#but it's not as if shockwave just used the pieces AS IS it's probably just a gene base for cloning

[whatudottu]

You know, sitting here thinking about TFP humanformers I have rather found it difficult to come up with an idea for a human Predaking, seeing as how his entire schtick as a predacon lead him to being depersonified and marked as a beast before folks realised he could transform.

I mean, these are just humanformer ideas based on Predaking KEEPING his canonical treatment rather than making Predaking and changing the dynamics that way. It does involve some uh... dehumanisation under the cut to keep with the theme, so keep in mind if you DO read, but those parts are mainly in the 'struggling to come up with a concept that isn't racist' section.

The first ideas that I had for him would probably to make him into a super soldier, and sure it works but- if you attempt to 'discipline' a super soldier the way Starscream tried to do so with a predacon's beast mode, I think you'll be walking away with broken shins (aka not walking at all). Another idea was to bring a fucked up 'shockwave inspired' element that would lead to the amp 'beast' comparisons to be made, but the more 'beastman' version of this idea is VERY DELICATE to work with (read: comparing a human to an animal is VERY HISTORICALLY and still PRESENTLY a not great thing to do) but also doesn't quite FEEL that predacon to me; predacons are emphasised to be ANCIENT not that they are extant animals, so if Shockwave has done anything to beastify a human I think insecticons may be that unit of humans.

No, I think that for a human to be considered a beast without being racist about it would be to turn predacons from 'animals' to 'monsters', to Frankenstein's monsters. Though I thought of I think a vague Frankenstein comparison before, I will bring up that many others have also seen some modern Prometheus allegories between Shockwave and Predaking. I was mainly inspired by my [insert number here] rewatch of OSP's Frankenstein episode and especially the particular eye colour Adam was depicted with, but the basic idea of being a dead person brought back to life with the best pieces carefully selected by someone wholly dedicated to the craft of science (irrespective of Frankenstein's dropout status) plus how the monster is almost universally feared? Come on, this is the 'in' I needed if I wanted to keep the general fear of the unknown with Predaking and the Decepticon High Command.

And what better show to introduce a character that is this compilation of ancient human DNA and real corpse than a show that has previously introduced ZOMBIES and will later introduce VAMPIRES!?

If Shockwave shows up, after 3 seasons worth of knowing what a zombie is and that it's a real possible thing to happen - in addition to the fact your own fucking leader stuck a shard of 'zombie making' juice into his chest/bloodstream/whatever the humanformers version of Megan would do - with a creature visibly made up of the dead with eyes of something very non-human, would you welcome them with open arms? Adam Frankenstein certainly wasn't, not even from his own dad which Predaking can at least attest to actually having SOME sort of decent relationship with Shockwave.

In a way, it modifies the predacon fossil scavenger hunt to be 'global graverobbers' which in a humanformers setting might actually be 'go to this great battle and recover the bones of not only our but our enemies bones to provide a human base' which could EMPHASISE the monstrosity of Predaking's nature as a melting pot of old friends and foe mashed together into one fucked up super soldier. In a canon parallel this mixture of gene sequences and cadavers would still influence Knock Out and Starscream to think turning the corpse of C.Y.L.A.S. into their own super soldier would still be a good idea, having something else besides the dark 'energon' (if it is not still energon) fuck up the experiment and make a tech-modified human into some kinda fucked up vampire. Heck, with this old post of mine comparing the looks of the new predacons to the two big blue (dead) bots, this humanformers concept for Predaking can persist and continue to be used by Shockwave to create Skylynx and Darksteel, not made of battles long passed but of the freshest bodies the scientist would have access to.

But I guess canonically there has only ever been 2 zombie hordes throughout the entirety of TFP, if you consider the horde in Thirst to be very hungry vampire thralls instead (considering they were killed rather than revived, I'd place them under 'vampire'), so perhaps not a lot of bots can go 'this is terrifying' and not a lot of evidence that Shockwave can gather about why they are at this level of hesitancy; it's not a simple fear of the unknown, it's the type of fear from experience. But I have a trick up my sleeve!

BOOM, Altered Loyalties baby; human edition, of course.

This might deserve it's own post but essentially, a humanformers 'Shockwave's Monster' Predaking would have a lot more precedence for being a Unicron made monstrosity if the threat of Unicron damned creatures exist as a background constant. A threat to base verse to their position on Earth, a threat in humanformers because the dead outnumber them. All the while, Shockwave stands beside a being created from those very same dead that may or may not have risen from the corruption of WHATEVER it is within the Earth's core, only to announce this is a very new SUPER SOLDIER!? Zombies are one thing with their durability and their hordes, but this creature - this DEMON - stands there with advance agility, enhanced endurance, and superior strength!?

To later find that it - that HE - is not merely a walking corpse, but an intellectual, sends shivers even down Megatron's spine. Megatron, the head of one of the last remaining shreds of humanity, staring at the undead being not only made to be harder, better, faster, stronger than him, but capable of intelligence in much the same way as the poetic ex-gladiator.

He WILL NOT go extinct.

#predaking #tfp predaking #this is mostly a talk about him even with the passing mention of others #transformers #tfp #humanformers #maccadam #i did want to mention that there might have been ideas scraping at the edge of racism because well: they kinda did #ask to tag #but otherwise they were indeed just a part of the thinking process in 'how do i dehumanise a person without making it an animal thing' #boom bang supernatural shit that shockwave somehow scientifically got to #i think it would be some version of fucked up organ donation in combination with 'mysterious science' stuff #like predaking probably looks like multiple different folk both con and bot might recognise #but it's not as if shockwave just used the pieces AS IS it's probably just a gene base for cloning #predaking (and other predacons) probably all have the non-human eyes and even tho shockwave is just utterly desperate as a scientist to fin #that confounding variable causing the eye colour- ultimately since it isn't actively detrimental to performance outside of other's percepti #(something shockwave couldn't even be bothered to care about one let alone less) #he'd kinda let that be until he eventually finds out a routes out that probable cause #but this was a huge ramble on how i'd probably deal with a humanformers predaking #under the assumption that i keep the dynamics the same and just adding details (that could work if not similarly to the main version) #and hope the brief mention of racism is enough of an explanation as to WHY i didn't go with some ideas

[yeyinde]

fever in a shockwave

pt., iii | stagnant on my betterment

“I don't want to lose you,” he's saying, and it's odd because he never really had you to begin with.

WARNINGS: angst, pining, yearning; eventual smut; trauma; grief and the existentialism of moving on; recovery; poor/unhealthy coping methods; codependency; reference to drug use (but it's just weed); reader has a backstory; spoilers for the series

WORD COUNT: 14,7k

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an update; this isn't the final part lmao dangerous words coming from someone like me oops. there's probably going to be three more parts after this.

There is no sense of closure when you watch the jagged pieces of a broken man fall to the floor by your feet. The splintered edges offer no succour, no victory, when they come to rest along the scattered ruins of a delusional love affair: alcohol bottles—Kraken, Captain Morgan—and grease-stained boxes of takeaway, most unfinished in favour of satiating yourselves on flesh, sex. 

(Booze, more often than not.)

Seeing him struggle to find meaning in what you say—watching that ethanol-soaked resignation filter through hazy, electric blue—brings a fresh pain instead, taking space in the hollow gaps where you expected vindication and self-worth to bleed through. 

You're doing the right thing, after all. Aren't you? 

Aren't you? (please, someone, anyone, say yes—)

Uncertainty is an uneasy, nauseating feeling inside your guts. Much like a broken bone, it emanates a visceral sense of perturbation through your body. Every synapse fires in protest; every nerve screaming out. They bellow one thing in unison: something is wrong and not quite right. 

You feel their cries deep in your being. Each muscle twitch and frayed thought that passes carries the echo of it. 

This pain, it seems, is cracking your ribs apart and exposing the rotting marrow to the open air. Slurping from the putrefying sludge, satiating itself on the sickness eroding you from within. 

It's all wrong. It feels wrong. 

Bear swallows. You watch the way his throat works around the bitterness that lashes across the cut of his brow; gyres darkening in his eyes. Storms on the horizon. 

(You think you'd welcome the squall. Might embrace anything to get out of this place—)

“That's what you want?” He rasps, thick and gritty, and you think about the last time he sounded like that—all torn up, and broken. Words mangled in his throat. Husked out when he told you about Rip, about the boy, his daughter, and—

No. No.

None of this is what you want, and it pains you that he can't see that. 

(Such a selfish, broken man.)

Inside the festering slurry of your marrow, an urge wells up. Bubbles in the putrid pools until it's frothing, raging against the walls keeping it trapped until it seeps through the cracks, leaking into your muscles, your tissue, your bloodstream. 

This silly little body of yours carries it up to your heart where it sinks talons into your pericardium, subsumes the serous in this terrible essence, this idea, this whim—

(“what?” the scoff he lets out trails on the coattails of what might have been a laugh in another life. if he was another man, maybe. you, more honest with yourself. but you are just two broken people in a run-down bar. humour exists somewhere in the muzzle of a loaded pistol. “got a saviour complex or something?”

or something. or something—)

Because the thing is: you do. 

You spend most weekends wandering around antique stores because you're convinced that everything deserves a home. A place of its own. You find the unwanted, the unsellable, and you let it take space in your lonely, cramped apartment. 

And why not? No one else will buy it. You're, technically, helping the environment. It's a win-win. 

(and more lies you tell yourself.)

These false promises are always made that one day, one of these days, you'll find something to do with it all—maybe you could learn how to make something out of it; stitch all the unuseable parts, the unwanted pieces, and create something that everyone will want—but so far, none of your rescues has ever been finished. Saved. They sit in a corner taking up space. Untouched. Unused. Collecting dust. 

That insidious whim curls inside of your heart, and whispers: 

it's never too late to try again. maybe this time, it'll work out for you—

It's the same one that lures you in, making you purchase a complete set of ugly-looking dolls because some ladies were recoiling at the sight of their lumpy, antediluvian faces, and you felt bad thinking that they were doomed to end up sitting on the shelf until they were unceremoniously tossed into the bin with all the other things that won't sell. 

And the one, now, that stares at the terse set to Bear's shoulders, the lines rucked across his broad, the helplessness etched into ashlar, and considers that maybe all he needs is someone. A friend, maybe. 

(And maybe, maybe, that it could be you—)

“Bear—” it would be so easy to swallow the words back down until you choke on them. 

You breathe in. Taste nicotine in your throat; the phantom burn of a memory from long ago: one once buried under the rubble of your crumbling foundations, now rearing into this yawning abyss as you waver on the precipice. This vacuum that syphons you dry. Leaves you empty, gaping. 

It’s your mum leaning over the railing of a mezzanine as she smokes a cigarette—the eighth in the last three hours, pack near gone—and tries (and fails; always, always, always) to find some temporal kinship with a higher power as you sit on the porch swing and drink in the scraps she tosses your way. 

(Today, it’s the way the smoke curls in the periwinkle sky like a naked gospel; grand televangelist to a crowd of one.)

She scrambles within the ruins of her own making to seek answers to compensate for the lack of worth that slips from the cracks. Left behind again. Again, but it’s not her fault. It’s never her fault. 

(You should know best, she tells you—you suckled from the shattered parts of herself before you broke away from the cradle of her arms. Genetics leaves you wrecked for company, for permanence.

It’s just not made for us, baby. We’re unloveable only because we love too much—)

An epiphany comes in the middle of her eighth cigarette, and she divines enough wisdom to come to the succinct conclusion that those broken pieces are not the cause of her misery. 

(How could they be when they’re a part of her and she’s a part of everything?)

Can't fix a broken man, she murmurs into the midmorning fog, blood-red mouth splitting into a sneer. There was beauty, you thought, to be found in the pale yellow of her teeth against the pastel dusting of dawn. Rapturous, almost. You couldn't look away even as the words snaked through the underdeveloped fibres of your mind. They're like someone who's drowning, you know? They'll grab on to anyone that gets too close and try to pull them under, too. Maybe because they want to save themselves, or maybe because they don't want to die alone. Better to leave them behind. 

Can't fix a broken man, (but maybe—)

Your dad tried to fix me, she adds, and it comes in the same cadence of an afterthought, blase; but the thinness in her voice, the reedy pitch of barely veiled urgency, all feigned indifference to the topic, all give her away. She's been waiting for this, you know. Gearing up in steady increments so that the blow lands harder when it's thrown. 

Isn't that stupid? And he couldn't even bother to stick around. What a joke… But I guess some people are like that, huh? Couldn't be me, she scoffed, jabbing her finger in your direction. You could see the yellow of her nails beneath the pock marks in her chopped, blue nail polish. And don't let it be you, either. The best thing you could ever do for yourself and someone else is leave. Don't cheat. Don't be the other woman. Just fucking—

The bubble bursts, and in that breaking, a truth is revealed to you in some strange, hangover-induced epiphany brought on by dehydration, malnutrition, and the terrific idea of going home with a man who has never once talked to you while being completely sober. It screams—first and foremost—you are an idiot, but beyond that, you really are your father's child, aren't you? 

Lost amid your memory, the emergence of a forgotten fallow, it’s Bear who shakes you awake when he reaches for you after the silence sat for too long. Fingers touching, too tender and too rough at the same time, and the juxtaposition makes you quiver as it ploughs disquiet into your being. 

Tears pebble in your lash line, threatening to spill over. You haven't cried in a long time and yet, yet—

His hand folds over your wrist, tight and unrelenting. Shackles against your bones. Grinding them into soft, fine powder. 

“C’mon,” he slurs, pleads; tugging you closer as if distance is what makes you say these things to him and not the heavy, overwhelming scent of alcohol wafting off of his numb tongue. “You don't know what you're saying right now—”

His fingers tighten. The midnight scabs on his knuckles tear from the strain, the stretch. Blood wells under the slit that lifts from his broken, battered skin. Pebbles like a tear-drop on the wrinkle of his bruised knuckle, and then sheds itself free. Running down the yellow mess of moulted flesh until it meets the cliff edge of where his palm rests against yours. 

“You don’t mean it. You can’t mean that. Stay with me, stay—”

The alcohol makes him sway where he sits, eyes upturned but focused inward, lost to thoughts and feelings and places unreachable to you. Ephemeral lines in jaded, blue sands. It slips, too, from between his fingers. Uncatchable to anyone but the flush under his skin, the slur in his words. 

Can’t fix a broken man. 

The motion dislodges the droplet and it waterfalls over his palm until his blood kisses the clean, unmarred skin of your hand. 

He doesn’t notice the way he bleeds on you (through you, in you; drowns you in it, in him—): outside of a thready determination built on drunk devotion, he doesn’t seem to see much at all. Clouded. Overcast. Those hazy eyes regard you with a thin, untouchable distance. Filmed over and too far gone for you to pull him back—

(and you can’t help but wonder if he even notices you or if, in those unending crevasses, an icy, broken bergschrunds, the misshapen silhouette of you strikes a different chord to him; if these slurred hymnals are just a hollow orison for someone else in your stead.)

—so you stop trying. Let it sit, let it rot. Smell the infection in the air as the wound splits apart. Gangrenous and beyond palliative help. 

Something must flicker across your face sharp enough to cut through the fog he drowns himself inside because his eyes widen slightly, and his hand tenses around your wrist. Tight. Unyielding. 

As his fingers dig in over your pisiform, deep enough to bruise—to mark you once more with his stain, his touch—you’re struck by the sudden thought of brittleness. It’s not something you’d ever considered yourself as—delicate, fragile—but with the way he holds you now, not at all dissimilar to the way he held on last night, fingers loosely wrapped around your wrist as he used your joints as a stress ball to calm himself down, you feel vulnerable. Swallowed whole, caught. 

What once felt like a comfort, a sense of security as you moulded yourself into an anchor point, a lighthouse on the sandy, dark shore, for him to find, to swim for amid the roaring waves dragging him down, now feels like dead weight. 

For the first time since you've met him, you taste chlorine in the back of your throat. Feel the pull of the currents dragging you down. 

You know all too well what it feels like to drown. 

You pull away. He clings tighter. 

“Bear, please—”

Please, you think. Please, please, please—

(If you keep stripping yourself bare, you'll be nothing but bones—)

He doesn't even notice. Nothing, it seems, will pull his fixed attention from every minuscule expression that flickers across your face as if the mere notion of weakness, of hesitancy, will give him reason to hold on just that much harder. 

“Can't just give up on this—” the words are tangled in his throat, caught on the end of a snarl, and vicious. He tugs on you, pulling you closer. “On us.”

“There's no us, Bear.” 

And it isn't a lie. Of course, it isn't. 

There's an empty chasm between you both, void of any tangible substance. Whatever he thinks this is, it can't work. Won't. Not in the real world. Not outside of the bottom of a bottle. 

You won't be his crutch. His bad habit. His midlife crisis amid a downward spiral. 

You can't be.

Won't be. 

(you will not be the other woman. you will not be your father's child.)

And it isn't remotely the same, you know. Bear's wife is—

Dead. Gone. 

—and yet, this whole situation still makes you feel like a homewrecker even though the home you demand he returns to is empty. 

Selfish, you think, but you can't even begin to know who you're referring to in this beautifully devastating moment. Bear, for chasing ghosts, drowning them in alcohol and bad choices and vices that end with bringing strange women back to his lonely hotel room just to feel more than the vicious bite of grief in his chest.

Or you, for pulling away from this drowning man because you're not strong enough to save him and yourself at the same time. 

(or—something sneers—you just hate the idea of being like either of your parents, but what can you do when you've stolen all of their bad parts for your own?) 

You think of the man in the bar. One hundred dollars to send him back home. Where he belongs. 

(...he can't destroy himself like this. You'd know that, though, as his friend.

send him home, alright?)

“Go home,” you say, harsh and severe. All the things that your mother wished she said to him. Regurgitated words spat out by his feet because borrowed doctrines are you've ever known. 

A fissure crackles across his expression, cutting through the fog. It's anger, bitterness, pain—some strange, fantastical amalgamation of the three—and it coalesces into broken defiance where it sits, clinging to the glossy grease around his brow, his nose. 

It makes your fingers itch with the urge to soothe—to unfurl the wrinkles in his brow, to tuck this grown man close to your chest until the tension in the thick set of his shoulders liquifies in your hands, and he melts into malleable putty. 

(Another trinket to collect dust on your mantle.)

You swallow it down—the salt and blood, and the pathetic pulse of your heart, and all. Hurt him, you think. Hurt him deeply. Deeper, still. Push him away and run. Run. Keep running until your legs give out, until your lungs collapse because if you don’t, if you don’t, you know you’ll stay with him until he throws you to wayside, until he wakes up one morning and decides that you are not enough compared to the big, wide world just outside his door; that your walls and your roof are not big enough for him—

“Please. Go home. Go home, Bear—”

Your words land like you knew they would, and he reels back for a moment, as if struck, but the anger, the twisted pain etched in the lines of his unkempt beard, his greasy brow, make stand firm. Unmoving. 

You catch the acrid scent of gasoline on his skin when he leans forward, forcing himself back into your space with his chin dipped low, eyes blazing with a defiant inferno. His scarred, battle-battered hands drop to his splayed knees, gripping tight. Holding firm. 

(Or holding himself back—)

His voice is a matchstick when he speaks. Smouldering embers sparking to life. Renewed with a sense of purpose you can't make sense of. What set him off? What made him flip—

(You're not worth it. You're not worth it—)

“M’not giving up on this.” 

His jaw is slack. Laxed. The words slip out slow, languid. Curling with a touch of humid derision, mordant humour, at the idea that after all of this, everything (nothing, you think—nothing, nothing, nothing), you could just walk away unscathed. 

If I burn, the crackle in his throat says, promises: then you're burning with me. 

“Bear—”

“I'm not giving up on us.” 

He leaves, and takes another part of you with him. 

(You sever a part of yourself and leave it in the mouldering hotel room that still reeks of stale sweat, cheap whisky, and sex.)

The aftermath goes like this: 

A tsunami of regret and indecision dredges up terrible, awful things—phantom memories and stains in the shape of fingerprints that pollute the inside of your psyche—ones that should have been left to rot at the bottom of your buried trenches. It makes leaving harder than it should have been considering the abrupt nature of this—whatever it is. 

(Untitled. Unnameable. Unknowable.)

There's betting on losing dogs, and then there's this: 

Pacing all your cards, all your coins, on one that wasn't even in the race. 

One foot in, one foot out doesn't apply when Bear has never even stepped over the threshold. That notion roots itself in the scorched fibres of your chest, knotweed in your alveoli, as you scent liquor on his breath when he speaks. A cavernous distance grows between want and reality. 

You thought you knew him. Learned and memorised all his hard lines, his soft valleys, the thick thatches of hair that dust his body like the dark depths of a riverbed; a nebula of loosely connected scar tissue—Orion's belt made of fine, silvery lines—and pock marks from blemishes and bumps born from the rich, enigmatic tapestry of his life beyond the mere sliver of you. Crows' feet in the corner of his eyes, but only when they're crested in pleasure, twisted in that tender sort of humour only comfort brings. 

It takes you a weekend to map out the burly topography of a man, and only seconds to realise you know nothing about him outside of this rapacious intimacy. 

And even though you want to feel like this was the right choice—because it is, it was—you can't seem to stem the sheer brutality in which regret tears through you as you stand alone in a desolate parking lot under the waning sun. A whimpering ending to a desolate beginning. 

Was it loneliness that brought you here, or just the mundanity of fearing failure? It's these unanswerable questions, these skewed thoughts, that tumble over themselves, struggling to stay buoyant in the molasses of your sicky grey matter. 

(Let them sink. Let them drown.)

These distant sentiments barely echo in the gaping vacuum of that is your mind. Untethered, whispering by as you stare, transfixed, at the broad strokes of pretty pastels in periwinkle, tangerine, and bluebonnet are rapidly consumed by the darkening sky that opens like a chasm above your head. The sight of it a little too close to the colours that danced in the aether when you both broke, finally, meeting somewhere in the middle, tangled webs. Broken people coming together in a cataclysm that was always, always, headed down a single path to devastation. 

(The perfect conclusion to a story without a beginning.)

It's something you shouldn't think about. Let them sink. Let them drown—

This looping, knotted thread is a dangerous one to follow—the agony of watching Bear storm off (even after asking, demanding, that you let him drive you home; an offer you quickly refused) is still raw and gaping; a pulsating wound in the back of your throat—but you're brittle enough to want it to hurt, maybe. Chasing that unequivocal high only self-flagellation brings. 

Masochism in failure. In heartbreak by your own design. 

And it should hurt, right? This lonely climax (not with a bang, but a fizzle) should devastate you. Cut you to the core. Leave false starts on your bones. Scars on your ribcage. A meteor shower in milky white. Something tangible. Permanent. 

But instead, it feels unfinished. More of a sudden paroxysm than a defining choice you've made. Concretely. Absolutely. It's a hollow win for your bruised ego. Your battered pride. It slinks, somewhere, in the depths of this renewed pain, and licks at the tender wound made when you pierced your chest and ripped your heart cleanout. 

Threw it at the floor by his feet. 

Quid pro quo, maybe. Or a desperate bid to rid yourself of the Bear-shaped hole now taking residence inside. 

(It's fine, though. That pesky thing, all wrapped up tight in thick layers of duct tape, has never really felt like it belonged to you, anyway—)

It's all such a beautifully horrific panoply, you find. Paradoxical. Oxymoronic. Smothering and somehow claustrophobic at the same time. Being burnt alive and dying from hypothermia. 

The cudgel of pain to your chest is white-hot and vicious, but there's a seismic polynya in the lavascape of sadness that drapes through the topography of your being like a sluice, and in that little island of ice sits the unrelenting sense of flat resignation. 

You left Bear of your own free will, but in the jaded fibres of your being, you know it was all—

Inevitable. 

And fuck—

(fuck, fuck, fuck—)

Was it? Was it all inexorable or are you just making up flimsy excuses for yourself? 

Yes, you think. And then: no. Maybe. Maybe. 

(you are your father's child—

and your mother's broken daughter.)

You want to cry, and scream, and break the pain against something willing to fight back, to cut you just as deeply as you hack at it, but all you have are fragmented memories swarming you in this vacant parking lot on the wrong side of Virginia Beach, and—

(don't let it in, don't—)

—you chase it, lure it all in as you compare the blue in the sleepy gloam to the colour of his eyes, and then—

Your back against a brick wall, his knuckles sticky with blood closing around the nape of your neck, pulling you closer. Closer. The wide expanse of his palm swallowing your wrist as he led you to his truck; then, heavy on your thigh the entire—ill-advised—drive to the Motel 6 down the road where you stand now, fragile, raw, and all alone. 

When this all started, when you finally had the cobbled remains of Bear’s lucidity in your arms, the flat press of his attention against your jugular, you considered it to be a victory—

(a victory in amber)

—but hindsight is a cruel, mocking laugh in the back of your head. Twisting the knife deeper, severing the fraying threads that anchor you to yourself. With a sadistic glee it tells you that while you might have won the battle over the bottle, you lost the war (—abysmally, and without even the haze of a fever in your veins to numb the hollowness of your loss). 

You just can’t fix a broken man, and you certainly can’t keep him afloat all on your own when you’re too busy trying not to drown yourself. 

It's just that the weight of your shared brokenness was incompatible and insurmountable to the grief in Bear’s heart, but really. You just wonder if it was inevitable that everything you offered would be passed over in favour of numbed indifference at the bottom of a bottle. For someone, something, else. And while you might have been the one to leave first, but somewhere in the misplaced hurt inside of your chest threatening to collapse in on itself, folding into a black hole that devours all of your messy, ugly parts, you know that Bear was never really there, anyway.

That thought stings more than it should because you know, you know—

It’s just not made for us, baby.

—and maybe it’s all your fault for forgetting that inevitability in the first place. 

(shame on me—)

The thread you warned yourself not to chase gets tangled around your throat, choking you with the very same line you should have stayed far away from. It feels like hollow cyclicity—a gluttonous ouroboros gorging on itself—when it all, eventually, leads back to the beginning. 

Your fault, again, for trusting broken guidelines in the dark. For betting on losing dogs. For picking up another stray who already had a home. Another trinket to gawk at that ended up being chock full of arsenic, killing you with every touch. 

But He's gone, now, despite the fire that raged in his eyes, he still left you here to burn on your own. 

(inevitable—)

You should learn when to let go, you suppose, and fight the urge to bite your nails down to the wick just to taste blood in your mouth that isn't his. 

For the most part, though, you’re fine.

You’ve always been a good liar (“terrible, actually,” Bear snorts, and it’s the closest you’ve ever come to seeing him roll his eyes. “Jesus, never play poker if I'm not around—”), and especially to yourself, so after a moment of self-reflection in the form of a scalding bath and a purging cry in your car as you shoddily cut the Joe Graves-shaped cancer from your aching heart before it can metastasise and infect you further, you come out of it all standing, somehow. 

It might be the pastiche of indifference you slip into; a facsimile of the one, jaded and so bone achingly tired, that fell over you when you stumbled out of the bathroom, ready for something more only to find a man half-gone already to a bottle in the span of a few moments alone with his thoughts. 

Regardless of what it is, it works (—in shades, and only as long as you cling so tightly to anger that your fingers bleed and your joints ache—), and you let the familiarity of your unpractised trot to some gnarled finish line lead you forward.  

A clean break, you think (—hope: plead, bargain; wishing so hard on every eyelash that falls, every eleven you come across so that something, someone, listening might cradle the delicate splinters in their arms and nurse this whim, this want, into fruition), and you'll be fine. Fine. 

You have to be. 

But the thing is this:

Despite your best efforts to put some sense of distance between you and the heartache that must be, at least a little bit, on par with being gutted, a clean break is never clean, is it?

Case in point—

Thinking about him makes you bleed, and you think about him constantly. 

(Regret, then, is a wellspring in which the pain drinks and you didn't know a body could thirst this much.)

And it's made even worse when you realise just how bullish a man like Joe Graves can be. 

Maybe it's the thought of everything that had built up between you shattering into pieces that awakens this sense of urgency within him. Clinging, perhaps, to the only form of comfort he knows. The only one who toughed it out—in part, due to your employment obligation; the rest? an unresolved saviour complex when it comes to the people even a contrarian wouldn't place a bet on. Maybe. 

(Probably. Undoubtedly. 

You stopped trying to find the reason why you kept picking up the strays who always bite you in the end.) 

Whatever the reason, Bear is persistent. Relentless. 

He makes it Wednesday (you'd left him behind Sunday evening—day of the Sabbath, you learn; how fucking ironic) before his campaign starts. 

It's forty-six missed calls, half a dozen texts (because he doesn't like texting—he likes talking. Face to face. No fallacies, no bullshit), and thirty voicemails (twenty-seven of which are drunken ramblings you don't even bother to listen to, and the rest—

Pick up. We need to talk. 

Listen, I—

I fucked up. I fucked everything up—

Delete. Delete. Delete. 

What are you supposed to do with any of that, anyway?) 

The crux of the issue that Bear seems to miss swims in ethanol and leaves behind a five-minute voicemail filled with slurred I miss you's amid a background chorus of a rowdy bar. Then, a woman's voice—a woman who isn’t you—urging him back for more shots. 

You can imagine how the rest of that night unfolded. 

(You wonder if the word meant for you—I miss you—was still on his tongue when he followed her back.)

It's your fault (again; always) in the end because while you don't answer him—neither text, nor call; all voicemails deleted—you can't bring yourself to block him, either. 

You let it sit somewhere in the murky middle. Untouched but looked at. Longed for. 

It would be so easy to just give in. To let Bear back into your life—properly this time, maybe—and to take him up on those slurred promises made at two in the morning about coffee shops on the boardwalk, and breakfast at the Gulfstream, and movies and dinner, and talking until three in the morning, fucking in the back seat of his pick-up truck—

But that's the thing about yearning, isn't it?

Everything seems sweeter when you want it bad enough. 

So, you drown yourself in him. Stand as close to the fire as you can without burning alive.

Dousing yourself in the scent of ethanol cleaner. Clinging to broken pinky promises. Thinking about peanut butter and bacon staining your fingers. Prying information from rotting timber, and keeping the saprophyte that falls off the wood in your pocket for safekeeping. Filling space on a drumroll because you talk too much, anyone ever tell you that? 

(ad infinitum.)

Taping the ugliest bible verses to the back of your eyelids just to get closer, to feel closer, only to come to the realisation that you have no stake in religion to care about the deeper meaning behind it all. Metaphors and imagery are hollow when they mean nothing at all. 

There's no comfort, no succour, to be found in the thin pages. 

(You roll them up and smoke them instead. Easier to digest that way, you find.

Bear would probably hate it, and that alone balms the hurt some. Marginally, infinitesimally, because nothing can cauterise this gaping hole in your chest so you might as well fill it up with paper mache instead. Origami cranes with how much you hate him miss him need him want him written on the inside.)

You ache. Moulder. But you let it all rot inside of you until it's a congealed mess of putrefying memories and the moulted remains of the yearning you kept locked in shackles; the one that keeps biting, gnawing at the limbs of its cage to free. 

It's easier to let it all decay together in a controlled space so that you can bisect the necrosed mass in a single go. Sever the limb to save the body. It's a mantra you repeat as you call in sick to work over and over again. 

The flu, you say, and if the sniffle you give is from crying, and the cough from the weed you've been smoking all morning (blue dream, the shaggy-haired kid tells you with a nod; adds: the good shit), well. No one—especially your shitty boss and his shitty work ethic—has to know. You balm the hurt in a way that makes you feel good, smoothing it all over with trashy reality television (though, the Japanese dating show you end up dozing off to is pretty good, admittedly), and junk food. 

Moving on—even some sad, pathetic facsimile of it—helps. Routines forged in wilful avoidance take the edge off of the livewires inside of your body, nerves overstimulated and burning up with a fever much too hot, too vicious, for you to palliate with home remedies. 

And so, you throw yourself into it. Become a human battering ram against the ghosts in your head. 

Things quickly become more of a coping mechanism than a potential, but that's fine. It's all fine. It'll work in the long run until the bruises that line your flesh fade along with the want and the hope, and the terrible memories, too. 

(Terrible, in the way only a desperate, all-consuming one-sided love can be.)

All of it up in flames, in smoke. 

You burn through an ounce in retaliation while watching his name flicker across your screen, and then spend an hour googling whether or not weed is really addictive (it isn't, but the routine, the habit, can be), before deciding that this whole affair is stupid, anyway. 

It's a carousel of self-pity, spite, and masochism that feels like it might never end. Your efforts to palliate the sickness amount to a week of paid sick time spent watching a slew of old romantic dramas on repeat, and ignoring the string of texts that pour through (talk to me, let me fix this, let me—). All voicemails are immediately deleted before you can even hear the hitch in his voice. 

It's duct tape over a gaping wound. Drifting aimlessly along Lethe, careless and indifferent, but all the while, desperately reaching down and cupping water into your palm for a sip that never seems to quench the thirst in the back of your throat.

You think you could drink until you're just standing in a dry riverbed and still feel parched. Effloresced by your own hand. 

(as usual. as always—)

But this wound is still raw, still tender, even beneath the tape. 

Ignore it. Ignore it—

(—before the edges begin to tear. Cloved down the middle.)

Another buffer is born when you get a text message from your boss—u comin in tmrrw?—and realise you can't avoid it, work, forever. 

The prospect of going back on Friday evening—tomorrow, you suppose (the days have been slipping like molasses through your spread fingers)—makes you nervous. 

You're not ready to see Bear. 

But more than that (deeper than it, too), you’re not ready to see Bear unaffected by all of this. Sitting in his usual spot, in their chair he barely fits in, ordering the same drink over and over and over again. 

Moving on, too—in his own way. Meeting someone else.

(His horoscope holds no punches when it tells you a past relationship may re-enter your life, which may open your eyes to a world of new experiences—)

It isn't as if he usually pairs celibacy with his whisky, and with the plethora of ignored messages (read receipt turned off), unanswered phone calls, and deleted voicemails, you know it's inevitable for him to give up. To get the hint—whatever that might be. Move on, maybe? 

(get your shit together and chase this properly, Bear, jesus christ—)

You consider calling in again, but without any paid sick days left at your disposal, you know you can't afford to. So, you swallow it. 

(And if it takes a little longer than usual to get ready for work, then so be it.) 

Even with all of the false bravado you can scrape together come Friday, your nerves are frayed. Raw. The anxiety rolls off of you in waves, noticeable enough that even the regulars loitering outside (the ones who usually try and bum smokes off of any passersby, yourself included) offer you a cigarette. 

(Politely turned down, but fuck—fuck—you wish you took it.)

The first hour into your shift is spent trying to pretend you're not aware of the way your roaming eyes skirt to the door in thirty-second intervals. Traitors. Or the involuntary flinch each time the door opens. 

It would be easier to get lost in the familiarity of this desolate dive bar on the fringes of town, and so, you do. 

(Try to, anyway.)

Immersing yourself in the routine of it all—the motions of pouring drinks, sizing the newcomers up (profiling their personage down to a drink and a random idiosyncrasy); the astringent scent of alcohol, the mild barley and hops; the noise of hushed conversations lulling between the static rumble of the television (sports, per usual). 

The clock ticks down the seconds, the minutes, hours. You pour drinks. Clock the local gossip. Listen to the patter of condensation dripping into the tin bucket beneath the hole in the roof. In between the threadbare stirrings of routine, you find yourself waiting with dread gnawing at your insides until they're shredded and raw, pulsing ligaments burning with the fever of infection. 

But it's moot. All of it. 

He doesn't come back to the bar. 

Where you expect to see his broad shoulders slouched over the counter, head hanging low over his steady accumulation of shot glasses (a drinking challenge with only one participant; his demons the spectators), the seat he usually occupies remains empty. 

And maybe you're idealistic and stupid and wet behind the ears, but a part of you expected him to. To wander up to the counter with roses and chocolate and sobriety etched into the Neptune blue glow of his eyes, and to pick you, to choose you, but—

A fairytale. 

The box on the counter—complaints—$5—is picked up by some wayward frat boy, and the mocking laughter that follows makes you think of cobalt blue, and peanut butter and bacon burgers in the empty parking lot near the beach, watching the endless midnight black ocean rock against the sandy shore. Talking. Talking. Talking. 

Everything. Nothing. All the things in between. 

You told him about college—failed the first semester, and then my dad… well. Anyway, had to drop out for a bit. But. I went back. Stupid, I know, and it doesn't matter but—

His hand falls on your arm, fingers a little greasy from the sweet potato fries, the ones he kept sneaking from your pile when he thinks you aren't looking, and he says:

It matters to you. 

And it did, but only because it was something your dad mentioned a long time ago—I'd be proud if you followed in my footsteps—and despite everything he'd ever done, his attention, his affection, was all you'd ever wanted. 

Yeah, you'd said, and stared out at the vat of blue until your eyes burned. Yeah, I guess so. 

Well, he had peanut butter staining the corner of his mouth when you blinked the sting from your eyes, and turned to him. What do you wanna do?

Nothing. Everything. 

Your dad once picked you up from practice, hands tight around the steering wheel. He filled you in about his day (stupid fuckin' guy from upstate came down and bought all the houses we were fixing to sell), complained about your mother (god, you know, that woman didn't even tell me what school to pick you up from? Said I should know where my daughter goes to school, as if I'm not working all damn day to keep you fed, and—), and gave you the biggest piece of advice you'd ever get:

"Look, no job is better than real estate. All that crap you think you want to do? Not important. All you need is four walls and a roof, and that's it. The rest is secondary."

(If that was true, why weren't you enough for him? Why weren't your four walls and roof enough to keep him?)

A shrug. I don't know. I've never been good at anything. You think of bruised knees. Scraped skin. Chasing a car, a dream, that never once slowed down. Can't even run right, it seems. 

I can teach you. He clears his throat when you look at him, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand twice but somehow misses the dollop of peanut butter tangled in his beard. M’used to training men, I'm sure I can whip you into shape. Teach you how to run. Put you through the wringer until you come out sprinting on the other side. 

"Teach me how to swim instead." 

The bark of laughter he let out was cut off when you held your pinky up. 

His brows bounced, incredulous. "Really?"

"A Taurus always keeps their promise." 

"Christ's sake," he shakes his head, and you count the lines on his forehead when he turns, and rubs his fingers against his temple so hard, you wonder if he's trying to chisel through his skull to get at where it hurts the most. "I might not even be a Taurus."

"When were you born?" 

His tongue pokes out from between his teeth, chin dropping to his chest when he huffs. You watch the way his shoulders shake, the flesh softening around his neck when he dips it low, and wonder if this is what it was like to yearn. 

His eyes spark, Neptune blue, when he looks up. He says nothing, but holds his pinky up to yours, the digit swallowing yours whole. 

It's a promise. He squeezes your hand in three pulses. One. Two. Three. You think you might get lost in the canyons that keep dividing inside of his eyes. 

"Bet you were born in April." 

"Not even close." He grins, all teeth, and drops your hand. Motions to the fries spilling over your console with his chin. "Finish up."

"Oh, did you even leave any for me? Thought you ate them all."

"Watch it."

Your stomach churns at thoughts, the memories. Plagued by him, it seems. So tantalisingly out of reach, and yet—your phone vibrates in your pocket; another voicemail left for you to listen to in your car and pretend that this whole thing is fine—so close. 

He's everywhere, it seems. The scent of this place makes you think of him, and the stench of sickness—

Every square inch brings back some reminder of him. 

When he got too trashed the first few visits and stumbled into the washroom. His bulk falls into the cheap door frame, and sends the ugly photo of what might have been the boardwalk crashing the floor. His call of: take it outta my tab when it shattered into pieces. 

(You didn't. You hated that picture, anyway.)

When he knocked over his shot of tequila when you told him you thought he'd look really handsome in a beanie—a touch too bold, high off of the ethanol that leaked from his pores—and the rubescent smear over the bridge of his nose that followed. The ruddy stain on the counter—nail polish, you think, from that time a group of bridesmaids stumbled in after a wedding on the beach, and used the washroom to freshen up—matches the shade of his blush. 

You spend an hour before closing scrubbing the counter down until your fingers are cracked and dry and burning from the chemicals you douse on the cheap, aged wood. It doesn't come out. Nothing you do will ever make the table unsticky. It's too far gone. 

Like him. Like—

"Whisky," a man barks, slapping a dollar bill down on the stain. "Two shots." 

Four walls and a roof, right? Right. Right. Right. 

The walls here bleed condensation from the humidity outside, and the roof leaks when it rains. Always. It's patched up with duct tape and pipe dreams. 

(Like you—)

The box on the counter catches his attention, rheumy eyes skimming the words. He scoffs. "Funny. Make me a drink worth a tip, and maybe I'll—"

"You know what?" You snap, throwing the wet cloth down with a splat that sends droplets pelting across his abdomen. There's a vindictiveness in seeing the splatter on his smooth, unwrinkled shirt. 

Your eyes sting from the bleach, the lemon cleaner. Pebbled tears in your lash line threaten to spill over, but you swallow it all down. You won't cry. Not now. Not anymore. 

Your hands twitch, an aborted motion to scour the wetness from your lashes, but you stop it in time. Curl your fingers into fists instead. 

(And stupidly, nonsensically, you have the sudden, passing regret over washing your hands of the blood he'd spilled on your skin.)

"I don't work here."

"Since when?"

"Now. Get your own whisky, and take your shitty tip, and shove it up your ass—"

Quitting your only source of income certainly isn't the wisest decision you've ever made—but you've never been wont to make good ones, anyway, and so, you think it's all perfectly fine, considering. 

Considering. 

If anything, it's better than waiting around for the inevitable collapse of this shaky, patchwork foundation of paper-mache you cobbled together (reinforced with pipe dreams) to come crumbling down around you when Bear wandered in.

(If he ever would—

Fuck. You hope he does. Hope he doesn't. 

Get better. Come back—)

You sit in your car at the end of your shift—the very last one after several odd years of growing roots down into the worn floorboards, and keeping more secrets about the occupants in this town than you care to admit—and just—

Breathe. 

Sort of. 

It's twisted in a way that makes you entirely too aware of what everyone would think if they knew about it. So, you cup this little secret between the palms of your hands, and cradle it to your chest, only exposing it to the outside world when things become too much. It's easier to say you count to ten—in, out, in, out—than to admit that your methods of self-soothing, of quelling the visceral sense of anxiety from pinballing around inside your guts like a marble, is to lean back, close your eyes, and pretend that you're back in the deep end of the swimming at the local chapter of a YMCA. 

Drowning, of course. 

Or some fictive version of it. 

It comes to life in smeared yellow against hazy blue. A cacophony of muted sounds in the background—exultant shrieks of children, splashes in the distance, the low chatter of garbled conversation—is all you can hear in your underwater sanctuary, but only just. Noise is distorted and strange. A warbled mimicry of noise. 

Your world is pressed into a cerulean marble, untouchable and inescapable. You linger in the centre, floating aimlessly in stagnation. 

Down here, nothing matters. Everything is dissolved in the heavy chlorine that saturates the cold waters, and whatever resilient pieces remain sink low to the pool floor, scattered around the yellow goggles just within arm's reach. 

You sink with them. Your thoughts become liquid; mercury slinking around your head. Intangible. Nonsensical. And above all else—silent. 

Or they're supposed to be. 

But even down here where nothing can touch you, where no one noticed you haven't surfaced in ages, your thoughts are carried by the lulling currents. Saved from your murky grey matter, from the sap that traps them in the mouth of a pitcher plant, they buoy to the surface, unmoored now. Free to scream at you in whispers. 

You think of Bear.

Or rather, you think about not thinking about Bear. 

About other things. And nothing—forced white noise. Static. What you're going to do now that you don't have a job. The scabs on his bloodied knuckles. No. Work, maybe. Finishing up that degree you promised yourself you'd get, if only to fill some absent void in your chest—or a futile obligation to a man who forgot your birthdays. Who spelled your name wrong on holiday cards—on the rare occasions he ever bothered to send them. 

Other things. Other things—your faucet is leaking. You'll need to call the property manager to fix it. You need to get gas, too. Groceries. 

Faintly, you catch the musk of his cologne still clinging to your passenger seat when you breathe in. Hold it, count to ten. It makes you remember the warmth of his humid breath on your cheek when he leaned in close, tapping your console as he pointed out your CHECK ENGINE light was on. Had been, you confessed sheepishly, for a few weeks up to that point. 

Stupid pothole, you grumbled around the electricity running down your spine when his arm brushed yours as he leaned back with a derisive snort. 

You caught the headiness of white oak, musk, when he turned his face to you, decidedly unamused by your answer, and flatly told you that you were driving around in a death trap. 

Things not even on its last leg—it's in the damn grave. 

Whatever, you shrugged. I'll just hit another pothole on the way home and it'll turn off. 

Jesus Christ—

He didn't smell terrible. Faded cologne from a few days ago. Something woodsy. Cedar, maybe. Leather, smoke, pine. Sweat from the unrelenting humidity. Loam clinging to his skin. Spiced rum around his collar when he spilled his drink down his chin (you, eagerly, hungrily watching the amber droplet roll down the length of his neck—). He always seems to smell like he had been working in a thick, taiga forest in the dead of winter. Cindersap. Evergreen. Sweat-soaked leather. Chopped wood. 

It congeals in your senses. Glueing to soft tissue, embedding itself in your skin. Permanent, unshakeable. 

Unwashed sheets shouldn't be appealing. Motel shampoo. Cheap soap. The muted smell of old, stale cigarettes. 

And yet, in this marbleised world, you think of it. 

Of his skin, and the way it feels against yours. The slight sheen of grease along his nose when it nudges the soft slope of your neck. The rough drag of his beard over your pulse. Wry curls that end up on your tongue after he'd kiss you. 

Any plans on shaving?

He dragged his cheek over your collarbones, eyes lidded, heavy. None at all. That a deal breaker?

You hold your breath until your lungs start to quiver, to ache; until you're dangling precariously on the verge of hypoxia with ink blots splashing across your vision in a garish Rorschach (they're all butterflies. with knives. what does that say about me, doc?). Phosphenes scatter in a nebula of colour. Your throat constricts around nothing, empty. Empty. The urge to swallow follows on the coattails of a pitifully fleeting euphoria. Temporal and untouchable, but you still reach out, grabbing and grasping with straining fingers because you'll hate yourself forever if you don't try. Scrambling, desperately, to catch cosmic dust on the tips of your fingers. To imbue your disjointed cracks with the chemical makeup of a Magellanic cloud until your broken parts burn incandescent. Kintsugi in cuts, scraps, of Andromeda. 

But for as much as you want to shatter your lungs into infinitesimal pieces, and scatter them across the universe, your body has a failsafe against stupidity. 

It forces you to gasp, gulping down thin, crisp air until you feel the burn in your chest from overexertion. 

You open your eyes, and wish the world around you was still draped in teal and hazy yellow. That you could taste chlorine in the back of your throat. It's a brutal awakening to find a gossamer of silken midnight draped over the parking lot in the back of the dive bar. Empty, barren, save for yourself and the chef. A man you guess you'll never see again. 

Soft, crushed ochre smears a hazy ring in the east. The dawning sun of a new day. 

Leaning against the old leather of your car, your eyes cut to the console briefly. The CHECK ENGINE light is off. You made Bear groan, out loud, when you hit a pothole on the freeway and it flicked off, like you knew it was. Problem solved. More duct tape over what is probably something wrong with your engine (probably dented the filter in your catalytic converter, Bear grumbled, and you nodded along, pretending like you knew what that meant). 

A light catches your eye. Your phone buzzes on the dashboard, screen illuminated in the reflective surface of your window. 

You could pretend you were getting a call from RAEB if you tried hard enough. Answered it, maybe, and feigned ignorance while you chatted away to him like nothing happened. Like you sometimes don't try to drown yourself on land. 

You reach for it, fingers tingling at the last vibrations before the screen cuts out, and bring it close. 

It takes a second, but the voicemail icon pops up in the notification bar beside a text from your friend sent hours earlier begging you to come out next weekend (haven't seen you in forever okay?? come out w us!!). 

You don't know why he keeps trying. Why he's so persistent over something that is, quite decidedly, nothing. 

The icon taunts you. You hate seeing it—always have. It can't be swiped away. Can't be hidden. It irks you somewhat, seeing this little symbol. 

Make it go away—

You shouldn't. Not when your insides are this raw, this fractured. Broken. But you turn your phone over in your hands for a moment, mood mulish and itching for something. A fight, maybe. Something to be angry about, justifiably. To vent your frustrations. 

You tap it before you really think things through, watching as it dials VOICEMAIL and the automated message pops up after a ring. 

Please enter your password—

You have one new message. To play your messages, press one—

It starts shaky—like he's moving. You can hear the shuffle of his body, the rasp of his shirt. A door slams. He huffs. 

Look, uh. I'm not… I'm not good at this kind of thing. I was hoping—hoping we could talk… but. I guess I, uh. Anyway—

It goes quiet. You reach up to hit SEVEN on the keypad, delete the message like all the others, but a noise stops you. The screen hums under your finger. 

I've been thinking lately. About a lot of things. The team, myself. You. I made—some bad calls. Got some good men…uh, into some trouble. The kind of trouble you… don't walk away from. 

It made me think about Rip. I told you about him, right? In the—the motel. Rip is—Rip was… important to me. To us. Saved my life. In Iraq. Mosul. Bullet nearly hit me but somehow, he pulled me back just in time, took the bullet instead. Right in his stomach. And you know, he, uh—he huffs. It sounds like a laugh, but one he's choking on. He got right back up and took the bastard out. Just—wasted him. I owe him my life. Always have. It's muffled, as if he has his hand pressed to his mouth, keeping the words in. Should have saved him, but I couldn't. Couldn't do a damn thing to help him. I let him get that bad and I knew. I fucking—I knew. I saw it. Watched him spiral. And now—shit. Now I'm—uh, talking to your voicemail at four in the morning—

You think you catch what am I doing before the line cuts out. 

Fog settles in the midmorning dawn. You lean against the headrest, clutching your phone, and try not to think at all. 

(wash, rinse, repeat)

The hole in your chest, filled in with clay and papier-mache, crumbles under the seaspray.

What am I doing. It stays with you. 

These flimsy excuses become a house of cards. 

It doesn't surprise you much at all when they wobble, falling on top of you.

It's his name flashing across your screen—just Bear—as you lay in bed days later, pretending not to think about him that starts it all.

(again, again, again)

This is all a cruel sort of timing, you think, and feel the harsh thud of your heart so strongly against your rib cage that you wonder if the silly thing might break through them yet. 

You shouldn't answer. Know, without any hint of uncertainty, that Bear has the potential to pull you back in—fish to a pretty, glimmering lure—and that the moment you acquiesce to one thing, others will immediately follow in rapid succession, much too quick for you to keep up with. 

There will be no stopping the deluge once it breaks. 

And yet—

What did you expect?

The words thrown back into your face echo in the small of your flat as the walls around you wobble, teetering on the edge of collapse. 

Like most things when it comes to him. 

After the second buzz, one that sends a thrill through your spine that you refuse to give attention to, you hesitantly press your finger against the green answer key and slowly bring the phone up to your face, inches away from your nose, before stopping. Abruptly. 

You can handle Bear at a distance, you think, and so, deciding better than to have him murmur directly into your ear, you quickly tap the speaker button, and stammer out a muzzy greeting. 

“...Bear?” 

There's a sharp inhale that threads through the speaker, and you know, all at once, that he hadn't expected you to pick up. Was, instead, ready to meet and reluctantly embrace the cool, blithe distance of your voicemail. 

“You answered,” he hedges, and you wonder if the wariness in his tone means anything deeper. “I didn't think you would.”

Despite his honesty, there are shades of derision tainting the gruff timbre. 

“I wasn't going to,” you volley back, matching the fickleness of his misplaced scorn with your own. 

“Then why did you?” 

“You know why,” you admit quietly. 

No one is around to see your boundaries crumble. To watch as the cards you kept so close to your chest dip once, quick enough for him to glimpse them, to see what is tucked in the palm of your hand. 

In that loneliness, you find a sense of freedom that you had been missing. One tinged in the bitter coat of nostalgia. 

It feels too much like those nights spent arguing about the meaning behind the perfect pour (and why yours would always be trash), and showing him abysmal creations on Instagram in a thinly veiled attempt to make him see that you weren't, objectively, the worst at it. 

Back when you held the patchwork remains of your bruised, duct tape heart out over the countertop that never seemed to ever be clean as an offering to a man who bluntly looked down into the nozzle of his bottle instead. 

He huffs a little, then. Put-off, maybe, by the distance you pitch when giving in is always just within reach. “I don't see the problem.” 

“Well, yeah…” you mutter, shuffling in bed to get comfortable. You drag your knee to your chest, as the other stretches out in the sheets, and lazily wrap your arm around your shin, fingers digging into your flesh. Bruising, biting. It centres you, this fleeting pain. “You wouldn't, but I'll have you know—”

It's comfortable. The thought is a battering ram, one that hits hard, vicious, and dredges up the realisation of just how much you missed this. And just how easy this all is with him, even know when your heart is in tatters and you can hear the slur in his words (though, that might be his usual mumble—the man is hard to understand on a sober day, what with his penchant to grit words out between his teeth, as if he needs to tear them to shreds, to chew on them, before forcing them out), the normalcy in all of this, or as normal as this abnormal situation can get, is a bludgeon to your resolve. 

“...what, huh? What'll you have me know?”

You'll get suckered back in again, but this time, all the way to the event horizon. Inescapable. 

“You know, Bear.”

It's flimsy when he huffs, and sounds too much like relief when he growls: “Then why fight it?”

“I don't want to talk about this right now.”

The line goes still, but you catch the hitch in his throat all the same. “We should. I can fix this. We can fix this. You can't just decide—”

You can, you think, and drop your forehead to your knee, letting the phone slide down the valley of thigh and stomach where it comes to rest on the clothed crease of your hip bone. A prison. Your body is the cage. 

Not being able to see him gives you some sense of power back, and you reach for it. Needing to wield something decisive and distant before the rough timbre of his voice, his desperation, scoured your resolve into thin powder. 

“ Just give up, Bear. It's over. There's nothing to fix because there was nothing there to begin with.”

“Nothing there, huh? Is that what you think?”

Overtaking the bitter resignation is anger. A bone-deep fury that simmers to the surface, dredged up from the bottom of the bottle you thought you lost him to. You can hear it in the sharp breath he takes, the little growl he lets out. 

“Fuck that,” his viciousness stabs into your defences like a battering ram. Unrelenting, dizzying. You make to step back, but he fights you on it. Keeping you close. Blazing anger so hot, it nearly burns you. “You waltz into my life, chasin’ after me and then, what? You just decide it's too much for you? I warned you. I fucking warned you, didn't I ?”

“I—I know. I just—”

What, you wonder. What? Because was it ever as simple as wanting a hurting man to be a little less lonely in an empty pub? 

It's moments like this that make you contend with your self-sabotage, the unmaking of yourself (morality, compassion, kindness) by your own hands. Your complicity in all of this is staggering, and suddenly the idea of a clean break feels vile. 

How could you drop a man you spent months pursuing, expecting him to change overnight? 

Your faults, and flaws, soften the part of you that wants to run, fleeting into the dark to avoid the consequences of your actions. 

It takes two to tango, and the idiom bludgeons through the headache like a battering ram. 

“I guess I just wanted to help, at first. To be your friend. You seemed so—” lonely. Sad. One bad day away from slipping too deep into the bottle that he couldn't climb out again. 

His laugh is ugly, biting. “What? Pathetic? A sorry fucking drunk—”

“Alone.” 

It quiets him, this soft confession. 

“Can't save everyone,” is what he says after an agonising beat, and you think of the priest he tore into viciously for uttering the same sentiment. Bruising with his words, his tone, instead of his fists. Creating walls from the craters it left behind. 

“Doesn't mean you can't try.” 

“Wasted your time, don't you think?”

“No.” The word is immediate. Forceful. “With you? For you? No. But Bear. The thing you don't get, what you don't understand, is that you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. And maybe it's selfish, and honestly, I know it is, but you always risk your own life whenever you try to save someone from drowning, and I know I'm not enough to help you.” 

He's quiet. “Reading up on being a lifeguard?”

“In my spare time.” 

A huff. It's barely a ghost of laughter. “Yeah. Yeah. Well. Hope it all works out for you.” 

You can imagine the grim twist of mouth as he says it. The downward pitch to his chin, dipping in his misery. 

“I hope the same for you.” You whisper, and it feels like finality. 

Moments ago, the thought might have brought a sense of bitter relief to you, but now it just feels sickeningly like loss all over again. 

“Shit,” Bear grouses suddenly, and then draws a sharp breath once more. “I miss you,” he rasps on the exhale. 

You don't know why he would, but you understand, maybe, because you do, too. 

(So much, so much, so much—)

“I miss you, too, Bear.”

The tentative words seem to shake him, and all at once, he's commandeering again. Authoritative, in that way only he can be. 

“I'm getting better,” he rumbles. “I gotta. For the—for the team—”

It's the wrong thing to say, though, and he seems to realise it midway through. A quick course correction comes with a rushed, and for me, too, that reminds you too much of all the times you heard this same thing from behind the counter as you topped up their third, fourth, fifth glass. 

You know better than to believe in this hollow gospel, this midnight epiphany, and for the most part, you don't. It's all empty words. False promises from a prophet, spoken as a defence mechanism against the ugly reality of what happens when people catch on to their bad habits. 

But it's Bear.

Out of everyone who murmured the same phrase in that exact tone, you believe in him just a little bit more than the rest. 

(Stupid, stupid, stupid—)

It's his intense tenacity. That gritty determination seems ingrained within his very being. Inseparable. 

You wonder when you started divining truths from its scripture. 

“I don't want to lose you,” he's saying, and it's odd because he never really had you to begin with. 

“Bear—” It's late, and your thoughts are just running themselves aground. Turning into a tangled, indecipherable mess. “I need to get some sleep. Can we—can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? Will you answer?”

It's deserved, of course, but you know that particular knife twist hurts him just as much as it does yourself, and whatever little vindication he finds from it is swallowed, quickly, by regret. 

“I just…want to talk to you.”

You imagine that somewhere between the lines, the things unsaid, sits the glaring truth of his sudden devotion, his obsession: 

there's no one else. 

(never anyone's first choice—)

“Sure. Okay, yeah, we can. We can talk. You're—” you need distance. You need space. A minute, maybe, to sort through the ugly thoughts making webs in the back of your head. “You're my friend, Joe. We're… we can be friends, again.”

“Friends?” 

It's not what he wants. That much is clear by the threadiness in his tone, but at two in the morning and with your thoughts liquifying into syrup, it's all you can offer him, all you're willing to give. 

Friends. It makes you remember the limbo you sat in before, the murk and heartache of watching him ply himself with overpriced liquor and then stumble out the door, sometimes with company but most often, all alone and with just ten minutes to spare before closing. The yearning. The pining. The want that made you feel sick to your stomach with guilt for some unseen, unknown woman back home. 

(“Dead. She's dead—”)

It sickens you even more to think about that. The ring he kept, the sadness that draped over his shoulders in a swath of agony. The one he didn't take off, not even for you. The warning signs were there. 

You just ignored them all.

Friends, you murmur again, and wonder where, in all this, you went wrong. The beginning, maybe, when you looked at him and couldn't bring yourself to look away. Friends. We can be friends, Bear. 

“Oh, yeah?”

“Best friends,” you echo back, hollow and thin. “With matching bracelets and everything—”

“Thought it was a tattoo?” 

“That, too.” 

“Okay,” he acquiesces quietly, but you can hear the threads of obstinacy in his voice when he says it. The combativeness, the steadfast refusal to fully submit, rears in the things he doesn't say, pitching bivouacs in his tone. This isn't over, it says. You're not over. “Friends.”

It's scornful, and you hate the way it blisters under your skin. Burning hot, the same feverish delirium that turned you incandescent with just his touch. 

Everything about Bear tells you to relent. Submit. 

It would be so easy to just give in. 

And the thing is:

You want to. Desperately, achingly. 

His certainty, his acuity in all of this, has a way of dismantling your sense of reason. Or, at the very least, your rationale for why you're keeping him at a distance. It's not just being diametrically opposed, though; this is the unerring knowledge that your complicity needs to be curbed. That you are, in small parts, responsible for this barren husk of a man. For aiding and abetting in his spiral, sure, but mostly for expecting him to greet you with sobriety when he woke up, as if spending an entire weekend between your thighs was enough to negate all the demons clawing at the walls of his skull. Scarring bone. Chiselling into marrow. 

Simply put: you're not enough. You knew this, and yet—

Pursued, persisted. Laughably, even echoed the same words you repeat now to a man on the verge of going nuclear under the pressure of his rage, his grief. 

It's impossible to make a levee out of skin and bones, and no matter how much Bear might want to try—maybe has tried with his late wife, with a bottle, with vice, with bloodied, bruised knuckles and a chip on his shoulder deeper than a canyon—it's just not feasible. 

Too bad, you think, that this bone-weary epiphany didn't come sooner. That you didn't kick him out when you realised those beautiful valleys in his eyes were really just trenches. 

Hindsight, of course.

(How were you supposed to know that the rough growl in his timber wasn't a security blanket against the world but just the aftereffects of inhaling too much artillery fire?)

You should have, though. Your mum was a how-to manual on the things to avoid. She could channel wisdom directly from a man's marrow, and you—made in her spitting (vitriolic) image—seem to have learned nothing at all about divination. 

And you—forgotten ilk—can barely tell the difference between a portend and good fortune when you sift through clumps of barley tea at the bottom of your cup. 

For all of her stolen wisdom, you make a promise to yourself that you won't tear yourself into pieces just to make a safety net for him out of your flesh. Or set yourself on fire to keep him warm. 

(Not anymore, anyway—)

But then, cruelly, viciously, you wonder if you ever really helped him at all, or if this is just a manifestation to assuage your own guilt. Doubtless, you find. What have you done for him that wasn't, in some part, mutually beneficial? All this time, you've been gambling equivalence with a broken man, and then ran the moment those jagged pieces cut you. 

And maybe a little bit of this hesitancy is rooted in fear as well. A fickle thing you try to ignore in favour of something that makes you seem more altruistic than you really are, but still lurks in the shadows, in the words you, too, won't say. 

Things like: 

He's never met you sober. Not completely. And certainly not in a way that counts. 

Each interaction is marred with some form of a buffer between you both. Distance shaped in sips of his (fourth, fifth) beer; a shot of whisky. 

What if he doesn't like what he finds sober? 

You heard enough jokes at the bar about falling in love drunk and then waking up sober. If this is that, you don't know how you'd regain any sense of ground back. 

The precipice you clawed your way up to is endlessly steep, treacherous, and yet: you still let yourself fall. Still took the risk in opening your hand just to show him your still-beating heart. 

Return to the sender, you think a touch hysterically, deliriously. 

In the suffocating silence, his voice rings out. Quiet, rough, as if his vocal cords were made of charred wood, smouldering embers, and not warm, wet tissue. It's just your name, but the sound of it seems to drag you down to yourself, if only in increments.

“You good?” He asks when you hum noncommittally in response. 

With your forehead braced against the slope of your knee, it feels like bowing your head in a confessional when you whisper, paper soft, “I'm tired, Bear.”

It sounds like he is chewing on glass when he sighs. Throat torn, raw. The ghost of it whispers across your chin; fingerprints tapping over a tender bruise. 

“Haven’t been sleeping much these last few days. Been thinkin’ of us. Of you. And the team. All the people I let down—”

“Bear…” 

“And I—I want to see you soon. When you're ready. I'm not going to rush things this time. Not gonna mess it up again—”

He speaks like this is settled. Over. As if you've already climbed into the palm of his hand, and all he has to do is just close you up tight in his fist. A little flower he can carry around in his pocket. Kept safe. Kept close. 

It's—

A lot. Overwhelming. He sounds sober enough, and you know that he's not wholly dependent on drinking—it’s palliative; a coping mechanism to numb himself from the reality of everything else that happened to him—but there's a real crutch there that can't be erased by determination alone. But thinking about that—the future—makes your chest feel like it's going to cave in on itself; collapse and become another black hole in the Milky Way, swallowing everything down. 

You need to breathe. You need to think—

“You should get some sleep, Bear. And—”

Don't drink. Stop. Get help. Talk to someone. 

But the words are empty. Hollow vessels to placate your sense of responsibility. Your own guilt. 

Coward. You've always been so good at running—

“Take care of yourself.” 

“Yeah,” he rasps. The hushed timbre makes you tremble. “You too. Get some sleep. I'll talk to you in the morning.”

And so, this delicate dance made of putting duct tape over fractured promises and palliating the sickness in patchwork hope begins again, working in pieces. 

There's a distance that lingers between the folds of you both, unspoken hurt and distrust—a lingering symptom of letting yourself get swept away by the idea of a man rather than the flesh and bone cut of one—but despite it all, each misgiving that passes your mind when you see Bear’s name flash across the cracked screen of your phone, it works. 

Somehow, somehow. 

It isn't as deep as missing puzzle pieces, because as much as you and Bear seem to connect on a level beyond sex, and booze, and fleeting highs to numb a phantom ache in the pit of your chest, the idea of soulmates seems to be frangible for your fractured selves; with all of your jagged, sharp edges, something so soft would break into pieces, shatter apart. But it is something. 

And that might just be enough. So, you let it root. Let it grow limbs, and leaves, and curl around you like gentle, strangling wisteria until it reaches up to your chest. 

This delicate, fragile thing makes a home, again, inside the empty landscape of your heart.

(shame on me, you think, but still pick up his call as this tender, soft thing you're nurturing snakes across your jugular where it's the warmest, leeching heat from the fever that thrums under your skin.)

Despite his bold declaration, though, he seems to waver on a full pursuit. Content, almost, to maintain this idea of closeness without shattering the bubble you've reconstructed. 

It's odd, though. 

Bear is a man who seeks logic out but always ends up relying on his hunches. Emotional in the sense that he places all confidence in himself beyond the scope of what he might be able to deliver. If his determination can't bring him across the finish line—well, then it was unwinnable from the start. 

For a man so tenacious, so driven, his hesitation in all of this surprises you. 

But something has to give eventually. 

It always does.

Bear isn't terrible at texting, but he prefers phone calls. Something he admits has less to do with his occupation (no, I won't have to kill you for telling you this, you need to stop believing what you see on tv), and is more just a way of gleaning nuances he can't with written word. 

Though, not always. 

There's a softness when he speaks tonight, a quality you're unfamiliar with, as he confesses on a hushed memory, half musing aloud when the world is dead asleep and the sun is a distant idea in the back of your head, that he used to write letters to his wife whenever they weren't on the phone talking. Or Skyping each other. 

“Deployment with a group of guys doesn't leave much room for privacy,” he says, as if he hasn't just unravelled this hidden part of himself at three fifteen on what was meant to be a rather mundane ending to your Thursday. “They're not really, uh, sensitive to that. We're on top of each other for most of it, anyway. Asking a whole room to clear out just so I can talk isn't happening. So, uh, we—uh, me and Lena, we wrote letters.”

There's a stutter in his voice when he relays this to you, and you're struck numb by it all. Lena, you think, putting a name to a concept. 

“Oh,” you say, and you're not sure what to think about it. So, you don't. You tuck it aside, where all the other things you've learned about Bear go. The ones revealed to you in shambles. “That sounds— romantic. ”

It makes him scoff, and it's this terrible, broken thing. “Romantic, huh? Is that what you think?” 

You hum, taking it in. The grand reveal of his ex-wife (she… we, he corrects and clears his throat like it burns: we decided to separate. See, uh… see other people), and his marital problems, you connect the dots lingering in the foreground. 

You're not completely ignorant of his intentions. 

It's the first move on a fresh chessboard: a show of his commitment to this—whatever it might be—and how serious he's taking it all. Where you'd been the only one to dare pry open the rusted nails keeping your secrets at bay before, he's taking the initiative to do so now, to meet you somewhere in the middle where the olive branch still grows. Placing his bets before the race. Offering himself, and his secrets, up as collateral in this strange game you found yourself in. 

But does he know that you can still hear the slight slur in his voice when he speaks, or notice the way he seems to skirt around the conversation of his drinking habits on the days when it must be hitting him harder? Surely, he must. 

And yet, he still calls. Still decides to gamble with your devotion in maintaining a strange facsimile of friendship with whisky on his breath, slurring his words, and gives out the pretence of playing for keeps under the table. 

Maybe he knows you'll still give him the chance to keep playing no matter how many times his luck runs dry. It makes sense, considering. 

You'd always had a weakness for men like him. 

(Stupid—)

Outside of the tipsy phone calls, you've yet to hear him completely gone. A testament to his dedication, maybe, but you know the first week is always the easiest. When the high of the epiphany roars through their bloodstream, and the weight of the world doesn't feel as crushing as it once had, it's easy to make deals you don't have the means of keeping up with. But the debt is insurmountable to those who aren't fully invested, and the collectors are vicious. 

Still. Still. 

This is as close to sobriety as he's ever been, and you soak up his unbridled attention like you're starving for it. 

And in all honesty, you are. 

Bear is a strange, complex web of a man. Full of grit, anger. Misery curls in the corners of his eyes, hidden there amongst the powder keg of obsessive devotion just waiting to go off. You scented kerosene on his skin—napalm drenching his pores—when he'd lifted two fingers up and nearly snarled his order from across stained cedar wood. 

Having the brunt of his fire listing your way is a character study in restraint, in penance. It taps against the delicate binds holding everything back, and loosens the ties with every piece of him you're given. 

It's hard, you think, to stay so far away from someone when you're wobbling on the brink of devotion. Love, in shades of obsession. The taste of which settles in the back of your throat like a sickness, aching each time you swallow. 

You're not sure what it is about Bear, about this particular brand of miserable, angry man, but his very existence feels like it was constructed, handspun, to make you hunger for a taste. 

And then, you know. It's just that, isn't it? Miserable, angry man. 

(saviour complex, maybe. maybe, maybe, maybe—)

It feels deeper than that, though. It might have been the cause for this unravelling, this unmaking between you both, but the rest—the helplessness and the anger and the worry; answering his call even when you swore you wouldn't, leaving him in the motel room like a bad dream smeared across your pillow only to pick him up again, another bad habit in a sea of others—is than just a simple desire to fix problems that are not your own. 

(especially when they aren't your own.)

“Never really been the romance type,” he rumbles, shattering this strange, introspective reverie you've fallen into. 

“You seem to be doing okay for yourself, though,” you volley back, a touch too cautious compared to how it all was before. When you'd read him his horoscope, and pester him about trying your audacious food combinations he'd complain about, but eat, anyway. 

“Is that what you think?”

“It's what I know.”

You expect him to pick up your jab, turning it on you instead. Something caustic, something severe. Something equally mean and mordant in the way only Bear could be. But he doesn't. He lets it fall to the wayside instead, humming under his breath in something that might be acquiescence, or maybe avoidance of the topic entirely, and shifts back into neutral territory. 

How was your day? He asks, as if that wasn't one of the first things he'd said to you when you answered the call.

“Fine,” you hedge, breezing the word out between your teeth. “It was okay. Bear—”

“I, uh, have a meeting tomorrow,” he steamrolls through your concern like it's made of paper instead of the broken remnants of your heartache. “Another eval., to see if I'm fit to return to training. Make my way back to being an Officer.” 

More secrets are revealed to you in the slow dawn of his unfurling fist. Held out like a beacon, a piece of candy. Good job, it says when you reach for it like the good, obedient dog you are. 

Pavlov's finest. 

“That sounds…” You're not really sure what it means, in all honesty. Words coming together to form a sentence. The meaning is absent from between the lines. You could infer, but you've never been good at guessing. So, you stagnate. “Good. Um, really good, Bear.”

He huffs, and you take it as a laugh—or as close to one you'll get from him. “Gotta pass the eval first.”

“Should be easy for you.” 

“Should be,” he mumbles, and you catch the faint end of a muffled groan. “But I've been slacking. Put on extra weight. Need to burn it all off before I can really get into the old routine. Gonna fall behind worse than a newbie.”

Newbie being growled out in his flat intonation makes you snort. 

“You find something funny? ”

“Ha, no—” his words turn over in your head—put on extra weight—and, damningly, you remember what all that extra weight felt like, stretched out beneath you; arched over your body, heavy and suffocating, and—

Fuck. 

Bear catches the hitch in your breath, and makes a questioning noise in response. You can't let him ask. Can't let him know that you keep painting a picture of his hairy belly brushing against yours in the forefront of your mind. His biceps. Burly is what you'd thought of him before. Thick. Husky. A heavy man, in more ways than one. 

The softness around his waist belied the hard muscles below. You could feel it pressing firm against your palm when he rolled under you, bracing your hands over his chest as he let you ride him. 

That's it, sweetheart. Just like that—

“No,” you swallow around the desire welling up inside of your throat. “Nothing.”

He hums, and it's tainted in disbelief. Like he knows, somehow, what you were thinking of. What you keep thinking of—especially after these phone calls, his voicemails, when you're lying in bed with your fingers whispering between your thighs—and you almost expect him to call you out on it. To demand an answer. 

Instead, he offers a tender truth that nudges against the soft pulse in your throat. 

“...Not drinking as much helps.” 

You almost want to call him out on the as much he tacts on to the end of his confession, to question the logistics behind those two words. To quantify it in a number, in tangible data. Something concrete you can plinth your hope on. But the answer scares you. 

Too much and you'll fall all over again. Too little and you'll have no choice but to run. 

So, you retreat in the face of his truth. A coward. 

“That's—It's good. That's good, Bear—” and it is. Of course, it is. Great, even. He isn't even yours and this silly notion of pride staples itself to the front of your chest for the world to see. “I'm, um. I'm proud of you.”

It sounds hollow, pyrrhic, coming from you—repentant enabler—but the airiness in his voice strikes something deep inside. Pulses against a dormant place that comes alive, fecund with the bittersweet stirrings of hope germinating in the fibres. 

Skingraft over the wound. 

“Proud, huh?” 

And the sound of his voice cuts that thread as soon as it forms. 

His voice is pitched low, throaty. He draws the syllables out as he says, at length, “I, uh, keep thinking about you.” 

You should warn him away. Tap the impish fingers sneaking to the cookie jar—a thorough chastisement to keep wandering hands in check. Bad dog, is the passing thought, and you try to swallow down the hysterical giggle that bubbles in the back of your throat. 

You should.

But you don't. 

It comes out breathier than you intended when you say his name, and it sounds much too malleable in the face of this tactile man. 

“Been thinkin’ about you a lot.” 

“Yeah,” you whisper. Too much. Too much. “Same. Uh, me too.” 

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Going out with some friends. Probably going to get dinner. Watch that new movie that just came out. And, um, have a few drinks after.”

“How're you getting home?” 

“Taxi, most likely.”

He hums low, throaty. The sound seems to reverberate through the phone and tremble deliciously down the length of your spine. “That so?”

“I'm not going to be drinking much.” You weigh the ethics of discussing your intentions to drink, to get completely wasted, and maybe go home with someone who isn't Bear, who doesn't even so much as look like him, before waving the thought away before it can take shape. “It's just—social. Getting caught up. Haven't seen them in a while because of school and stuff.”

And because you've invested so much of your free time spinning in circles around a man who didn't even really seem to look at you (who insisted on calling you kid to force distance and indifference between you) until a few months ago, letting your social life dawdle on the wayside. 

Not that there was ever much one. It's easier, sometimes, to push people away than to explain the inner workings of your borrowed scar tissue. 

He hums again—and he really needs to fucking stop doing that before you do something stupid, something reckless, like remember the way he sounded when he lifted his head up after coming deep inside of you, panting in your ear from exertion, and groaned just like that when he shifted forward, inching his softening cock further you, seemingly content to stay like that as you melted into the mattress that reeked of stale sweat and sex.

“I'll drive you.”

Your breath catches. “You don't have to.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, but it's decidedly noncommittal and comes completely undone when you catch the crackle of iron in his mulish tone as he adds: “but I want to.”

And he will, is the underlying promise that brims to the surface, wrapped up neatly in a way that brokers no real room for a counterargument. Not that he'll give you the chance to make one. 

Still. You try, if only to snatch at some modicum of control that slips, gossamer thin, between your fingers.

“It's fine. Making you go out all that way is kinda…”

“Don't worry about it. Beats paying for a cab, anyway.”

“Bear…”

It's firm when he says: “let me drive you home. Make sure you get there safely.” Final. But to soften the blow, he adds, voice tender like a bruise: “Just let me do this for you.” 

And how are you supposed to stay no to that?

“Okay, Bear.”

(Answer: you don't.)

#joe graves x reader #joe graves x you #bear graves x reader #joe bear graves x reader #joe bear graves #barry sloane #joe graves #six (2017) #seal team six #history six #bear x reader #bear graves x you

[avocado-writing]

Hiiii, love your fics 💙 Can we get one where aziraphale has a huuuuge praise kink and gets flustered easily by reader? Thank youuuu

notes: paired y’all up bc you went well together rating: E

pairing: aziraphale x reader

“Gosh, aren’t you gorgeous?”

Aziraphale shifts in pleasure underneath you but you hold down his hips with surprising strength. He won’t wiggle away from you, oh no, not when he’s making such delicious noises. 

“Unnfff, I— oh gosh, I’m… I don’t know…”

“Such a lovely cock, angel. I could keep it down my throat all day.”

And, just to prove it, you let your mouth relax into an “o” and swallow him down again. Aziraphale’s a perfect length and just thick enough to stretch your jaw a little. You press up to the nest of fair curls at his base and you think he might explode. He wants to bury his hands in your hair but you feel like he doesn’t know how to ask, so instead he grips the arms of his comfortable chair with such force you think he might shred the upholstery with his well-groomed nails. 

Ahh, your angel. You’ve been seeing him romantically for a little while now and have begun to work out what really gets him going. You’ve seen how he reacts when you tell him how handsome he is, what a good job he does at touching you. The slack of his mouth and glassy, obedient look in his eyes. You’re sure he’d do anything just so you’d praise him… and when you found out he’d never had the experience of someone using their mouth on him? Well. It seemed like the perfect equation. 

“Oh my… please…”

“Please what, darling?” you ask, popping off his length and letting your hand take over. His cock is a ruddy red and straining in your fingers, spurts of his precome and your spit dripping down over your knuckles to soak his sac. “Use your pretty mouth, Aziraphale. Tell me what you need.”

“Don’t stop,” is all he’s able to get out, his brows knitted together in a desperation you’ve never seen on him before. 

“Only if you tell me what a good boy you are. You’re so good, Aziraphale, sitting there so nicely while I take you in my mouth. I just want to hear that you know it.”

“I’m…” his eyes roll back as your tongue darts out and plays with the slit of his cockhead, the sweet salt of him flooding your tastebuds. You’ll never get tired of that, ever. 

“Come on. I know you can do it, my beautiful angel.”

“I’m good. I’m good…”

“Are you my good boy?”

“Yes! Yes, gosh, I’m your good boy…!”

He can barely keep himself still now, he’s so desperate for your touch, your attention, your praise, your love. You’ll give it all to him gladly. You look up into his face and consider how much like a piece of art he is: flushed rosy cheeks, puffy tooth-worried lips as he tries to hold pleas back, eyes watering with overstimulation. You decide to let him find his release. It isn’t fair to torture him so. 

You slide up to your knees from where you’d been lounging languidly on the carpet and set to work, pressing him into your mouth and working up and down with a vengeance. Your tongue flattens and you run the plain of it along his underside. You hear his breaths hitch, a quiet string of curses leave his lips, and he comes with such force that you choke a little.

As he rides out his shockwaves you swallow his spend down, making a show of retreating and licking your lips before climbing into his lap and kissing him. His mouth is slow and lazy in responding. That’s fair enough, you were probably a bit blissed out the first time you received oral. 

“Are you alright, love?” he nods and presses his forehead to yours. “How was it?”

His grin is cheshire-cat wide, engulfing the whole of his face. 

“Heavenly.” 

taglist: @angiestopit@dazed-soul @@foolishprincipalitee@smile-eywa@staygoldsquatchling02@underratedboogeyman@cool-ontherun-world@emilynissangtr@cool-iguana@this--is--music @ilyatan @lxsm2@clarina04@wtfhasmy-lifecometo@mrgatotortuga@wereallbrokenangels @night-affiliate @silcosmoke@kimqueenofhell@chewbrry @bajablast23 @h3k3t@am-i-obsessed---maybe@bakerstreethound@darktealrat @chaospossum

#aziraphale x reader #michael sheen x reader #good omens x reader #Request

[weenwrites]

Cooking A Meal: Part 2

Summary - You ask one of the cons to cook you a meal, but honestly it goes about as well as you'd expect. Characters - Megatron, Shockwave, Starscream, Soundwave, Dreadwing, Knockout, Breakdown, Airachnid, Predaking, Darksteel, Skylynx Content - Crack Category - Headcanons Trigger Warnings - None

✎ A/N: This is an un-revised shitpost, not something too serious.

[ Please do not repost, plagiarize, or use my writing for AI! Translating my work with proper credit is acceptable, but please ask first! ]

Megatron

Don't even bother having him try to cook you something, he can't cook at all. More often than not he'll just send some vehicon off to fetch you a meal, but when he's actually put in a kitchen and told to cook a meal, he'll probably serve you a plate of charred... Stuff.

It reeks and honestly you can't even tell what it used to be. The most he knows about cooking is that humans always heat up their food. He doesn't know how cooked a piece of meat or a slice of bread has to be, and despite knowing how useful patience is, he can't bring himself to wait a couple minutes for a slice of bread to turn golden brown.

Even with some instructions he doesn't understand a single word on that page. What does "fold in the cheese" even mean?! All in all, the food tastes awful, the presentation is awful, and it's not even a nice experience, he somewhat cleans his mess, but still, it's an awful experience. Even your local fast food restaurant would serve something better than what he could make you.

Shockwave

He wouldn't be too bad at cooking... However the meal he's served you is most likely made from some artificial substitute... It's not bad, per say, and it has a higher nutritional value than everything in your kitchen combined, but... He didn't stand in a kitchen to make it, he stood in a lab and fabricated it. That aside, it's plain and has a bit of a weird taste, the presentation sucks, and it's not naturally made, it was fabricated in a laboratory. It counts as science. Not cooking. So nevermind, he'd be bad at cooking.

But if he were to cook, he'd get into the technicalities of all, and spout food science facts at you. He'd tell you all about how proteins in meat force out moisture through coagulation, and that's how meat cooks. Or how amino acids and simple sugars are rearranged to change the color of meat as it cooks. Unless you know about food science yourself, all it may sound like some scientific garble to you. Whether you implore him to continue or not is all up to you.

But just because he knows about the chemical composition of a cracker doesn't mean he knows how to make things taste good. He chooses things based on their nutritional value, not their taste. Everything from meal portions, to seasonings, to even the temperature it was cooked at is all carefully measured to ensure that you're getting your healthy fill of nutrients. He doesn't even allow you to season it afterwards, because any more seasoning would disturb the healthy balance.

Still, while it may be nutritious, it certainly isn't delicious, but at least it's 100% edible and extremely healthy.

Starscream

He didn't know humans cooked their food, he thought they just ate it as is. So you'll have to explain a lot of stuff to him before either of you actually get anywhere. But once he gets the basics down, he'll be off to a rough, yet good start!

He's very particular about the way things are organized in a kitchen, and he'll get real annoyed if you moved something like a spatula or a spoon he was using. He's sorta set up this organization system in the kitchen that works specifically for him and no one else. While it may look like a mess on the outside, it works really well for him.

He'd never touch raw meat, even if it were to cook for you. He just hates the feeling, so you'd basically have no luck at getting him to scrub a chicken down with salt and seasoning unless you gave him a pair of gloves or a brush. But even if he's a bit squeamish, he's very thorough with his work, and very patient too. But he does complain about how long it takes for things to prepare things and then cook.

Might be a bit burnt here, and a bit bland over there, but if you pick some parts out and sprinkle some salt, pepper, spice, or hot sauce on it, it makes for a solid-ish meal! Which is pretty impressive, given the fact he once knew nothing about cooking a few hours ago.

Soundwave

They're actually a really good chef, better than everyone else, that's for sure. Soundwave knows where and how to learn what he needs to know, so it wouldn't take long for him to research and grasp the bare bones of cooking. And after a couple of tries, they could definitely whip you up a 5 star meal that tastes like something the best chef in the world would make.

It's almost scary how fast he learns, but hey at least you're getting like one of the best meals in the world using cheap ingredients from your fridge. Like who knew ketchup could taste so good in place of fancy marinara sauce!

And because of the amazing meal he made, it's without a doubt that he is the undisputed best chef aboard the Nemesis and everybody else's skills immediately pale in comparison. If it were a competition, it would've been over the moment they joined.

Dreadwing

Like almost everyone on this list, he has no idea what to do, and he has no idea what humans eat, so it ends up being a bit of a lecture before he actually starts cooking. It might take him a bit, and he'll stumble here and there, but he's always quick to ask good questions to ensure he has a solid grasp on what he needs to do.

He's quick to pick up anything you teach him, like about cutting vegetables, or seasoning meals, temperature, et cetera. And in a while, he's able to follow a recipe rather well, only occasionally coming to you to ask a question about what "folding" or "basting" or "al dente" means.

He'd serve you a pretty solid meal all in all. But on the off-chance that what he made for you had caused you to get sick, he'd immediately and sincerely apologize to you, and most likely never make you a meal ever again.

Knockout

He has some knowledge around human cooking thanks to the internet, and it helps the slightest bit, but for the most part he'll be bugging you with all his questions about human cuisine and cooking.

And all the while he's cooking, he'll ask you to fetch him things like that kitchen knife over there, or that measuring cup—no, not that one. That one was used for wet ingredients, he needs the other one that was used for dry ingredients, now chop chop. The clock's ticking. Or he'll holler at you to come and help hold the bowl as he scrapes the mixture into another pan.

Surprisingly, the kitchen actually remains rather nice and orderly throughout it all. He fills your sink with water and just leaves the dirty dishes in there to soak, and cleans messes the instant they're made, which greatly helps with clean-up afterward! But he won't touch the dishes. He just hates the feeling of scrubbing grimy food off, so you're on your own unless you give him a pair of gloves.

But as for the food itself? It's... Semi-decent! He may have burned it a little, or messed up one of the steps, but it still tastes good and it's still edible. He even decorates it nicely! He'd chop any vegetables into cute little shapes, and he has a good eye for presentation. So it's pretty nice.

Breakdown

He doesn't know anything about human cooking. He does question where the heck human food comes from though, and the most he knows is that humans consume other organisms, which he finds really weird. So in the beginning, the whole cooking session might be more of an educational session than anything, but only so he understands what humans can eat and what he should be doing.

He technically doesn't do any cooking since he just makes you things like instant noodles or instant mac n' cheese. But he'll need a bit of supervising because with the noodles, he'll put the seasoning packet in the water while the noodles are cooking, and then drain the noodles because he thought that the noodles would absorb the flavor (same goes for the mac n' cheese), but it turns out that the cheese water just goes down the drain. So it technically isn't completely his fault that the food may taste off (because instant food doesn't always taste that good...) but he does mess some of the steps up which contributes to that.

But with a little guidance here, and a little trial and error there, he'll actually be able to whip up something pretty decent using the instant stuff as a base! He'll add things like chopped up vegetables or spice for some flavor in some instant ramen, or cook the macaroni in milk and add some mustard for mac n' cheese, or perhaps crack an egg and add some garlic into some insta-soup.

All in all, it's a pretty solid meal for his first time cooking. But does it really technically count as cooking if he used an already pre-made thing to make it?

Airachnid

If she didn't care about you as much as she does, she would've fed you something poisonous if she didn't ignore your request first. She's... A questionable cook... To say the least, but one thing's for sure, all the meat she uses in her cooking is fresh. And I mean fresh as in "she dragged that animal into the kitchen and slaughtered it on the spot" kind of fresh, which is ideal if you're eating something that requires super fresh meat like oysters.

She doesn't burn the food, but she most likely under-cooks it. As for seasoning, well, she doesn't add any, so whatever you're eating will need a whole lot of salt, pepper, and spices either to taste like something, or to distract from the horrible taste the food already has.

But while the food may taste weird, the presentation's interesting. It's something of an art, made from something you don't even think you can call "food" anymore, but it's interesting to look at.

All in all, the food tastes horrible, the presentation's neat, and you're 100% guaranteed to get food poisoning if you scarf the entire meal down (which you won't, the stench is bad enough to kill even flies).

Predaking

He can't cook at all—actually, he doesn't even know what humans eat, so you'll have to explain to him quite a lot. Even then, he'll probably just bring you a dead animal and assume that's enough. You'll actually have to lecture him on cooking meat, preparing ingredients, and whatnot. So this whole thing turns into a cooking lesson as opposed to doing actual cooking.

He soaks all that knowledge up like a sponge, and with his newfound knowledge of cooking he's able to make something relatively decent for you, if not leaning more towards mediocre! The meal is something simple, probably from a cookbook you have at your house (or on the internet...)

All in all, while it's below average, it's probably above-par by your standards, given the fact you just taught him how to cook a hot second ago. The presentation is simple, the food actually tastes good, so all in all it's a pretty average meal.

Darksteel

Surprise, surprise! He is the worst cook out of them all. And here you might have thought that Predaking or Airachnid would've been the worst, but nope. It's him. He'd most likely burn your kitchen down, if not trash everything you have, and waste everything you have in your fridge. The best he does is bring you a dead animal that he "cooked" by spewing fire at it. Then again it's most likely either overcooked or undercooked and would definitely give you trichinellosis, E. coli, BSE, salmonella, or whatever other horrible disease you risk contracting by eating what he's served you.

But what about vegetables? He doesn't even know what a vegetable is, and unless you give him a really thorough description of what counts as a vegetable or not, he'd most likely just uproot a tree or pluck a bush out from the ground and give it to you, mildly scorched, because he remembered that you have to cook it.

If you were to ask him about presentation, he'd probably pose the scorched cattle or chicken he got his claws on, set the crisp "vegetables" upright, and think that's good enough "presentation".

Bottom line? Do not eat anything he gives you, it'll absolutely destroy your stomach.

Skylynx

Yeah he doesn't want to. He'd hate cooking so much because everything takes so long to do! He's sensible enough to do some research and learn, or ask you questions for clarification, but waiting for water to boil just drives him crazy.

He tries to work diligently and be patient, but you might catch him cutting corners a little bit. How so? Well, he'd raise the temperature of the stove to get something to cook faster, or if he needs to carefully ground something into a poultice, he'll just smush it into paste. If you're having something simple like mashed potatoes, then he has absolutely no problem preparing that.

He doesn't pay much attention to how it looks, so while the food he serves looks unappetizing as he straight up slaps it onto your plate, it actually tastes pretty decent... Ish... Decent-ish. Sure your food may have come out a bit burnt, or you might find some weird chunks in it, but it's better than what Darksteel has to offer, that's for sure.

#tfp imagines #tfp headcanons #tfp x reader #tfp megatron #megatron x reader #tfp shockwave #shockwave x reader #tfp starscream #starscream x reader #tfp soundwave #soundwave x reader #tfp dreadwing #dreadwing x reader #tfp knockout #knockout x reader #tfp breakdown #breakdown x reader #tfp airachnid #airachnid x reader #tfp predaking #predaking x reader #tfp darksteel #darksteel x reader #tfp skylynx #skylynx x reader #shitpost #x reader #reader insert #self insert #weenwrites

[aggressively-crying]

Probably bad transformers animated headcanons

Bumblebee listens to 100 gecs and uses TikTok. Both of which he does with his speakers turned up. In public.

Prowl has considered buying a fur suit but stops himself every time he's about to go through with it.

Optimus purposefully misuses slang and memes to watch the crew members that know what the terms mean die inside. Even pronounces them wrong for extra flavor.

Ratchet watches soap operas. It started out as simply being curious as to what trash the humans consider good stories but then he got legitimately invested.

Sometimes Bulkhead tries eating human food just because it looks really really good, but it always inevitably tastes kinda gross because he wasn't meant to process that kind of material. He wants to find a way to convert it to energon but until that day comes, he's forced to simply stare and long for it.

The repair crew has movie nights once a week with Sari, both to get a better understanding of human culture, and as an excuse to hang out. Every once in awhile they accidentally pick a movie that they don't realize Sari probably should not be watching until it's too late. They do not speak of the Friday the 13th incident. Or the time Sari picked Coraline and Optimus had to leave halfway through.

In that vein, after realizing how jumpy he was about spiders on Halloween, Optimus actually tried giving himself a degree of exposure therapy so no harmless tiny arachnids needlessly die by his axe. Now he at least TRIES to bring them outside with a cup and a piece of paper, but he's not above just asking Bulkhead to do it instead.

Ratchet has taken to finding old junker cars and trying to fix them up in his spare time. Their makeup is painfully simple compared to Cybertronian anatomy, and it's not like he has to worry about what happens if he can't fix one fast enough. He still thinks just selling spare parts on the open market is barbaric, but it's kind of therapeutic for him to just work on something like that without the stress of having someone's life or even just general well-being in his hands. He lets Bulkhead repaint them when he's finished.

Sari does NOT actually know how sex works. At least, like, not accurately. The version of it she told to Optimus was wildly off-base, but still juuuust close enough to freak him out.

Similarly, Prowl has observed nature long enough to get a sort of incomplete idea of how all that goes down, and has come to the conclusion that organics universally lay eggs.

Bumblebee plays horror games with the lights off just to prove hes not chicken, and then has horrible nightmares for a week straight. He also fully believes in every video game creepypasta/myth you tell him, and swears up and down he's seen Herobrine.

Bulkhead is terrified of mice because he doesn't understand how anything can be that teeny tiny and he heard they can chew through metal like some kind of freaky organic scraplet. He gets nightmares about Ratchet opening him up and finding a whole colony of them chewing on his wires.

Sometimes while Megatron was just a head in Sumdac's lab, he'd be bored enough watch whatever was on TV between schemes and naps. The only thing he would ever admit he liked was wrestling because he felt at least a little vindication watching the pathetic organic wretches beat the slag out of each other. That and it reminded him a bit of his gladiator days.

Shockwave is a pretentious energon tea drinker and has whatever the Cybertron equivalent of a loose leaf tea infuser is. He INSISTS it's objectively better and whatever the more normie type of energon is simply cannot compare.

Lugnut has date nights with Strika but they usually start off as sparring matches that get juuuust a little out of hand. He would not have it any other way and loves when his big scary wife throws him across the room and into a wall, then immediately rushes over to check if he still functions. It may be the concussions, but he swears she looks like a holy being towering above him from where he's slumped over on the floor.

Blitzwing is actually pretty functional from day to day. He's had his multiple faces for long enough that he knows how to cope with them and work with them. Sometimes he has poor impulse control, and sometimes he can't stop himself from feeding his anger, but overall he's actually pretty good about keeping himself in check. He just leans into the whole "crazy" schtick because he knows that's how others see him and no matter what he does, he's not gonna change their perception. It's sort of a spite thing when he annoys people with it, but it's also kind of a self deprecating cry for help that he's REALLY hoping someone will eventually pick up on.

Starscream is only a Decepticon because he wanted to pursue acting but nobody would hire a Warframe. He sought out fame and adoring fans in the gladiator arena, and he got what he was after until Megatron kicked his skid plate and Starscream was suddenly no longer the popular seeker heartthrob bad boy, but a laughing stock who fell when someone bigger and stronger clipped his wings. He originally joined Megatron with the intent to climb the ranks and snatch his following out from under him, but then the war broke out and his whole plan was thrown off track.

No Cybertronian is 100% okay with Earth vehicles looking the way they do and not being alive. It's pretty creepy seeing what they think is just some guy carrying an organic around only to remember right, yeah, the organic's controlling him like cordyceps in an ant and he was never alive to begin with.

Blurr has to intentionally talk much slower than he would at his natural speaking pace just because nobody can understand what in Primus's name he's saying.

Between him, Jazz and the Jet Twins, it's actually kind of a meme on Cybertron that the elite guard badge messes with your speech synthesizer because Sentinel is the only member that speaks even slightly normally.

Jazz once attempted to show Sentinel a nature documentary that Prowl recommended. Sentinel proceeded to purge his fuel tank about five minutes in and forbid jazz from watching that filth outside his own quarters.

Both of the jet twins play fortnite whenever they're on earth and come up with the nastiest incomprehensible insults they can to spam into the microphone because they think that's just part of the game that nobody is taking seriously rather than unbelievably toxic people having mental breakdowns at losing.

And finally,

Cybertron has its own cryptids and urban legends: a long, serpentine beast, as long as 60 Warframes that slinks through the oil of Iacon's aqueducts. A jet black cybercat with three tails that will take your spark if you look it in the optics for too long. A shuttle painted in neons, appearing at the station on its own when there is only one transformer at the station, speaking honeyed words in a voice that sounds too familiar, and promising to bring you home safe, but keeps driving and never stops until you're in stasis or offline. A spectral figure that haunts the underground tunnels that few dare traverse, keeping to the shadows and darting out of sight, but you can always hear their engine revving, and always hear their anguished wails. A frame-bare mechanical avian, practically skeletal, that circles over the sea of rust, massive in size and always waiting to swoop down on unsuspecting mechs. They are spoken of in hushed whispers, none know for certain whether they are real or simply fiction. Most think it's silly to believe in such things, but the superstitions around them persist.

#transformers #maccadam #tfa #transformers animated #optimus prime #bumblebee #bulkhead #ratchet #prowl #sari sumdac #megatron #blitzwing #lugnut #shockwave #starscream #strika #blurr #jazz #sentinel prime #jetfire #jetstrorm

[havendoesthings]

He's no longer an Autobot [Short]

Context: Action takes place in my Transformers Animated AU, where Bumblebee lived on Cybertron long before Ratchet was even born. In this one-shot he's a part of the then Cybertronian Bot Academy where with his own eyes he can see that some of the bots start to pick sides [Said sides being Autobots and Decepticons] where one of this bots is someone close to him, his friend – Shockwave. WARNING! The writing below is unfinished and not actual! Something similar will happen' in the fic I have in plans to write for this AU, just not how it's written as below. Hope you'll still like what I wrote tho! If you have any questions about the AU feel more than welcome to ask about it! >ww<

,,There, in front of him, not so far away was Shockwave. 

But rather than the usual blue optics, his eyes were now red. And that meant one thing,

Shockwave joined the Decepticons.

He couldn't lie, his vents upon finally capturing the full picture of his — To this moment… To this moment? — best friend caught him off guard. 

Joining Decepticons ranks wasn't something that was unusual. At the same time though, it also wasn't anything usual. It was… Just there. Somewhere, looking at him and other bots from a far distance, reminding them from time to time of the political fractions their people started to form. 

As it turns out, they're not as far away from them as he thought. 

"You're," He started slowly, the feeling of his glossa being unmoisturized making him uncomfortable. Together with his throat, it was slowly becoming dry. "You've… You've joined Decepticons," He wanted to continue but didn't know what to say. 

And there was silence. Completely nothing could be heard, and nothing indeed intruded on it. 

It was just like no one besides them was on this one certain corridor. 

And to be honest, if someone would say that to Bumblebee earlier, — After all, their Cybertronians boot camp was not called one of the noisiest places without a reason — he wouldn't believe them. 

But now, right before his eyes, his small world collided with reality. It almost felt like his world and everything he knew about Shockwave suddenly made a lot more sense. Every time he couldn't agree with some of the methods their higher-ups used, some evident repulsion aimed at some of the Primes’ words. It all… It all suddenly started to fall into one, big piece. 

But there wasn't 'almost' there just for show. 

So Bumblebee held onto that 'almost' in hope. For what? Only time will tell. 

He gulped, trying to make his shoulder pads be seen as more relaxed, but did it work? After the unchanged expression Shockwave was sending his way, he guessed that it did little to humor and help his case. Still, it was worth a try. 

"I indeed did." 

"Ah," He could feel his spark beating its usual rhythm. 

He licked his dermas, feeling a little lost over what he was supposed to say next. They didn't exactly give out instructions about what you should do when your friend suddenly got involved in the world of some adult bots, did they now? — It was a joke, okay? He has to cope and face, in these few seconds, that he has to answer with something- — Either way, 

"Are you… Sure about that…?" 

"Definitely." Yikes, he didn't even hesitate. Was something that crossed his mind. But as quick as the thought was present, as soon it was gone. 

"Mhm." He made a face. He couldn't prevent himself from doing so and probably with that he made his friend's trust drift more and more away from him, but what exactly was he supposed to say? "It's cool, it's cool." Which honestly? Was a brilliant answer, shut up. 

It was the only thing his panicked brain could think of and Shockwave didn't bother to react in any way to it. Which was nice because it was still better than him simply walking away from him."

#tfa mute bee au #mute tfa bee #mute tfa bee au #mute bumblebee #mute #tfa bumblebee au #tfa au #tfa bumblebee #tfa shockwave #shockwave tfa #bumblebee tfa #transformers animated bumblebee #transformers animated #transformers au #transformers #friends to enemies #? #Ig they kind of are? #But not exactly? #They both think they are their enemies when in the reality they're both kind of #Kind of trying to find each other in this world which is in and later after war #They're just idiots to realize they're still friends #Bcs at first they think they hate each other #When they dont #Theyre just stupit and lack understanding of basic communication

[stuffymcstuffsworld]

Boss battle

Okay, so you overreacted... you can admit to that. But to be fair, you are known as Lord Sullivan's child. Shame on them for not expecting such behavior.

Something had just felt off about today from the start. You had felt this way since that morning. You had tried to wave off the feeling, but you couldn't shake it. And then, you got the text.

It's funny how a short message can terrify you beyond measure. 'We've lost Iruma.' The horrified shriek that escaped your throat could probably be heard across hell.

Suddenly, it didn't matter that you were human. It didn't matter that you were miles away with no wings. Your baby was missing!!! The Demon King himself wouldn't have been able to stop you.

At this point, you were driving my pure anxiety. By the time you reached the park, it's in chaos. Que more panic and hyperventilating. Now it wasn't just one child at risk, but all your children?!?

Was it too late to do anything? It better not be otherwise you were going to skin the children's 'chaperones' alive. Rage started to build inside you.

It was bad luck that you happened upon Kalego's group first. You arrived on time to see Jazz dangling from one of the beasts large ears. The shrill sound of the whistle was nothing compared to the shattering of your own mind.

'Mmmmmmmyyyyy Bbbbbaaaaaabbbbbyyyyy!!!!!!!' Your mind howls as your body lunged to catch him. You then watched as Kalego used his Ceberus to take down the monster. He turns, showing a smug smirk.

That smirk dies when he notices you still holding Jazz tightly in your arms. Your nostrils flare. "Tell me something, Naberius-sensei..." A chill fills the air.

"What could have possibly possessed you into sending the very children you are supposed to be protecting to fight a monster?" Your eyes glow eriely. If looks could kill, he'd be dead.

"I don't care what febel excuse you could have. In fact, don't say a word." The cold icy ton you used flooded his veins. Dread fills his systems. This is what staring death in the face felt like. You set jazz down.

Advancing forward as the prideful dog took a step back his mouth agap. Even though moments ago, he had taken down a monstrous beast... he was filled with immeasurable fear now.

You an unranked individual. You who showed no signs of fang, nor claw. Your every step seemed to shake the ground.

Even though he knew it was more than likely just another beast in the area. It certainly didn't feel like it. It was pure luck that in that moment, he was summoned.

Even though he now suffered knowing that Opera was now aware of his fluffy form. He was somewhat relieved. Temporarily at least.

As the magical creatures took up their ultimate form by merging together, it still seemed easier to handle. He had Shichiro and Opera to assist him after all. That was... until the unexpected happened.

'Reckless! Idiotic! What in Hell was that child thinking??? Was he really that stupid or just had a death wish?' Kalego screamed internally in his mind as he watched in horror.

Iruma was in the beasts way, right in the line of fire! Suddenly, a blinding light flashes. And you're there. A shield spread out in front of you, absorbing the blast.

You remaind unscathed. Iruma staring up at you from behind in awe. Runes glowed along your skin. Eyes illuminated. You were pissed at this point.

You made your way towards the enraged creature. It lunges trying to bite you. You were not amused. You grab its horn and slam the large body into the pavement, sending shockwaves across the park.

You stare down at the squirming animal. "A worm like you... tried to hurt my children..." Your hushed voice echos across the park.

A loud wail comes from the snarling mass of magic. You walk across its neck, your magic pulsing wildly. You should kill it. Ripping it apart piece by piece. You should ensure not a single speck of it remains.

Your finger twitched, itching to do it the old-fashioned way. But the children were watching. It's best to stick with the less messy way. Unfortunately.

You raised your hand to the sky. A storm brewed above you. The wind whipped around, creating a barrier. There would be no escape.

It tried to stand, but you weren't allowing that. You slammed your foot down on its jugular. Even if you were drastically smaller, the force of having the air knocked out made an impact.

"Devine bolt." You hissed. Swinging your hand down swiftly, calling lightning down. A large charge blasted through electrocution being your weapon. Frying the beast to a crisp.

You stomp again, and it crumbles to dust. You land on your feet. "If you three hadn't wasted your time and had been taking your duties seriously, none of this would have happened."

Your words were directed at the three adults. They tensed. You slowly turned your head towards them. Oh, they better be groveling for their lives by the time you were done with them.

"It doesn't matter if they insisted. Or that they were stubborn. It doesn't matter if you thought them capable. You are the adults. No adult should send a child into battle for them."

Opera stood defensively while Kalego bristles and Balam seemed to shrink behind them. "I will deal with each of you later." It wasn't a warning. It was a promise.

#mairimashita! iruma kun #welcome to demon school iruma kun #reader #iruma suzuki #lord sullivan #balam shichirou #naberius kalego #kalego sensei #opera #jazz andro #rage mode

[mama-qwerty]

A God's Grief

Sometimes in the server I get struck by inspiration and do some "live writing" - wherein I write a scene on the spot. No editing, no thinking too hard on it, just write and post. The muse takes me by the throat and drags me along.

I wrote this bit last night, after a discussion about how the ME would react if Knuckles were to die. Canon ME would probably not care too much, but in the server we play more with the idea that the ME is the one that created Knux, and is essentially his "mother" in the strictest sense of the word.

~~~~~

She felt the moment it happened. The tether the Master Emerald held with her guardian snapped, the chaos that flowed between them whipping back into itself like a cut rope.

She reached out, trying to reconnect. This happened every now and then--if the guardian was off planet or otherwise separated from this plane of reality. But the Emerald had always managed to feel the echidna in some way, however faint.

But now . . . there was nothing.

She reached.

She called.

She summoned.

. . .

She begged.

No response.

He was gone.

The guardian was just . . . gone.

The Emerald reached through time. Searched through space. She couldn't read his mind, no matter how much anyone (including him) thought she could. She didn't know exactly where he was, or what he was doing.

Or had been doing.

The gem knew about death. She had been witness to the extermination of the echidna centuries ago.

But that had been different. They had brought their deaths upon themselves. The Emerald's faithful guardian at the time, a young girl named Tikal, had fallen too. And that was . . . disappointing.

But that had been different.

He had been different.

He wasn't some mortal, born with their failings and subject to their influence. The Emerald had created him, built him for this sole purpose. He was not merely her guardian--he was as much her child as any flesh and blood parent.

But now he was gone.

And the Emerald hadn't expected it.

All her knowledge and ability to see all, and she didn't see this coming.

At first the atmosphere of Angel Island grew quiet. The chao came to a near stand still as the ripples of the sudden absence of the guardian reached them.

But then, the Master Emerald screamed.

A brilliant, blinding flash erupted from the gem, the shockwave shaking the island, sending each zone into turmoil. Lava overflowed, trickling over the edge of the floating island. The ice caps shattered, spraying shards of splintered ice for miles. The ground trembled, and fissures appeared, threatening to crack the island into pieces.

The Emerald grieved for her guardian.

And before long, that grief turned to anger.

To rage.

She reached for chaos energy, grabbing hold and sending it to the chao. The gentle, child-like creatures responsible for the downfall of the echidna so long ago would be the avatars for the revenge enacted over the death of the final one.

The Emerald funneled chaos energy into the chao, changing them, mutating them, using them to become the servants of her justice. Her anger toward the world that dared take her guardian, her child from her.

The chao cried and screamed as they changed, but she didn't care, didn't pay them any mind. They had a job and she did as she pleased.

Their bodies twisted and elongated. Claws sprouted from fingerless nubs, and great fangs pierced soft gum. Gentle eyes replaced with the sharp gaze of a predator.

She sent them to the surface, to the last place she had felt her guardian.

They had one order.

Return him.

Let nothing stand in their way.

Once her guardian was returned to her, she would rain down a punishment like no other on the world that dared take him from her.

This world would burn.

The chao moved as though this had been their form all along. They ripped through the metal creatures surrounding the fallen guardian. Tore them to shreds without pause.

The creatures the guardian interacted with stood nearby, and tried to intervene--the blue one stepping forward to block their path.

He spoke, meaningless sounds falling from his lips. The chao ignored him, heading for the guardian. The pink one tried to join the blue one in blocking them, and they merely pushed the two aside.

The monster chao surrounded the guardian. They looked down upon him, their black eyes shiny and reflecting the chao soul still within them.

After a few seconds of silence, one reached down and gently cradled the echidna's still body in its arms.

The others came closer, reaching out to brush their clawed fingers against his fur. They gently caressed his head, his muzzle, his hands.

A soft whine floated from the back of their throats, and they slowly turned to go back the way they'd come.

"Hey," the blue one called, reaching toward them. "Hold on . . . where are you . . ."

Before he could finish, the group disappeared in a flash of green light.

The monster chao reappeared before the Master Emerald. They gently laid the guardian's body at its base, and the gem hummed a soft chime, reaching out to her guardian.

He lay still. Not a twitch. Not a breath.

The Emerald reached out once more, pulling more chaos to her and letting it flow over his cooling body.

It had to work.

She was the Master Emerald, for crying out loud. She could manipulate time and matter and space and damnit, she would bring him back.

It had to work.

She tried. She tried so hard. And when it didn't work, when her guardian failed to stir, failed to breathe, failed to open his eyes and reach back for her, she sat silent for a long moment.

After that moment of silence, a sound filled the air. It was soft at first, a low tone, like whale song in the deepest depths of the ocean. It rippled through chaos, causing all sensitive beings to cover their ears out of reflex.

The Master Emerald cried.

#knuckles the echidna #discord writing #the master emerald

[malemacrofics]



Ever since Bolin forced Zaheer to "put a sock in it". I've imagined what it would be like to be a pet or toy to that big, himbo lug.

The Side Effects of Spirit-Bending

Content: Gentle Giant, Underwear Entrapment, Cum Eating, Forgetful Giant, Musk, Bolin's just doing his best tbh

A/N: Probably the smuttiest thing I've written yet, I'm not gonna lie. But I am happy with how it came out! Hope you guys like it and, as always, requests are open even if I am kinda slow to get around to them. Also, if you guys have any macro headcanons or blurbs you wanna share, please do! I love talking macro, haha

I wasn’t sure what had happened, if I’m being honest with myself. I am (was?) part of the ground forces attacking Republic City with Kuvira. Her gargantuan machine marched alongside my regiment. My team had been briefed on all the things that might have happened. Everything from the Avatar throwing boulders large enough to fit in my apartment, or the Beifong family joining the fight and attempting to drop entire buildings on the machine. Even that, admittedly handsome, earthbender turning the streets to lava in an attempt to trap the mech was all in the briefing. However, the large purple mushroom cloud that erupted in the middle of the city once the mech fell? Or the resulting energy and shock waves that raced outwards from the epicenter? Those were new. I doubt any briefing could have prepared me for that.

I was one of the unfortunate sods to be close to the epicenter. Everything was basked in a strange, unnatural purple light for a few seconds. The light was quickly followed by an immense burst of heat and force that knocked me horizontal onto the road. Finally, in my last moments before I lost consciousness, I could feel immense amounts of electricity coursing through my body. Almost as though I had stuck my tongue into an electrical outlet. When I finally came too and everything wasn’t surrounded by a constant haze, I looked around to survey my situation.

There were relatively large pieces of debris surrounding me, and the roadway beneath me seemed to suffer a few cracks. However, the buildings on either side of me still reached high into the sky, in fact they seemed higher than they did moments ago. You did just probably suffer some kind of hit to the head. I reminded myself, trying to remain logical despite the rising panic I felt. At least I wasn’t trapped under some debris. I could feel slightly rumbling behind me, however I assured myself it was either an aftershock of whatever caused that shockwave, or a far off building collapsing under its own weight. Now wasn’t the time to get too caught up in worry of what ifs. At least, it wouldn’t have been the time for the panic if not for the massive shadow that began to loom over me. I quickly turned only to see a giant, large enough to eclipse the sun.

I had attempted to bend a nearby rock and blast it towards the giant’s leg, only for it to immediately grab its shin and yell out due to the sudden pain. However, as the giant bent over, and its face got closer to me, I could see who it was, clear as day. It was that lava bender from earlier. However, just as I was able to more clearly make out his face, his eyes fell on me with sudden recognition. I could see his large, green eyes quickly pass through emotions ranging from anger at the pebble I launched his way, to confusion at what I was, before settling on concern. The giant reached out a hand for me. My attempts to evade proved fruitless due to the sheer difference in size between us, as he was able to easily wrap his fingers around me before bringing me up before his face. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, little guy. I don’t want to hurt you! What happened?” He asked

“Let go of me, you big lug!” I responded, trying to thrash against his grip.

“Hey, I genuinely mean you no harm.” He said, opening his hand so I could stand on his palm, “See?”

I warily stood up before eyeing him suspiciously. “So, what do you want?”

“What happened to you? You’re like… five inches tall! Are you a spirit or something?”

“I’m not a spirit. And what do you mean, five inches tall?”

“I don’t know if you noticed, little dude, but you’re standing on my hand. Look around, everything’s giant compared to you!”

I took a look at my surroundings for the first time since the blast, and his words finally set in. The debris I was surrounded by wasn’t actually large. To a normal sized person, it would’ve looked like fist-sized rocks. I must have had a look of concern on my face, as the giant earthbender piped up. “Hey, little guy, don’t panic! Once this is all over, I’ll try to help you get back to normal, alright? My name’s Bolin, by the way.”

Hearing his giant voice grounded me back in our reality. “Right, thank you, Bolin. My name’s Arik. What do we do now?”

Before Bolin could answer, a voice behind him called out “Bolin! Where’s Korra?”

Bolin’s eyes went wide with concern yet again as he frantically tried shoving me into his pocket, only to find his pants lacking them. Then, I could see an idea cross his mind as he mouthed “Sorry” to me before pulling open the waistband of his pants. I didn’t have enough time to grasp what he was doing until I was unceremoniously dropped in and the waistband closed. I fell for only a few seconds until I hit something warm.

I had no light in my new environment, but considering what had happened, It didn’t take much effort to figure out what had happened. I was now face to, well, dick with Bolin. My entire body pinned between his member and the fabric of his underwear. My nose filled with the scent of his musk. I attempted to wriggle free from the confines, only to be met with the giant dick to slowly harden. As it got harder, I found myself with less and less space. Deciding it was better to at least be able to move somewhat, I stopped trying to free myself and instead just wait. Hopefully I wouldn’t be in here long.

—--

Bolin had an exhausting day. He and the rest of Team Avatar, as well as the air nomads, had to deal with Kuvira’s invasion of Republic City, which ended with Korra managing to bend a beam of spirit energy from almost point blank range. And if that weren’t enough, the sheer amount of that energy managed to rip another portal into the spirit realm. After all was said and done, Bolin just wanted to lay down and relax for a little bit. Luckily, Tenzin was more than willing to let him use a guest room on Air Temple Island.

Bolin opened the paper door and saw the room he’d be staying in for the night. A bed pushed against the corner with a wardrobe in the neighboring corner, and between them a large, hexagonal window to let in plenty of wind. He collapsed on the bed, initially face first before turning onto his back. All he really wanted to do was fall asleep, but after the day he was coated in so much sweat he knew he should shower first. But before he could begin to get back up and head into the shower, he could feel his blood begin to rush towards his manhood and feel it begin to harden. He placed his palm on his bulge and began playing with it through the fabric. “What the hell,” Bolin thought to himself, “I deserve it after the day I had.”

As he finished his thought, he pulled down the waistband of his pants and boxers and put his dick in his hand.

—--

Arik felt like the day might never end. He could feel each footstep Bolin took, causing his surroundings to constantly shift. It wasn’t terrible until Bolin began walking up and down some slope. The fabric and skin around him began to shift until he was pinned under looser skin, which Arik quickly identified as Bolin’s testicles. Their wiry hair coiled around his limbs until he was plastered to their surface, and his face now inches away from the tip of Bolin’s penis. As Arik tried to free himself from the hairs, Bolin’s dick would harden again, but with his new position, all he could do was watch as it also leaked small amounts of precum, coating Arik’s face, even forcing him to attempt to eat it if he still wanted to be able to breath. Ironically, the part of this whole experience Arik hated the most wasn’t being trapped against a sweaty crotch, but it was feeling his own dick harden at the experience. At least Arik could take solace in the fact he already had a crush on Bolin after seeing him in those moving pictures a few years back.

Eventually, Bolin began to move more slowly, and he heard some talk through the fabric of Bolin asking someone to stay on Air Temple Island. As Arik was feeling more excited at the prospects of getting out of Bolin’s boxers, he was met with a massive force pushing him closer to the giant earthbender. He was completely pinned against the fabric. Once the pressure alleviated, he attempted to untangle himself one final time in hopes of getting out. Once again, all he did was cause the giant member to grow harder. However, before it could leak any more precum on him, Arik saw light as the waistband of the boxers were moved. However, his hopes were quickly dashed as he watched Bolin grab his own dick in his hands before trying to jack off. Arik wriggled more out of rage, doing anything he could to free himself, but only causing faint moans to come from Bolin.

I finally managed to free one of my arms, using it to free the rest of my limbs. As soon as I freed myself, I began to climb the massive balls I was pinned under for the better part of the day. I finally stood tall at the base of Bolin’s penis. His eyes were closed as he continued to jerk himself off, and I knew he wouldn’t hear me at this distance. I summoned the rest of my energy to begin running along his torso. At first, the run wasn’t terrible. His muscular build granted me enough traction that I wasn’t too worried about slipping, despite the… activity he was currently doing. However, as I began to reach his mountainous pecs, I felt a massive force hit me from behind, throwing me down onto the earthbender’s skin. A white, salty liquid covered my body, and in only a few moments more drops of it hit where I was, all the while I could hear Bolin moan in pleasure. After I picked myself up and wiped off my eyes, Bolin’s eyes fell on me. He quickly grabbed me before sitting up. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry Arik! I completely forgot you were down there!” He apologized. “You’re like, totally covered with my cum now huh? How about we shower and I can try to make it up to you, sound good little guy?”

I simply nodded, as any attempt to open my mouth caused the earthbender’s cum to enter my mouth, forcing me again to swallow it. Bolin stood up and entered the bathroom attached to his guest room. He disrobed after placing me on the counter of the sink. I could see his full body in all its majesty, from strong arms and muscular torso, to his thick cock and tree-like legs. He was built like an adonis. He reached behind me and slowly turned on the sink, just enough to let the waterfall in a single stream rather than a few pitiful drops. He let me climb back onto his palm so I could more easily climb into the basin. He even used his finger nail to cut me off a little chunk of soap to wash myself up with. Meanwhile, he turned on the water for the actual shower and entered. I wasn’t able to see him in any detail through the frosted glass. However, once he was done, he looked just as stunning as the remaining water coursed over his skin. He walked over to the sink and turned off the water. He quickly dried himself off with a towel and wrapped it around his waist before grabbing a small cloth, likely for people to dry off their hands after washing them, and gave it to me to dry myself off with.

Once I was done, he let me climb back onto his palm and took me back into the main room. He placed me onto the table beside the bed, before walking over to the wardrobe and looking through the extra clothes in there. He finally settled on an outfit, it’s orange, yellow, and red fabric making it clear it was an air nomad ensemble, however it still looked natural on him. “I doubt there’s anything in here that’ll fit you, little guy.” Bolin said in an apologetic tone. Before I could even try to reassure him, he turned on his heel and faced me “But don’t worry! I have an idea. Just stay right there, alright?”

Bolin quickly left the room after finishing his thought, only to return a few minutes later, a bundle of fabric being held in one hand, and what looked like a few cookies in the other. He set it all on the bedside table right next to me. “I figured Tenzen’s kids might still have their doll clothes, and I was right!” Bolin said, proud of himself. “Any of these suit you?”

Bolin then began rummaging through the pile of doll’s clothes. There were an assortment of clothes, many reflecting clothes of the different nations. Finally, I settled on an outfit that somewhat resembled Earth Kingdom fashion, with deep greens contrasted with brilliant gold. Unfortunately the pants were a little big for me, but Bolin quickly fixed that by pulling a thread from a shirt I didn’t like and tying it around my waist like a belt. “You look so cute like that, Arik!”

“T-thanks” I sputtered, a blush quickly coming to my cheeks as I looked away from Bolin’s face. I was then nudged by one of his fingers, atop it a small piece of a cookie he had brought back for me. I didn’t want it initially, until I felt my stomach rumble and remembered that the only thing I’ve eaten all day came from Bolin in a more… intimate manner. In the end, I graciously took the crumb and sat closer to the edge of the bedside table. Bolin and I talked for the rest of the night, him trying to get to know me better. Eventually, as we were preparing to go to bed, he said to me “I promise, starting tomorrow I’ll talk to Korra to try to get this fixed.”

“Bolin, can I be honest with you?” I asked, slightly nervous about his response.

“Yeah, of course, little guy! Glad to see you beginning to trust me more.” He responded with a small chuckle.

“I don’t know how much I want to go back to normal…”

“What do you mean? You want to stay like this forever?” “I don’t know about forever, but after getting this tiny and being found by you, things have been kind of… nice, I guess.”

“Even after I accidentally hit you with my cum?” “Weirdly enough, yeah. I had a massive crush seeing you as Nuktuk, and now getting to be taken care of by you? I don’t know, it’s kinda nice. Even if I did spend most of the day against your sweaty crotch.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, it was kind of nice getting to take care of you. And I promise it’s not normally that sweaty.” He said, with another small chuckle to himself. “But I want you to know, if at any time you want to grow back, I’ll talk to Korra and see what we can do. But until then, how about you be my little pet?” “Deal.”

With that, Bolin stripped down to just a pair of boxers and laid on the bed, pulling the covers over him. “So, Arik, where do you wanna sleep? Wanna try laying on my chest, hearing my heartbeat? Or maybe you wanna go back into my boxers? Bolin Jr. is already beginning to miss you.” Bolin said. And sure enough, you turned around and began to see a small bulge growing under the blanket. “No pressure, though” Bolin reassured you.

A/N: Sorry for the vague ending, but wanted you guys as readers to decide where to sleep for the night, lol.

#avatar bolin #Bolin #bolin x reader #Bolin x Male!Reader #canon x reader #canon x male!Reader #male!reader #don't know if this is really x reader #Legend of Korra #Word Count: 2500-3000 #Macro/Micro #fluff if you ignore half the fic

[charliemcksstuff]

Please work. Please.

If a silent prayer was all Mk needed to be able to see him again, it was answered.

He opened his eyes and was met with a very messy looking Sun Wukong in a shining gold hue, staring off into a different direction as he was. His expression full of conflict and confusion.

“Monkey king!” Relief surfed through his tone like waves as tears pinpricked his eyes, making his vision blur slightly.

The great sage jumped at the noise, before his eyes darted everywhere around him until he was met with Mk’s translucent gold body. The tension in his shoulders left, and a smile made its way onto his face.

“Kid!” He exclaimed, intense eyes tracing down his very being.

The successor grinned, eyes still hanging on to their tears. “I’m so glad you’re okay! Your scroll was split in half by Azure Lion, I thought you died!” He watched as his mentors smile faltered at the mention of the lion, but it still slightly remained.

“Oh, no I’m okay. At least I think- cause y’know I’m immortal- anyway, the place I’m stuck in, it’s sort of split in half?- I’m pretty sure it’s because of the scroll being split. Do you think you can get me out of here?”

Mk paused briefly to look to his left, where Tang was presumably checking out Monkey King’s scroll.

“Tang is actually figuring out how to fix it right now! He said he’ll have to use magic to piece it together and then get you out of it- also, when you come back you’ll probably notice something different-”

Mk was then interrupted by a voice speaking to him, or as Wukong thought since the kid turned his head and started paying attention to something else.

But, noticing something different as soon as he gets back to the real world? That’s weird. Sure, he received a lot of things in the scroll which were from the outside world he was oh so oblivious to, but those were just like shockwaves and a lot of rumbling. Mk stopped his train of thought as he faced him again and said something about someone else joining their astral projection.

That person was Macaque, who was in a little bit of a rough shape. He was still the overbearingly pretty and dramatic looking Macaque he knew, just more disheveled and shaken up. And as soon as the demon laid eyes upon him, they were filled with a gentle hope. Hope so small yet still so genuine.

Im gonna stop there and let your mind wonder where this goes while I actually finish it off👍

#lmk macaque #lmk mk #lmk season 4 spoilers #lmk sun wukong #lmk season 4 #lmk qi xiaotian #lmk tang #lmk #lmk spoilers #now i need to add this to the pile of lmk fanfics #six eared macaque #lmk red son #monkie kid dbk #lmk pif #shadowpeachshipping #spicynoodleshipping

[beewolfwrites]

The Oar in the Sand - Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Seventh Day of Nostos

Here, have another chapter! Literally can’t wait for the reunion, but I also couldn’t help myself and decided to add some angst. Because it’s fun, and why not.

Enjoy :)

I honestly just keep forgetting to include these, but the AO3 link is here. 

____________________________________________

There was something beautiful about stepping into the pink and blue dusk of the evening. The sun had almost set, the sky streaked with vibrant pinks, lavenders and greys. There was a screech of metal above, and I looked up at the sleek hotel before me. The King of Hearts blimp billowed in a gust of heat, tilted, and drifted to the ground like a burning star. It collided into one of the neighbouring buildings, the explosion sending a shockwave of hot air blasting through the streets. 

I shielded my face with my forearm as a piece of paper whipped through the air and landed on my shoe. Picking it up, I realised it was a leaflet. The photograph on the cover was almost identical to the glossy skyscraper before me. The only thing absent was the busy influx of pedestrians and traffic outside. 

‘The Tokyo Horizon Hotel.’ 

I flipped it over, looking at the pictures one by one. Everything about the staff seemed artificial to me, from the pristine red blazers to their immaculate hairlines. Despite this, I instantly recognised that glint in her eye, a slyness disguised beneath a professional smile. She was sitting at the very reception desk I had been leaning against just hours before, posing for the camera.   

‘Izanami,’ I whispered, deep in thought. ‘She was the receptionist.’ 

A receptionist turned King. There was something unexpectedly funny about it, probably because it made absolute sense to me. She was the face of the hotel, having encountered every possible type of customer under the sun. She knew the ins and outs of the industry, was privy to the drama that occurred behind closed doors, and even the drama that filtered through the grapevine. Of course she was the King of Hearts; she knew exactly what made people tick.  

And now she was gone. It was a shame. If not for the circumstances, I could have become friends with someone so carefree and easy as she was. 

But I can still remember her. 

I could still carry her memory with me, like a token or a good luck charm. In a way, she had died so that I could live. I just had to make it count somehow. For now though, I needed to find my way back home. 

Back to Chishiya, to Kuina…

And back to my older brother, who was still out there, somewhere, waiting for me. 

I wandered deeper into the city using only the familiarity of the streets to guide me. Thick swathes of tall grass covered the pavements and roads, and it was difficult recognising store fronts through the vines and foliage. Scattered around in the grass, the bodies of players had been reduced to bones, each one a victim of the King of Spades. They were still carrying their weapons, their clothes now rags against their hollow white skeletons. It wasn’t right that a human body should decompose so quickly. It meant that my suspicions had been correct all along; time was altered here. The city was a jungle, and as I waded through the overgrowth, Izanami’s words haunted my mind. 

‘Life isn’t a race, it’s a labyrinth. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up going round and round in circles.’ 

Her dying words were uncanny. In her game, if I had simply carried on guessing answers at random, my points would have hovered around a neutral 25. I would have been trapped forever in that room, going round and round in circles. 

It really was like a labyrinth… 

How many times had I made a similar comparison with the city? Too many to count. It was as if she had read my thoughts, knew the ins and outs of my heart, as strange as it sounded. 

And now as I roamed the streets, deftly avoiding stepping on bony fingers and spines, I realised that Tokyo was opening up, welcoming me back inside its web. Even as the darkness of the evening skulked along the corners and alleyways, I followed my gut instinct, tracing a mental map until I turned onto a smaller side-street, coming to a stop before the small building opposite me.

The furniture store. 

There were no candles lit in the windows. No signs of life. I opened the door and slipped inside, tasting the dank mustiness of the air. It was cold, but everything was as it had been before we left. Our makeshift living room was still in place, the armchairs turned on each other in a circle, a flimsy coffee table between them. 

Inside the small kitchen, I found a can of Kuina’s favourite corn soup in one of the cupboards. And so, lighting a few candles on the windowsill, I prepared the portable stove we had used to fashion meals with so many times. It was on the kitchen surface, a little dusty but still usable. I poured the can of soup into a pan and left it to warm up as I explored upstairs. 

The staircase was dark, and the room upstairs even more so. But even in the darkness, I would have recognised that bed from anywhere. It was still as a photograph, a moment in time captured. The way the covers were thrown back, an indentation in each pillow, mine and Chishiya’s. It was only days ago, but it already felt like a fragment of our history. 

I ran my palm along the bedside table, searching for the one thing I had left behind. 

My ring should be here somewhere.

I wasn’t there. I searched the floors and under the bed, but my ring was nowhere to be seen. I raked my hand along every nook and cranny, feeling for its familiar shape, and only growing more and more frustrated when I couldn’t find it. This couldn’t be happening. It meant too much to me. 

I can’t lose it again!

The only explanation I could think of was that somebody had been here after us and they had taken it. Or, it had rolled away into a corner where I couldn’t see it. As impatient as I was, it was too dark to look properly, and so I begrudgingly resigned myself to waiting. 

I’ll have to look again tomorrow when it’s lighter. But still, my ring… 

Sighing, I headed back downstairs to my simmering corn soup. A warm bowlful later, and I was curled up in my old armchair, trying to fall asleep in the ambient candlelight but unable to shake off the fear that the King of Spades would turn up when I least expected it, and I would become one of those many skeletons.

I tried instead to turn my thoughts toward Chishiya. Finding him was my first priority right now. Now that I was clear-headed, I could understand his perspective a little more. The detachment, the alienation. He had never truly told me about the full extent of his isolation. Only that his parents had ignored him, and he had been mostly raised by the house staff. When he first told me, in the lingering quiet after we explored each other’s bodies, I hadn’t appreciated the full weight of that moment.

And the way he’d fired his pistol at Banda, and sat waiting outside after I’d barricaded myself in one of the cells. Even our conversation in the hospital, his adamance that he wouldn’t take part in a game with me. I had been adamant too. I was willing to play together, even if only one of us survived. 

‘Are you really willing to risk an outcome like that? How selfish?’

Back then, his words had thrown me off. They came across as strange and uncharacteristic, but in actuality, I was just blind.  

I understand now. 

I would feel it too. If Chishiya died in a game, where would that leave me? Wandering around Tokyo alone without a shred of hope. That kind of existence wasn’t worth living for. 

God, he was right. I’m really am that selfish… we both are. 

It was time to change things.  

But right now, my eyes were heavy, so heavy, and it was becoming impossible to keep my mind from slipping away into a velvety slumber. Curled up in my armchair, I watched the light of the candle flames flickering on the wall like shadow puppets, until I fell into a heady, dreamless sleep. 

________________________________________________

My eyes flew open. 

I was still curled in my armchair, my neck stiff. However, the cold room was bathed in darkness.  The candles on the window ledge had blown out, and only faint slant of moonlight filtered through the window, illuminating the armchair across from me. 

A shiver brushed the back of my neck.

Someone’s here. 

I gently unfurled myself, listening carefully for any indication of footsteps or breathing. There was nothing. Everything in the room was exactly where it was supposed to be. It was just the candles. I got up and walked towards the window, inspecting them. The wax around the wick was still warm and liquid. It could only mean they had been blown out recently. 

Raising my head to the window pane, I saw my tired reflection staring back at me. And then I froze. A dark, familiar face grinned from behind me, hovering just over my shoulder. There was a click, and I felt the barrel of a gun press into my back.

‘Don’t even fucking think of moving.’

I should have known Niragi would find me eventually. It was only a matter of time. Although it was actually rather impressive that he was still clinging to the revenge he craved for his burn scars. It was an act of self defence, and most people would have moved on by now. 

He’s not most people, clearly. 

‘You’re the same as ever,’ I said, stifling a yawn. ‘Always trying to show off your guns. It must be tiring.’ 

‘I could say the same thing. Not going to show off that terrible foreigner’s accent?’ 

‘I don’t need to.’ I stuck to my native tongue, looking him straight in the eye through our reflections in the glass. ‘I know you can understand me.’ 

Niragi pulled a face of disinterest, but beneath the facade I could see his curiosity. 

‘Back at the Beach, when you first confronted me about Chishiya’s plans, you seemed to be able to understand me even when I wasn’t speaking in Japanese. It was the same when I was at the bar, right before…’ His mouth quirked in self-satisfaction, and I dropped the sentence altogether. ‘And on the rooftop. You understood everything.’ 

He scoffed, jerking the gun harder against my spine. ‘What, did you think I’m an idiot or something? I went to school, obviously.’

‘You could have fooled me.’ 

It was only a mutter, but Niragi had heard it all the same. Grabbing my shoulder, he dragged me away from the window and forced me to sit in the armchair. I leaned back, crossing one leg over the other. He sat in the chair across from me, the handgun still pointed at my chest. 

‘You clearly have something planned,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I’d be dead by now.’ 

‘Well done, genius. Even though I’d love to put a bullet in your brain, there’s something else I’d like to do. Something more fun.’ 

Niragi looked terrible. There was a strange gleam in his eye, and the charred remains of his hair were an unruly against the scarred rivers running along his skin. Even his clothes were in tatters. It was a wonder, after everything he had done, that he was even still alive. 

‘We’re going to wait here for a while,’ he continued, ‘and then you and I are going to go for a little walk.’ 

I can see where this is going. 

A walk was never just a walk when Niragi was involved. I sighed deeply, knowing that I was at least safe for now. At this point, Niragi was too predictable for his own good. No doubt, he was going to take me to wherever Chishiya was just so he could have the satisfaction of killing one of us in front of the other. But if he led me to Chishiya, I would happily go along with his plan for now. 

Niragi hummed with fascination, the sound breaking through my thoughts. ‘You seem awfully compliant. What happened to the feisty little zebra who clawed at me?’ 

‘You have a gun and I don’t,’ I replied, nodding towards the handgun resting on his knee. ‘And I have no intention of dying just yet. My brother’s waiting for me.’ 

His mouth curling into a jagged smile. ‘Your brother, hm? What makes you think he’s still alive? He could be one of those skeletons out there, you know.’ 

The thought gave me pause for a moment, but I held my ground. I knew better. ‘He’s not dead. He’s in the other world. The real world, I mean.’ 

‘The real world.’ Something flashed in Niragi’s eyes, as if I had touched on his favourite subject. ‘Which world is the real world? You can live freely here. There are none of those man-made laws to hold you back from giving into your human instincts. You can kill or rape as many people as you want, take whatever drugs you what, there’s nobody to stop you. You can die freely too.’ 

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. ‘Well, since you’re here in this place, I’d much rather go back.’ 

Niragi didn’t seem fazed by the mild insult. If anything, there was a smugness about him, as though everything was vaguely funny. ‘You know, I’m surprised you’re here all alone,’ he said. ‘I assumed Chishiya would have come back, but clearly not.’ 

Now that was unexpected. 

‘You’ve seen him?’   

‘Perhaps.’ 

‘And you didn’t kill him.’  

Niragi shrugged. ‘Why would I, when I can kill both of you at once?’ 

I couldn’t hold back a snicker. ‘What, are you going to line us both up and try to do it with one bullet?’ 

His smile disappeared. The gun was against my forehead faster than I could blink. Niragi’s fingers were in my hair, against my scalp, pulling my head back until my face was mere inches from his. I let out an involuntary gasp, but tried to meet his gaze squarely. I couldn’t show him any fear. Not now. 

‘Don’t you fucking dare laugh at me,’ he snarled. I could smell blood on his breath, could feel the cold barrel of the gun against my temple. ‘I could easily kill you right now and spare myself the trouble.’ 

‘I’m sure you could,’ I murmured. ‘But we both know it wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying.’ 

He released my head violently, throwing me against the back of the armchair as he sat back down in his own. Through the window, the first streaks of a red dawn had finally appeared across the hazy concrete skyline. 

Niragi was quiet for a few minutes. He checked the bullets in his gun before sliding the mechanism back into place. ‘Get up,’ he ordered. ‘We’re leaving.’ 

I stood and looked over my shoulder at the stairs. Now that dawn was here, I would be able to see everything better. ‘Can I at least go to the bathroom before we go?’ 

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Where is it?’

‘It’s just at the top of the stairs.’ I waved a hand at the staircase. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be quick.’ 

He stood up, gesturing to the stairs with his gun. ‘You’ve got two minutes. If you try anything, I’ll shoot you in the foot and you’ll have to walk on it.’ 

‘Fine. Two minutes is all I need.’ 

I sprung up the stairs and made a beeline for the bed I shared with Chishiya. His familiar scent still lingered on the linen, and it sent a sharp ache running through my chest. I would have given anything to go back to that time. It was turbulent, yes, but there were moments of sanctuary. 

I pushed thought away.  

Don’t get distracted! You don’t have long. 

That’s right. I now had less than two minutes to find this ring. I got to my knees, searching the gap behind the bedside table in case it had rolled off the edge. There was no sign of it. Growing more and more desperate, I pressed my face to the floor as I peered under the bed. No matter how hard I looked, the ring was nowhere to be seen. I was busy checking under the neighbouring bed when in the slant of light beneath the frame, I saw Niragi’s feet appear in the doorway. 

‘Oi! Get out of there before I drag you out.’ 

I crawled out from under the bed. Frustratingly, my ring was still missing. It must have rolled away into a dark corner somewhere in the crannies of the room. I hated being without it, but there really was nothing I could do. 

‘I lost something up here last night,’ I tried to explain myself. ‘While I was here I thought I’d check before we left.’ 

Niragi marched around the bed and grasped the back of my clothes, hauling me towards the doorway. 

‘Move!’ When I was too slow, he jabbed the gun firmly against my spine and pushed me forward. ‘Hurry the fuck up!’ 

Pff, you’re not going to shoot me. Not right now anyway. 

With the gun between my shoulder blades once more, I silently allowed Niragi to lead me down the stairs and out of the store. Dawn had broken, and to my surprise, the overgrown jungle was softened by birdsong. I hadn’t expected to hear birds singing in the middle of Tokyo. Only the flap of pigeons roaming around for scraps of food. But on second thought, nature had taken back the city. The birds had every right to flock here. 

Niragi didn’t tell me where we were heading, and I didn’t dare ask. I knew better than to goad him on further. I would keep walking and walking until Niragi gestured towards a new direction with his gun. It was a mystery to me, how he knew where he was going. I could only imagine that he had spied on Chishiya and worked out where he was staying. 

The sun was high in the sky, reaching a mid morning simmer when faint voices sounded from somewhere nearby. Niragi paused behind me, then pushed me forward in a vague direction. 

‘Keep moving,’ he hissed. 

I felt his breath against the shell of my ear and flinched away. He chuckled lightly at my reaction, but I refused to show him how it affected me. He wouldn’t take my dignity from me. 

Not again. Never again. 

The voices grew increasingly louder, and as we rounded a corner, I began to recognise the structures, the familiar crosswalks. 

Shibuya crossing?

I had visited this place with my brother on the day after we landed in Tokyo. In fact, his friend’s apartment was only a couple of minutes away. It was so different now that it was swamped in foliage. 

There were two figures in the distance, standing between abandoned cars on what would have been the iconic crosswalk. My heart pounded when I saw a shock of white, that familiar hoodie, his blond hair. It was Chishiya. But despite seeing him only a day ago, he looked so different. His face was darker, more mature, and his expression was strange. There was apathy there as usual, but lurking beneath that thin surface, there was something troubled about him. He was talking to Arisu, who appeared to be holding a rifle in both hands. Neither of them had noticed us standing there. 

I opened my mouth to call out to them, only for a hand on my shoulder to shove me back. Niragi pushed in front of me, raising his gun. 

No! 

Everything slowed, blurring into a haze as I launched myself at Niragi, wrapping my arms around him and clawing at his hands in a furious attempt to grab his gun. He buckled under my assault, letting out a guttural growl as he shoved his palm into my face, trying to push me away. I saw my opportunity, sinking my teeth into the dirty skin of his hand. 

‘Fuck! Get off, you rat!’ 

I bit down harder, ignoring the taste of dirt and blood on my tongue. However, Niragi twisted his entire body, throwing me to the ground before storming forward. 

Winded and wheezing, I scrabbled to my feet. ‘Niragi, don’t!’ 

‘Watch me,’ He grinned and pointed the gun once more at the pair. At him. 

Please, don’t!

I moved forward, my eyes on the one person I wanted by my side. I was too far to reach him and push him out of the way, and there was no way I could get to the gun in time. 

But I can still shout… 

‘Chi—’

My voice was silenced by the gunshot that ricochetted across Shibuya. Chishiya’s body twisted, the force of the impact knocking him to the ground. Blood splattered across his chest, tainting the white of his hoodie. 

#alice in borderland #aib #chishiya #chishiya shuntaro #Chishiya x reader #chishiya x oc #Imawa no Kuni no Arisu

[excessive-vampires]

Danger in Numbers Part 3: Fallout

Masterlist

The force of the shockwave was so hard that for a moment after Cassie’s head hit the ground every member of Sweethive lost consciousness. 

Then the universe slowly came back. Carter pulled his car off the road and Sweethive thanked whoever invented the safety feature that stopped you from drifting into oncoming traffic. Kara picked herself up off the kitchen floor, her shirt covered in heavily sauced pasta and a cracked ceramic bowl a foot from her head. Mel hurriedly got their burnt brownies out of the oven before they burned down their home. Silas surveyed the damage as he coughed dust and smoke from his lungs. There was fire and rubble everywhere. The stage was completely destroyed. Everyone was screaming. He carefully made his way towards the press area. 

Cassie couldn’t move. Perceiving her surroundings was difficult for Sweethive so Silas didn’t know exactly where to go. Sweethive assumed Cassie was trapped under rubble until her brain began to process sensation enough to realize that whatever was on top of her was much softer than wood and concrete and crystal. 

Someone pulled whatever was on top of Cassie off and suddenly she could see. She looked over to see what had been pinning her and felt every single bonded heart of Sweethive skip a beat. 

Drew Findhive was being dragged off of her. His body had taken the brunt of the force of the explosion and there were pieces of the stage embedded in his back. Cassie tried to crawl over to him but a strong hand grabbed her shoulder. “You okay, Sweet?”

Cassie looked up and Sweethive was confused by the unfamiliar face in front of them. 

“Drew’s alive, don’t worry. We’re a doctor as well as an incorrigible flirt.” 

Then it clicked. “F-Find?” 

“Yeah.”

Cassie sobbed and the rest of the hive struggled to keep dry eyes. “You saved… You saved our Cassie.”  

“Drew’s body is tough, and a medical degree often comes with protective instincts.”

Cassie took a deep breath and nodded. “Another one of us is on his way, he wasn’t injured, we can help you.” 

“Sweet, we’ve got this, okay? Go see if there’s anyone who no one else is helping if you want, but don’t over-exert Cassie’s body. She probably has a concussion.” 

By the nausea building in Cassie’s gut, Sweethive could tell Findhive was right. But everyone else in the hive felt it in their own stomachs so maybe it was just fear. Cassie gave one last look to both Findhive members, then got up slowly and surveyed her surroundings, Sweethive was trying to figure out where she was in relation to Silas. Then Cassie heard a muffled cry. 

She made her way towards it, careful until she saw a newly familiar face with blood dripping into her short purple hair. Then she started moving as fast as she could. 

By the time Cassie got to the newest Exohive member she could tell what was muffling the woman’s cries. The rubble on her chest was suffocating her slowly. 

Sweethive tried to figure out the best angle from which to move the rubble without crushing the woman’s chest further while at the same time trying to figure out the best way to safely move the unconscious people Silas had seen out of the path of the approaching fire. Every single one of them jumped when a hand grabbed Cassie’s shoulder. 

“Cassie! Are you okay?” Alex asked, the relief in his voice palpable. 

Cassie turned around. “Just hit my head. I’ll live.” She pointed at the woman. “Need to help her.” 

“Moving the rubble could make her wounds worse…” Alex said. 

“Look at her, Alex! She can’t breathe!” Sweethive wasn’t actually sure which member the growled exclamations had come from. High emotion and head wounds could make lines like that blurry. 

Alex looked at the woman struggling to force unintelligible words out of her mouth. He nodded. 

They moved the rubble slowly, and just enough that she could get air in her lungs again. That made her words easier to hear. 

“Rose…” she said weakly. 

Cassie rushed to her side. “Exo, does Rose need help? Where is she?” 

“Rose!” The woman repeated, with enough desperation that this time Sweethive realized she wasn’t trying to tell them something about Rose. She was calling out for Rose. “Where…” 

Hives could always feel every member, even if they were unconscious there was at least a muted buzz of physical sensation and dreams. So this member crying out for Rose like this could only mean…

Kara and Mel began to cry. Cassie took a deep breath and got down beside the woman. She was becoming more and more hysterical and trying to move, which probably wasn’t good for her injuries. Sweethive needed to calm her down. 

“Hey,” Cassie said. “Exo, calm down. W—I’ve got you.” Sweethive remembered Alex was there at the last second. 

“Who…” she squinted, trying to focus. 

Okay they could comfort Exo and still be subtle about this. Cassie put a hand on her arm. “It’s honeybee, darling.” That was what Exohive used to call Sweethive after Carlos witnessed Silas lean in so close to a sweet-smelling flower that he spent the next minute sneezing out the pollen he’d inhaled.

“Honeybee…” the woman said softly. “I’m scared.” 

“It’s okay.” Silas heard distant sirens. “Help is almost here, you just have to hold on.” 

“It’s…” she sobbed. “It’s so quiet.” 

A terrible sinking feeling settled into Sweethive’s collective. They had to fight to keep Cassie’s hand on the woman’s arm. To not let Silas drop the person he was carrying away from the flames. To get Mel to the sink before they vomited on the floor.

#hive

[sineala]

Captain America/Iron Man: Invasion Force

Hi, internet! I'd like to tell you the story of how I discovered a glorious piece of new 616 Steve/Tony canon that has somehow remained unknown to us for twenty-four years! A lost treasure! And it's great.

So for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, a couple days ago I was looking for digital versions of the recent Captain America/Iron Man miniseries. (Yes, I legally own it in issues, trade, and digitally. I own it many times.) And those came up, all right. But what also came up was something I'd literally never heard of, called Captain America/Iron Man: Invasion Force. And I thought this was weird because, as a Steve/Tony fan, I figured I'd heard of all the Steve/Tony miniseries there were, right? But this was new. This was a four-issue team-up miniseries I had never even heard of and here it was on the internet. I'm not going to link it, but if you like to, um, read comics online, you know what I mean, right?

The upload dates on this thing were this April, but the miniseries was dated 1998. At this point I was wondering how in the world there was a Volume 3 Steve/Tony team-up I'd never heard of. And then I clicked on it and it was even weirder, because it was a bunch of tiny blurry lo-res screenshots of a comic being displayed panel by panel in a program I didn't recognize. But it definitely looked like 1998-era Steve & Tony art; it was clearly a legit comic.

We have so very, very few actual Steve/Tony team-up comics and so finding a brand new one that none of us had ever heard of before was a treat. And it's actually a fun read! This is delightful!

So I did some digging (and also Magic did some digging) and it turns out that this is from a long-defunct free digital comics line that Marvel ran from 1996 to 2000, consisting of what they called Marvel CyberComics, which is the most 1996 name I have ever heard. I hear modem dial-up noises in my head when I read that. CyberComics were new original comics for a wide variety of superheroes that were basically comics that had been lightly animated as Shockwave files, with some sound effects.

Eventually Marvel took those down from their website and I gather that they don't have the source files anymore, but, according to a 2011 CBR article, the guy who wrote a lot of them, D. G. Chichester, did in fact still have the source files, and in 2011 he put the Cap/IM one up on YouTube (1, 2, 3, 4). And from then on they languished in obscurity -- as of yesterday I think Part 4 had something like 24 views -- and then a couple months ago someone screenshot all of them, and here we are.

(They are hard to read, especially on the YouTube version -- you can zoom in a whole lot on the RCO screenshots -- but the YouTube version preserves the animation, so it's more fun in that respect. The first video doesn’t have sound, but the rest do.)

Captain America/Iron Man: Invasion Force is pretty fun. 1998 is one of my very favorite time periods for Steve & Tony and I am so excited that there is an entire brand-new team-up miniseries from that era of them being friends and punching aliens together. They have some nice banter and it's a fun team-up and they have each other's backs the whole way through and the ending is nice and happy and it's a fun read and I am just so happy that there is new Steve & Tony content from my favorite era. It is a shiny new present for all of us.

Also, if you are a Steve/Tony fan, you will probably enjoy the beginning of the first issue a whole lot.

We open with Tony and the beautiful woman he has taken on his yacht, because of course he has a yacht. They are having a great time together and are clearly interested in having an even better time in the near future, at which point Steve shows up at Tony's yacht to interrupt his hot date and tell him that they have to go meet aliens. You know, the plot. So Tony tells his date to head belowdecks and get started without him, although at this point it is pretty obvious he won't be continuing the activity he had planned.

And then Steve apologizes for ruining his date, and the conversation goes like this:

STEVE: Sorry for the visit, Stark. TONY: No, you're not. You live for this "duty calls" routine, Captain America. I hope you're not waiting for me to salute. STEVE: I expect you're saving that for the young lady. TONY: I'll make you a copy of the video. What's this about, soldier?

So I'm reading along, going, okay, okay, Steve's apologizing, that's sweet. Tony's having some snarky banter. And then Steve is MAKING A DIRTY JOKE ABOUT TONY'S BONER???? And in response, Tony is OFFERING TO MAKE HIM A SEX TAPE???????

Like, uh. None of that went where I expected it to go. At all.

And, hey, now we can all enjoy the knowledge that Steve is the kind of guy who likes to make dirty jokes about Tony's dick, and now 616 can join Ults in "list of comics universes where Tony canonically offers a sex tape of himself to Steve." Just bros being bros, uh, watching each other's sex tapes. These guys, internet. I can't even.

I just. Yeah. I'm going to need to contemplate this.

And, honestly, the rest of it is pretty good, too! They team up! They defeat the bad guys! They each have a fun interior monologue about their motivations, and the end is very sweet, as Steve thanks Tony for his help and Tony, uh, offers to buy him a desert island.

Anyway, Invasion Force here is a fun Steve & Tony team-up with some excellent banter, friendship, and fighting aliens together. It is a lost comic from one of my personal favorite Avengers eras, and also it contains some fun commentary on Tony's personal life. I am so glad that we have now refound it and all of Steve/Tony fandom can enjoy it.

#posts i actually wrote

[48787]

New Transmission The fucking Scientific Instrument Class Pseudocons apparently developed what they're calling "Hetero Sapience" and are corrupting the brainmodules of the non-Pseudo 'cons around them by using annoying xenophilosophy words. Soundwave tells me they're 'Greek' and 'Latin' words, apparently. Cool, I guess? Anyway, if you see any SI Class 'cons causing... issues, just try your hardest to turn your brainmodule off before you start getting infected with their weird lingo, alongside all the other issues pertaining to letting the SI Pseudocons transmit data into your brainmodule in their own weird ways. Thundercracker, on a bet with Starscream, tried to get into an argument with one of them and his head literally exploded when it started talking about Alpha Trion's "Mythological Origins" in its weird dialect. He's mostly fine, CR Pods are working at 'peak' efficiency, but the facial reconstruction is apparently impossible due to some kind of corruption. I thought it was just some weird prank but there weren't even any scorch marks or anything. Just exploded. So yeah, just avoid optical contact and auditory contact to the best of your ability and you should be fine. Otherwise, try to force-shutdown your brainmodule if you can. Shockwave is working on a cure right now, mostly because I know he had something to do with this in the first place so he's going to be the one to fix it. He probably wanted a greater justification to do that weird data-transfer idea he mentioned previously. But it also explains the weird Thunderwing hypotheticals he's been asking me lately... Can I go one fucking cycle without someone trying to "Perfect Thunderwing's Work" or whatever other idiotic drivel that I keep finding our limited energon reserves siphoned into?? It's not even a Shockwave thing, it's like every damn Cybertronian these days thinks they have the "Missing piece of the puzzle" or whatever. In fact, Shockwave might be doing this as a weird threat against the other R&D 'cons to cement himself as the one and only Decepticon "Allowed" to have resources wasted on projects like that. Ugh, now that I think about it, that's probably a correct assumption and he's probably gonna expect me to thank him for it later. Ugh, and he's probably literally right. Ugh. At least his repairs both to himself and to his lab seem to be mostly complete so further research into the SI project should hopefully come along a little faster. Both Shockwave and Soundwave think the SIs could potentially be used as some kind of specialty weapon, but we'll have to see how they work on sparkless lifeforms, like biological lifeforms or xenomechanical lifeforms. The SIs don't seem to corrupt each other, but Shockwave keeps reaffirming that they're not "Sparkless Lifeforms" because they "were never lifeforms to begin with"... but I think he's trying to hide something. Usually Soundwave is the one to pick up on that kind of technological obfuscation, but he actually agreed with Shockwave and offered to send Ratbat to try to work out exactly what each "sapient" SI is now capable of on a personal level. We could have just had regular Cybertronians aboard to fill the role SIs fill. I would've preferred K Class to fill any role an SI could fill in all honesty!! But no, constructing cold wasn't enough, we just had to try to learn how to "Construct Frozen" and the "Absolute Zeroes" just had to be put on my ship. Whatever. I've probably said too much already. This was supposed to be a warning for my ship crew, but it's looking like it'll end up being transcribed on the golden disk as well so when this new Scientific Instruments of Destruction project backfires in some absurdly bombastic way there will at least be something remaining that says I was right. End of Transmission

New Transmission Okay so I was right, but so was Shockwave and Soundwave. Or, well, they were right just enough to make sure the backfire is postponed for at least another handful of cycles. Ratbat is still in CR from the investigation, but the cure Shockwave developed seems to be effective and Thundercracker is out and aiding the repair effort. Shockwave is now in contact with one of the SIs digitally and the other few are... integrating due to the personal efforts of Soundwave. I suppose now would be pertinent to mention not all the SIs developed the "Hetero Sapience" condition, many of them are safe for interaction. Soundwave is also currently monitoring their presence, Ravage is tasked with the regular SIs and Laserbeak is tasked with the "Sapient" SIs. Shockwave probably knows exactly what caused this event but he is preoccupied with the one he no doubt is either indoctrinating or ruthlessly interrogating. Report to Soundwave if you see any suspicious behavior, he has been working very hard to ensure the SIs have their purpose clearly defined (And closely monitored). And, Starscream, stop trying to convince the SIs that you are the leader of this ship. Not only have the majority of your efforts been wasted on subsentient automata, the only one you have actually found who possesses the ability to truly listen to you immediately came to the bridge to complain about you. They were the first sapient SI I communicated with directly and it was because they felt the need to complain about you. I almost feel embarrassed for you. Come back to the bridge so you can apologize to it or so I can teach it how to laugh at you. It's practicing right now actually! This moment of chaos should hopefully be largely under control now, the actual "population" of Scientific Instrument Class Pseudocons was actually quite fewer than initially expected due to an indexing error incorrectly labeling certain shells as SI class. At the very least, we have some more specialty warriors because of it all. End of Transmission EOF

#yippie peace through tyranny!! #nemesis posting #Decepticon High Command Slice of Life rambles #Matrix Visions #I like this “chat” font I think it's cool #spacebridge still needs more time in the oven unfortunately #I'm also procrastinating on that because I can't seem to wrap my head around guestmount but do not want to send backup files one at a time #wegh. It'll get done. Eventually. #I'll have so much more bullshit once I actually finish the damn comic my wife radically altered my life with hehehe #I cannot wait to start posting about Alpharius Trionicon. He's the fucking worst if you couldn't tell by name alone and I love him so much #Anyway I just had a very specific joke/pun in my head in the shower then it turned into a whole *thing* like it usually does. #I usually don't explain shit but the shower idea centered around getting the SI acronym to work for hyper specific jokes. #Still can't decide if I want to lock in on “Scientific Instrument” because it fits *so well* for *so many reasons* #But “Synthetic Intelligence” is more generic in a more understandable way... Eeh.. It's a little *too* generic. “Instrument” is cooler. #Once my wife helps me understand her lil fucker more I'll come up with an even shitter joke using “Y/N” so I can do Y/N x SI x SI bullshit! #Oh! The matrix triune project is coming along slowly as well!! I think I mentioned that microphone project once or twice now hehe #I'm gonna make so many shitty covers of songs once I get the soundproofing to start focusing on vocal training stuff #It's been quite a fun time aboard the nemesis!! There's so much to “Blog” about that it's hard to really know when to start *or* stop hehe! #And the fact that all these projects are all interwoven is so fucking wonderful!! I FINALLY feel able to fully grasp my own focus!! #My brain is like a particle collider for certain interests now. I can reliably just.. Spit things out and tie it into the other interests! #It's sometimes exhausting but in such a new way. Like a relieving exhaustion? #Still figuring that part out!! #Anyway that's enough personal project vagueposting I should really be getting back to work hehe this was fun

[reel-fear]

Any shockbee headcanons you haven't shared here? 👀

GOSH,,, theres probably a few considering how obsessed with them I am and I certainly will never quite be done talking abt them KJNDSFKJGNSFDGKJNDFGSD.

I'm not sure if this is a hc or more speculating on a possible au but I think if Shockwave had told Bee who he was before things went all fucky with Wasp and such Bee would've been shocked yes but I don't think Bee would've wanted to turn him in. I think at first he very much would've underestimated how big of a deal dating a secret con would be and would just kind of treat it like a cool forbidden romance which would end with both side happily singing together. If you've ever heard "We See The Light"from something rotten yeah thats how Bee imagines it I think.

More on speculating on that idea I wish we had more fics exploring the idea of a world where in boot camp Shockwave came clean bc I think Bee being kinda ignorant in his understanding of the cons would be an interesting idea to explore. Bee tells him to just join the autobots bc they are the "good guys" and doesnt realize how tasteless that is. He insists the autobots would react better to Shockwave being a con than is likely bc Shockwaves 'not like the other cons' idk I think it would be interesting drama-

Bumblebee in boot camp was very prone to letting his insecurities and his inner fears make a fool of himself in their relationship. I think if Longarm started to get in good will with almost any other mech Bee would've started PANICKING thinking it would most certainly be the perfect excuse for Longarm to drop him like a piece of trash and ditch him. Which leads to him purposely doing dumb stuff to impress Longarm and try to keep his relationship a float. Sometimes its funny, sometimes its tiring and Shockwave was prolly relieved to see Bee go through a bit of development with not being so insecure bc yeah Bee kinda lets them get to him sometimes-

Bee has a HUGE tendency in boot camp to give into peer pressure and then drag Longarm into it. Ironhide brought vodka into the barracks? Well quick Longarm we have to drink it too otherwise we're chicken! Shockwave finds it somewhat endearing bc it leads to him doing things he never would have otherwise and its fun to be reckless sometimes but also Bee please put the fireworks away this isn't worth street cred-

Bee is very openly affectionate in front of others, Shockwave rarely stops him bc they are very touch starved and I think I've said this before but if the cons/autobots ever made a Warrior cats style 'its illegal to date people on the opposite faction' law punishable by death they would die first-

Bee has undiagnosed dyslexia, Longarm quickly becomes his proof reader for reports and boot camp assignments.

Bee has a ton of posters, decorations and strange things in his room, Longarm has those set ups people make fun of for being the pinnacle of single men having no decorations or furniture.

Longarm keeps a diary type book full of reports on day to day activities just for himself, Bee has started several diaries and uses them for a few days before ditching them.

As far as Shockwave is concerned every joke is funny as long as Bee is the one saying it and nobody agrees but Bee loves it.

Shockwave fidgets and moves his antlers a lot when he is thinking, he denies this but Bee has noticed it a lot. He's pretty much memeorized most of Longarm's fidgets and general way he acts

Bc of this I think if Shockwave were to meet Bee and just pretend he was unrelated to Longarm n such Bee would actually piece the truth out himself bc he was never observent in class, but he could stare at his wonderful boyfriend Longarm for hours...

Autism and ADHD love they have <3 their brains just click together a lot of the time and Bee helps Longarm unlearn his constant need to mask.

These are all the ones I can think of rn, really trying to avoid treading over ground I already touched on KJDNSFGKJDNFSGKJNFDGSD, EITHER WAY, I hope u like hearing me spill more brain thoughts-

#tfa #shockbee #tfa shockwave #tfa bumblebee #ramblez #yea Ill put this in the tags why not

[toastingpencils37]

List of Ninjago City events that have and have not caused power outages.

This is mainly going to be a list with a few analyses & theories dropped here and there.

I am listing this chronologically by season, but not DR, mainly because during the events in Episodes 1 & 20, it is not clear if there was any power outages or not.

This list is specifically events impacting Ninjago City, so events such as the Preeminent attacking Stiix is not going to be listed.

If I have missed events that you feel are important to list, feel free to let me know! I will fix it and credit you on the catch.

Season 1

Great Devourer Attack: No power outage, based on the TVs and everything still being on

Season 2

Stone Army Attack (Day Ninjago Stood Still): No power outage, based on Gayle Gossip being able to broadcast on the news that everyone should evacuate.

Overlord Attack: Power outage. No building lights shown during this time. Power outage appears to be caused by weird Overlord magic opposed to something being actually knocked out in the Grid.

Season 3:

Storm Farm: Power outage. Probably most obvious one, based on there being a whole episode where the end goal is the ninja to take out Ninjago City's power corrupted by the Overlord. Possibly longest lasting outage in the show, with it being confirmed to have gone on for days by the angry citizens. At this point, it is confirmed that Ninjago City has one source of power. The Storm Farms are probably still used after Season 3, but it isn't that hard to believe that Ninjago City decided to use other sources for their power grid after this point as well.

Season 6:

Ninjago City Being Split and Pieces Starting to Float: No power outage for whole City. Gayle Gossip and NGTV news is shown broadcasting about the issue. Areas that got split and floated away probably lost power though, due to literally being disconnected from the grid.

Season 7:

Forward Time Blade: Brief power outage (if I'm remembering correctly). Power went off for a couple seconds and then came back on, and in the Bounty's case, sent alarms going off.

(Note about Present Getting Messed With in the Finale: Even though power is confirmed to be gone, I'm not counting this as either a power outage or no power outage, because the present was changed to not have electronics whatsoever)

Season 8:

Emperor Garmadon Attack: No power outage. Billboards are still shown lit up and everything

Season 9:

Emperor Garmadon's Reign: No power outage. Despite the City being a wreck, lights & TVs are still shown to be on.

Season 10:

Oni Attack: Power Outage. It is shown that when the Oni tendrils gets close to lights, and almost everything else electrical, they get shut off. Like the Overlord attack of Season 2, nothing in the grid is actually knocked out, but the power outage is initiated by magical means.

Season 11:

Aspheera Attack: No power outage. Despite fire balls being everywhere, power still appears to be on everywhere.

Preeminent Attack (Kaiju Protocol): No power outage. Despite buildings getting absoutely battered from the Preeminent's impacts, building lights are still shown to be on. And when PIXAL plugs herself into the electrical generator, there are not any effects actually shown.

Season 12:

Prime Empire Initiation: No power outage. This may not be important to add, but for a shockwave affecting electronics, it noticeably only turned off video games for a split second, then reprogrammed them as Prime Empire.

Unagami Attack: No noticeable power outage. Borg Tower still has power functioning, but that could just be Borg Tower. We see nothing indicating that power is out for the rest of the City.

Season 14:

Wojira Pulse (Episode 2): No noticeable power outage. We see the shock wave hit the city, but don't see the effects. But based on how it affected the Monastery, which was also hit, electricity was not affected at all. Only water. (Probaby due to Kalmaar trying to wake up Wojira while she only had the Wave amulet)

Wojira Attack: Power outage. In the beginning of the attack, we see the lights and everything still on. But as the attack proceeds, we also see lights flicker and die out, and at the end of the attack, little to no lights still on.

Season 15:

Shockwave From Draining Nya's Power: Power outage. And it's an obvious one. We see the power go right after the shockwave hits certain parts of the City, with building lights going completely black. One strange thing to note however is that the Monastery's power is not shown to be affected in the aftermath. First most believable circumstance was that the shockwave had not gained enough power yet to knocked power out. Second most believable circumstance is that the shockwave briefly knocked the power out for a second or two, and then rebooted quickly.

Overlord Attack: Power outage. Like Season 2's attack, the outage was caused by magical means, with the temple emitting a radiation that targeted electrical devices.

I honestly wanted the make this mainly to show how strong Ninjago City's power grid appears to be. Also, it appears that usually when there is a power outage, the Overlord is in some way involved.

I was originally going to make a short post about the Overlord, and then decided in the shower to do a whole list. And in a few days, I'll probably start a rewatch of the entire Ninjago show just to look for boats, and then post the first list in a few weeks. Which I also thought about doing while in the shower.

#ninjago #ninjago city #ns1 #ninjago rise of the snakes #ns2 #ninjago legacy of the green ninja #ns3 #ninjago rebooted #ns6 #ninjago skybound #ns7 #ninjago hot #ninjago hands of time #ns8 #ninjago sog #ninjago sons of garmadon #ns9 #ninjago hunted #ns10 #ninjago moto #ninjago march of the oni #ns11 #ninjago sotfs #ninjago secrets of the forbidden spinjitzu #ns12 #ninjago prime empire #ns14 #ninjago seabound #ns15 #ninjago crystalized