willing himself to make some meager excuse of eye contact. "You need anything?"
Petra shook her head. "It’s not really work related… Or actually it kinda is... If that's okay… If you're busy I can bring this up another time." She was holding her work laptop closer to her, a subtle move that had been enough to catch Levi’s eye.
For just a second.
Levi looked back at the code. A wave of guilt washed through him when he remembered, it wasn’t necessarily productive work— a very temporary wave of guilt that he easily washed off just recalling the overly reverent attitude the executives had towards corporate processes.
He wasn't busy. The code he had been staring at the past few minutes wasn't company business anyway. "This can be finished later," Levi said as he lowered his laptop screen.
Petra cocked her head to the side. "Boss, are you okay? I noticed you haven’t been working in the office in a while and I know you---”
“The office is a mess,” Levi said. “And I just haven’t had time to clean up.”
“You need help?”
“No.”
“If you’re busy, I could--”
“Petra, it’s my mess to clean up.” He probably had said that last part too abrasively. After all, that mess referred to multiple messes at once and he was more than a little salty about that.
There was a flash of surprise, or maybe hurt in Petra’s face. Levi only had his peripherals to hint for himself how she might have felt. He sighed. “I don’t wanna clean it up but I don’t wanna stay there either. Besides, as long as no one is using the conference rooms, I think it’ll be fine.”
“Well, it is our right as employees…” Petra started.
“It is,” Levi said. He looked back up at Petra expectantly then lowered his laptop screen much lower, he could have easily just shut it down. “So what did you come here for?”
“I wanted to ask about Hange.” Surprisingly, Petra had brought out that conversation topic with a lot more certainty than every line before that.
Hange. And it had brought about an unwelcome twinge of pain inside him. He took a deep breath, letting it spread over his already enervated body. He noticed then, her name had started to seem strangely unfamiliar to his tongue. In truth, he hadn’t said her name in a while.
Levi took a deep breath and repeated her name, just a little experiment for himself. “What about Hange?”
“Your alarm and her alarm. They were ringing back in the gym.”
“That was weeks ago. Why bring it up now?” Levi asked.
Petra gave a slight shake of her head. “I was just wondering. Do you think it’s a bug?”
“It’s not,” Levi said, one eyebrow raised. He wondered if Erwin had ever discussed it with the others. Or wait, that might have been his job.
Petra grinned yet she seemed more hurt than actually happy. “I suspected it was a bug at first. But you know, when Hange stopped showing up in the office, you started acting different.”
“Have I?” Levi asked
“Yeah, you stopped working in your office. The few times I visited, it was a little cluttered but you never liked your office messy right? It only started getting messier when Hange started working closely with you…”
Levi was only becoming more self aware. Suddenly looking at how quickly, he had opened up his laptop, hunched over, just to hide his face behind the screen. He couldn’t even control his own reaction anymore. “And?”
“And when Hange was working… you seemed happier… You started going out for lunch more, talking to us more. You even invited me out…” Around that time, Petra started to stumble at her words, her ears turned a little pink. With time, she started to stumble with her words, to points beyond comprehension. “I know, I might look creepy pointing all this out but there were two points I wanted to make with this.”
“Two...points?” Then why didn’t you just start with it? Levi would have wanted to ask. But he was grateful that the speech was long enough for him to edit two lines of code, even in his own compromised state.
Petra took some time to compose herself. She put one finger up. “First, Hange changed you for the better, there were obvious signs that you were happier, so maybe those can be considered signs of love. Second, that means there might not be a bug and you’re just a really talented developer.”
“That’s reassuring,” Levi said. With his lack of energy, it could have come out toneless. “I mean it,” Levi added.
“If you wanna call it love or not, that will be up to you. But I think it aligns with our expectations for the application,” Petra straightened her back after that, adopting a more professional demeanor. “If possible, I’d love to have a chat with Hange about it. Maybe get her take on my theory…”
Petra wouldn’t have known. The talks had been between the upper management, it would only make its way to lower rung employees as a memo.
A fucking memo. Fuck red tape. Levi thought to himself. When it wasn’t official, could he even tell her?
Fuck that. “Hange might not come back,” Levi said.
Petra’s eyes widened almost immediately, her jaw dropped.
Before she could even speak, Levi continued. “They might terminate the contract. I know they’re discussing the legalities of it. Zeke is going to take the unfinished and have another team work on it. Or at least that’s what I’m understanding.”
“But there might---”
“There’s no chance,” Levi said firmly.
“Levi just---”
“None. There’s none.” Levi shook his head for emphasis. He allowed his voice to rise just a little bit louder than usual. He wanted to shoot down whatever glimmer of hope, before it got out of control.
Annoyingly, Petra had a way of just trying to find hope, the brighter side in most situations. But he didn’t need it. He didn’t want it. In his already vulnerable state, it seemed almost mocking.
And she was still trying. “But Hange----”
Levi banged one hand on the table in warning. “Petra,” he said. “Just stop.”
An abrupt slam on the table had always been enough to quiet people and Petra shouldn’t have been an exception.
In a surprising turn of events, she slammed harder on the table. “No, listen to me Levi.” Her voice was much firmer and at that moment, it didn’t seem like she had regard for differences in positions.
In shock, Levi fell silent and he was compelled to listen to that voice of authority.
“I came here for a reason.” She dropped her laptop on the table, almost louder than the slam she made just a second ago. “We got a support email which you might want to see. This is the reason I went here in the first place.” Petra quickly booted up her laptop. “It’s a support ticket, and the email...it looks like Hange’s.”
A quick look at the date only confirmed it, it had been there for a week. There was a flyer attached which only sealed its fate as spam mail. Of course, it would have taken weeks to identify it.
But why would Hange use that email? At first glance, Levi couldn’t help but be suspicious.
“It looks like it’s related to Mr. Jaeger’s convention. He’s having one and I thought, you might wanna check it out… If you have unfinished business with Hange, use that opportunity to talk to her.”
It could be spam mail. It wasn’t that hard to create a fake email using Hange Zoe’s name but it was still worth some looking into. A quick google search only confirmed it. Zeke was having an event in one of the most expensive cities in the world, a coastal city a twelve hour flight away.
Still, Levi couldn’t brush off the doubt. Would Hange have used an email with her name? After taking so much of her precious time creating fake emails?
“If this is really her, then that means she wanted to contact us right?” Petra continued. “I think it’s worth a look.”
Maybe all he needed was someone to tell him, a good push in the right direction. Before Levi even realized it, his mind was working harder than ever since the incident three weeks ago, working overtime to justify something as ridiculous as a last minute week-long vacation.
If Hange did send the email, it might be worth it. And if by some chance, it really was spam, then he will have just wasted a good week-long vacation in ‘one of the most dazzling cities in the world.’
Levi could count with the number of fingers in one hand, the amount of times he had been in a long haul flight. The prices for a hotel, a last minute flight and of course, the leaves needed to make the trip were all daunting issues to consider.
He had expected himself to be at least a little more hesitant. A part of him was moving almost automatically. He stood up and slammed his laptop shut. “I think I’m gonna take a week long leave.”
“Since I joined, you haven’t even taken a sick leave. I think you deserve this,” Petra responded. And that peaceful response from her of all people had been reassuring.
“Thanks for that.”
Petra shook her head. “It’s only natural to wish the best for someone right?” She paused, and a weak blush climbed up her cheeks as she bit her lip. “Well, I meant the best for you and Hange. Just see what you can do for her.”
Levi let out a sigh. “But it helps you know.”
And somehow, those kind words had only left Petra more flustered. In thanks, he offered to take her back to her work station, but not much farther than that. He made a quick stop to his still cluttered office, did some quick cleaning up, leaving the white board and Hange’s own work station still untouched, like it has been everyday since three weeks ago.
He went home early that day and as expected, his brain continued to nag.
Was it a useless move? A stupid move? A rash move? Maybe it was. But he wasn't going to tell anyone else, just in case someone managed to convince him out of it.
Levi had taken some precautions. He emailed back, only to get no response. He did some research on the flyer. The event came with different names, trade shows, networking events.
With the objective of bringing together the largest names in neighboring countries… We aim to optimize production, bring about the best quality… Seminars, business dinners, product demonstrations etc.
The words blurred together slowly and before Levi knew it, he couldn’t make sense of it at all. It wasn’t important anyway. What seemed more urgent was the schedule of events right under the spiel.
It was a five day conference and it had already started the night before. Levi opened up his leave credits, still completely full. Most years, it had remained untouched until the end of the year.
He opened up his own bank account. He didn’t have much but he still had more than enough to take that particular risk. And when he contacted Erwin about it, the latter seemed almost excited he was taking a leave.
By some sorcery, he got the one week leave, tagged as emergency leaves. The next afternoon, less than 24 hours after that meeting with Petra, Levi was already in the airport, overnight bag over one shoulder.
He was going on an adventure, some stupid, impulsive and potentially pointless adventure.
***
The guilt never abated. There was something almost surreal, yet seemingly audacious about taking a last minute long leave, after spending years working non stop.
Would anyone understand it? The more Levi thought about it, the more he realized, he didn’t understand it himself. So by some twists and turns of logic, Levi guessed nobody would understand.
He had books he could have read on the plane. There was an inflight entertainment system.
Still shaken by that one week long life, Levi ended up booting up his laptop and spending a huge chunk of the time reviewing pull requests on the flight. Time started to pass like how it used to in the office.
As expected, he got tired four hours in. Losing energy reserves midday in the office was a very unwelcome experience but something Levi never seemed to completely avoid. It was a very familiar experience that the next few steps had been much easier.
He pulled out the codes, his own personal project folder on his desktop, he stared at the files of codes yet to be merged to the original plan.
Then he started to organize his thoughts. Before he knew it, his fingers were flying over the keyboard.
It could have been some reminder, or just some attempt at shoehorning reason to his impulsive decision to cross the ocean on a last minute vacation. But the more Levi let his brain nag, the more he started to justify. The longer he justified, the sooner he just accepted.
Who cared if anyone else found it sappy. He needed closure.
Then and there, it seemed like closure meant articulating the plans of his own personal project, ideas that had been exchanged that fateful night in some empty playground, ideas that only built and built themselves until they were rows of codes yet to be tested or executed.
Maybe closure was getting the plans for the emotions alarm to Hange.
And as Levi continued to type, he realized, he had a clear idea on how he wanted it to work. Articulating it, planning it into something Hange would have understood was not too much of a tall order.
Connect the emotion alarm to a dashboard… plans on how to quantify emotions, moods… Colors, emotions, suggestions.
Newfound energy had Levi tirelessly working over that plan the whole long haul flight, creating diagrams, appending it with his own notes and suggestions. They were still empty spaces, questions and question marks, space which Hange would have been more qualified to fill herself.
After looking at it once then twice, reading out loud softly too himself the parts that hadn’t made too much sense, Levi scrolled back up and typed four words on the upper left.
Working Title: Mood Alarm.
Hange would probably argue semantics, how moods were a lot more temporary than emotions. And Levi was imagining some outrageous argument in his head and his own responses which would never see the light of day. He stayed staunch with his decision. Unless, Hange could come up with anything more catchy, it would stay.
And that fake argument, had been enough for him to relax. He lowered his laptop screen then reclined his seat and stared out the window. It was still a light blue but there were already hints of purple and pink just straight ahead.
The sun would set soon but only for a few hours. One quick calculation told him, it wouldn’t ever be late at night. Once he arrived at his destination, it would still be day and he would have to adjust quickly.
Tucking his laptop away, he allowed himself a few hours of sleep and he had been lucky to have slept long enough to wake up to a pilot’s message about flying over the city then a good view of unfamiliar landscapes just outside the window.
Levi spent those last few minutes before landing, tracing the skyline, counting the number of tiny boxes that dotted the greens, just inches away from clusters of green, white, silver, then flashes of other colors, too many colors to count.
It was an expensive city. He didn’t need Google to tell him that. Everyone knew it as a city only for the filthy rich. He could imagine Zeke having a house or an apartment there, maybe even two. And he made some guesses of which one Zeke could have owned among the larger ones by the beach. Then he made a much longer reflection of just one Yes or No question.
Would Hange been there? He was still too high up to distinguish humans on the outdoor balconies from tricks of light. Still he pretended that she was on one of the balconies over looking the ocean.
The plane got lower and lower, the houses were starting to look more like houses than little tiny boxes. Close enough, Levi was starting to see the glamour of the city, he was starting to see the glowing characteristics which made it a first choice for the ultra rich.
Sparkling blue ocean, only peppered by speed boats and yachts moored at the docks. From inland, mountain ranges formed crescents and worked with the coast to outline the borders of the cities from miles around.
By some type of magic, the landscapes surrounding it had managed to make the dazzling city its own world. Levi begrudgingly gave some credit to the rich for seeing potential in such a breathtaking view.
Just before the coast were tall buildings among shorter buildings and they were lined up on the flat lands, touching one end of the mountain range then the other. Some were hotels, others were casinos, a few of them were malls. Parks were clustered among the buildings, yet they seemed out of place. They were like some shoddily formed assurance that the city wasn’t out to get any tourist’s money.
Levi was seeing differently. The struggle he went into booking a hotel was already a prelude to whatever he would be dealing with. He silently patted his wallet at his back pocket as the pilot’s final instructions sounded over the whole plane.
"Cabin crew prepare for landing."
And all the passengers had been excited to leave. The plane soon slowed to a stop. Even before the seatbelt sign went off, Levi was already hearing the click of seatbelts. Then everyone filed out of their seats, pulling out luggages from the overhead compartment.
Levi was one of the last few out of the plane. Yet with his lack of check-in luggage, he was still one of the first out of the airport.
Nothing could have completely prepared him for the abrupt shift from dry autumn to a wet perpetual summer. He was greeted by some faint smell of the ocean, almost stifling warmth in the middle of October, and very very humid air that stuck to his skin. Unfamiliar sensations on skin, unfamiliar scents and an unfamiliar language that only blurred into nonsense when they made their way into his ears.
It was a new world, a new adventure, Levi would have never taken under any other circumstances. And maybe that had been the reason why the rush of guilt came back when he allowed himself to marvel over the views, the first hand experience of standing close proximity, breathing the same air of that city he had only ever read about books, or seen in the news.
Levi took a deep breath, pulled off his autumn jacket almost violently.
Then he reminded himself again. If he didn’t find her, he’d still be okay. If he didn’t find her, then that trip will just have been a break.
A well-deserved break.
***
According to reception, his hotel was conveniently located just a five minute distance from the convention center. According to his maps application, it was ten minutes away. Levi though, had taken one hour to make his way there
There were hidden paths that weaved through allies and the occasional mall entrances and exits and maybe that had been what reception had been referring to when they mentioned shortcuts.
Levi walked quickly through them at first before he opened up to a larger road. When his surroundings were more open, when his vision stretched far beyond the narrow walls of the alleys, he thought one of the most beautiful cities in the world to be worth a few detours.
Anyway, he had found the signs were all pointing towards the hybrid building that doubled as a hotel and convention center. It might have been the grandest building all around.
He scanned his surroundings, trying to connect his own view from the plane to his own surroundings. Unable to conjure a very clear and accurate picture of what had come above, he couldn’t confirm whether it had been the grandest building around.
It wasn’t too important anyway.
It seemed like the city was on some journey to prove itself to him. Every path, road, alleyway, shopping street and even the interiors of the mall were all different levels of grand. And they all didn’t disappoint, especially to someone who barely even left his home city.
Clean finishings, newly paved roads, cobble stoned streets and red brick roads all seemed to come straight out of the sappiest rags to riches movies.
One cruel truth though Levi soon found out—and had been expecting anyway—was that everything came with a price.
Of course, it would. But Levi hadn’t embedded that truth deep enough inside him to be able to completely stifle his surprise at the price of bottled water, then the price of a late breakfast. They were all prices Levi would have never considered paying for one meal’s worth of food. So he settled for fast food. And he was sure, he would be eating fast food for every single meal until he flew back home.
Eating burger meals worth twice or thrice what he would have gotten at home was still a harrowing experience. He was on that constant in between state, naturally bitter at the ridiculous cost of living yet still forcing himself to savor those few bites of a sandwich.
And he found some inkling of a distraction just staring out the window, watching the crowds go by as he consumed his brunch slowly.
Then, he noticed, he never stopped thinking about her. She had always been somewhere in his mind, still close enough to the front that a flash of brown hair, a messy pony tail or even a pair of glasses among the crowds were enough to have him eyes wide, chewing slower than usual.
In one quick impulsive move, Levi dropped the burger, pulled out his phone and activated the love alarm.
Just in case.
He put on his earphones, then his baseball cap over it. He finished his food much faster then exited the store.
The love alarm didn't ring as he weaved through the crowds. He put his cap lower on over his face, keeping himself unrecognizable.
So, it shouldn't ring for anyone if anyone can't see me right.
That was expected behavior at least. And Levi was just laying trust on some belief that if Hange was nearby, two things might happen. If Hange hadn’t cleared her alarm history and her alarm would recognize his. Or, even if she used a new account, she would recognize him with a baseball cap covering half his face, and it would still ring.
That was assuming she still used her love alarm.
It was a very small chance and Levi was completely aware of it. So he made his way to the convention center, taking note of the signs with the names plastered on them, with arrows guiding him through shopping streets.
Levi didn't mind the detours, more crowds to attempt to look through. When he finally arrived at the hotel entrance though, he found he was tired and a little grumpy.
With the words at the front mentioning Zeke Jaegers name as a keynote speaker though, he had gained some newfound hope, Hange might just be nearby.
He had done the research at least. There was a visitor's price. There was a guest book.
There would be people selling him medical equipment, the latest medical technology and the drugs, supply chains, just the latest lingo, Levi never bothered to learn.
And he got those business vernacular in slow, stilted opportunities, so separated from one another that he never made sense of them.
He was there for one reason. Hange. So it wasn't too difficult to feign purpose, maybe even pretend that he had a few million dollars resting in his bank account for an investment.
There was a map, the names of some of the companies were in languages he was only familiar with by appearance. It was name recall that saved him then, he saw a few of Zeke's hospitals show up in the convention map. Forming a path in his head, he dove into his crowds, clutching his phone harder, readjusting his earphones.
No ringing. And he couldn’t help but feel a strange emotion, a mix between disappointment and relief. It was quiet and somehow he liked it that way. Yet, that only meant that Hange wasn’t nearby.
But leads to Hange were a good second best option. “Levi--- Mr. Ackerman?”
“Ms. Finger,” Levi greeted.
If Pieck knew anything about the incident at the school, she didn’t make it obvious. She was all business at that convention, decked up in business attire, fliers and a product handbook on the desk right in front of her,
She made her way closer to him, letting out a hand to raise and before Levi could even mirror that same movement, someone cut in between them.
“May I help you?”
Levi could have sworn he had never met that man in front of him. Yet the man was looking at him suspiciously, out of character for someone in a suit and flyers.
Pieck pushed past him."Porco, I'll handle this. So, what brings you here?"
Levi had to play his cards well. "I wanted to talk…" to Zeke? Or to Hange? Which was the better name to bring up?
Pieck nodded at him, an inquisitive look on her face. "To talk…"
"Business…"
"What kind of business? You could relay it through your manager right?"
"it's about the app we're developing." He had his laptop with him then, and only the motion of his laptop to his front albeit had Pieck lighting up.
Of course it would, Pieck had been one of his fans when he had first demo-ed the emotions alarm in the hospital just a few months back.
"You've been planning improvements."
Levi gave a light nod. "I've created plans to further improve the efficacy of the application. I was hoping to talk to Zeke about it, or if he's too busy, Hange." He hoped he had used the right jargon.
Pieck had seemed uncertain there. Yet her eyes had darted to his laptop enough times for Levi to see that she was interested, that somehow she had held a stake in those final products.
"If you want me to show it…" Levi was about to drop his bag and pull it out.
That is, if Peke hadn't stopped him then. "Don't trouble yourself," she said. "But, you wouldn't find Zeke here for most of the day. He only shows up for the business dinners but they're on an invitation basis. I can try asking around, we have a few employees who could ask Zeke."
"If you could tell me where Hange is…"
And that was where things got slightly complicated and somehow Levi suspected from the way Pieck had avoided his gaze yet at the same time, Porco had flashed him with a glare, there was something they knew that he didn't.
Pieck spoke up. "Hange huh? Haven't seen her since the convention started. Even during the days leading up to the convention, she was in and out, more than we could even remember."
"She's unpredictable. Don't think you're going to find her here," Porco added.
"But if you could contact her yourself?" Pieck looked at him pointedly.
"Unpredictable huh?" Levi wasn't all too surprised that they would call her unpredictable. And they had said it with a hint of animosity on both their voices, a tone which very much said 'dont bother', or maybe, ‘contacting Zeke might be the better option."
Levi, though, saw a challenge in that unpredictability. If he played his cards right, he might even find predictability in it.
At the least, he managed to let out a light greeting of thanks before he pulled out of the crowds then past the entrance of the stifling convention.
Levi still kept a copy of a program, taking note of keynote speakers among them. Hange wasn't in any of them so his thoughts flew quickly out of the convention, only rooted there somehow by that offer from Pieck to get him in touch with Zeke's executive team.
No help at all with finding Hange. But Levi couldn't help but just think that their actions may have been calculated. Once again, Levi was groveling about the stiffness of the world of politics and artificial corporate pleasantries.
When that became too stressful, his thoughts went back to Hange.
Hange was unpredictable, in a predictable way. And Levi was sure as long as he strode through the town with some purpose, he could make sense of that 'chaos' she always seemed to exude.
That night, he approached it with some careful premeditation, while considering as well that he was still suffering from jet lag.
He scanned through maps, aerial photos, then pictures from taken from high points in the city. He let his eyes trace over the coasts, then the beaches, the affluent areas close proximity to the beach that strategically overlooked the bluest parts of the ocean. Then he noted a less affluent area that brushed the other side of the mountain.
Focusing on the smaller houses, almost hidden by the iconic skyline, he asked himself, would Hange be there? He didn't have a straight answer but he wouldn't put it past her. Besides, any sense of adventure had started to become a little more welcome.
There was truth to it, Hange was unpredictable. But the predictability to it was, Hange was so unpredictable, she was memorable. He was sure if he would ask about the brunette, someone would know.
If Hange acted like the Hange, he knew, someone might recognize her. Someone in a simple community in a country thousands of miles away from his own, wouldn't know Hange Zoe as anything more than some eccentric brunette.
And maybe that was where he was supposed to start.
The next morning, he bought a bus ticket and he had been lucky enough to even get an opportunity to sit. After all, no one actually visited that city for the locals.
It was almost a half an hour bus away form the city center, and houses by the coastline were getting further apart until Levi reached a point where cabanas were made of simple wood, paths were etched lightly on the ground.
Levi disembarked at one of the more simpler bus stops for miles around, and it didn't look like the bus passed there often.
But maybe it was better that way.
Untouched Nature, free nature is a beautiful thing. Nature once again at its rawest form, at its most candid, not flaunting its best parts for the rich to admire.
And Levi was seeing beauty in the candid.
There were a few local kids, wading by, speaking a language Levi didn't understand and for a second, Levi just stood, breathing in the sour air of some untouched beach. It differed a lot from the beach thirty minutes away. There was no music playing in the background, no strobe lights and Levi concluded one thing.
Hange would have enjoyed this.
Levi would bet money that if Hange did have the freedom to run around, she might have been there. The houses around the area were of a simple kind, so far apart, that Levi had to walk thousands of steps just to get from one to the other. He traced the coastline as he walked, far enough from the shores to keep his feet dry but still close enough that he felt the moist sand squish from underneath him. He was following some path back the way he came, towards the skyline, he noted there were bars among them, seemingly affordable bars, maybe catering to locals.
Levi entered to find chaos. Men in a group playing some possible version of mahjong with rocks, others playing chess and others playing cards with rocks as currencies.
And he was more convinced Hange would have joined them if she had the freedom to move around.
So he took the risk. "Do you get foreigners here often?"
And maybe the word ‘foreigner’ or the word ‘often’ had been unfamiliar to the bartender.
He looked questioningly at Levi but it didn't look like he was completely lost. He turned the younger bartender who looked back at Levi. "May I help you sir?" he asked with a thick yet still very intelligible accent.. Levi suspected he had worked in the city center before.
"Foreigners...do you get a lot here?" Levi was slow at first.
"A few. May I ask why?" And he was starting to suspect the man worked in service.
It looked like the man didn't need the quick adjustments though, so Levi continued. "I'm looking for someone…"
The local gestured for him to go on.
And just like that, Levi found out Hange's predictability. All he needed was some subtle gesture, some consideration, that maybe it would have been best to approach the men hustling chess players by the side, or the other men playing some version of mahjong.
It was just a quick flick of his head towards the gamblers as he tried to find the right words to say.
And the man in front of him figured it out. "Glasses? Brown wavy hair?"
"She likes playing games. She plays here?" Levi asked, just for some confirmation, some proof that he wasn't socially engineering anyone.
The younger man looked at the bartender. The latter broke out into a smile. "Hange?" he said with a thick accent. He let out a laugh then turned to Levi almost suspiciously.
Levi nodded quickly. "Yes, Hange." Hänge Zoe. Should he say her last name?
The bartenders said something to the English speaking local. There was a brief exchange between them and the bartender pointed at Levi.
"Her hair is always messy," Levi said, he put his hands at the back of his head, mimicking the messy way she tied her hair up. "She always wins games. She's very smart. And sometimes, she'd just go out to the beach and she'd get lost in the view."
The two locals look towards each other, their faces suddenly unreadable.
They knew something Levi didn't and Levi knew he was punching blindly just making quick guesses of what Hange would have done. The specificities could also mean they escorted him out with new information.
Yet, somehow, it seemed those descriptions worked. They both smiled, exchange a few words.
"She plays. She wins---"
Levi smiled. "And let me guess, she doesn't keep the money?" And when he saw the grins of the two men widen, he made another guess. "And she gives the money away?"
The man dropped his shoulders and put one hand out in greeting. "What do you need?"
"I wanna see her--- No, I wanna talk to her. Do you know where I can find her?"
"She doesn't tell us where she's going too."
The bartender said something just behind the younger man and the latter's expression changed. They were both pointing at something, seemingly hypothetical, then drawing something with their fingers.
The younger man then continued in English. "I'll take you out."
"Wha--" Levi never had time to finish.
The man guided him out.
At first Levi wondered what he did wrong. The man didn't seem to carry any animosity. He seemed almost excited. "She likes going there," he said with some level of certainty.
There. Initially, it had been difficult to figure out where 'there' was. Following the direction of his finger with his gaze was almost a tall order. But there was only one place from that angle which boasted any level of significance.
He was pointing high up to mountain ranges and from his place by the coast, on the other side of the city, maybe he could make out a small tower that peeked out over the green.
"She likes high places," the man said.
"She told you that?" Levi shifted his grin to something certain then he nodded. "Thank you, I'll check it out."
And that tower peeking out of the mountains was identifiable with just an easy google search, expected from one of the most tourist friendly places in the world.
A tower observatory huh? Was it be open to the public? Sources said yes. What did Hange enjoy there? Levi had an inkling of an answer but he might have to see to it to be sure.
While waiting for the bus back to the city center, he consolidated his clues. Pieck had told him to wait for a message from someone named Yelena. If he couldn't talk to Hange, he could talk to Zeke.
Still, he was covering his bases with Hange but he was a little messy with it. It was all a matter of fate, some inkling of what kind of person Hange would be.
But what would he know about Hänge?
Even on the empty bus on the way back, he left his love alarm on, earphones propped comfortably in his ears.
In the bus it didn't ring but when Levi was weaving through the busiest streets, changing from the city bus to the bus leading up the mountain, it may have rung a few times. And Levi only started to become aware, a few incidents in, that every single time he had stopped, then he would scan the crowds.
One flash of brown hair, sometimes it would show up red under direct streams of light. A bird's nest tied up in a half pony tail or just a very messy one. Or maybe that low voice, which seemed to shift to something shrill almost immediately when excited.
There was only one person he would have wanted his Love Alarm to ring for. So Levi, lowered his cap over his face, boarded a bus and made the journey to the mountain.
***
He didn't go back to the convention center anymore. A long list of programs and keynote speakers only confirmed it, it was a roadshow on business ventures more than research.
But Hange likes business right? Hange likes medicine? Or she might even be wedges among the crowds of tourists among the snazzier casinos, just playing. He then considered playing just to check it out and maybe ask around.
And when Levi was weighing options, he realized Hange was somewhat unpredictable. He was at the mercy of fate, luck and a few well thought out guesses.
So he treated it like some challenge, a challenge he could very much fail. But he would get a better chance of running into her, if he kept to one place.
He picked the summit of the mountain and he parked there for the next few days, laptop bag in hand, sweatshirt over his boardshorts. There was a cafe only a few blocks from the tower with a good view of the main street leading up to the observatory.
And Levi only had to be there a few days to realize, it was off-season and it was off-season for a reason. It was the time of the year, when the weather by the road was a fickle bitch.
That day, the rain was on and off. The northern winds blew strong and Levi almost wished he had brought his autumn jacket. Yet it never was cold or windy enough to be certain it was worth lugging around.
The sweatshirt had been a golden alternative and he found the hood had a dual purpose. Enough, to hide his face so he could keep his love alarm on without receiving too many alarms. And enough to keep him safe from the blinding wind that came with climbing high elevations.
Levi abandoned the baseball cap, instead keeping the hood low over his face. He made himself at home in that cafe that overlooked the main road towards the visitor's center and a platform with a good view of the city. He picked a spot right next to the window. He only had to turn left, to get a peek, yet he was in a good enough position that if anyone looked back, he only had to lean back to be concealed by the opaque wall.
Levi was taking stupid risks. Did she clear her cache? Did she even still use the app? Any of those miniscule decisions would have been enough for Levi to come home empty ended. Yet, they were highly probable decisions. After all, why would Hange want to keep the application after the fiasco months ago. He started to even entertain the possibility that maybe Hange wasn’t even using her phone as often anymore. She hadn’t replied to texts, responded to calls and her number was also out of service.
Everything was against him, every single probability. Everything had been against him since the start anyway so it was much easier to stomach such circumstances.
Levi made for himself an ultimatum. He only had until his flight back, three days after, to talk to Hange.
If he is not able to find her, he goes home empty handed. He cooperates with the transferring of assets, the finalization of the contract. He scraps his own personal project, the colors, the attempt to quantify emotions and the dashboard.
At the least, he tried. He responded to that ticket. He tried to contact her, he tried to look for her. Hell, he was even contacting Zeke, personal pride and corporate processes be damned.
Surprisingly, instead of leaving him more desolate, the high stakes, all against him, had only sent a surge of motivation through him.
Maybe helplessness could do that to people. Or maybe he just couldn’t believe for himself that losing could be such a probable outcome.
Levi turned up the volume of his phone, scanned the crowds just outside the shop. It was off season, the weather was dark and gloomy so it wasn’t too difficult to even count the number of tall lanky brunettes who could have remotely been Hange. And he probably wasted more than enough time looking closely at each one, before accepting that twinge of disappointment every time they looked back revealing an unfamiliar face.
He never failed to remind himself how stupid of a plan it was. In the end, his best option really was to wait for a message from Yelena. Even if he would have preferred to discuss the plans with Hange himself, without that monkey as an intermediary.
When the disappointment accumulated, becoming too much to bear, Levi opened his laptop again, checked his work trackers, then his own project but he always made sure to look out, in between lines of code, or in between tickets or pull requests.
Just in case. Just in case, one of the brunettes was Hange.
When his love alarm finally rang, Levi had been reviewing a pull request. The surprise lasted for a second, the horror at realizing if that person hadn’t opened their love alarm, he wouldn’t have noticed her, lasted a little longer.
But he couldn’t be too sure it was her. She had on a cap, her hair tied up on a high ponytail. It was wavy and untamed, yet bunched up in such a way that maybe even her hair felt stifled. The ponytail swung wildly with even the slightest movement of her head.
And she was moving a lot, head bent down at first, looking at her phone, then at two kids next to her.
She was part of a tour group and those kids didn’t seem like hers. The alarm stopped for a while, and Levi used that short rest to check the schedule of the convention he had downloaded just yesterday. There was a tour that day. So it could be her.
Still, he couldn’t be too sure. His alarm rang again. Then when he was watching closely, he saw her jaw drop, he saw her explain something to the kids. Then she started to scan her surroundings and when Levi used that flash when their eyes met for just a second, he suspected.
But maybe their eyes haven’t met. She was wearing sunglasses.
And there was still a good chance it wasn’t Hange. But from her reaction, from the reaction of the kids, then the way she poked at her phone and the way the heart just suddenly disappeared then appeared then disappeared from his phone within few second lags, Levi decided it was a risk worth taking.
He continued to stare. And the brunette continued to scan her surroundings. She bent over, said something to both kids, then patted one on the head. And she turned around, looking through the cafe window.
And Levi turned off his own alarm, leaning back on the chair, just far back enough to hide.
What was he scared of? It looked like she could have been scared too. She didn’t bother to come nearer, or to even crane her neck to see just behind the wall right next to the window. She shook her head, a half smile played at her lips. And she walked away from the cafe, back to the tour group.
A disappointing turn of events. And Levi was scolding himself. It almost seemed surreal to even find Hange there, after losing contact with her for months. But he couldn’t be too sure that it was her. And how many times had he repeated it to himself.
Heart beating wildly, Levi let out a wretched sigh and slammed his laptop close, loud and hard enough to jarr him and even his closest neighbors. Who cared anyway? He continued to stare at Hange, and just for some level of security, just in case his emotions took more control than he allowed, he put the hood of his sweat shirt over his head, zipped it up a little higher over his neck and stared out.
She was talking to the tour guide. The tour guide shook his head, then pointed just above him.
Grey skies. Levi understood gesticulations enough to get that part.
The tour guide then pointed at the cafe then at the shopping streets but maybe she wasn’t listening anymore. She turned to the sky and Levi followed her gaze to see that she was probably looking at the tower, the base was visible from his view but even when he bent his head to the side, he couldn't make out the top. He made it a game for himself, he craned his neck, just to see how far up he could make out from his comfortable seat in the cafe.
Then eventually, he gave up, yet the brunette was still looking up, her head hung back, almost freely. Her mouth a thin line. And it was only when Levi heard the loud murmurs, took note of the sudden shift of the cafe atmosphere from peaceful to bustling, did he realize she had been left all alone.
The whole tour group was inside the shop.
Except her. She walked ahead. And if Levi were right, and that was her, he might as well follow. For the first time in a while, he wasn’t coiling the charger of his laptop before stuffing it into his bag. He wasn’t placing it hinge first into his bag. He stuffed everything, leaving chaos in his wake.
But he didn’t have much time anyway. Besides, cafe was starting to get too crowded for comfort. He exited the shop, and she was still in view, for just long enough for Levi to make out, that she had turned a corner.
If a part of him wanted to hesitate, if a part of him was holding him back, he didn’t let it take over. He didn’t have much time to consider the situation either. After all, she was moving fast and the winds were enough of an adversary already. So he ran, holding his laptop bag close to his side. He was grateful, he had at least tightened the hood of his sweatshirt.
The corner she turned on, opened up to a smaller cobblestone road, and at the end of it was the entrance of the tower. She opened the door with the sign ’authorized personnel only’, and she didn’t come back out.
Many feet behind her, but still unperturbed, Levi followed behind. The first floor was wide, and it acted as shelter, an ante room to a visitor’s center maybe, and there was a small open room to the side. A rope acted as some weak barricade to the entrance with a sign hanging in front.
Closed due to weather conditions
Uncertainty was another adversary. He turned to the glass door of the visitor’s center. He could look for her there. After a small peak through the glass, he realized if he went through there, he might just get a little self conscious, he might just hesitate to even climb over the rope.
In the slow few seconds that followed, Levi considered several things.
If she wanted to go to the visitor’s center, she would have gone through the main door. If she were Hange, it wouldn’t be too outrageous to imagine her climbing over a rope or even opening an ‘authorized personnel only’ door. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized, the bartender was right, his own instinct could be right.
Hange loved adventure. Hange loved freedom.
And as he stepped over the rope, then entered the hollow area where the spiral staircase climbed endlessly, he realized, his instincts, his decision might have just been right.
The footsteps echoed loudly, bouncing one end to the other over the hollow walls. Even when he couldn’t make out movements, just staring above him, towards the dizzying top, he made out the echoes.
And that could be Hange.
Or it could be an illusion. Levi added a second later, as he started the journey up the spiral staircases, the laptop bag dangling precariously on his side. He was dealing with too many sounds at once, and they all echoed in the narrow room, that Levi couldn’t be too sure if her footsteps had been his own imagination.
Still, he climbed.
Hundreds or maybe even thousands of steps in, it became an issue of sunk costs. The rubber soles of his shoes on the metal, the slap of his laptop bag on his side. And the few times he looked back, the few times he allowed himself to slow down, he heard an echo, unfamiliar footsteps, the shoes not his own.
A few times, he tried to go faster, just to beat the sound. When he sprinted up steps, losing count along the way, he remembered he had to conserve energy. The sounds were blurring against each other anyway.
So he settled for a quick jog. The monotony that came with jogging had him thinking, the spiral case really was endless. He wondered how many feet he had climbed.
A few times, it was tempting to run. A few other times, it was tempting to walk. A few times, he wondered how nice it would be to be able to fly, just float all the way down like a bird. Soon enough, he was high enough that just looking down made him dizzy, left his stomach turning.
He started to focus on what was ahead anyway, even when it was all just some predictable pattern of stairs and stone walls. Along the way, maybe he had started to lose feeling in his legs, just like he lost track of the echoes, or maybe she had just stopped climbing altogether.
Close to the top, there was a platform that led to a doorway. And Levi only had to push open, to be greeted again by winds. Suddenly they were coming in all directions at once, enough for Levi to put both his hands over his eyes. Enough to have him bending his knees, trudgling forward, one step at a time.
He was at the top of the tower, the highest point for miles around. When he got his bearings, started to accept the wind as an inevitable companion, he had managed to sprint forward, lean his elbows on the arm railings and look forward, at the magnificent view that stretched past the hotels, the shopping malls and the casinos.
The mountains beyond that and just next to them, the empty beaches, the local communities.
A few times, he closed his eyes, allowing them some reprieve from the harsh winds. And around the time, when he started to notice the grey sky, the streams of light that seemed to let bright colors glimmer, the few parts of the land they touched, he easily remembered why he had been there in the first place.
Of course, Hange enjoys this.
He looked around him once. Then twice, just in case the first time had been a trick from his tired eyes. She wasn’t around. Then he started to question himself.
Is she really here? Or were the echoes of footsteps just an illusion?
Was he going crazy?
It could have been from the strong winds, or the crushing disappointment, but around that time, he found it difficult to breathe. He felt tears prickle in his eyes. He swallowed once, and that had been enough to keep his face unmoving.
He looked back at the view, then at the grey sky above, the streams of light that were only getting smaller as dark clouds hovered over the city, then at the neon lights that only started to glow brighter with each stream of light that disappeared.
The wind started to blow harder, the trees down below rustled, creating their own glimmer of green, all dancing at once. Then he looked up at the ocean, the waves only getting larger, as the direction of the winds started to become unpredictable.
Sometimes, his hood was pressing harder towards the back of his head. Sometimes, it pushed from the front, blowing his bangs out of his face. It was chilling his cheeks, forcing the salty yet very sour scent of the ocean through his nose, then his half open mouth.
The wind brought with it many things at once, utter chaos, in separated parts. Most Levi couldn’t even understand.
I love you. At first, he thought it to be the whistle of the wind. Then a second later, he decided that he was just going crazy.
Then the wind stopped for just a second, the whistle, the blowing deadened into nothing for just a few seconds.
A few seconds enough.
“I love you!”
A few seconds long enough for Levi to trace the voice to a strange location, above him, yet behind him. He traced it to the brunette, cap still propped snugly on her head, her ponytail swinging from left to right.
Her sunglasses were off, she stood balanced on one of the lower rungs of the rail. There were still a few streams of sunlight left, yet they shone on Hange, bright enough for Levi to see red, in her ponytail, to see those roundish hazel eyes, those cheekbones and hint of pink in them.
Red. For a while it looked like a fire, the smell of the sea tickled his nose, then a wave of horror. Then loss?
See you later, Hange.
She stood there, meters above him, far enough for Levi to still doubt yet still close enough that with a longer look, Levi accepted, he was obliged to believe it.
It was Hange. The longer he looked at her, the more certain he became, the more money he would have put into such a wild conjecture.
But what the hell are you doing here?
Comprehension was a slow process, muddled by surprise, disbelief and confusion at his own reaction. Impatient, Levi had exited the spiral staircase to a platform a few meters below the top, while she had climbed all the way up. That left them in two completely different floors, two completely different platforms, a good distance away from each other.
And it didn’t look like she noticed him.
Then who are you talking to?
She continued to look straight ahead. She took a deep breath then screamed again.
I love you.
The wind caressed his face again and the words came again as a whisper.
The few times Levi opened his mouth, he noticed. When the wind was strong enough, the clearing of his throat, the grumbles didn’t come out as expected. As if the wind stole his words, and carried them away with it.
And the wind wouldn’t tell its secrets right?
Exhausted, terrified, confused then frustrated. Unwelcome tears threatening to force themselves out, Levi decided he was desperate for someone who’d listen but he he didn’t want anyone capable of judgement.
He took a deep breath. “I love you!” With the wind blowing in all the directions at once, his ears snug under his hood, it came out as a whisper. It was as if his body saw an opportunity for a cathartic release in the potential listener in the wind. Even as his throat burned, he screamed it again. “I love you!”
I love you. Hange’s voice seemed to ride with the wind, once again, he heard it as a whisper. Looking back up, Hange had dropped back on the platform, her two hands cupped her mouth. She dropped them and took a deep breath. She dropped her shoulders, then stared up at the sky, her head hung back. And she looked like she was about to collapse.
And maybe he looked the same way. He wanted to collapse too, with the weight over his shoulders, another, more deeply embedded exhaustion reared its ugly head.
But he wanted to hear the rest of it. He couldn’t be too sure who she had been talking too. Either way, he was sure it didn't change anything. Whether she felt the same way or not, love was love.
He took another deep breath. “I love you!” The wind was only getting stronger and once again, it snatched the words out of his mouth, his throat raw, almost burning. He didn't even know wind could burn until that moment, until he noticed the ache in his tongue.
Hange didn’t seem to notice. She still continued to stare straight ahead, then up at the sky. She put one hand over her eyes, wiping sweat. Or tears?
And maybe his mind suspected tears. And maybe tears were contagious. They came out unwillingly, as something that just welled at the rims.
And maybe if he just screamed again, they’ll force themselves back. “Hange Zoe.” He took a deep breath. “I love you!” He had been more strategic, letting it out a split second later, when the wind was whistling, almost screaming.
The wind might never take those words to her. But he didn’t seem to mind, the words had been for him more than anything.
Levi…. I love you...
The wind was strong enough, rain started to patter over the stone platform. And it became difficult to distinguish screams from the whistling of the wind. So Levi couldn’t be too sure. Still, he listened closely.
...In another life… Okay?
The rain was cold. The dampness pressed the hood closer to the back of his head, then the edge of his hood hung low over him, obscuring his view.
Yet the wind still found a way in, it first caressed his cheeks again, then tickled his lips as if forcing something out of him.
It goaded. It teased. And Levi had always been a sore loser, even if he never told anyone.
Alone, with no one there to hear him, but the wind, and Hange beyond ears reach, Hange who had barely noticed him, the words were forcing themselves out.
He looked back to see her standing, leaning closely over the railing. The strong rains, the ferocious winds had reduced her to a shadow.
And he was sure, she probably hadn't seen him.
Another surge of confidence. Then one deep breath. By some unexpected rush, Levi was starting to feel some strange anger. And Hange’s own staunch acceptance, the way she just gripped the railings and stared ahead, was only aggravating it.
“I don't wanna wait for any more next lives!” He let out a painful cough after that but even that didn’t penetrate the rumble, the pattern of the rain and the gusts of wind that surrounded him.
I want you. It was a weak whisper at first. Recovering from that last bout, Levi attempted once again. “I want you now.” Even when he couldn’t hear it himself, he felt it, the rawness in his throat, the anger that laced every single word. “Love is a choice right? Then I made my fucking choice! I want you! I want you now!” He wasn’t talking to anyone in particular, the figure hidden by a thin veil of rain.
The figure that eventually disappeared into the tower.
He eventually got tired of looking up. His neck ached, his vision started to blur and the hood hung damp over his face.
Levi only realized then, how much he had been holding in. In fact, it never felt all his to begin with. Cathartic releases weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Hell, Levi didn’t even notice how much had actually been released until he leaned back on the wall, until he realized, he didn’t mind at all being covered head to toe in water and dirt.
Humans were unpredictable. They were incomprehensible. And the moment that everything fell into place, Levi let it sink in.
He loved Hange. He wanted her. He wanted to be selfish about it.
“That’s what a choice is right? Doing what I want?” Levi whispered, making some sense of Hange’s own words, he mimicked her voice, her mannerisms as he said those first words. He then lowered his tone, into something more natural. “We’re not fucking robots Hange. We want things. We feel things.”
He didn’t need to tell her that. High up on the tower Hange had been screaming. He was certain of that. Hange had been leaning forward, she had been breathing hard.
She was feeling. She was human. She was free.
And Levi wondered why she had seemed so desperate, so eager to let something out, as if every other moment outside the tower had been stifling.
“That’s life married to a billionaire huh?”
He couldn’t blame her for screaming. HIs only little game of copycat had him exhausted too but somehow, by some sleight of hand, some magic, it had him calm, peaceful even under the strong patter of rain.
Articulating only made emotions all the more real. The signs that he hadn’t been the only one chasing blindly was reassuring.
And maybe that was all Levi wanted anyway, that was the final closure to that long game of cat and mouse. Levi turned to his soaked laptop bag, he maneuvered his way back inside the shelter. He zipped his bag open, let out a sigh of relief to see that the case had done its job to keep the laptop dry.
Then alone on the stairwell, he leaned on the wall, noted the sound of footsteps many feet below. He opened the laptop, then before even booting it, he closed it again and took a deep breath as one realization dawned on him in those slow steady movements.
In truth, he didn’t mind never showing the plans to Hange. Maybe he had just been looking for some excuse to see her, some attempt at closure.
“You got it,” he whispered to himself, hands cold and shaking even under the humid tropical air. “You can stop now…” But something inside him continued to lightly boil. “So what? Do we wait until the next life?”
Nobody answered.
He opened his phone, then his mood alarm. He already predicted the color on the screen.
Green. Happy sad? Or sad happy?
At that moment, Levi concluded, desire and acceptance could begrudgingly coexist.
***
Levi had no plans of going back to the convention. Yet, after that night, he had one more day left, one more day to check the city.
He did a quick google search, reading through long reviews on beaches, on the mountains, the hiking trails, the tower and the shopping street. None of them seemed interesting and Levi almost considered just curling up in bed on the last day and allowing himself to recover from the ordeal the night before.
And even if his mind had been willing him to find some other purpose. Levi found, as soon as the adrenaline rush ended, all he wanted to do was lie in bed. Only standing on two feet long enough to get him through a shower and curled into bed.
His mind was racing with other questions. Could Hange move? Was Hange moving? Was she walking? Was she talking? As if nothing happened? And the more he thought about it, the harder it became to move.
He slept through the night. By morning, he had enough strength, enough need for stimulation to pull his laptop closer. He ran his hand over the keyboard. It was fully dry. He realized he would rather wait a few more hours before opening it again.
He turned back to the ceiling. Rest. He whispered to himself. You don’t need to go out. You went on enough adventures to last a lifetime.
A fucking lifetime. It felt like sour graping. And Levi soon found himself admitting to sour graping. He would have wanted more adventures if it meant more time with Hange.
But real life didn’t work that way. Life expected people to decide on circumstances, never on emotions or actual thought.
So what’s the point of being fucking human then? Rejecting the world as a whole, made it easier to just roll over and nap again despite the light streaming through the window.
And Levi was in and out of sleep, the only view was the plain white walls of his hotel room, and whatever light reflected on it. Some natural need for stimulation had him jumping at the sound of the phone ringing.
Instinctively, he pulled his hand behind him, dragging the phone roughly from the side table.
An unknown number. Hange. The unwelcome part of him tried to rear its ugly head again. He put the phone to his ear. “Hello?” He kept his voice cold, just in case it was her, or wasn’t her.
“Mr. Ackerman?” An unfamiliar voice on the other end and Levi couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman speaking.
“Speaking.”
“Ms. Finger told me about your request, about your plans for the Mood Alarm. I ran through it with Mr. Jaeger and he would be happy to host you for dinner, then for a private meeting in his suite."
“No need,” Levi said.
“No, he insists.”
“It’s not worth your time.”
“Mr. Ackerman, listen.” And the voice on the other end was firm. “Mr. Jaeger has invited you to dine with him. He took the time out of his busy schedule to do this. This is a formal invitation, if he is interested in your plans he will tell you himself.”
Levi didn't respond immediately. He couldn't think of much else to say yet.
“Will you dine with him?”
Levi put the phone in front of him, put it on speaker and just stared at the unknown number. Could this be a scam?
As if to answer his question, the person on the other line only continued. “We have added you to the guest list for the dinner tonight, just give your name to the reception at the hotel. Mr. Jaeger will see you there.”
And the person on the other end, did not give him time to protest. Levi thought it almost rude to call back, to even bother anyone over a decision that was just his to make.
Hours of contemplation later, Levi decided to just show up and lay low. Besides, what was the worst that could happen? He had already reached the point of acceptance the day before.
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Hello! I saw that you reblogged the "I wish you would write a fic where..." post, and I have two ideas for the Running From My Destiny verse that might make neat scenes. The first I can't really make a summary for since it's such a general idea, but I'd really like to see a Quirrellmort POV. For the second one:
Malfada Prewett meets the Weasleys. This... does not go as well as her parents thought it would, even if they didn't have particularly high hopes.
OR
Malfada absolutely does not get along with her cousins; she loves them anyways, though.
I hope the prompt(s) is(are?) fun! It's cool that you're doing this; it seems like it'd be an interesting experience. Have a nice night! :)
Thanks so much for the prompts! They were both very cool ideas! Hope you have a nice morning/afternoon/night as well!
ᑫᑌIᖇᖇEᒪᒪᗰOᖇT/TᑌᖇᑎIᑎG TO ᗩᔕᕼEᔕ
(spark)
Quirinus Quirrell surveyed his classroom, then glanced down at his attendance sheet, running a shaking finger down his list of names.
“P-Parkinson, P-Pansy?”
“Here, Professor.”
“P-Patil, P-P-Parvati?”
He’d always been ashamed of his stutter. There wasn’t a time he remembered not feeling afraid of his own voice. He expected peers, now students, to laugh at him and make him feel smaller and smaller, until he was annhilated.
“Here, sir.”
He pushed his reading glasses up his nose and focused on the next name.
His heartbeat stuttered in his ears. Something seemed to click. To focus. And when he spoke, his voice was as composed and steady as he’d always dreamed.
“Potter, Harry.”
“Present, sir.”
He could not help but look up at the speaker. But it wasn’t as if he was one looking. Rather, someone or something else had nudged their way to the front of his brain, gazing at the small first-year in the second row, scrawny, bespectacled and overall unremarkable, except for the round-rimmed glasses and bright green eyes that seemed to stir some distant memory, as if he had seen them both on another person.
Dead. And yet he felt more alive than ever.
He shuddered, and moved on, taking note of the remaining few Gryffindor and Slytherin students.
(ember)
It had been mere days since Quirinus had returned to the school; mere weeks since Voldemort’s disembodied spirit promised him everything he’d ever dreamed of.
No longer would he be the bullied, cowed Professor of Muggle Studies.
No longer would he be an afterthought.
There is no good and evil, only power, he reminded himself. Whether he vanquished Voldemort or brought him back to life, he would be great. And that was all that mattered.
And so, he had found himself standing in front of the Mirror of Erised, performing spells that he did not understand (but the other, strange new part of him did) and renewing the runes drawn around an ancient bloodstain.
But now, he was sitting in his office. And that green-eyed, unremarkable boy was sitting across from him (though the part of him that was Voldemort whispered, Quirinus, he is the one).
“Do you think I should be worried at all about the shadows?"
Harry Potter’s voice seemed to be coming through several miles of water. For his part, Quirinus felt frozen, and yet, more clever and powerful and strong than he ever had. His limbs had new life, every square centimetre of his being thrummed with magic, and he felt a strange, vast understanding of everything around him; even the boy’s mind.
"You were right to come to me, Harry Potter.” And there came the new, clear voice again, but it faded quickly. “If you are at all interested in learning to... control... to develop... your power, I may just be able to point you in the right d-d-direction."
(flame)
Halfway through the Quidditch match, something strange had come over Quirinus. That same terrible focus and perhaps not-so-mysterious power.
And every nerve in his body sang with the same fierce joy: Kill him, kill him, kill him! They’ll never trace it to you! Dumbledore is not here to see! KILL HIM!
Quirinus had not taken even a single year of Ancient Runes while he was at Hogwarts, and his affinity for the Dark Arts had always been weak. But now, he sat quite calmly in the professors’ box, muttering an Ogham chant and tainting the air with foul magic.
He saw what the others could not; Harry Potter was being consumed by his own shadows. The boy reached for his broom, hanging on with the last of his material form. His eyes were glassy and empty, and everything in Quirinus sung with the triumphant knowledge that his strange enemy was close to death. The Reaper was coming.
The two Weasley boys circled around him, trying to save him (foolish children, none can save him from Lord Death himself!).
It was the girl that snapped him out of his focus; she threw herself into the box like a wildcat let loose and despite the protests of the professors around him.
But it mattered not. Her precious brother was fast losing his grip, and soon the great Boy-Who-Lived would be nothing but a stain on the grass below; a tragic accident—
“INCENDIO!I”
The box crackled with flame, and the thing inside Quirinus howled in anger; yes, she should not know that, but fire would save the boy, sap the shadows.
Even as Snape shouted at her, it was her victory, not his, because Harry Potter had pulled himself back on the broom to safety.
How hard is it to kill an eleven-year-old child already cursed by a parasitic monster? You are just as much of a failure as they say you are!
And yet, thought Quirinus, he did not know if it was the thing, or himself howling in fury at his inability to kill the boy.
(ashes)
He did not like her. He did not like either of the Potter children at all.
Perhaps he liked Harry Potter sometimes, when he delved into his mind and forced the Obscurus to manifest, savoured his terror and the fear-filled memories of his Muggle relatives. When he entertained the idea of using him as a weapon against Dumbledore, now that he had shielded the boy from Legilimency from anyone but him and instilled within him a fear of his Headmaster.
Perhaps he liked Harry Potter when the Dark magic had burned out, and he lay helpless on the floor of Quirrell’s office.
Quirinus found that he liked to toy with the child; make him feel as helpless and utterly annihilated as he once had felt.
After all, he would one day kill Harry Potter. He would make the life bleed out of those green eyes and watch them go still and glassy (like his mother’s, he remembered now), someday soon.
Even as he Obliviated the second child who dared to intercept his search for the Stone, Quirinus knew the end was dawning.
With shaking hands, he lifted the cigarette to his mouth and inhaled death. The weak, prim Quirinus who would have balked at the very idea of polluting his body with such a thing was no longer important to him. After all, what was nicotine and tar and his disgust at the idea of a smoking habit when the spirit of the Dark Lord lived within him?
No. He had been chosen for greater things.
Tonight was the night the end begun.
Quirinus signed the bottom of his letter of resignation, put out the cigarette, and placed in it his brand-new ashtray.
And yet, he cried.
“I have given you my all, My Lord,” he said, and his voice, his own voice was steady. “And now I am nothing.”
𝙼𝚊𝚏𝚊𝚕𝚍𝚊 𝙿𝚛𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚝𝚝/𝚃𝚘 𝙰𝚕𝚕 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙲𝚘𝚞𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚜 𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙳𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝙼𝚎 𝚄𝚙 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚆𝚊𝚕𝚕
August, 1986
“Just give it a chance, will you?” asked her dad, taking her luggage out the boot. “You won’t know you hate it until you try it.”
Everyone seemed to be giving her the same stupid advice today. When they stopped to get petrol during the drive from London, some weirdo in the petrol station had told her “Cheer up love, it might not happen!” She had responded by sticking her tongue out at them.
Mafalda frowned, crossed her arms, and leaned against the car.
“I don’t see why I can’t go to Roedean.”
“Well, you’re a witch, Mafalda.” He wiped his forehead and frowned. “Bloody hot, isn’t it?”
Witch. She hated the word already. Yeah, some of the girls at school were into Ouija boards and palm-reading and whatnot, but Mafalda didn’t go in for all of that nonsense.
The kind of nonsense that got Uncle Fabian and Uncle Gideon killed.
“And what do they call you and Mum again?”
Her dad sighed. “Squibs.”
“Yes, Dad! It’s not very nice, is it?”
She glared at the house as if it had personally offended her. It was tall, maybe four or five stories and so crooked that there was no way it hadn’t fallen down by now. A couple of brown chickens hobbled around the yard.
And in here lived the people who had sent her father off to Muggle boarding school, as far away from them as they could possibly manage, as soon as they could.
As her dad strode towards the door, Mafalda followed, kicking a rusty cauldron as she went by.
Before Mafalda could make her great escape, her dad knocked on the door and a plump, short, red-headed someone opened it almost immediately.
“Alfred?” she asked in a squeaky, shocked voice. Then, she glanced furtively behind her as if to check that no one was listening. “Alfred, what are you doing here?”
Her dad frowned, fanned himself with the collar of his shirt, and beckoned her closer so that the rude woman could look her up and down.
“Come on, Mals,” he whispered. “In for a penny, in for a pound, eh?”
Yeah, her hair probably looked a mess and the dress Mum had forced her to wear was all creased, but Mafalda didn’t think she would look particularly nice if she’d just spent three and a half hours in a stinky, sweaty car.
“Well,” said her dad, “this is your niece, Molly, and she’s a witch just like you. Got her Hogwarts letter last week and everything; Professor McGonagall said we should come over and see you. Of course, her mum and I know next to nothing about the wizarding world and Mals just barely remembers your brothers—“
Mafalda couldn’t help herself.
“You’re my aunt? Uncle Fabian and Uncle Gideon’s sister? Why’d you never come to see me?”
The woman — Aunt Molly — went red in the face.
“Come in, Mafalda,” she said tiredly. And at her father’s hard look, she added: “Come on then. Both of you. In.”
Once they were inside the cramped, cluttered kitchen, she was introduced to her cousins. Mafalda kind of tuned out for most of it because most of them were younger than her, bloody annoyingly loud, and she wasn’t the World’s Biggest Fan of small children, but she did pay attention to Charlie (thirteen and Gryffindor Seeker) and Bill (fifteen and a Prefect of Gryffindor House). The youngest boy was crying his eyes out because someone turned his teddy bear into a giant spider, but Aunt Molly didn’t seem to care. A ugly-looking sweater was knitting itself on the sofa.
While she obviously knew what a Prefect was, Mafalda had no idea what a Seeker was or why everyone was making such a big deal over Gryffindor or more to the point what Gryffindor even was!
“Who’s that, Mummy?” asked the youngest, a little girl with hair the same violent red as Mafalda’s.
“Your cousin, dear,” said Aunt Molly tiredly. “She’s just come to meet us, her father’s a Squib you see—“
The little girl screwed her face up.
“I don’t wanna Squib cousin!” she yelled.
Despite herself, Mafalda flinched, and her dad did, too.
“Don’t worry, dear. She’s a witch, just like you.”
As if that made it any better.
“I don’t wanna,” the girl repeated, glowering at Mafalda.
“Look,” said Mafalda harshly. “We’ll just leave, get our Squib selves out of your way and on the three-and-a-half-hour drive back to London. Thanks for nothing.”
“You didn’t call, Alfred,” said Aunt Molly.
Her dad pinched the bridge of his nose, looking frustrated.
“There’s no way to contact you, Molly. No phone, and you don’t get our kind of mail. Where am I going to get my hands on a trained owl?”
“She can sleep with Ginny,” said Aunt Molly, nodding towards the little girl.
Mafalda gave Bill, who seemed like the most sensible one of the bunch, a look that clearly said, I am not going to bloody sleep with that demon and that’s final.
“I can sleep with Charlie, Mum, and Mafalda can have my bed.”
Aunt Molly beamed. “What an angel,” she said. And to Mafalda. “Come, dear, let me take your trunk. We’ll all go shopping in Diagon Alley tomorrow, doesn’t that sound nice? Alfred, you wouldn’t mind—”
“—Not letting the world know you have a secret Squib cousin, you have nothing to fear, I’m well practiced, Molly.”
Charlie stood up. “Can I show her around the house, Mum?”
The youngest boy looked up, too.
“And can I have a piggy-back ride from her?”
“You’re too old, Ron!” said the snootiest-looking boy, who was sitting in the middle and had the least amount of dirt in his face.
“I’m not too old!” shrieked Ginny, waving her freckled arms. “I’m only five years old, Mum! I want a piggyback-ride!”
“When your dad gets home from work,” said Aunt Molly.
“You’ll get used to us,” Bill whispered.
I don’t have to like you, thought Mafalda.
“So are you coming?” asked Charlie. “We’ve got to de-gnome the garden. You should come too, Uncle Alfred.”
Dad said he’d come with them, but would rather watch. De-gnoming apparently seemed to involve spinning the tiny, screaming, spiteful little (animals? creatures?) until they shrieked with giddiness, then tossing them as far as you possibly could, which Mafalda was very good at, and Bill and Charlie were all too happy to cheer her on, even convincing her dad to join in, too.
"Don't mind Ginny," said Bill as he flung a particularly angry gnome over the hedge. "She doesn't know anything about anything. And it was wrong of Mum to push you away, but I hope we can be friends still, and that you'll come to Hogwarts with us."
Mafalda, despite herself, thought that was an entirely reasonable proposal.
Maybe she wasn’t going to hate the wizarding world.
It turned out that unfortunately for the sake of her sanity, Charlie loved to talk while he was working.
“Have you heard about Quidditch, Mafalda — oh, good one, Uncle Alfred! That must have gone like twenty yards! Did you know the Antipodean Opaleye has no pupils? What House are you going to be in?”
And yet, she found herself (ew) getting a bit fond of them already.
#quirrellmort#quirinus quirrell#mafalda prewett#mafalda weasley#harry potter fanfiction#hp fanfic#bill weasley#charlie weasley#harry potter
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Three Tangled Hearts
Author: reneejuliet
Pairing: Yoongi x Jimin x Reader
Rating: M (smut (see warnings), cursing)
Word Count: 2,669
Genre: Smut, Angst (lil), Idol AU (are you surprised?)
Author’s Note: Hello beautifuls! Here it is: my first attempt at a MxMxF dynamic. There is gonna be some missing context in this, as I initially wanted to flesh this out into something longer and/or a series. I currently have another drabble for this story that gives some more context, but not much. If the response to this is good, I can post that as well! Otherwise, it isn’t anything that’s going to ruin the story overall. Remember to read the warnings listed below since this is definitely smuttier. And feel free to lol at my inability to properly label warnings because I don’t even know what to consider my writing (but I’m always more safe than sorry, don’t worry). Enjoy, and as always, please let me know what you think!
Warnings: MxMxF, polyamory, not quite a threesome, MxM sex, anal, sort of exhibitionism, teasing, biting/marking, dom!Yoongi for like two seconds, whiny Jimin, hinted oral (female receiving), erections, Yoongi’s growl, use of ‘noona’ again because it’s me, love confessions(like I can’t stress how much they say ‘I love you’), there’s also some fluff in here but it’s hardly enough to label it
You should have heard it, but you were too wrapped up in your own mind. You always were these days. So it wasn't until you opened the door and stepped inside that the rhythmic pounding hit your ears, and your heart dropped into your stomach.
Jimin was bent over the couch, Yoongi thrusting hard into him. Both boys' faces were twisted in pleasure, but there was something more straining their usually beautiful features. It was enough to give you slight pause, even if you suddenly felt sick to your stomach. You were right, after all.
They didn't need you; didn't want you. Not like they swore they did. They never would.
Yoongi's eyes latched onto you first and his thrusting faltered, his fingers tightening on Jimin's hips. His lips parted around the silent form of your name. The brief reprieve allowed Jimin to collect himself as well, and as soon as his glittering eyes located you, they were filled with tears.
"Noona," he moaned, only it sounded broken in a completely different way. You made to take a step back, to run for your life, but Jimin was quicker. His hand caught yours and he tugged you closer, threading his fingers through your limp ones. "Please, noona," he begged, a sob lodged in his throat. "Don't go, don't leave us."
"I..." you struggled, trying to find words. It was so much easier to ice them out with silence, to pretend you didn't care. This... you weren't prepared for this.
"Don't go," Yoongi's deep timbre echoed, and you felt the tears well at the corner of your eyes. Jimin's hand tightened on yours and you exhaled shakily.
"I can't..." you muttered, voice weak as the sobs you'd been suppressing for weeks finally crescendo-ed. "You... y-you don't..."
Jimin brought your hand to his mouth, pressing tender kisses to your palm and your fingers and your wrist. "We do, noona, we really do. Please..."
Yoongi gave an involuntary thrust into Jimin, who lurched forward with a breathless moan. His fingers grasped tighter on to you, though, as if afraid you'd pull away again. Yoongi's eyes also glistened now, fearful that his body's reaction would have undone whatever this progress was. You hadn't run away yet, anyway.
"Y/N-ah," Yoongi called, his voice low and throaty. You recognized the sound - he was struggling not to cry.
Your body betrayed you, and you sunk to your knees. Both boys lurched forward in concern, Jimin's face pinching as Yoongi accidentally thrust further into him again. But you responded by leaning forward and pressing your forehead to Jimin's. His lips trembled around your name and then you were kissing him, gripping his hand tightly as your other tangled into his hair.
Jimin kissed you back like his life depended on it. Truthfully, it felt that way. He'd missed you terribly in the past weeks that you'd withdrawn from them, his heart sick with your absence. To have you back now, and kissing him with a passion that rivaled his own - his body thrummed in joy.
Seeing the two of you kiss spurred Yoongi on, and he began thrusting back into the younger boy. Jimin tried to continue kissing you through it, but he was soon distracted by the moans being pulled from him. You simply kissed his neck reassuringly, tugging gently on his hair. He groaned your name, panting as Yoongi sped up.
Yoongi never took his dark eyes off of you as you suckled Jimin's skin, his tongue coming out to wet his lips. And when your eyes lifted to meet his own, the pupils blowing wide at the sight of him, he felt his dick twitch deep inside the other boy. Biting his lip, he hit harder, deeper inside of Jimin, stealing the younger's breath away until he collapsed against the back of the couch. You continued to run your hand through his hair, but you moved to reach your other hand out toward Yoongi.
He took it, wrapping his long fingers through your delicate ones and tugging gently. You stood, still cradling Jimin's head, but allowing Yoongi to bring your hand to his mouth. He pressed hot, frantic kisses to any inch he could reach, the knuckles of the hand still on Jimin's hips going white with the pressure he exerted to keep him still. One, two more thrusts was all it took with the way you looked at him for Yoongi to cum deep inside Jimin. The younger gave a high whine as he came too, air shuddering out of his lungs until he was left gasping.
As soon as Yoongi pulled out of Jimin, he was pressed against the couch to reach you. He dove his hands into your hair and brought your mouth crashing to his in the single most passionate kiss you had ever known. Your own hands moved to caress the hot, sweaty flesh of his neck and he shivered under your touch. When the kiss finally ended, he pressed his forehead to yours. You could feel his hands trembling in your hair, his warm breath stuttering over your face.
"I love you," he muttered, voice pitched so low you almost didn't hear him. He kissed you again, chaste but no less desperate. As if afraid he wouldn't get the chance again.
"We love you so much," Jimin agreed below you, having moved to circle his arms around your waist. He pressed kisses to your hip over your shirt, nuzzling his face against the soft material.
The tears fell freely from your eyes now and Yoongi was quick to kiss them away. "I love you too," you repeated, your words shaky but poignant. "I'm so sorry."
Yoongi shook his head, tightening his grip on your hair. Jimin burrowed his face into your stomach and squeezed his arms around you, forcing you closer. "No," Yoongi breathed against your lips. "No, you had every right to be upset."
"We're the sorry ones," Jimin mumbled into your shirt. His fingers scratched affectionately against the skin on your back, following the curve of your spine.
"Do you forgive us?" Yoongi asked in his low, husky voice. You knew the tone all too well - despite the indifference he put out to the world, the man often sought validation.
You slipped one hand up Yoongi's neck to the soft juncture behind his ear, stroking it gently. His lashes fluttered at the sensation. Your other hand fell to Jimin's hair, feathering through the lush strands until he moved to grasp it with his own and lavish it with kisses again. "Yes," you whisper, choking on the tears again. Both boys hear it and rush to soothe you. "I do, I -"
You don't get a chance to finish. Yoongi surged forward again, crashing his lips to yours. He inhales you like the oxygen he needs to survive. And truly, his time apart from you had felt like he was dying. Slow, torturous. He'd thought it would be never ending. Now you were back, and you miraculously forgave him for the hurt he had thrown your way. This - this he had to make sure never ended.
Below you, Jimin stroked the smooth flesh of your back while he watched the two of you kiss. It was hot, and he couldn't help the flood of heat pooling low in his stomach. His skin bristled with the need to be touched, a pleasant shiver racing down his spine. He turned his face into your stomach again to conceal a whine, one hand releasing yours to push the fabric away from your flesh so he could press kisses to your curves. It was a desperate attempt to stave off the growing need inside him.
As soon as Jimin's warm mouth touched you, a gasp was pulled from your throat. The kiss with Yoongi was broken, but he didn't seem to mind as he dropped down to your neck. The combination of both of them suckling at you forced an embarrassing moan from somewhere deep in your chest and you bit your lip in mortification.
"No," Yoongi growled, rising back to stare into your eyes with his own dilated pupils. They'd blown out at the strangled sound you emitted. His hand raised to your lips, long fingers pressing down until your teeth released their hold. He ghosted his touch over the swollen color, eyes going almost impossibly dark.
Your body suddenly lurched forward with a breathless gasp, forcing Yoongi to catch you against his chest. Gaze turning down, you caught sight of Jimin licking the remnants of his bite to your hip. He turned those hooded eyes of his up at you, pupils as dark as Yoongi's. You swallowed thickly, lips suddenly very chapped. A heat so hot it burned you red crept into your veins.
"Y-you guys have a show in a few, few minutes," you stuttered out, eyes involuntarily squeezing shut as Yoongi carded his hands into your hair again.
"But we missed you, noona," Jimin cooed into your skin. His plump lips brush over your belly button and a shiver absolutely wrecks your body. You can feel Jimin's grin at your body's response.
"So much," Yoongi agreed, voice just breath at this point. His fingers scratched against your scalp and another small moan escaped you. Another growl, this one happy, sounded in his throat at your noise. His teeth nip at the shell of your ear and you swear your body turned to jelly right then and there.
"But you just... you, you just..."
"Doesn't matter," Yoongi purred in your ear. "For you, Y/N, we're always ready for more."
In confirmation to Yoongi's words, Jimin slid his hands over the curve of your ass - giving it a squeeze for good measure - before running them down the length of your thighs. His fingers massaged the thick muscle and your breath stuttered. He shifted on the couch to give himself better access to you, allowing him to trail his kisses further down until he met the waistband of your pants.
"J-Jimin," you moaned, spurring him on. He curled his fingers inward on your thighs, tracing light patterns into the sensitive area. The air escaped you in a whine this time, invoking an unusually low moan out of the younger boy in response.
"Y/N," Jimin groaned into your flushed skin. His hips twitched against the couch. "Fuck..."
Meanwhile, Yoongi had gone back to work on your neck, busying himself with sucking dark marks into the pallor of your skin. He held your body flush to his so that every rise of your chest pressed into him, and already he could feel himself stirring again. He couldn't help it though. The taste of your skin was so sweet, so salty that he never wanted to taste anything else ever again.
Well, maybe not nothing else...
"W-wait," you called out when Yoongi began tugging at your shirt and Jimin's hands fiddled with the buttons on your pants. "Wait, stop."
Though there was no fear in your voice, both boys halted immediately as if they had done wrong. You took this reprieve from their mind-numbing touches to step back, fixing your clothes as you went. Yoongi's lips twitched with the hint of a scowl and a flash of heat wiggled in you. Running your hands over your face and through your hair several times gave you a moment to collect yourself before turning back to the boys.
"Your concert," you reminded softly, hands settling on your hips.
"Who cares," Jimin groaned, reaching out for you. It was endearing, but also distracting.
"You do," you replied. "Your fans are waiting for you."
Your eyes met Yoongi's and the sheer depth of love they reflected gave you pause. For a moment, you wondered how you could have possibly doubted him when he said he loved you. His entire being seemed to radiate it. If you were any weaker, your knees would have buckled, your resolve crumbled, and you would let them have their way with you. Because god did you wish they would.
As it were, you were built strong. Stubborn. And entirely too professional. Or at least, as professional as someone with an inappropriate relationship with not just one, but two of her charges could be. Still, you were trying.
"Will you still be here after?" Jimin asked, eyes softening. You softened with it.
"Yeah." You nod your head once. "Yeah, I'll - I'll wait."
They adjusted themselves to be decent again before abandoning the couch to come to your side. Jimin got to you first, coming up on one side and wrapping his arms around your waist. He pressed his face into your neck. Yoongi took up your other side, one arm wrapping around your stomach and the other cupping your chin. He turned your face to his, nuzzling his nose against yours as his lips teased your own.
"We don't deserve you," he mumbled against your lips, his fingers stroking your skin. "I don't..."
You silenced him with a kiss. He trembled against you, pressing closer as if afraid you'd slip away. You pressed just as close, tangling both of your hands into each of the boys' hair. Jimin answered by pressing kisses to your neck, albeit chaste ones this time. You could already feel both of their arousals against your hips; they were smart enough to know better than to try and agitate that any further.
"You have me either way," you exhaled against his lips when the kiss ended. "I'm sorry it took me so long..."
"We'd wait forever for you, noona," Jimin assured you. His fingers rubbed soothing circles into your waist.
You glanced over at him, catching his lips with your own. He responded eagerly, pulling your bottom lip between his teeth and tugging. You sighed, and he smiled.
"Or maybe, just... a few hours?"
Jimin's eyes darkened, his lips pouting. He swallowed, hard. "Noona," he groaned, voice ending in a breathy pitch.
"You can't just say things like that," Yoongi admonished as you held Jimin's stare. His own voice had dropped in tone again, raising the hairs on your skin. You turned your head to meet his gaze now.
"I don't," you assured, words firm though their inflection wavered. Their affect on you was hard to hide, but based on the way it rounded Yoongi's cheeks, you hardly minded.
"Promise," Jimin breathed into your ear now. "Noona, promise that you mean it. After the show..."
His excitement was tangible, especially on your hip. You pulled lightly on his hair to rein him back in, but it only seemed to encourage him. He tugged on your shirt playfully, biting his thick bottom lip. You eyed it, and he whined.
"Promise," you said, glancing back up at him. He released his lip and surged forward, kissing you heatedly. He swiped his tongue inside your mouth, familiarizing himself for future reference. When you bit down on his bottom lip in warning, he relented, though reluctantly.
"I love you," Yoongi whispered in your hair as you kissed Jimin. He tightened his hold on you, reaching out for the younger boy with his other arm. Jimin grasped his arm, squeezing in an attempt to ground himself against your kiss. Yoongi squeezed back, reminding him to behave.
"I love you," Jimin echoed against your lips, once he had the breath.
"I love you," you responded, and Jimin's eyes crinkled with his smile. "And I love you," you said as you turned back to Yoongi. Your declaration sprouted his gummy smile and your heart absolutely burst.
"Now go," you insisted, extracting yourself from the boys and backing up to the door. With shaking hands you turned the knob to open it, ushering in the sounds of the crew preparing for the show.
The boys looked at you with their smiles. They complied, sure to send you knee-weakening glances over their shoulders as they went. Your heart tittered in your chest, and suddenly the show couldn't be over soon enough.
Let me know if you’d like to see the “prequel” drabble for this!
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©reneejuliet 2021. No part of this material may be copied, photocopied, reproduced, reposted, or translated without consent.
#btsghostie#bts drabble#bts smut#yoongi smut#jimin smut#yoongi drabble#jimin drabble#yoongi angst#jimin angst#bts angst#kpop drabbles#kpop fanfiction#kpop fanfic#bts fanfiction#bts fanfic#bts fic#yoongi fic#jimin fic#yoongi oneshot#jimin oneshot#suga drabble#suga angst#suga smut#suga oneshot#suga fanfic#suga fanfiction#yoongi x jimin x reader#yoongi x reader#jimin x reader#yoongi x jimin
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In Dreams - Steven’s Dream Analysis
The episodes have taken out my kneecaps, so it’s now time for another symbolism analysis post!
Of course, I’ve been waiting for a long time for an episode such as this so I’m gladly jumping it; however, what we should keep noting is how dream interpretation will always branch out when it comes to connotations. So when we discuss “In Dreams”, any interpretation could be plausible since the elements found in the reveries could be viewed in differing ways depending on the angle of perspective.
I’ll be jumping around a lot since this won’t be the casual essay type of thing with transitions, it’ll more so be different portions where I bring my own interpretations into the mix and feel free to add onto it!
Anyway, let us begin!
Dream One (The Beginning)
For dreams, we usually have an intention or metaphorical usage found in different ways actions or scenes are being portrayed. The first dream is able to encapsulate a great deal of what Steven wants: the ability to live his life without feeling like his purpose of being present could only be done in the circumstances of heroism.
You see this play out with how Steven arrives at his own home, a place of familiarity. What is being shown is the ideal situation, what Steven wants to attain in the conscious world; it even shows the feeling of comfort or homeliness in the characters found inside of the building too!
Most of the people found inside are perceived by Steven to be enjoying luxury or a path of success. Lars definitely emphasizes this if we go back to how Steven, no matter how composed he had to be for Lars’s departure, still has a harm time coping with the fact that Lars is out there with his own objectives and goals — something new to pursue without Steven in the picture.
This opportunity of entry disappears from him. In dream interpretation, this is actually seen as a lack of entry towards a goal or objective and how one sees their ability to get to it.
The cookie cat has a chock full of content when it comes tothe placement of where it is in the dream. For one, there’s always the consideration of size difference, which always perpetuated the emphasis towards control, stability, the amount of domination in the situation.
What we’re seeing here is cookie cat looming down on him, while he’s very small compared to it, a classic showing of lack of control, the inability to feel dominant in a situation.
Secondly, the cookie cat is a specific symbol because if we could connect this to Steven, this could be seen in a few ways: his childhood innocence or his past.
“Steven, no one needs your help. So why are you still here?”
Cookie cats were always some form of correlation to a younger time, a childhood where it wasn’t tainted by the responsibilities towards the Crystal Gem motto, and since it’s been told numerous times by people that cookie cat has a backstory that parallels Pink Diamond (seen in the lyrics of leaving his family behind and the visual division of cookie cat’s colors) it is akin to seeing the past come back to tell him that he’s not allowed, that he doesn’t deserve, the opportunity of being happy with his friends and family.
That the only way for him to be happy with them is to be useful, helpful, and seeing the cookie cat — being very domineering and controlling of this principle — remove him from any access to that opportunity goes to show what Steven is internally feeling at the moment.
And then there’s the falling.
Falling in dreams always came back to the feeling of control in one’s situation, and Steven doesn’t feel that way (no shit).
He’s been told by his childhood paradigm that he can’t be happy, that people won’t be with him now that he’s perceived worthless in their eyes, and having him fall into an endless abyss away from his source of happiness and opportunity shows that feeling of helplessness so well.
Dreams 2-5 (CPH Dreams)
Now, there’s a post that explains the second dream a lot more for the potential dream symbolism of the Diamonds appearing. I’ll link it in the reblogs just so we can get it out of the way.
However, there’s a lot of significance in a few key pieces of imagery being seen that point to the fact that the past is coming back, and repression won’t help him now that it’s slipping into the conscious.
For psychology, repression and suppression are always an interesting topic to discuss because there’s always discussion on the idea of how even if someone attempts to cope and push away the origins of one’s anxieties into the unconscious, there’s always a way for them to slip into the forefront. What we’re seeing here is that: Steven finding the sources of his pain (or events he never had full closure over) being brought up again into remembrance.
What I also find interesting is that even though the montage shows such a comedic viewpoint, there’s an underlined grizzly context to many of the other occurrences found throughout it.
The use ofDogcopter (another piece from Steven’s childhood) as a form of visual symbolism of separation, especially when it’s integrated into the shape of his three main caretakers (who influenced his Atlas complex heavily), continues the underlying fear that Steven still believes that he will be alone — that overall his childhood is disappearing and his connections are assumed to follow suit in that matter.
The imagery of baby Steven brings up an interesting tidbit about Carl Jung’s view of children when it comes to adulthood and care, especially if it seeps out of one’s subconscious into the conscious mind.
In every adult there lurks a child — an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the personality which wants to develop and become whole. -Carl Jung (Vol X. No. 10)
In other words, there’s a potential for yearning for care that hasn’t been fully given ever since childhood or that there’s a wanting for development, for something that can fulfill one’s character to its full completion until we can go into the next cycle of our life.
We could also interpret symbols to the state of hopelessness, lack of control, etcetera, so there are many more ways to view this when it comes to Steven and his current storyline. However, for the sake of keeping it short, I’ll bring the sources to the reblogs.
Dream 6 (The End)
Prior to the beginning of dream six, the fear of Steven’s usefulness to Peridot becomes a major concern for him as the episode goes on. He doesn’t want to lose another friend or become distant to them, and sadly, it shows a lot with this last dream shown.
However, before we can do that, let’s talk about Connie.
Now, I could joke that this is dream symbolism for Steven wanting to be stepped on, but there are a few ways to interpret this fully.
For one, this is another example of size difference being used as a form of dichotomy between control and lack thereof. For the first interpretation, since Connie is imprinted into the face of Obsidian, we could see this as another concern in Steven’s mind: that Connie has a handle on her life and what she plans to do while Steven feels helpless to what he even plans to enjoy or partake in now that his main task of Crystal Gem recovery has now been completed.
One could also say that this is another form of anxiety wrapped in another source of concern when we remember that Steven and his family got stepped on in CYM before Sunstone could save them. That was another moment where he almost died so it wouldn’t be surprising to see the idea of it getting placed into his subconscious as well, even if it’s very unlikely for me to interpret it as such.
Now let’s go to Peridot.
Before the introduction of her dream self, use of childhood imagery comes back once again with Steven’s old bedroom. Waking up in it could be seen as one harboring thoughts or a mindset that still permeates in the past and the prior, something that still hangs in one’s thoughts even in adulthood.
For Peridot’s dream self, even though the static is from real Peridot’s attempts to disconnect Steven from the dream, this plays once again to the imagery of vision and the soul in Steven Universe’s world. The disconnect to one’s person (soul and mindset), the feeling of being unable to reach out to a person, is there. He’s afraid; this is what he feared: Peridot is going to leave him now that he has failed, that he didn’t play the part for what she wanted him to do — he’s scared shitless of another person leaving him behind to pick up the pieces.
He believes that she has the opportunity to go forward into the future, to her own life, while there’s him, his opportunities closed off, unable to climb them from how arduous they are in scale.
Unable to touch her, to be able to keep close contact.
Unable to stop her from leaving.
But these are all fears, assumptions, and anxieties.
It doesn’t have to be like that. It doesn’t have to define you.
#steven universe#suf#su#steven universe future#suf spoilers#peridot#steven universe analysis#bork speaks
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So uh. It’s 4:17am and I know literally no one cares but I just finished watching Bo Burnham’s new special and like, holy shit. I have some Feelings. And this is my fucking tumblr so unfortunately anyone who follows me can and will be subjected to those Feelings. Apologies in advance. I blame my high school English teacher for this, who I had for freshmen, junior, and senior year, because that cunt made as analyze and pick apart not just books but documentaries, movies, and other pieces of media to such an extreme degree I still blame her for a lot of my academic burnout and inability to really engage with my college courses because what was the fucking point. If I could write the best paper in the class and still not get a full score when my classmates with less well written shit did because I ‘wasn’t reaching my full potential or putting in as much effort as required’ why should I bother.
Off topic. I’ll put the rest under a cut to be vaguely courteous because this is going to be a lot of semi-organized rambling that I’m putting here mostly so I can stare at it in baffled, disgusted horror at ~2pm tomorrow when I go back and reread it. And then decide not to delete it anyway because hey, I don’t delete anything because I enjoy tormenting myself years down the road.
I grew up with Bo Burnham, yeah? I knew all the lyrics to New Math when I was in middle school and you can bet your ass I understood like, four verses at the time I first started singing it. And I remember the vivid pleasure of going through high school and hating math because I suck at it (ayooo failed out of Calc senior year first semester~ (they weren’t called semesters in hs they were some quarterly thing but I don’t fucking remember the right term)) and the absolute joy realizing how one of those verses were clever was brought me. Like, every time I understood a new verse in New Math it made my entire day so much better.
And then the summer after my first year of college I, for some fucking reason I cannot fathom now, 20 year old me thought it was a brilliant idea to decide to watch What. with my parents while we ate dinner. I had seen What. before. I knew what the contents entailed. I was apparently 100% down to watch him pretend to jack off on stage while eating taco salad in the living room with both of my parents who were so closed mouthed about sex that I got literally my entire sexual education from fanfiction.
And then my cat had a seizure literally right before that scene so fate helped me escape that hell for some reason, and yes, Siren was fine after a very scary night.
But like. Still. What the fuck, 20 year old me. Why did you set yourself up for the mortifying experience of watching a comedian mime jacking off while sitting next to your mother. Why.
So anyway. Bo Burnham was peripherally a part of my life for a very long time. I’ve always really liked him. I wish he had made more vines while vine was still a thing because the ‘is there anything better than pussy’ one still cracks me tf up.
I saw a post here at some point about how the new special made someone feel like they’d just watched his suicide note. And I didn’t take it seriously, because yeah, Make Happy got kinda serious and stressful there at the end but like?
Maaaaan am I glad I watched Inside though, despite being vaguely concerned. I totally get where that person was coming from. It does kinda feel like that. At the same time though, I just have this feeling that Inside is going to be important.
Here’s where I finally get to the actual fucking point of the post.
Collectively, entertainment media is desperately trying right now to figure out how the hell to handle the pandemic. Ignore it? Pretend all media now exists in a universe where the shitstorm of 2020 didn’t exist? Most of the ones that I’ve seen have gone down what I consider the absolute worst route, which is of course terrible fucking writing that kind of? addresses the pandemic and shit that went down, but like, with clunky dialogue and really bad jokes. I’m mostly talking about the Roseanne spinoff/sequel/whatever the fuck it’s considered, of which I watched half an episode of and then silently begged my fiance to let us leave his mother’s house because she was laughing at it and it was genuinely, horrifically painful. This is why I don’t watch tv anymore.
ANYWAY. He never mentions it. Not once. There are plenty of really relevant things discussed and pointed out and I think one? mention of the actual year 2020 but beyond that. Nothing. And I feel like Inside might be one of the most genuine, visceral, real pieces of media portraying the pandemic that we, as an American society anyway, are going to come away from this all with. At least everyone in my own admittedly piss poor social circles has spent like last ~year and a half doing that social media thing where the more you post about how well you’re doing and great it all is, the more miserable and bad off you really are.
(Yes, that is how I judge my ‘friends’’ relationships on facebook. The more pictures/posts/tagged shit/social media demonstrations of how ~amazing~ and ~in love~ and ~perfect~ everything is, the worse I assume the reality is.)
But Inside strikes as very, very real. And I just feel like 20 30 40 50 years from now, when we’re talking about the 2020 pandemic and how it shaped and shifted and effected and destroyed people and society, it’s going to be a very important piece of media. Because so far, anyway, it’s the first one I’ve seen where you can actually see it all go down. The absolute fucking breakdown so many of us went through. Dealing with worsening mental problems that had previously been getting better, lost progress, ruined plans and dreams and missed opportunities and everything else.
It’s the first one that strikes as real, I guess. As not manufactured. Not tailored to portray the ‘correct’ message. Not diminishing or exaggerating anything but just... showing. Existing within the reality of the year. And not being apologetic or ashamed about it.
I’m glad he actually went through with putting it out into the world. That probably took a whole lot to do, and I hope good things get to him for going through with it all. For completing it and giving it to the world. It was visceral and raw to watch and my piss poor attention span that needs 20+ tabs open at all times actually sat there and watched it, in full, all the way through in one go. Without pausing to read a fic, watch something else, check facebook or tumblr, answer a roleplay, or skim through omegle to see if anyone good was online. That’s like, unheard of these days.
I just. I dunno. There’s a lot there to breakdown. A part of me wants to do it, take the time and write the analysis and the breakdowns and pick out what I think the important bits are. But I hate doing that now and I’m sure the desire will be gone come afternoon-morning, along with all these weird feelings about it.
This has gotten long enough and it’s 4:47 now, so half an hour of word vomiting into a tumblr post is probably too much. So I guess I’ll call it quits and maybe maybe not delete this when I wake up. Night, anyone who actually suffered through reading this mess.
#Maddie talks#Weird thoughts mostly#Don't expect anyone to actually read but hey#that's not what this blog is there for so why not word vomit just for my future self
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Midnight Call // L.H
This is (kind of?) FWB!Luke — I think this is a little different for me and I’m really happy with how it turned out so any feedback would be really appreciated as always. Loosely based on the song ‘Honest’ by the Band CAMINO. Thank you to @calumrose & @cashtonasfuck for proof reading this for me!♥️
Word count: 1,778
The air felt thick.
Heavy breathing was the only sound that could be heard in Luke’s bedroom. The rest of the city was silent. Hot skin pressed together, you rolled over and settled against his bare chest, feeling it rise and fall under your cheek with every breath he took. It was sometime in the middle of the night — the only time when you felt as though you could breathe. Luke made you feel that way.
His fingertips dropped to your cheek, smoothing the skin and tilting your chin so you were facing him. The content gaze on his face told you everything you needed to know. His eyes conveyed the feelings he’d never know how to explain. Very little words were spoken as he held you, basking in the post—sex glow that had consumed the two of you.
“Your tattoo is so pretty.” Your voice came out quieter than you expected, barely a murmur as your fingers softly traced the stunning hummingbird on his inner bicep. He smiled softly at your words, the hand resting on your lower back absentmindedly rubbing circles. They trailed off as he grew more tired. “I always forget that it’s there, then when I see it, I remember how beautiful it is.”
“Feels nice.” He replied, his voice a soft mumble as he tried to stop sleep from consuming him. He wanted to stay awake a little longer — wanted to hold you, appreciate you being there because as soon as the morning came around, you would be gone again. “Gonna send me to sleep, gorgeous.”
The questions lingering on your mind whenever you got to this stage in the night never quite made it to your lips — what is this? What are we doing?
Luke gave you the chance to be yourself. To do nothing but be with him, wrapped in his sheets or his arms as you let go of everything. There was no pressure. No strings, nothing to worry about — a chance to escape the weight of the world in the quiet of the night, when nothing else truly mattered.
“You can go to sleep.” You reassured him, noticing his heavy eyes and how often he was blinking to try and stay awake. His breathing was evening out, a clear sign that he was about to fall asleep. You’d gotten used to it. “I’m right here.”
He hummed in response, finally letting sleep consume him, wrapped in your embrace. If it wasn’t the sex, it was the quality of the sleep you had in his bed that brought you back everytime. The comfort of sleeping in his arms was something you’d been unable to find anywhere else— the only place where your mind would allow you to rest.
With Luke fast asleep, you were left alone with your thoughts once more. His even breathing and Petunia’s snores from her bed in the corner of the bedroom gave you something to focus on — not leaving you in complete silence. You just wanted to stay close to Luke for a little longer. You cuddled into his warmth, dropping a kiss to his jaw before pulling the thick comforter around the two of you. Faded notes of his cologne flooded your senses in a soothing way as you fell into a deep slumber, comforted by your surroundings.
It felt like mere minutes before your alarm broke the peace of the bedroom. It was never long enough.
“Luke,” You mumbled, grabbing your phone and shutting off the blaring sound. His arm was wrapped tightly around yours, as if his skin touching yours was the only thing that allowed him to rest. He swore he couldn’t sleep without you pressed up against him. “Let me go, I need to get dressed.”
He hated how quickly you tried to leave.
“No,” He groaned, shaking his head against the pillow and sitting up to rest on his forearms. He’d barely opened his eyes, had no time to come round, and all he wanted to do was hold you for a little longer. “You have five minutes. Please, just stay a little longer.”
Luke always got you to stay. The two of you clung to each other for a little longer, as the sun rose, knowing as soon as daylight returned — so did reality. It was rushed goodbyes, with no time for breakfast, having to get back to your apartment before your roommate realised you were gone.
It was your night-time secret, and that was how it worked.
Luke had been adamant that he wasn’t looking for a relationship, still recovering from the hurt he suffered from the last. As far as he was concerned, his heart was closed off to any potential love interest, saving it for the smushy dog that slept in his bedroom. He had made that clear, and that was okay. At the beginning, anyway. He felt as though his words had been harsh, spoken the morning after the first night you spent together. You both felt something, got some kind of release from being wrapped in each other. That’s all it was.
He gave you a chance to escape the burden of your everyday life. There was always someone wanting something, expecting something from you — putting pressure on you to constantly exert energy for other people’s benefit. Luke didn’t make you feel that way. With every night you spent in his bed, the more able you felt to breathe, to relax. His bedroom had started to feel like a safe space, where you could just be you — and Luke wanted nothing else.
“Mhm,” Luke sighed in contentment, lips trailing to your cheek and back to the spot behind your ear. The weight of your body against his was something he tried to commit to memory, fingertips dancing up and down your back softly as you laid with him. He knew it wouldn’t last long. “Wish you could stay with me all day.”
“You don’t mean that,” You replied quietly, your face resting against his shoulder. It wasn’t meant to make him appear insincere, but his strict no relationship rule played on your mind — if not only to protect yourself from falling for him. You didn’t take a lot of his words to heart, especially those he spoke when he was half asleep, doing anything he could for more cuddles. “That’s not what this is.”
But, what is this?
“I can think of worse ways to spend my day,” He confessed, his deep voice rumbling against your chest as he rested his head there. He tried to stop his mind from thinking about you spending the day in his bed — tangled in the sheets as he convinced you to watch some terrible reality TV. Just having somebody there, having you there, to pass the time. There was nothing he loved more than a lazy day, ordering food in and not having to worry about anything else. “Although I’m not sure I’d get anything done with you here to cuddle me.”
The more time Luke spent in your presence, the more he found himself curious to know every aspect of your life. No conversation seemed to be off boundary — hours spent quietly chatting never felt uncomfortable, no matter the topic. You’d told him some of your deepest secrets, your biggest fears, and he had done the same. He knew about your parents, the place you grew up — he felt as though he knew your friends like they were his own. It almost felt wrong to wake up to a new day and forget it ever happened — watching you leave with a quick goodbye after spending hours talking about secrets from your childhood. He knew things about you that no-one else did.
Your spirit seemed to linger in his house after you left. He would find himself brushing his teeth, imagining you there with him, maybe joining him in the shower. After his last relationship, he hadn’t allowed his mind to consider the possibility of someone else taking that place. So when the thoughts arose, at first he’d tried to shoot them down — but after each night by your side, he opened up a little more. He’d make breakfast for himself, wishing he was making it for two, picturing you perched on the edge of the countertop watching him flip pancakes. Even taking Petunia for a walk became something he wished he had company for — the music playing through his headphones was no longer enough. He found himself listening to the playlist you had made for him, for the nights you spent at his house — a combination of yours and his favourite songs, as well as some you wanted to introduce him to.
Luke couldn’t tell you any of that, though.
He wouldn’t know how to. The fear of rejection was too heavy on his mind, although he occasionally allowed himself to ponder over the possibility of you feeling the same way. He was too worried about ruining whatever relationship the two of you had — the dynamic between you both worked, and he knew he’d never forgive himself if he changed because of his selfish inability to keep his mouth shut.
He was hoping you’d respond in some way to what he said, his proposal of staying a little longer than just the hours of midnight to early morning. Although, as he expected, you spoke the words he had heard many times.
“I need to go home,” You spoke softly, and he pretended not to hear the sadness in your voice.
Deep down, he knew you wanted to stay too, but you just wouldn’t admit it to yourself. He sighed heavily into the sheets, knowing the scent of your favourite perfume lingering on them would be the only thing left in moments to come. Your fingers gently pushing away the messy blonde strands that had fallen onto his face would make him want you to stay even more.
You could admit that the idea of Luke as a boyfriend was something that danced around your mind often, wondering whether he’d change in an relationship — or whether he’d be the caring, affectionate friend that he always had been to you. Luke noticed the little things. He remembered small details about you that you barely knew yourself, knew what things (and people) you liked and disliked. You couldn’t help but think it would be amplified if he allowed himself to be devoted to someone else.
”I’ll call you later, okay?”
He didn’t know when later was. All he did know, was that it wasn’t going to be soon enough.
***
Taglist: @irwinkitten @ukulelecal @wildflowergrae @luckyduckydoo @letstaketheups-and-downs @jazzyangel242 @cashworthy @babylon-corgis @norawashere @monsteramongmikey @late-nightdevil @maluminspace @fluffsshawn @xhaileyreneex @goth5sos @flowerthug @calpops @youngblood199456 @aliencal @wokeupinjapanisabop @banditocth @cashtonasfuck @5-secondsofcolor @g-l-pierce @monsteramongmgc @calmlftv @mantlereid @treatallwithkindness @another-lonely-heart @calumrose @inlovehoodx @mermaidcashton @everydayimfangirling @sexgodashton @b-easybreezy @ilumxna @malumsmermaid @koalacal (to be added please fill out this form) ♥️
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#please let me know what you think and if you'd like more of this kinda au!!!#luke hemmings blurb#5sos blurb#FWB!5sos#FWB!luke blurbs#FBW!5sos blurbs#5sos au#luke hemmings au#myblurbs#mywriting#5sos blurbs#5sos x reader#luke hemmings x reader#5sos fwb#fwb blurb
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Pharmacist/Me = 1 🏆 Doctor/Nursing Staff = 0
Thank you in advance for reading this rant. I’ve been really frustrated and just needed to get this off my chest, and today at least I had a wonderful knight in a white lab coat. 🩺❤️🩹🥽🥼💪🏻
Content warnings and squicky squicks: (further down there is) an image of a medical vial with a clipped image of a more benign part of a syringe, health conditions (endometriosis, fibromyalgia), menstrual cycles and associated terms such as bleeding and other things, lack of empathy in my specific healthcare system, hysterectomies, pain, swearing and losing patience. Most important warning: self-administered syringes and injection discussions of legal medications (Depo-Provera) approved of by professionals and properly researched. P.S. this may sound rather Karen-like but I would never do this to someone’s face. Online ranting and acknowledging where I could do better is not the same as screaming in public for bossy requests or comps, etc. Ew.
Another ‘warning’… pharmacists being kick-ass allies and giving a damn about their patients.
I’m really annoyed because (and I know healthcare and scheduling is a clusterfuck right now, but…) for over a month now I’ve been trying to get an appointment in person to get this injectable medication that is, yes, birth control, but is also used for endometriosis in my case. And I have severe endometriosis (exacerbated severely by fibromyalgia, siiiiigh) to the point I bleed enough and lose so much I have to go to the hospital when my care is not properly preventative… like in this case, and the pain is unbelievably severe also to the point I’ve spent time in the hospital, including my 11th Christmas Eve and Day. I started this injectable medication at 13 because it was the only thing that came close to helping reduce my endometrial tissue. Even a hysterectomy wouldn’t help as much, unless they decided to go the super invasive route and remove all the organs (or parts of them) that had become ‘infected’ by the tissue. Again, tissue where it’s not supposed to be, and it causes extreme pain as the tissue tries to flush out of my body each period, even if it’s attached to, like, my pancreas. Just no. That does not work at all. No. That is not fun.
SO. I’m 31, nearing 32, and the doctor’s office knows this. I’ve had the same doctor since I was 10. Been on this medication nearly non-stop for just shy of two decades (with appropriate precautions such as bone density tests) because of the absolute severity of the pain and my inability to function when it hits… which can be months at a time of non-stop bleeding and morning sickness-level nausea and vomiting, migraines and the occasional complete inability to move—in other words, it’s debilitating.
My doctor (even the nurses, as it’s in large print at the top of my file in the system) knows all about this. They’re supposed to call me if I’m overdue by a certain margin (I get they’re busy but months and months???). But my doc’s also a bit of an airhead (albeit a smart one when he focuses) and takes forever to reply to anything on time, even when it’s a severe issue, but not severe enough to go to the hospital. But it’s gotten to the point where the nurses say to go to the ER and then the ER nurses and doctors there get SUPER pissed off (AT ME AND SOMEHOW NOT AT MY DOCTOR/NURSES AND THEIR ORDERS) at the ‘waste of time’, and it’s just a clusterfuck.
Oh yeah, and that ER visit while I was overdue for my injection? Internal intestinal bleeding along with a lovely, even if small, perforation in my fucking uterus from the growth of endometrial tissue. I MEAN COME ON — WHAT IN THE HELL. Totally preventable if they fit me in when I called literally over a month ago.
But I will not change my doctor (the other docs at the practice know what is going on and have offered to take me on, but they don’t have the experience with myself and my conditions or the history, but they can do little else because of professional conduct—it’s between myself and my doc) because he is the only one who treats me with humanity and understands fibromyalgia, endometriosis, pre-MS and pre-RhA/PsA, endo-related IBS, (ulcerative) colitis, and other neurological conditions with any degree of empathy. (See, I told you I’m a mess!) There is no way I’m switching offices in the perpetual shortage of doctors in Canada moving elsewhere for m o n e y (plus Covid-19 being a teen hooligan and constantly coming back to wreck more goddamn shit, including everyone’s sanity, then setting things on fire like the real hooligans in my village have been doing this summer — I mean… what in the hell!?!?), so with all that in mind I actually thank my lucky stars. So I put up with a lot of this shit because he treats me, besides him being an airhead, like an actual human being deserving of compassion and care and quality of life despite my severe disabilities and pain. So.
I’m usually treated really well (even if they often think I’m a nuisance for daring to be severely chronically ill/in pain all the time) so I try to be patient and good and understanding when I can.
But his STAFF (I know they’re busy and I’ve been patient but they’ve been so awful honestly to the point I cried hard enough my dad noticed my red eyes and frustration-tear fracks on my face)! And the doc himself’s inability to reply to notes on time even when urgent and when he knows the circumstances (I admit I am a bit of a hard patient so I can understand if he just kinda ignores me sometimes, honestly). But in this case I was THREE DAMN MONTHS LATE for my injection and they’ve always called in the past when I was coming due if it looked like I hadn’t scheduled an injection, so that I was all on time and squared away and didn’t risk severe pain and damage to my already-fucked hormonal system (learning I couldn’t have kids was absolutely heartbreaking, let me tell you, but even a hysterectomy in that case would solve nothing — this is by far the easiest option, especially considering how my fibromyalgia would fuck with my post-surgery recovery and leave me with lasting pain for years if not decades; sigh).
Anyway. So. After some ridiculous levels of back and forth and some truly remarkable levels of lack of compassion (she kept giving me the exact same, word for word response in a bored tone UGH) considering the severe pain I was in (I was told, in front of OTHER PATIENTS AND STAFF, that I could just wait until I talk to the doctor myself at my next phone appointment and then schedule my injection for my next MONTHLY followup — 4.5 months overdue at that point, it would’ve been — because, and I quote, ‘am used to dealing with pain because of my fibromyalgia and years of dealing with it and other conditions’ which they named in front of others!!!!!!!! what. the. fuck. But I kept my cool because I know all these people, my mom taught their kids music, they’re a fixture of the community, etc. and I refuse to be a Karen…. At least externally.
But here comes the nice part that makes me love our new (okay, he’s been here like 5 years but still, in a small town that’s pretty new lmao) pharmacist that much more. Rasik was aware of my frustration with the doctor and nurses and was even the one who brought to my attention that, at the time, I was 2 months late for my injection and he was a bit concerned since he’s privy to how much pain I exist in without throwing in one or more knives directly into my womb, ovaries, tummy, hips, and other areas my endometrial tissue has taken root. He’s such a sweetheart and he really does care for his patients— the work he does with my father’s diabetes (the tricky one where you’re not obese) management is above and beyond the call of a pharmacist and I will forever be grateful for that alone, never mind how he cares for me.
So I went in today to pick up another medication, after yet another frustrating stop-over at the nurses’ desks, and he suggested I ask for my injectable medication (it’s Depo-Provera, by the way) and the syringe plus the two tips necessary — I’m actually familiar with this since I had to learn epinephrine injections from an early age (not Epipen) and how to give testosterone daily to my ex-husband (sorry not sorry, dude, but congrats on your first kid *grouchy thumbs up*). But yeah! Legally he’s not allowed to suggest I give it to myself, but he was getting super fed up with the nurses and doctors dragging their feet and ‘being assholes with little empathy’ in his own words, so I took the hint and requested my vial plus syringe, as well as the drawing and injection gauge needles…. which he gleefully filled for me, and I reiterated that it was ‘fully my idea, not yours, Rasik, because everyone knows I’m dumb and would never think it’s you if something happened’ (I’m not dumb and I’ve given injections to others many times looool).
Long story short: HERE’S TO PHARMACISTS AROUND THE WORLD, BEING AMAZING AND CARING FOR THEIR PATIENTS AND ‘BENDING BUT NOT REALLY BENDING’ THE RULES TO MAKE SURE THEIR CLIENTS ARE CARED FOR PROPERLY. They are amazing and deserve every last bit of your courtesy, especially when they pull double duty every. single. day. because of Covid and their subsequent boosters. (i.e. boosters in the form of humans who are fucking stupid if they have no medical reason not to get the vaccine… I mean JFC.)
Rasik? You are amazing and I am 100% going to find you some Indian-Canadian (or North Indian; I believe that’s where he’s from originally) treats or desserts or make some myself after slyly asking his assistant what he leans toward liking.
Be kind to one another, yeah, but… my goodness: be kind to those who can truly make a difference in your health, sanity, and even life or death.
Pharmacists, volunteers, and frontline health workers: the true heroes of these times.
Thank you so much. So very much.
💜💙🇨🇦👨🏽⚕️❤️🩹🙏🏻
P.S. … now I just gotta stab myself intramuscularly after making sure there’s no air bubbles and etc., and swap out to the proper gauge needle (different, smaller, to draw from the vial, larger to inject so that it goes in more quickly and, oddly enough, hurts less haha). I don’t think air bubbles are as much of an issue as when injecting intravenously (ummm I have a doctor uncle and grandma nurse and nurse friends, so shush 😆). But I’ve done this for others and animals so I should be good! :)
I’m a smart enough cookie even if I’ve lost a few nibble-size pieces around the edges. 😉😘 buahaha
Cheers to my pharmacist!!!! You are amazing and I can’t wait for the pain and months and months of bleeding to settle down.
Remind me again why humans are the only mammals (animals?) with monthly fluxes? UGH wtf ever. 🙃
#pharmacist#pharmacy#doctors#nurses#birth control#sorta#endometriosis#pain#chronic pain#menstrual pain#x100#preventative care#depo-provera#canada#canadian healthcare#socialized medicine#it has its issues but covid certainly isn’t helping#will still x3000 take it over the United States because come on#and yes i lived there for years so I can pass that judgment#thank you so much rasik#pharmacists are true allies#tw: needles#tw: syringes#tw: drugs#i guess?#tw: dumb healthcare#lol
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About The Baby (Thomas Shelby x Reader)
Thomas Shelby Requests Open
Word Count: 989
Warnings: Mentions of possible abortion, Tommy not caring about what reader wants
Summary: Reader got pregnant by Tommy but doesn’t tell him and plans on getting rid of it. Tommy finds out anyways and isn’t too happy about reader’s plans.
Author’s Note: Hello again everyone! I haven’t posted on here since November and I’m hoping to never go that long again without posting. I still have everyone’s requests from the past few months that I’ll be working on soon. This story might be a bit trash because I am not an experienced writer and I hope the characterization of Tommy isn’t too bad. All I can say is I tried my best. So nevertheless I hope you like it. I had a few different concepts on how this story would happen but this was the one I wrote out fully. If you have any interest in my other concepts of this story idea, I would be glad to write them out in a full fic also.
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The insistent, non-stop pounding on the door of your flat kept you from resuming your sleep. No matter how hard you tried and no matter how much you hoped you already knew two things: 1. You wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep and get the rest you needed and 2. The knocking won’t quit until you answer the door and if you continue to ignore it he’ll find a way to get in, even if it means somehow breaking the door down.
Sudden deafening knocks on your door in the middle of the night would usually make someone cower in fear in their bedroom, afraid of who is out there and what they want. But you knew who it was and you knew this would likely happen. You just didn’t think your conversation earlier in the day with Polly would reach him so soon.
Tugging on your robe, you leave the oasis of your room and head to the front door where just outside chaos is surely awaiting you.
You open the door and there stands Thomas Shelby, who is not looking particularly happy. He spares one glance at you before shoving his way past the doorframe, past you, and into your living room. You close your front door and turn to him.
“Thomas.” You say acknowledging his presence.
“When were you going to tell me eh?,” he snapped at you in quiet anger.
You stared at him with a dumbfounded expression. “Tell you what?”
You knew exactly what he was talking about but decided to play stupid, just wanting to be petty and rile him up and anger him even more because of him ruining your sleep tonight and his inability to discuss these things at a decent hour.
“You know what I’m talking about. Better yet, were you going tell me? Make me aware of it at all? Or were you just gonna go behind me back and never let me know a thing!”
You crossed your arms looking annoyed. “I still haven’t a clue of what you’re talking about Tommy,” you replied disinterestedly.
At your words, he marched right up to you, grabbed your upper arms and pulled you closer to him. “About the baby Y/N. Polly told me everything”.
This, of course, wasn’t a surprise. You already figured Polly had told him everything. You loved the woman dearly but when it comes to things that involve her family she has a hard time keeping quiet. That’s why you attempted to avoid her the last couple weeks. She somehow has a magic power that makes her aware of when someone is pregnant. But alas, you had to run into her at a market and she immediately had to realize you were with child, despite barely having a bump yet. And then she just had to know your whole plan on what you were going to do...
“Then you already know I don’t want to keep the baby Tommy,” you say tearing your arms out of his grasp.
Tommy takes a few feet backwards until he plops down on your couch, resting his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands over his face. “Were you going to tell me? Or were going to get the procedure done and go about acting like it never happened?”
“I don’t know Tom. I might’ve told you at some point.”
He just sighs and looks up at you. “Why don’t you want the baby eh? Why don’t you want to have our child Y/N?”
“You know this isn’t a good life to bring a baby into. There are always enemies in our lives Tommy due to the business which I can deal with just fine but a baby shouldn’t be brought into this misery,” You walk over to him and put your hand on his shoulder. “Not to mention that we’re not married and we don’t even live together. The baby will be looked down upon for this. Perhaps in the future if and when things are more stable and safe we could have a baby then but I don’t want one now.”
Tommy suddenly pulls you down onto his lap and wraps his arms around your waist, holding you close. “I could marry you first thing in the morning. Fuck, I would right now Y/N, you know I would. I love you and I’ll love this baby just as much. You wouldn’t need to worry abou-”
“But Tommy I already told you I don’t want this baby!” you exclaim, interrupting him.
He cupped your jaw with his hand and turned your face towards his. “I know this was unexpected but we don’t have to do anything rash, yeah? We’ll raise this baby right alongside each other, watch them take their first steps, watch them ride their first horse, watch them get dressed for their first day of school. It will be good. I’ll take care of you both. You know I will.”
Despite what Tommy thinks this wasn’t a rash decision on your part. Ever since your doctor had told you the news, you had carefully thought about what to do every single day. You had felt bad about not letting Tommy know anything and you knew it wasn’t right to do but you knew Tommy wouldn’t come to the same conclusion as you. It wasn’t an easy decision to make but you didn’t want to bring an innocent child into this world just to always have their lives be at risk every day due to this business and the lives you and Tommy lead. It would tear you apart and absolutely haunt you forever if anything happened to your child because of the enemies that seem to constantly lurk around in your lives. You had already made up your mind on what you were going to do but unfortunately Tommy had his mind made up also.
And Thomas Shelby always gets what he wants.
#Thomas shelby imagine#thomas shelby x reader#tommy shelby imagine#tommy shelby x reader#peaky blinders imagine#peaky blinders x reader#thomas shelby fanfic#tommy shelby fanfic#peaky blinders fanfic
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The Break-in; Aftermath
I decided to come back and write a comfort piece set a couple of weeks after the break-in story line, and here it finally is! It’s not my most favourite piece of writing ever, but it’s soft, and sweet, and developed plotty feelings, and I have something worth celebrating today so I decided to do that by doing a quicker-than-usual-edit and post this up for happy feels! Who’s ready for some hurt/comfort?!
Warnings: Box boy universe, general dehumanzation (for the ‘verse), referenced violence, referenced beatings, injuries (head injury, broken ribs, broken fingers), self-blame, scared and confused headspace
Tag list: @haro-whumps, @theycomeinthrees, @whumpthisway, @samanddeaninpanties, @teachunks, @draganies, @pepperonyscience, @whump-it, @castielamigos-whump-side-blog, @untilthepainstarts, @galaxywhump, @kiretto-laorentze, @lonesome--hunter @slaintetowhump @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @still-an-asshole
Kit hadn’t seen anyone in nearly two weeks. No-one but Emile and the store pets. He was mostly confined to bed—and still the actual bed, not just his mattress on the floor. Emile insisted he rested, he was forbidden from anything strenuous or taxing, only allowed him to help with small tasks at the end of the day,
He’d never known such luxury. If it weren’t for the broken bones and deep tissue bruising he might have melted away at being given such time to relax. As it was, mostly he just focused on dragging breath into his lungs past the stabbing ache in his ribs.
He was bored too, and on edge. Nothing felt as safe as it had. He tried to let it go, Emile said he was taking care of it. New security systems had been installed, and all the windows replaced with stronger glass. His body remembered though—the feeling of fists and feet, the kicks and punches and heavy handed shoves. His body remembered being beaten, but more than that it remembered losing his charges to the whims of people who didn’t have their best interests at heart.
So he wasn’t sleeping well, food sat heavy in his stomach, and he had no way to work off his restless energy without earning a glare from Emile and cutting remarks about needing to recover more quickly. And that was his other concern—that as soon as he was declared fit and healthy again Emile would have no more worries about inflicting whatever punishment must be brewing for his mistakes.
It left him strung out, a lit fuse with nowhere to burn. He wanted to recover well, he wanted to be good and make up for his errors and inability to fulfil his duties. It just wasn’t working. He felt more tired than ever, the pain making him sluggish and slow. Emile hated the way he looked with his bruised face and bandaged hand, told Kit it wasn’t appropriate for him to be seen by customers until it wasn’t noticeable.
Even once he could move around without wincing in pain he was confined to the upstairs apartment or the back rooms whenever the store was open. He didn’t mind missing out on the customers, they were never that important to him. But he hated not being busy. He hated sitting with the itch under his skin that stemmed from his failure to take care of himself. He hated having nothing to do but think of all the ways things felt wrong.
The bright spot on the horizon was Libby. He’d missed her too, and was finally up on his feet enough to be allowed downstairs during her lunch break.
“Hey,” Libby said and rushed up to him all at once. She cupped his face lightly, her eyes roving over the bruising. “I’m so sorry about what happened. I heard a few days later but Mr Raser said you weren’t up to visitors.”
He blinked, noting the change from calling Emile by his first name, and back to referring to him by his surname. Libby hadn’t done that around Kit since the first few weeks of her employment. He wondered if it meant anything.
“How are you?” She gathered up his unbandaged hand and squeezed.
He looked down at their joined hands with bleary eyes, watching the way their fingers curled around one another.
“Kit?”
He flinched a little at his name, at the concern. He wasn’t scared of her, he just… felt seen, really seen, for the first time. More than the paramedics who had tended to him, more than the police detectives who had questioned him, more than by Emile who inspected him with detached scrutiny and thin lipped annoyance.
“I can’t believe they hurt you this badly,” she said fiercely, like she was angry on his behalf.
“I’m okay,” he said, finally looking up again. “They said I’ll be okay.”
“But you’re not. Not right now.”
He tried to smile, and reassure her, but all he ended up doing was sighing. “I’m trying.”
“Is anyone taking care of you?”
“That’s… I don’t need... Um, that’s not what I’m for? I’m the one who takes care of them.”
“So that’s a no, then.” She huffed and he curled into himself before remembering how much everything hurt and gasping in pain. She caught his elbow and guided him to sit down. “Here, gently. I brought you soup, and you’re going to drink it, and then…” he watched her eyes rove over him and around the shop, too. Her hand came up to brush through his hair and he leaned into the touch. “Have you managed to get this clean?” she asked gently.
He shook his head. “My hand… and I can’t lift my arm without my side hurting, and it hurt too much at the back… where I hit my head.” He ducked down in shame.
“Okay, that’s what I thought. And Mr. Raser hasn’t tried to help you?”
He started to speak and she cut him off, “And if you say that isn’t his job I might cry.”
He looked up, worried, but found her smiling softly at him, and it emboldened him “I don’t think he noticed.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well that settles it. Soup and a hair wash.”
Before he could even protest, she whisked herself away.
* * *
He thought that usually he would be nervous of this. Stripping his top off in front of her, letting her see his bruises and marks. But on a full stomach of easy to digest food, and after two weeks of pain, he was too tired to worry.
They were in the bathroom for the store pets and she helped him ease out of his shirt and he stood nearby while she filled up the sink. It was low and deep—perfect for helping someone else get washed if they were kneeling or restrained, or otherwise incapable of doing it themselves.
She helped him lean forward over it, sitting on a stool to be the right height.
“I’ll go carefully, tell me if anything hurts and we can take a break okay?”
“Alright, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
She flicked water at him and he drew back in surprise, relaxing when he saw her try not to smile while looking stern. “I mean it, don’t go pushing through pain. I’ve got twenty-five minutes of my lunch break left and I don’t mind spending them all in here with you.”
“That’s very kind, thank you.”
“Come on then, here we go.”
She started by slowly wetting his hair, used a cup to pour water over his head while shielding his eyes with her other hand. He sighed in contentment as weeks worth of grime started to wash away. She worked her fingers through the matted hair that had dried with blood, that he hadn’t been able to fully get rid of.
“Still feeling okay?”
His ribs protested the position a little, but not really any worse than anything else, so he nodded. “Feels good.”
“This bump looks really bad. Does it hurt a lot?”
“Mmm, no? Not since they gave me something to take. The tablets help. They just don’t… my ribs hurt too much so I can’t reach up.” He winced. “I don’t mean to complain.”
She snorted. “Looks like you have every right to complain, to me anyway.” She eased him upright and squeezed the generic shampoo into her hand. “You got a raw deal here, it’s alright if it bothers you.”
“You mean the break-in?” He asked with a frown.
She looked at him steadily for a moment. “Yeah, that, among other things,” she said from between clenched teeth. “But yes. It must have been scary.”
She lathered his head, massaging in gentle circling motions as she went. His eyes closed involuntarily and without meaning to he leaned into her touch.
“I… I didn’t know what to do. And there were so many of them and I couldn’t see their faces and I didn’t know what they wanted.” He gulped, tried to swallow his words but between the soft comforting touch and the pent up emotions he’d been sitting with for weeks, they just kept spilling over. “When they hit me all I could think was how much trouble I’d be in, and then the pain hit too and I thought… thought they might do worse. Like… like in training. And then after, I thought Sir might send me back to training for being bad, for losing the pets... letting them be taken.” He squeezed his eyes closed tighter, scrunching up his face until his healing bruises started to hurt. He could fight back tears if he focused on the physical pain.
Libby’s hands left his head and he heard water splashing, and then her hands cupped his face. He opened his eyes as she ran her thumbs across his cheeks and his muscles relaxed under the steady pressure. “It won’t happen again, Mr. Raser is taking care of it, taking even more precautions. I don’t think anyone would try the same thing twice anyway. You’re safe here, with me, like this. We’ll make sure you stay safe.”
He nodded, breathing slowly so he wouldn’t sob and hurt his ribs.
“Was Mr. Raser mad at you?” Her face darkened, and if he wasn’t so well attuned to the emotions of others he might have missed it.
He shook his head vigorously, sending water droplets and shampoo splashing across the tiles. “Not really. Only because I can’t work for a while. But I don’t think it’s me he’s really angry with. It’s confusing, but I’m glad.”
“Well that’s something at least.” She swiped shampoo off his forehead to stop it slipping into his eyes.
“He’s letting me sleep in the big bed,” Kit added shyly. “It’s very nice.”
“The what?”
“The big bed, upstairs? There’s one in the wall, it folds down. He uses it when he had to stay overnight, but now…it’s for me, until I’m better.” Kit smiled, timidly, and shrugged.
Libby’s face went through a range of emotions so fast he felt dizzy just watching her. She sighed, finally, and returned to massaging the shampoo deeper into his scalp. She muttered something under her breath that he didn’t catch. “Libby?”
“Yes?”
“I upset you?”
“No. Well, I am upset for you. That’s not your fault. I can’t…can’t believe there’s been a bed up there this whole time and he makes you sleep on the floor on that tiny mattress.”
“Pets belong—”
“I know, I know the spiel. It just seems wrong.”
He pondered that as she gently tipped his head back and began pouring water over his hair, rinsing the shampoo clean. So many things seemed wrong. The break in. His different treatment since. Libby’s insistence that he should be better cared for. He was being better cared for, wasn’t he? Rest, and time, and the ability to laze about in bed. And he knew he didn’t deserve it. He knew punishment must be coming, he’d failed so spectacularly it must be.
His thoughts broke off as she spoke again. “I think we’re just about done. Unless you need help with anything else?”
His hair felt amazing, squeaky clean and heavenly. He kept his eyes closed in contentment, revelling in the warmth of the room and the moment of peace where he knew exactly what he was supposed to do. He startled as she used a washcloth and rubbed down his face, over the tops of his shoulders and this his neck. He shivered as water ran down his back but not because it felt bad.
“I can manage the other stuff.” He opened his eyes and smiled. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” She hesitated and then turned away. The loss of her attention stabbed pain in his gut, he didn’t want the moment of calm to be over. His thoughts scrambled to catch up with a swell of emotion he couldn’t name.
She let the sink drain, wiping down the edges and wringing out the washcloth. He began to speak without knowing where he was going, words forming and leaving his lips in a rush.
“You said something seemed wrong, but I don’t know which thing you mean. Everything feels wrong since… since I got hurt. Everything has been so different.” The admittance tumbled out before he could question it, but saying it aloud flooded him with relief.
She leaned against the sink and considered him. “I just know that you deserve better than the lot you’ve been dealt. You deserve to be comfortable not just when you’re hurt, and you don’t, you shouldn’t, have had to be hurt in the first place—not ever. It’s not my place to question your owner, but I wish I could give him a piece of my mind.”
“I try to be good. But sometimes I don’t know what that means either. I don’t know how to be everything that’s expected of me.”
She nodded, stuck her tongue between her teeth and then bit at her lip before sighing. “I wish I could help you more.”
“You helped me now,” he smiled. Everything in him was calmer, no itch, no buzzing of a thousand unanswered questions, no worries about his safety. Sudden tears filled his eyes and he had to look away. “I’m sorry, I’m just tired, just tired.”
She moved swiftly and cradled his head with one arm wrapped around his bare shoulders. He cried silently for a few long minutes, letting everything that had built up slowly bleed away. It was wrong of him to take her time like this, to show weakness like this, but he could hardly care. She didn’t stop him and that made him believe she didn’t care either.
“Same time next shift, okay? Until your ribs heal I’ll help you in any way I can. And… other things will work themselves out in time, you’ll see.”
He nodded, and for some reason he believed her and trusted her words more than anything anyone else had ever said. They settled deep in his chest and he didn’t even question that some of it ran counter to his training. Words like deserve, and help, concepts like him not being hurt—none of them were right. But from her… they didn’t seem wrong either.
His mind was lighter, and he was more centred than he had been since the attack. He sat with the feeling and decided, without really meaning to, that he liked her better than Emile in almost every way.
It felt like a small betrayal, after all the leanience Emile had given him, and he resolved to go and ask for his punishment as soon as his ribs felt better, and to work extra hard to make up for not liking his owner best of all. But even so—he wouldn’t give up the feeling for anything, because it felt like safety, and it felt as far from wrong as he had ever remembered feeling.
#box boy universe#Kit's Story#hurt/comfort#light angst#injuries#injured whumpee#blood mention#violence mention#referenced violence#referenced punishments#dehumanization tw#whumpee and caretaker#pet whump#pet whumpee#people as pets
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Day 3: Vendetta against Bro
Welcome back to more Homestuck Liveblogging. Picking up with Nannasprite as she prepares to give John the Dirt.
https://homestuck.com/story/421
Sburb’s opening move is to take John’s Dad away from him. If @mmmmalo‘s theory about psychological storytelling is to be believed, Sburb provokes fear and then manifests it in the form of a character’s antagonists. If you wonder why I bring them up so much, it’s probably because I’ve been reading their blog lately. I am almost always game for more Homestuck theorization, and would love to be able to reference more people and engage with their thoughts in my theoryposts and liveblogging, so if you know somebody with good takes, please pass them along my way.
The Incipisphere, like John’s name, was invoked into existence by player/character action, but paradoxically, has always been that way. By engaging with Sburb, John authenticates its retroactive existence, like a mailman taking a signature of receipt for a package.
When we engage with the fixtures of our cultures and material realities, we too, authenticate them. This can be good or bad - when we communicate with each other, recognize each other, we authenticate each other too. Observing and being observed is a mutual act of validation for everyone involved. I see you seeing me seeing you.
I’m full of horseshit again. Read some more horseshit after the break.
Content Warning for this one: Pedophilia Mentions.
https://homestuck.com/story/422
There’s a lot to unpack in this sequence of pages, and I’m almost certainly going to miss a lot of it, but I’ll come back to stuff that I miss as it comes back up in later pages.
As a Crucible of Unlimited Potential, Skaia can become absolutely anything, and the shape that it will take on will be influenced by the actions of the players. But it isn’t anything yet.
This is the second time in two pages that Nanna has brought up the light-darkness dichotomy of the forces at play in the Medium, and after just talking about the act of mutual authentication through mutual observation, my brain is screaming the words Hegelian Lens at me. Might go somewhere with that too.
I also wanna call attention to the name of the Medium. As a story about stories, it only makes sense that the name of Homestuck’s main otherworld should evoke the field used to propagate mass communication.
https://homestuck.com/story/423
I’ve always thought that it’s interesting that of the two forces in the Medium, the players have natural allies in the form of Prospit. The choice here is not to act on behalf of one or the other, the choice is between Action and Inaction. Not doing something is itself, doing something.
https://homestuck.com/story/427
You Can (Not) Redo.
Sburb relentlessly drives its players forward. If you attempt to go back, or stay where you are, you will be punished. No getting your parents back, no getting your planet back.
What’ll it be John? Advance or Advance?
https://homestuck.com/story/431
John is extremely resistant to being made to do things that he doesn’t want to do anyway, even by Narrators.
More thoughts about Cake and Baked Goods in Homestuck and in relation to John. The other main characters baking is associated with in Homestuck are all women - The Condesce, Meenah, Jane, Nanna - and baking in general is pretty strongly associated with women, moms, etc. I’ve always thought it was a little out of place amongst Dad’s other character traits, which are definitively masculine. Maybe it’s for exactly that reason - baking is culturally feminine.
Maybe John’s resistance to baked goods is because he’s uncomfortable receiving feminine affection (especially, but not only from his Dad). It’s like getting kisses from your Mom in public or other public displays of affection between men and the women in their lives, or even men and other men in their lives. John is certainly pretty clueless about affection from women when he receives it later in the story. On the other hand, he responds very well to masculine displays of affection, like the aloof but ebullient cards he gets from his Dad, or the one-upsmanship between him and Dave.
(I’ll have to think some more about the capitalism thing from my other post.)
https://homestuck.com/story/433
More of Rose seeing enemies in every shadow. Then again, could it be Jasper’s fault that they’re in this mess?
https://homestuck.com/story/442
I think the fact that we jump to this point in the past suggests that Rose is probably reminiscing about this spot, going along with my theory that when the Narration is focusing on a character, it’s also giving us that character’s stream of consciousness - we’re experience what Rose is experiencing.
That probably goes a long way to excusing the kind of puzzling, irritating experience we have of our first minutes with John. Due to his tendency to get distracted by things and forget how things work, we have to suffer through his own inability to navigate his disorderly environment exactly the same way he does.
Oh, so that’s why this story gets compared to Ulysses.
It is Jaspers’ fault that they’re in this mess. My hypothesis gathers more data.
https://homestuck.com/story/444
The third of the prose poems. Drat. Got to Dave’s Poem before I even had the chance to write about Rose’s Poem. Guess we’ll come back to this one later later.
https://homestuck.com/story/445
I’ve almost certainly missed a few of these gags by now but “Left him hanging long enough” is one of the jokes that Homestuck reproduces over and over again. Homestuck reproduces itself frequently, like variations on a theme. Its self-referential nature could be called incestuous, as it turns one-off gags into recurring gags.
https://homestuck.com/story/448
While Bro and Dirk are both definitely irony ninjas where Dave is just performing irony to get his Bro’s approval, I think all the irony is an effort to distance themselves from the fact that they really do sincerely enjoy the things they’re “ironically” into. That too, is probably ironic.
Unfortunately, the actual subject matter of Bro’s interests, while innocuous in a vacuum, are still extremely inappropriate to leave out where a thirteen year old can have access to them. Bro probably isn’t a pedophile, but between the martial education, and the uncomfortable degree to which he involves Dave in his sex life, his relationship with Dave recalls pederasty which is one of many, many links between Dirk, Bro, and the Classical Hellenes, and Monastic Shudo, a similar practice historically attested from their beloved Japan. (The term Platonic Relationship is called that because Plato is one of the first Greek Philosophers to argue that maybe it would be better for students’ education if they weren’t also sexually involved with their mentors? Or so the story goes.)
I may have a bit of a vendetta against Bro Strider, which probably has at least a little to do with the fact that, when I first read Homestuck, I got fooled into thinking he was kind of awesome, and it wasn’t until I was able to deal with my own childhood abuse and the fact that I had been indoctrinated with a lot of the very same toxic ideas bro inculcated in Dave that I was able to realize that Bro Strider is kind of a horrible guardian, so I have a sort of special ire directed at this character. Maybe I’m afraid in another life, I could have grown up to be that kind of creep. I’m glad I didn’t.
https://homestuck.com/story/449
All throughout this section, the narration suggests that Dave is both subconsciously aware that his Bro’s pasttimes make him uncomfortable, but trying to soothe himself by affirming them. So, in spite of my sharing some youthful confusion with Dave, the Narrative at least communicates to us from the very beginning that something is off about Bro.
https://homestuck.com/story/452
To interrupt my dark and brooding reverie, please enjoy some Skate 3 Glitches.
I guess here’s a good place to note that I am going to be using the #personal stuff hashtag to denote when a post contains me alluding to my own dark and troubled past.
https://homestuck.com/story/457
The password is six letters long, and based on the fact that it’s the most awesome thing that it could be, I have no doubt that it’s Strider.
https://homestuck.com/story/465
Yup.
https://homestuck.com/story/466
:)
It warms the cockles of me heart that Dave’s first inclination when he starts to flip the fuck out is to reach out to John Egbert.
https://homestuck.com/story/484
8^y
https://homestuck.com/story/485
Remember that one-upsmanship I was talking about? Any chance Dave and John get around each other, they talk each other down. I’m not sure if Andrew was saying anything about Toxic Masculinity at the time. I expect, like a lot of us, he didn’t have those words on his mind in 2009, but that’s textbook toxic masculinity, and I think when viewed as a complete work, Dave and John’s growth out of it is a sign of healthy maturation. Build each other up, boys, don’t tear each other down. In this life, we’re all we’ve got, and you owe it to each other.
https://homestuck.com/story/503
Leveling up is one of those weird things about Roleplaying Games that I didn’t realize until some point in the last two years is kind of an integral fixture of them. Overcoming hardships permanently makes you stronger in games that have an experience-level feature in them, and once you’re strong enough to beat a challenge once, you’re almost always strong enough to overcome that challenge in the future.
It’s a kind of storytelling that on closer examination is weirdly propagandistic, but it’s actually all over media. It’s pretty rare for a story to say “When you overcome a challenge, good job. You will have to overcome that same challenge again and again - maybe every day of your life.” The interesting thing, and I might come back to this, is that I think Homestuck actually takes this latter approach. Exactly the same emotional struggles they begin the story with are the ones they spend all 8000 pages of Homestuck agonizing over, and these characters will probably spend their entire lives wrestling with the baggage of their youth.
Suffering and toil is the fate of humankind, I suppose.
https://homestuck.com/story/518
Surrounded by Idiots.
https://homestuck.com/story/538
Saw is a story about a serial killer who subjects his victims to gruelling trials catered to make them face their own fatal flaws and emerge changed into better people, which is a lot like authorial scorn, which Andrew describes thusly in the commentary for Vriska’s introduction: “It's not as ill-willed as it might sound, but more of a universal principle of storytelling that for things to be interesting, harsh outcomes must befall those you create, in response to which they may thrive or fail. Which to the casual observer may read as hate.“. Lord English and Caliborn bear visual similarity to Jigsaw’s creepy puppet avatars, and serve as instruments of Andrew’s Authorial Scorn. Bro reproduces the same kind of creator’s hatred that Lord English bears toward all of Paradox Space, and reproduces it for the dubious benefit of his ward - Dave is to overcome the challenges thrust upon him in order to become strong.
https://homestuck.com/story/571
Dave does not care for being watched.
https://homestuck.com/story/588
If Dave’s first instinct for when he’s uncomfortable is to go talk to his friends, his second instinct is to attack.
https://homestuck.com/story/625
I don’t remember where I read it originally, it’s too far away in the past, but each of the items in the Rocket Pack is representative of one of John’s friends. The Cinderblock Dave, the Flower Pot Jade, the Violin Rose. John’s friends, his connections and bonds (Blood) tie him down and prevent him from indulging his most impulsive behaviors (Breath).
https://homestuck.com/story/631
In addition to Mad Science (or perhaps as an aspect thereof) John demonstrates remarkable lateral thinking.
https://homestuck.com/story/635
Alchemy has helped me get my thoughts in gear on a subject I glossed over the other day - the way the characters’ personality traits and objects fill the background radiation of the comic. In a way, the same thing is going on when the characters produce all kinds of neat shit from the odds and ends around their house as is going on when Sburb populates itself with symbols from the characters domestic lives.
Clowns become a threatening symbol throughout all of Homestuck, basically because there are a bunch in John’s house from a Doylist perspective. From a Watsonian perspective, Sburb seems, through the vehicle of destiny, to deliberately latch onto things from the players’ lives that will help them to contend with their anxiety and trauma. John has bad dreams about clowns, and seems to conceptualize himself as a clown in his self-critical estimation of himself. Maybe even as a Dark Mirror of his aspirations to be an entertainer? Is a Circus Clown a funhouse mirror version of a stage magician? I don’t have a follow up to that question, but it makes me think. If you checked out the essay from Malo I linked earlier, you might recognize some other things that John is afraid of which characterize his session, like his alleged fear of heights, and his anxiety about confronting his Dad.
I think that’s all for this evening. Another 200 pages down.
Cam signing off, alive and not alone.
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Uh.....if you mash together pre-Reboot and New 52 continuities the way we all just tend to do anyway, you know who would have just as much to say about Bruce resuscitating the Joker after Dick killed him in Last Laugh?
Duke. Who does the math and realizes, wait, the fucking clown was actually DEAD, like, game over, the world rid of the problem that is him and the shit he does....and Bruce...actively cancelled this out, whereas if he’d stopped his OWN kneejerk reactions long enough to realize that reviving the Joker wouldn’t erase what Dick had done or lessen Dick’s awareness that he’d crossed that line, literally all it would accomplish is to have all of that remain true WHILE bringing the Joker back into the world and thus creating more potential victims of his in the future?
Victims like....Duke’s parents.
Aka can someone please drag Bruce Wayne’s butt to therapy because his complete inability to bend or budge on the specific issue of killing has
1) caused his eldest son no shortage of severely debilitating emotional issues all stemming from his deep-seated fear of losing his father’s love due to situations like with the Joker and with Blockbuster
2) caused and perpetuated his continued estrangement from his second son, whose actual literal death was so devastating to Bruce he was in real danger of getting himself killed before Tim came along and yet upon his actual return from the grave, still took backseat to Bruce’s fixation on a rule he set FOR HIMSELF long ago, because it was always made fairly clear that Jason could have been persuaded to change his methods in regards to fighting all other crimes if Bruce could find a way to make an exception in regards to the Joker, who has hurt all of their family so often and so severely, and that’s not even getting into the shit with the Penguin in RHATO
3) contributed to his third son’s feelings of estrangement and not being deserving of a place in Bruce’s family, in the aftermath of Tim’s entirely understandable DESIRE to see his father’s murderer dead, without even Tim actually acting on it before earning Bruce’s judgment, and with a likely extension and continuation of this divide being evident in how opposed Tim is to going to Bruce for help whenever Ra’s pops up again to be all “I’m outside ur house in the bushes spying on u thru the window, will u join me in remaking the world in our - sorry that’s a lie, I meant my - image, plz check y/n,” because again quite understandably, Tim fears being caught in the middle of Ra’s and Bruce’s ideological war because he’s afraid of Bruce deciding its because Tim is more open to what Ra’s says than he actually is, and the conflicts that could arise from that
4) almost destroyed any chance of a healthy and loving relationship between he and his youngest son before they even got a chance to start one, due to his own issues with a past Damian had literally no ability to opt out of, even if he had been given alternative viewpoints to the morality of killing, as taught to him by the League - Damian was a ten year old child who could not be expected to have the resources to leave the League and their expectations for him, without help, even if he had previously been able to conceive of a way of life other than the one laid out for him from birth
5) I don’t even know where to start with Cass and the whole shit with Deathstroke and like....I just. Yeah
6) As noted at the start of the post, had Bruce simply not intervened to resuscitate the Joker, like didn’t even need to kill him himself, like if he had simply NOT BROUGHT HIM BACK TO LIFE (like and people wonder why Dick was so convinced Bruce would judge him for not stepping between Blockbuster and a bullet to save that villain’s life when not even a year prior, Bruce had established the precedent that apparently in his mind, if there was even a possibility of resuscitating an already dead villain with a body count like the Joker’s, that was apparently what needed to be done)....but like....no Joker after the Last Laugh, no Jokerized Thomases a few years later....not to mention how that could have altered the chain of events that unfolded with Jason’s return and attempt to get Bruce to kill someone who would now already be dead.
Like....Bruce. Buddy. Pal. This vow you made - again, for YOURSELF - to never kill in any scenario, because YOU were afraid that YOU wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from doing it again, and again and again...it might have been born from a place of good intentions, but the stringent, utterly inflexible way you apply it to your own family, with zero allowance for context, let alone exceptions, is actively hurting them in any number of ways, AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS.
You need to get some nuance. Nobody’s saying YOU yourself have to go out and start gunning people down, but there have to be room for more opinions on this than just yours...especially when it comes to the choices OTHER people make on this matter, for born of THEIR moral compasses. Your moral compass has allowed you to give yourself a pass on some pretty fucked up things, so you need to just NOT, with the whole treating it as the be all and end all of Right and Wrong.
I mean in my professional opinion, of course.
Also also also, I would just like to point out that another factor that in my mind, makes the Last Laugh story and the fact that Dick DID in fact cross that line once and kill someone, even if they were later revived.....
This is important, and potentially central to SO MANY of the internal conflicts within the Batfamily, most of them between Bruce and various of his children....
BECAUSE IT DISPROVES BRUCE’S FEAR OF THE SLIPPERY SLOPE IN REGARDS TO KILLING BEING LIKE...A UNIVERSAL LIKELIHOOD, RATHER THAN JUST A PERSONAL FEAR BASED ON HIS OWN SELF-AWARENESS.
Bruce’s entire thesis about never killing even once, even with someone like a Joker, is because he believes once you start down that road, you’re never going to stop....with him frequently shown as seeing Jason and his actions as proof of that basic premise....because ultimately, like with the Penguin, its like even when Jason has gone a long time without killing anyone, Bruce is convinced that its only a matter of time before he breaks his promises or finds another ‘exception’ he feels he can justify....because again, Bruce so often fixates on this idea that there IS no stopping. With it being very easy to see how this also extends at times to concerns about Damian and the possibility of him killing again, given his own past.
But when you take Last Laugh into account.....and acknowledge the fact that Dick has killed as a bigger deal than the comics or most fics have ever really allowed it to be....
Suddenly you have to take into account that yes, Dick has killed once...
AND ONLY ONCE.
Years and years and years ago....and never done it since.
And that’s a potential GAME-CHANGER for so very freaking many of the conflicts that keep their entire family so divided....because so many of them are sprung from this one central source.....which is based on this one specific fear Bruce has for himself and has since applied to all of his children as well....
To such an extent that when one of his children crossed this line for the first time....BRUCE HAD TO UNDO IT.
Even though Bruce said at the time he resuscitated the Joker so that Dick could live with himself, not have to live with having killed a man and what that might do to him.....Dick still had to live with himself, still had to live with having killed a man! It very much informed his character moving forward, was a central part of his fears in situations even tangentially similar, like with Blockbuster. Bringing back the Joker didn’t actually change ANYTHING for Dick, other than....render all that kinda meaningless, because he had to work through the emotional issues of having killed a villain....who didn’t even stay dead, and continued to kill and ruin lives.
Nope, I maintain in actuality, Bruce resuscitated the Joker so that HE could live with what Dick had done, not have to live with one of his sons having broken the vow that was so important to Bruce himself, and what that might do to him, Bruce...and his relationship with Dick, or even just his ability to continue to have a relationship with Dick. He was driven to ‘reverse’ what Dick had done, IMO, so that HE didn’t have to face it, could in time pretend that it hadn’t really happened, it didn’t count, his world order was still intact.
And that’s a level of denial that’s actually pretty damn characteristic for Bruce in a lot of ways.....and IMO, the real source of so much of his conflict with his children.
Because then once Jason came along and already had eight heads in a duffel bag by the time Bruce realized who the Red Hood really was.....it was too late for Bruce to do anything about it, to stop reality from crashing straight through every barrier Bruce tried to throw in the way to keep from having to face the moral quandary of one of his children (that he so often saw himself in) taking the step that he’d so definitively feared ever taking.
Its not that Bruce was able to ‘forgive’ Dick for killing the Joker that one time, and not the times Jason has killed, because Bruce loves Dick more.
Its because Bruce DIDN’T forgive Dick for it. HE DID HIS BEST TO PRETEND IT NEVER EVEN HAPPENED.
And the reason that didn’t happen with Jason....was because it was never even an option. By the time Bruce was confronting his son as JASON.....instead of a mysterious masked vigilante....there was zero possibility of reframing this in his mind or undoing any of it like he tried to do when he resuscitated the Joker.
Bruce’s vow is all well and good for him....but the thing he’s never faced, because he’s afraid to face it, afraid it could permanently destroy his connections with his family....is that he doesn’t get to make that choice for his children. That it doesn’t make them terrible people to feel differently about the importance of not even allowing a man as destructive as the Joker to die, in large part based on their having entirely different life experiences than Bruce himself, that lead them to feel differently on specific matters like this one.
And I think the most effective starting place for that dialogue, that confrontation, realization....is for BRUCE to face what Dick did all those years ago, AND the fact that in Dick’s case, history has NOT repeated itself since.....that Dick truly did kill a man, kill the Joker, in every way that mattered....and HE’S STILL DICK GRAYSON. The person he was didn’t change, not fundamentally, not in the ways that matter so much to Bruce on every other level. Killing the Joker didn’t make Dick a killer, other than in the specific context of that specific situation.
And that to me, is such an important conversation to have within the construct of the Batfamily and their interconnected conflicts, a confrontation that could actually force Bruce to start shifting his perspective in regards to his CHILDREN’S choices, not necessarily his own....and with that ultimately spreading into each of the individual conflicts Bruce has with his various kids, and allowing for some actual PROGRESS to be made on those fronts, instead of it always just being the same old fight, with them all endlessly running in circles.
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Tidings of Comfort
*filled another prompt by @thepriceisrizzoli!
~*~
For such a small box, it contained so many big dreams.
It was small, humble, and its red color was pleasant in contrast to the snow drifts partially covering the welcome mat Angela had foisted on Jane. The open air hallways were a constant source of complaint for the older tenants in the building during winter, but Jane had thought and Maura agreed that so long as it was well-maintained, it brought a little festive cheer to the place. Slowly she started to back away, knowing that it would be too easy to just stand here forever staring at the gift box and that meant there’d be a good chance Jane could randomly walk out of her apartment at any time and see her there with it. She couldn’t be here when Jane saw it. Waiting to hear about it would be agonizing, but it would be more agonizing to watch as Jane read the card and opened it.
Okay. Nice and easy. Simple. Cute. Not stalkery, right? No. It’s fine. It’ll be fine. Now just back around the corner and
OH SHIT AHHH OH NO AH SHIT
Maura’s attempt to make a quiet escape were thwarted not only because she slipped on some snowy stairs, but because the stream of profanities that zipped through her mind after her pep talk wound up slipping out, quite audibly, as she banged down the stairwell. She managed to stop the downward momentum by grabbing hold of the railing, and it was only after the faint echo of her body banging against the stairs and her resultant yells had died out that she let herself take a breath. On the one hand it didn’t do much for her faith in humanity that no one had come out to see what had happened, but on the other hand, it would’ve been mortifying to be found like this right after—
“Whoa, everyone okay out there? Are we laughing or are we calling first responders?”
Jane’s face popped over the railing, and she looked stunned to see Maura lying there. “It’s okay,” Maura wheezed. “I’m a doctor.”
“Geez! What happened, are you okay?” Jane asked, hurrying down to meet her.
“I’ll be fine,” Maura said, though this was belied by her inability to stand up without assistance. “I’m okay, don’t mind me, I’m just going to take off.”
“Take off? Wait, you just got here—did we have plans I forgot about?”
“No,” Maura said miserably. She hoped it was cold enough to warrant a red face, because a blush would blow her cover. “I was just thinking it’d be nice to see you, since you’ve been off work prepping for your deposition and then giving the deposition, so I was on my way up and, well...” Just enough of the truth to mislead Jane to a false conclusion.
It wasn’t in Maura’s nature to make spontaneous visits, and Jane would’ve pushed her for details if she wasn’t concerned about the fall. “Well, that was very kind of you, and I’m so sorry! Our super is usually on the ball when it comes to snow on these stairwells. I mean the halls are okay, at least. Are you sure you’re all right? Let me help you up, we can get you relaxed on the couch and watch a show or something.”
“No, no, it’s fine.”
“But weren’t you on your way here anyway? Come on, you’re not embarrassed, are you?” Jane chuckled. “I mean, you’ve seen me make three-point landings just trying to successfully navigate a curb on a rainy day. Hell, remember that time I was telling some rookie to shove off and I turned and face-planted over the tape into a crime scene?”
“Oh, gosh, I’d forgotten that. You almost compromised so much evidence.”
“Yeah. So I don’t wanna hear about embarrassment. C’mon, pal, you’re coming with me.”
With surprising strength, Jane took hold of Maura and started guiding her up the stairs. The forcefulness of her movements were coming from a place of wanting to be helpful and keeping Maura safe from the prospect of falling again, but as they neared the top of the stairs, Maura couldn’t help feeling like she was being strong-armed to her doom. Maybe if Jane hadn’t seen the box when she’d come out in the first place, she wouldn’t see it now...
But no such luck.
At the top of the stairs, Jane noticed the small, intricately wrapped gift near her door. “Huh, what’s that?”
“Well! Look at that,” Maura heard herself saying. “It seems to be a present?”
She leaned purposefully towards the door, which Jane nudged open. “It’s got my name on it,” she muttered, picking it up.
“Maybe one of your neighbors left it,” Maura said. “Just—just now, I mean, when you were coming to my rescue. Did you see it when you came out a minute ago?”
“No, but it looks like I might’ve knocked it out of the way when I opened the door,” Jane mused. She glanced up and apologized when she saw Maura leaning weakly against the doorframe. “Hey, sorry, let’s get you inside. And might I suggest more practical boots the next time you go out in the snow?”
“Fair,” Maura sighed. They’d gotten to the couch and Maura hunched over to remove the boots, but groaned in pain half-lean.
Jane had been about to inspect the mystery gift, but dropped it on the coffee table at the sound of Maura’s anguish. Though Maura protested, Jane shushed her and knelt on the floor, untying the boots. Wanting to be as sensitive as possible to Maura’s pain, Jane removed the first boot with utmost tenderness, using her free hand to hold Maura’s stockinged leg steady. As Jane’s hand slid down with the progress of the boot, Maura felt goosebumps erupt that had nothing to do with the cold.
“That better?” Jane murmured, joining her on the couch. “C’mon, let’s see what this is about.” She picked up the small package from the table, and Maura might’ve lunged for it if that wouldn’t have sent her into spasms of pain. “The card is almost as big as the package,” Jane chuckled, unfolding it. She raised her eyebrows at the length of the note, and glanced at the bottom to check the signature. “Huh. That’s weird, it’s not signed.”
The panic churning through Maura’s veins halted, but new anxieties cropped up. She’d forgotten to sign it? How could she have forgotten to sign it? Maybe this was better. Maybe now she could try to plead ignorance. This had been an embarrassing slip of judgment and this had been a stupid idea and oh no was Jane reading the note now? Would it sound like it was from a stalker if it was anonymous?
“You don’t have to read that,” Maura blurted out, and Jane looked at her, surprised. “I mean, um, I mean I think that might be one of Emily Post’s rules. If a card isn’t signed, you aren’t obligated to, um...”
“I’m not obligated, I’m curious,” Jane said.
“Wait,” Maura said, getting an idea. “Jane, you should be careful. An anonymous package left on your doorstep? With a long, creepy letter?”
“What makes you think it’s creepy? It’s not written with like, cut-out magazine letters. You saying I should call up a bomb squad to make sure there’s not a tiny explosive in here?”
Maura's impulse was to say yes because the distraction might help her make a stealthy getaway from this embarrassment, but her conscience wouldn’t allow it. “No, I’d just think you might want to be a little more careful. I mean, what does your gut say about unmarked packages?” Oh, no. This was bad. How could she be trying to scare Jane like this? Was that really worse than the humiliation she might feel at being found out and having her note rebuffed? “I-I’m not trying to frighten you, I just want you to be cautious.”
Jane pursed her lips. “Maura, nothing you do could frighten me.”
“Not even...” She tried and failed to come up with an extreme example.
“No, not even if you suddenly started teasing your hair, quit your job, married Steven Tyler and joined Aerosmith.”
That at least got Maura to laugh. “Steven Tyler? Oh, did your mother make you sit through the Liv Tyler episode of Who Do You Think You Are, too?”
“Yes, and it was very inspiring,” Jane said, returning to the note. “Maybe this is a DNA kit she sent me. Call it a gut feeling, but I don’t think this gift is intended to be a threat. Listen to this note.” She cleared her throat and held out the paper with a flourish: “‘Dear Jane: every time the holiday season comes around, I try to be good about remembering everything I have to be grateful for. You often get lumped in there when I say I am grateful for my friends, but it’s high time I singled you out specifically. I am so thankful for the friendship and solace you provide me. You’re fierce and first to defend me in my moment of trouble or need. Your wit and laughter sustain me and never come at my expense.’” With a rueful laugh, Jane glanced at Maura. “Guess this can’t be from you, huh? I think I’ve been making one too many jokes at your expense lately. I’m sorry about that.”
A lump had risen in Maura’s throat, and she tried to tell Jane it was all right, but couldn’t speak, so she merely shook her head.
Jane continued, her voice a little more reverent now: “‘When we part, there is no sadness because our bond is always there. You’re not just my friend; you’re a gift both precious and rare. In reading over this note, I’ve realized it sounds like a love letter, and I admit that made me pause to wonder if I should attach it at all. I didn’t set out to make it sound that way at first. Then I figured it might be dishonest to continue acting as though these feelings hadn’t been brewing for some time. I apologize for sounding mushy, but I had to make these growing feelings known and hope that the knowledge of their existence isn’t a burden to you in any way. Merry Christmas.’”
She flipped the note over again, as if this time the back of the paper wouldn’t be blank. Maura tried valiantly to temper her wildly beating heart, but to no avail, and so instead focused on keeping her breathing regulated so as not to arouse Jane’s suspicions.
“Wow,” Jane whispered. “Sounds like I’ve got a secret admirer, huh?”
“Not a stalker?”
“No,” Jane chuckled. “A stalker would go more into physical details like, ‘the column of your throat drives me to the brink of insanity,’ or ‘your eyelids look like they would be delicious additions to my favorite beet salad.’”
Despite herself, Maura had to laugh. “Oh, that’s sick. Why do I encourage you?”
“Because you love me. And I love you.” Jane said it with a shrug and a teasing tone of voice, petrifying Maura with her casual confidence. “Face it, pal. You’re stuck with me.”
Maura was torn between wanting to laugh with her, and wanting desperately to confess everything and tell Jane the letter was from her. She was starting to falter under Jane’s gaze, which was soft but searching. Maybe too searching.
Thus, Maura’s response to Jane’s touching sentiment was to ask, “Could I make use of your bathtub?”
“My...”
“I’m still feeling a little sore from my tumble down the stairs, and I think a little hydrotherapy might help.”
This wasn’t a lie, really; Maura was sore, and she often used warm baths as a way to soothe aches and pains. She hoped that by the time she got out of the bath, Jane would’ve had time to move past the anonymous gift and they could converse about something totally different. Or maybe she’d have turned on the TV and forgotten all about it the ludicrous emotional display. Maura didn’t stop to consider how suspicious this abrupt semi-departure made her look. Jane got her a set of pajamas to change into, and Maura started the water.
A few minutes in, the bath was indeed helping to relieve some of Maura’s physical pain, but emotionally she was still in a rather anxious state. This wasn’t helped much when, about ten minutes later, Jane started talking to her from the other side of the door.
“So, why didn’t you sign it?”
Maura almost thought her heart stopped. She didn’t know what to say. Could she pretend she hadn’t heard the question? There was a soft shifting sound, as if Jane was sliding down the wall to sit outside the door.
“How’d you...what makes you think it was me?” Maura finally asked.
“Few things. I know your handwriting, for one. It’s beautiful, precise. It’s so much nicer than mine, and I’ve always admired it. For another thing, I just stepped outside to see if I’d maybe missed another tag or something that fell off. There’s a little bit of snow right on the edge of the hallway, and I saw tracks that look like your boot prints, coming up the opposite side of the stairs as the side I dragged you up after your fall. And, well, you seemed really uncomfortable with this situation instead of wanting to help me solve it, which is what I’d think you’d normally do.”
It was almost tempting to laugh. “I should’ve known better than to think I could get away with fooling a detective.”
“That’s not all, though,” Jane went on. “See, I don’t... I don’t have a lot of friends. Definitely not enough close ones who’d have been able to write such a nice note about me. Too nice, because I do make jokes at your expense too often.”
“You really do,” Maura sighed, and that got a weak laugh out of Jane.
“Well, look, um, this isn’t a joke to me. I promise. I think that was really brave of you, and really sweet.”
Maura didn’t know what to say to that, so she just asked, “Did you open it?”
“Open what?”
“The...gift?”
“Oh!” Jane laughed. “That’s so weird, I didn’t. I didn’t even think about it, because I already got my gift.”
“What do you mean?”
Jane sobered up. “The gift was the note. The gift is holding this note in my hand, as concrete evidence that you feel the same way I do. And—”
“WAIT!”
There was a loud splashing sound now as Maura flailed to get out of the tub. Now that she knew it was safe to have this conversation face-to-face, she needed to be able to see Jane while they had it. She had to be able to see even the most minute changes in her countenance, had to ensure that the promising words Jane was saying were in fact coming out of her own mouth and weren’t some part of an elaborate ruse. It killed her that she had to make her reappearance with slightly damp hair, hastily put up, and old pajamas that didn’t flatter her figure, but she didn’t have the luxury to be precious about her appearance at the moment. Jane never seemed to mind.
She opened the door, and Jane was leaning against the wall, arms folded patiently and a serene smile on her lips in the semi-dark hallway.
“So...are we really gonna do this?” Jane asked. “Are you going to be able to handle me?”
“Handle you? I should think being your best friend was a pretty good primer.”
“I know, but that’s what I mean. I mean, now you’re gonna be hearing things from me a lot more often. My filter’s gonna disappear.”
Her demeanor put Maura at ease, allowing her to tease back, “Was it ever there?”
Jane took a step away from the wall and Maura’s breath caught in her throat. “I mean the filter that’s always kept me from telling you things like how beautiful you look. I know that it’s not like I’ve never told you that before. But I’d second-guess myself a lot so you wouldn’t think I was more into you than I should be. Like, I knew I couldn’t lay it on too thick or compliment too many individual things at once. Which I’d do right now, but I just established that cataloguing beautiful things about a person piece-by-piece can sound serial killery, so...”
Maura had been trying to keep her own smile in check, but couldn’t contain it when the joke made her laugh. She stepped forward as well, bringing them almost toe-to-toe, and reached out. Jane took hold of her arms, gripping them for support.
“You’re trembling,” Maura observed.
“Yeah. Yeah, and I can’t believe you’re not, what’s the deal?” Jane asked with a shaky laugh. “Sorry, I just got kinda overwhelmed just now. I’ve seen you in pajamas, even my pajamas before, I’ve seen you fresh out of a bath or shower before, and thought nothing of it or tried to think nothing of it. Now it’s like this veil has been lifted. I don’t want to come on too strong all of a sudden.” She pulled Maura into a hug. “And I’m going to do my best to live up to that beautiful card. I want to make you as happy as you’ve made me. You make me so happy, Maura, you make my heart so happy.”
All Maura could think to do besides whisper “me too, me too” was hug Jane back as hard as she could. They lapsed into a short silence as they stood, embracing each other in the hallway. Strangely, the urge to do anything more didn’t strike either of them right away; it was already too overwhelming just having gotten to these initial declarations, like going from zero to a hundred and twenty in nothing flat. Maura in particular needed a minute to process, and Jane seemed to intuit this:
“Sorry if that was a weird conversation to start while you were in the bathroom,” she said, and Maura laughed again. “I just thought, I dunno, you seemed skittish and maybe the better thing would’ve been to ignore it altogether but then I thought maybe you only got that nervous because you worried your feelings weren’t returned and I wanted to reassure you. Either way, I hoped keeping the conversation semi-private would maybe be helpful for you. It was just killing me sitting out here alone and thinking about it.”
“Thank you for being brave enough to bring it up when I just wanted to run away,” Maura said. “Although part of me also wonders if you didn’t just want to show off the fact that you’d figured out it was from me.”
It seemed the charitable thing to avoid bringing up (again) that it hadn’t been hard to solve, so Jane pivoted and replied, “Well, there is still one thing I’m hung up on.” She shifted out of the hug, pulling Maura’s gift box from her back pocket and opening it. “Why’s it empty? Is it like a metaphor?” In a cheesy deeper voice, she added, “A metaphor for how empty your life was before you met me?”
Maura’s mouth fell open and she smacked her forehead. “I’ve really outdone myself tonight. I forgot to sign the card and I forgot to actually put the gift in the box! Oh, my gosh. I was really, really nervous. Please pardon the hyperbole, but my mind must’ve been miles away.”
“Didn’t it feel light to you?” Jane chuckled, giving the box a shake before returning it to her back pocket.
“I mean, it didn’t weigh much, it’s just a—”
“Ah, ah,” Jane cut her off. “Don’t spoil the surprise! You can still give it to me later. Although I’m sorry to disappoint you, whatever it is, it’s not gonna be even a close second to the gift of learning that you’ve been pining for me since day one.”
“It was not day one,” Maura scoffed, rolling her eyes affectionately. “I should cut the suspense now and just go get it.”
“Okay, so how about this,” Jane mused. “As amazing as I think you look in PJ’s, I assume you wouldn’t like to go out in them—I mean, further out than your car. Why don’t you go home and change, I’ll get cleaned up, and you can come back here with your amazing gift and we’ll go out to celebrate, um... whatever it is we’re doing here.”
“I think you look gorgeous as is,” Maura said, tugging the hem of Jane’s sweater, “but otherwise, I really like the sound of that plan.”
Jane opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out of it when she felt Maura’s hand graze her backside. A shaky breath escaped her when Maura tightened her grip, and then Jane realized she was just taking her time extracting the gift box from Jane’s pocket. Seeing the response this small action elicited was incredibly exciting, and Maura was reminded of one of the only things she could remember her mother saying about love: that it was like friendship set ablaze.
“A sensitive spot for you, hm?” she murmured. “Good to know.”
Jane almost tripped trying to follow Maura to the door. “I look forward to finding out yours.”
“Somehow, that’s another mystery I don’t think you’ll have much trouble solving,” Maura said.
Maybe Jane was the one who would benefit from a minute to process. Their everyday banter had just shot forward into something immediately more flirty than usual, but it didn’t feel weird. What actually caught her off guard was how natural it seemed. This all still felt surreal to her as she watched Maura gingerly put her boots back on, and reach for her coat. She was consumed by warmth, even as Maura opened the door and let the wintry air in.
“You be careful on those steps now,” Jane said, leaning against the doorframe. “Use the railings, grandma. Wouldn’t do for you to take another tumble.”
“No, I daresay it wouldn’t.”
Maura’s heartbeat ratcheted back up again when Jane leaned towards her. She left a soft kiss on one cheek, then the other, and then a quick peck to the forehead.
“Just so you’re prepared,” Jane said, pulling back and glorying in Maura’s smile. “There’s gonna be mistletoe hanging over this door when you get back.”
Speeding in winter wasn’t safe, Maura knew, but what the hell. She was already feeling reckless tonight.
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#2 Joust
I’m so sorry I didn’t post on Friday! I had it finished, I was waiting on an editor and then went out. Anyways, here is my second piece: Joust
Word Count: 4,859
Characters: Roden, Mott, Jaron, Jolly (Original Character), Merry (Original Character), Lord Feall (Original Character)
Notes: Edited! This is a continuation from #1 Can’t Believe You’ve Made Me Do This and from here on out, all fics will be probably continuations and interconnected. Enjoy!
Drylliad usually welcomed high ranking visitors with a beautiful celebration, thanking the Saints for a safe arrival.
But it wasn’t every day that a king visited, even if he did answer to a higher power.
And it wasn't every day that a king's visit fell upon a festival date.
In the streets of Drylliad, streamers fluttered from windows. Lines and lines of short banners on ropes zigzagged across buildings and houses. Poles covered in flowers had been set up, ribbons hanging down from their tops.
Tents housing food from all over the realms.
Tents boasting the best imported weapons.
Tents hiding the prettiest men and women from the public eye.
It wouldn't be long before Chaos flooded the marketplace.
Children would chase stray dogs through the festival, and occasionally, drag their favorites home to become pets. Troubadours, dancers, fire eaters. There’d be massive stages built for elaborate puppet shows.
Roden couldn't deny how excited he was to see it all.
As a child, he'd enjoyed festivals. He insisted on dragging Latamer, his childhood friend, with him to see the jousting knights and fire breathing dancers. They never missed a single one, even when Latamer was convinced that he carried the plague.
Latamer was always hanging around in the back of Roden's mind.
He should've been strong enough to save his friend.
At that very moment, he was awaiting orders from King Oberson, leader of Dinwallis, one of Bymar's kingdom states, and from Jaron.
He stood in the castle's great hall, Bymarian knight Lord Feall to his left, and Mott to his right. Behind Roden stood a small company of guards.
Just enough to keep the peace, but not enough to distract from the festival.
"King Jaron and I have been discussing the attack on Lord Feall," Oberson said. He scratched at his patchy beard, "I have decided to keep my personal guard with me, though the Lady Amarinda has reassured me that there is a slim chance of another attack."
"You don't know the Faola like I do," Feall placed an armored hand over his chestplate.
"You're right, but I do trust Lady Amarinda's judgement and her husband was very insistent that the bandits who attacked you have ulterior motives," Jaron crossed his arms. "However, Lord Feall, I advise you to take care in the streets. The Faola haven't resurfaced since their attack, but it did seem that at least one of them wanted you dead."
Ah, the short bandit.
It wasn’t very often that bandits and thieves managed to escape Roden.
He was talented at his job, his drive for justice was a fuel nobody else could really understand.
The short bandit and the Faola would be apprehended eventually.
Roden remained silent as he pondered the situations that could arise. There were guards stationed in the woods at various locations, the company of guards behind him were to patrol the outskirts of the festival, and he and Feall would be keeping an eye on the festivities in the center of it all.
He didn't want to admit that Tobias was right about the Faola.
That they did end up redistributing the goods they'd stolen.
Saints, his inability to catch them made him tense with frustration.
There were better ways to go about delivering justice to the unfortunate. It didn't require breaking the law.
"I only hope that the Faola don't try to ruin this festival," Feall joked.
"As do I," said Jaron. "Roden, I trust your plan to work, you can send your men out as soon as you feel ready."
A small grin crept across his face.
There was no way Roden would say it aloud, but hearing people tell him that they ‘trust’ his plans was beyond invigorating. It was simply proof that he was an efficient leader and a capable captain.
Jaron arched an eyebrow.
Ah, Roden was still grinning.
He forced a scowl on his face.
“We’re ready to deploy.”
Roden glanced at Mott, who cleared his throat, "Will you be alright without us, Jaron?"
"I'll have you know that I don't require a governess to watch my every move. I won't get into trouble."
Nobody said a word, as nobody dared inform Jaron that despite his efforts to avoid causing a ruckus, he tended to attract danger.
Jaron threw up his hands, "Imogen's going to be with me! Is that enough reassurance?"
"I suppose, though sometimes I believe Imogen encourages your antics," Roden teased. He turned around, ordering his men to their positions before Jaron could protest.
"Do you have a backup plan if they do decide the festival's too boring for them?" Mott asked quietly, following Roden out of the great hall.
He shrugged, "I predict that Jaron is going to disguise himself, Imogen and Amarinda will follow suit, and they'll avoid Tobias as if their lives depend on it."
Mott chuckled, "He's quite the mother hen."
"It's inconvenient at times."
The image of Tobias frantically searching through the streets brought a grin to Roden's face. Tobias would probably try to enlist the help of the royal guard, insisting that something was wrong, only to find the trio laughing at him from the safety of a tent tavern.
"Have you any word of the Faola?" Mott asked. He pushed the castle's front door open, and didn't wait for Roden as he walked down the steps. "Have your scouts found anything?"
"Not exactly," Roden confessed. The morning sun already beat down on him. He'd chosen the wrong day to wear a full suit of armor. "There's a friend of mine who may have a few words to share, but I don't even know if he's here."
The last of the guards crossed the castle bridge, split into two groups, and left for their posts. Mott squinted at the towering poles bedecked with ribbons and flowers, "Ah, he's the troubadour you were telling me about the other day."
"The one and only. Last I heard from him, he was busy in Mendenwal."
"Let's hope he makes an appearance today."
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Hours passed, but still no sign of anyone remotely resembling the Faola. Roden, Mott, and Feall rode together through the streets, doing their best to avoid the unlucky few who were already succumbing to alcohol.
"Ah, day drinking," Feall chuckled. "I understand their reasonings behind that all too well."
A smirk crossed Mott's face, "I can't deny that I've considered smuggling a flask into meetings with regents."
"I have smuggled a flask into meetings with regents," Roden chuckled, but he had no intentions of trying any kind of drink anytime soon. He had a troubadour to find. "Have you seen anything Feall?"
"Not since you asked me twenty minutes ago."
"Have you seen the Faola before?" Mott asked, wrinkling his nose at the sight of a woman waving at him from a scarlet tent.
"I have, their leader is Bymarian," Feall explained. "I don't know his name yet, but I have suspicions. I think he comes from the kingdom of Idunn Craich, but I can't be sure."
"Another kingdom state," Roden noted, still scanning the crowd for his contact. "I know of two. Bultain and Dinwallis."
"Idunn Craich is a kingdom state too, so that's three."
"And the other two?"
Feall grinned, "Ulster and Midhe. Congratulations, captain, you've learned all five Bymarian kingdoms. Would you like a medal for that?"
Roden's cheeks burned, but he didn't say anything.
Despite his actions during the Avenian War, he still had to struggle with the education he'd been denied.
Noblemen within the military ranks adored pointing it out.
"Any sign of the troubadour?" Mott shielded his eyes against the blazing midday sun.
"Not yet," Roden said. "He goes by the name Jolly, he typically prefers bright colors. He's Bymarian, if that helps."
"Ah," Mott nodded. "Find a place to keep the horses. Does he differentiate between men and women? Is he a gambler?"
"He's, ah, definitely the life of the party. Why?"
Mott dismounted, gesturing for Roden and Feall to do the same. He then tipped his head in the direction of a massive building resembling a castle, "I think I know where he is."
"Even if it isn't him," Feall said as he led his horse to a post. "This seems like the area he'd be in."
"Do you know Jolly?" asked Roden in surprise, resting his hand on his sword hilt.
"I do, as a matter of fact. He's a favorite of Queen Danika."
That didn't bring any surprise.
Though Jolly didn't remain in Carthya for long increments of time, he visited often, and he always brought tales of his escapades with whoever he chose. Often, his visits ended in a bar fight or running from a disgruntled spouse.
Life was never boring with Jolly.
As they approached the temporary castle, Roden caught himself walking as slowly as he could.
Dear Saints, there was just so much to take in.
So many people hawking their wares.
Entire suckling pigs roasting on spits.
Jesters swallowing swords, fire, and many other things that would definitely kill the inexperienced.
To Roden's embarrassment, he had to jog to catch up to Feall and Mott, his armor smacking together with loud metallic clangs.
"Don't worry, you can have your fun soon," Mott said, clapping Roden on the shoulder. "You're the one who wanted to do this."
"I know, and you're right, I shouldn't get distracted," mumbled Roden as they stepped through the castle's threshold.
The scent of cooking meat wafted through the temporary castle, accompanied by the spicy aroma of spilled wine and abandoned sweets.
Despite the magnificent exterior, the temporary castle looked like any other tavern. The walls were made of stone, the floor being the trampled grass, and the windows consisting of several sticks and a gap between stones. Tables bore broken legs and chipped surfaces. A staircase led up to another floor, guarded by pockmarked women in ragged dresses. Kegs lined the back wall, a bar as long as the castle's width stood in front of them, and various sorts of mugs and cups hung from the ceiling.
A grin spread on Roden's face.
He was certain that this place was a site for enjoyment.
"There, at the back," Mott said, tilting his head towards a large crowd of men and women near the tavern's keg wall.
"That can't be-," began Roden, but he knew Mott was right the second he caught a flash of a peacock green jerkin.
Feall whistled, "That's definitely Jolly."
At the mere mention of his name, Jolly stood up, a dimpled smile breaking across his chiseled face, "See? I told you they'd come!"
The grin on Roden's face instantly melted into a frown, "This isn't going to be good."
"Do we-," Mott started, but he was cut off the second a group of tavern patrons shoved them all forward.
"Captain Harlowe! It's been far too long!" Jolly exclaimed, lithely jumping from the countertop he'd been standing on. "How are you? Still pursuing that one minstrel? Saints, can't remember her name. The one with the-"
Jolly held his hands out a fair distance from his chest, leaving Roden to uncomfortably clear his throat, "I need to ask something of you, Jolly."
"Ah, anything, but then I need to ask something from you," Jolly swayed on his feet, and would've toppled over if it weren't for the woman who caught him. Jolly patted her cheek, "I knew you cared about me, love. What, or who, can I do for you, captain?"
"Have you ever heard of the Faola?"
That was all it took to force Jolly to straighten out. He frowned, "Why?"
"They're here in Carthya," explained Feall. "King Oberson of Dinwallis and I were attacked several days ago by them."
"They're in Carthya?" Jolly shot a look at the woman at his side. "Shoo, Merry, I have to talk business."
The woman, Merry, scowled and yanked Jolly's full tankard from him as she walked away.
"We'll talk later?" called Jolly.
Roden almost didn't catch the fact that Feall's eyes were glued to Merry's leaving figure.
There was something in Feall's eyes that couldn't be placed.
"Right, the Faola," Feall said, jolting himself back into the conversation. "What do you know?"
"Ah, ah, ah," Jolly waggled his finger as he simultaneously smoothed out his jerkin. "Captain Harlowe, I desperately need your help before we do any talking about a subject that'll definitely get me into trouble."
It wasn't the first time Jolly had asked for help. Typically, he asked for assistance in escaping somebody he'd crossed, or needed help paying off a tavern bill. The chances of anything being different were slim.
He trusted Jolly.
Roden nodded, "It's alright, you can tell me later, I promise I'll help you in any way that I can."
"No, Captain, I don't think you under-"
"Tell me about the Faola, please."
For a moment, Roden worried that Jolly would remain silent.
Was discussing the Faola truly that bad?
He tried not to look relieved when Jolly finally nodded.
Jolly cleared his throat, and looked over both of his shoulders to his drunk companions, "I've had a few run-ins with them, not terrible company, if I do say so myself. There are worse bandits that I've had to deal with, but still bandits."
"What do you know of their leader?" asked Roden, holding out a hand the second Feall tried to interrupt him.
"Bangol Bandir?" Jolly chuckled, his eyebrows rising in the process. "Absolute cheater at cards. I wouldn't want to expose him, though."
"Bandir's not very big. . ."
"We must be thinking of two different Bangol Bandirs because the one that I know could crush your head between his thighs, Captain."
Mott smirked, "That description matches the bandit we're looking for just perfectly."
"Ha," Roden didn't bother hiding the annoyance now throbbing through his head. "Your jokes brighten my day."
"No, no, no," Feall blurted out, speaking before Roden could get him to remain quiet. "I'm Lord Feall, a member of Queen Danika's court, and while traveling here I was singled out by a bandit much shorter than you. It could've been a woman."
"Couldn't be Faola then, Bandir doesn't employ women for thievery. He uses them to poison enemies too strong to challenge in battle," he turned to one of his friends. "Can you find Merry? I want my drink back."
"Tobias insisted that the bandits were Faola," Mott scratched his chin, a thoughtful expression cemented on his face. "Perhaps the bandit who attacked you, Lord Feall, wasn't a leader at all."
"Impossible, there's no way a single bandit could-," he began, but he never finished his sentence.
"By the Saints! Lord Feall? I know you," Jolly burst, a new drink in his hand thanks to his crowd of followers. "Haven't seen you in years, has your inheritance been resolved?"
"Inheritance?" Echoed Mott and Roden in unison.
Feall's face darkened, "I was set up to inherit Idunn Craich, but the, ah, rules of inheritance have become muddled. Idunn Craich's throne was left to a disgraced family, but as Queen Danika sees it, there is more to the story. Idunn Craich will be mine someday, but that's beside the point. You'll have to forgive me Jolly, we rarely conversed."
"Ah, but that doesn't matter, I heard everything about you from court," said Jolly as he took a prolonged sip from his tankard.
"Anyways," Feall cleared his throat. "Have you any idea who could've led the attack?"
"Possibly. But what's in it for me?"
Roden kept his mouth shut as both Feall and Mott looked to him. He scowled, "I already promised you that I'd assist you. What more do you want?"
"I- I just," Jolly stuttered, and he wiped his hands on his tunic.
Jolly. . . Nervous?
A rare occurrence indeed.
"What do you want?"
"I bet against that table over there, regarding the, uh, joust this afternoon. . . And the man I bet on. . ."
Oh no.
That's what Jolly meant when he asked for help.
That's why he wouldn't speak until he knew that his request would be fulfilled.
He needed to know that there would be somebody to ride in the jousting tournament and win for him.
"That's too much to ask, Jolly," Mott was dangerously calm. "There's not enough time to find somebody to ride in the place of your failed man."
"It's going to cost me money," Jolly wailed. "It's going to tarnish my reputation!"
"We'll pay you the money you lost for the information," Feall offered, his eyes blazing with determination.
"You should understand the importance of a reputation, sir!"
"We'll pay you double! Triple-!"
"That's enough," Roden held up his hand, and a light smirk crossed his face. "I'll ride in the joust, but I'll only do it if you tell me what I need to know. Can you promise me that, Jolly?"
"You? Joust? Captain, that's absurd. You don't-!"
"You'd be surprised at what I'm capable of, my friend."
Roden shrugged once he realized that Mott and Feall were staring at him. He'd practiced on his own time, there was a large array of perks that came with being able to use a lance on the battlefield.
Now he'd have the chance to ride in a tournament.
Granted, it was his first official tournament, but Jolly didn't need to know anything about that.
"Alright, fine," Jolly looked over his shoulder again, and then gestured to a broken table in the corner. "I'll tell you what I know about the Faola."
"Thank you-," Roden began, but Jolly shook his head.
"I'm trusting that you'll win the tournament, Captain, otherwise. . . Things will no longer continue to work in my favor. Shoo! Go away!"
Jolly continued to wave off his companions as they approached the table. They soon lost interest in him, and turned to harass the poor minstrel in the corner.
"Right," Jolly rubbed his hands together. "Now, there's rumors following the Faola like nobody's business. I've seen sections of them working in Bymar and Avenia, so they're not just exclusive to Carthya."
"Bymar, that would line up with why they'd attack Feall but not King Jaron," Roden noted, wishing he had something to write down everything Jolly said.
"Could the attacker have been a woman?" Feall asked, his brow furrowing.
"Hush, let the man speak," Mott held up a hand.
Feall shut his mouth.
"Thank you," said Jolly. "It's entirely possible you were attacked by a woman, but I doubt it, Faola women are much smarter than the men. They'd administer poison to you in doses till it seemed like you died of natural causes. They're all quite dominant, too, frightening once they get you tied up and-"
"Jolly. Remain on the subject."
"Sorry Captain, where was I? Ah yes, potential identities. Several members of the Faola adopt names that aren't their own, some use it to instill fear and others use their stolen names to justify their causes. Notable aliases include Veldergrath, Bevin Conner, Mireldis Thay, Joth Kerwyn, King Eckbert himself. It's a way of being able to hide the fact that they work with bandits."
"I recognize Mireldis Thay," Feall murmured, but he couldn't remain quiet any longer. He smacked the table, "She's what stands in the way of Idunn Craich."
"It would be idiotic for Lady Thay to use her first name while fighting as a bandit," Mott pointed out.
Jolly nodded, "And then attack you. Besides, I know Lady Thay, she's far from here. It's just somebody tarnishing her name, just as the bandits who sport Lord Kerwyn's name are trying to do. No, no, I suspect that you're dealing with somebody else. Have any details I can go by?"
"Nothing, aside from the height," Roden said. "He, or she, was short, a little bit shorter than the average woman."
"Perfect!" Jolly exclaimed, standing up as he did so. "I'll see what I can do about finding your mystery bandit. And don't forget to win that tournament, Captain, I highly suggest that you don’t lose."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I'm beginning to worry that you haven't gotten anything keeping you away from making stupid choices," Mott said, tapping Roden's head. "Jaron's rubbed off on you."
"Ah, well, I need to learn all that I can about the Faola, and Jolly is our best bet," Roden said, strapping a plate of armor to each of his legs.
The tent he and Mott were sheltered in was blindingly hot.
The armor Roden put on made the heat nearly unbearable.
"You're sure you're going to be alright?" asked Mott as he shoved a helmet in Roden's direction.
He shrugged, "There's danger in everything I do."
It wasn't his first time using a lance, he'd trained for several months after he realized the value in being able to wield a lance while in a battle. Roden knew the risks and he knew the rules.
But a splintering lance was far different from a sword.
A splintering lance might not hit you directly, but chances were high that a piece of wood could lodge itself in your face or neck.
Not an enjoyable way to die. . . Not that dying is something to be enjoyed.
Roden pulled the helmet on over his head, and slid the visor up, "Would you give me a favor of yours to carry with me?"
"No."
"Please?"
"Absolutely not."
"Please remember my name if I fall on this lovely afternoon," Roden joked, slamming the visor over his face.
Mott scowled, "You're not going to die, and if you do, it means you're awful at jousting."
"I suppose I have to win now so I can prove you wrong."
"I'm concerned, were you not planning on winning in the first place?"
"There's always a chance at losing, but I try not to let that be an option. This will be over soon, my friend," Roden's voice was muffled behind the helmet. "We'll meet at the tavern this evening, Jolly said he'd be waiting there."
The sound of trumpeters shook the summer air. Mott frowned, and held the tent flap open for Roden, silent and disapproving as he almost always was. However, he did clap Roden's armored shoulder and whispered a few words of luck before he made his way to the stands.
Children waved multicolored flags at him, Roden waved back.
Ah, how he'd dreamed of taking up a lance.
Jolly's rider, the man Roden was replacing, was an older knight named Cronnach Nyrsate. Sir Nyrsate's coat of arms had been painted onto a wooden shield and leaned against the judges' box. . . Which usually sat Jaron, Imogen, the Prime Regent, and three other guests.
It was a surprise to see Jaron holding Imogen's hand in their seats and not off causing trouble. Harlowe sat next to them.
Saints, it would be humiliating if Roden lost in front of his father.
Sir Nyrsate's horse was supposed to be ridden for the match, but Roden had just enough time to pull enough strings and get his own horse armored and ready to go.
That would give him a slight advantage. His horse, a gift from Bymar, was massive. Bred specifically for war. It made the rider taller, never stopped, and brought a crushing power that rivaled all other warhorses.
It was a little frustrating, however, to see Roden's horse bearing the Nyrsate coat of arms rather than the Harlowe coat of arms.
Roden swung up into the saddle. . .
And finally allowed himself a look at his opponent.
He didn't recognize the coat of arms, nor did he recognize the horse. All Roden saw was a large man in battle scarred armor, which would've been painted black at one point. A red plum erupted from his helmet.
Definitely more than a little intimidating.
Jaron stood up, and raised his hands out to the stands full of festival goers. Roden was too far away to hear anything.
Not that he would've been able to hear anything anyways.
He was far too focused on his opponent.
"Sir! Sir Nyrsate!" Bellowed a flock of snot nosed teenagers, street rats, and esteemed young heirs to noble houses.
Roden waved a hand at them, he couldn't speak now. He needed to focus.
"Ah, good sir!" Shouted a man over the roar of the crowd. Jaron must've said something funny. The man waved his hands. "Sir!"
Roden squinted, Jolly was there to see him off.
"Good luck," called Jolly as he launched himself over the barrier keeping the viewers out. A girl followed behind. "Me and Merry came to give you a send off, and the kids of course, you simply have to let them send you off."
"A favor for you, sir knight," Merry bowed deeply, retrieving a dirty blue scarf from the front of her gown as she did so. She tied it to Roden's right wrist before stepping back to help several members of Roden's screaming fans over the side of the fence.
"Remember, if you knock him off his horse, it's an instant win," Jolly patted Roden's thigh, and hefted a lance over to him.
"I know the rules," Roden huffed as he tucked the lance under his arm.
A page stepped out from Jaron's box, holding out a flag like a sword.
The flag went up.
Roden charged forwards, a small band of children howling as they chased him and his horse for several feet.
All he had to do was aim for the center, lower the lance, and hold firm.
Inhale.
Exhale.
The crowd began to scream the second a lance cracked-
Stars blurred across Roden's vision.
He missed!
Saints, he hoped Mott didn't see that. Jolly's concerned face from the crowd didn't help, Merry was the one to get him a new lance.
Flag up, screaming children, crowd cheering.
Roden missed again.
It took three points to win a match. Points were earned when a lance was broken or a rider was toppled. One point for each broken lance, and so far, Roden hadn't broken any of his.
He was two points down.
One point away from losing.
Anger burst through his lungs.
How could he have been so stupid!? Signing up for a joust! He'd never ridden in front of so many screaming civilians before!
The children who'd been chasing at him clamored for his attention, but they backed away the second he didn't say anything.
"Lean in the saddle," Merry said as she handed Roden a fresh lance. She patted his horse's shoulder, "I know you're fierce, unhorse him and that's a match."
"I've never done this before," Roden confessed, unsure if she'd heard him over the roar of the crowd.
"You've done it twice just now, third time's the charm. Go on, don't let Jolly down. Or me. You're wearing my favor, and everybody in town knows that it's mine. You'll damage my reputation."
"I'm so sorry about your reputation."
"As you should! Be more sorry about your reputation, sir knight!" Merry shot back, her hands on her hips. "Are you so quick to give up?!"
The crowd screamed, Roden jolted to attention.
His opponent charged early, ready to finish the match off.
Merry cried out, and slapped out at Roden's horse's flank, causing the mighty beast to rear up.
Roden shouldered the lance, forcing the horse in a straight path down the arena.
Lean in the saddle
He could hear Merry's words ringing in his head.
Time seemed to slow around him as he blocked out everything save for the man barreling towards him. The crowd's screams were muffled.
Like they were shrieking underneath a pond's surface.
Lean in the saddle.
The rider was coming closer and closer to him.
Roden gripped the lance and-
Wood splintered.
The unmistakable sound of metal colliding with the solid ground cut through the muffled noises.
He was still in the saddle, holding a shattered lance.
Roden was still in his saddle.
He'd made a hit!
Instantly, Roden turned his horse around itself, and held up the broken lance to Merry and Jolly. His opponent was being dragged out of the arena by his foot. Pages chased the runaway horse. Mott was standing among the crowd, his hands above his head.
"That was amazing!" Jolly shrieked as he ran to Roden. "Knocked him clean off!"
A trail of all sorts of children, the ones who'd chased Roden down the arena, came flooding, waving their banners and shouting for "Sir Nyrsate's" attention.
"You better pay up," Roden said, tossing the broken lance to the ground.
The children all scrambled for it.
"Oh, I will, I promise I will," Jolly vowed, grabbing Merry by the shoulders to plant kisses all over her face. "Dear Saints, I've won too much money."
"Don't gamble on drunks ever again," Merry snapped as she shoved Jolly away from her.
"Oh, I won't, I promise I won't."
Roden was certain that he and Merry were thinking the same thing: Jolly would certainly go on to bet on more drunks.
But perhaps it was worth it.
After all, Roden received his chance to ride in a jousting tournament.
And he'd guaranteed an opportunity to learn more about the Faola.
It wouldn't be long before he caught them.
#the ascendance series#the ascendance trilogy#ascendance series#ascendance trilogy#roden#jaron#tobias#mott#ocs#fic friday#ive always loved jousting and this gave me an excuse to watch 7645 hours of jousting videos. best day ever
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