#thank you so much alex for making these! they were so so fun and easy to use!!

[acotars]

Read in 2023:

“By the power of Phil Collins, I rebuke you!” she said. “By the power of Phil Collins, who knows that you coming back to me is against all odds, in his name I command you to leave this servant of Genesis alone!” x

MY BEST FRIEND’S EXORCISM by Grady Hendrix ★★★★

#litedit #bookedit #horrorlitedit #horroredit #i linked the tag to her posts above but so many of these assets came from @cruellesummer's collage kits! #thank you so much alex for making these! they were so so fun and easy to use!! #cruellesummerkits #my best friend's exorcism #grady hendrix #gradyhendrixedit #edits* #all #2023*

[nfwmybaby]

to be alone (with you)

_↷pairing: andrew x reader (tried my best to make reader as gender neutral as possible) ˎˊ˗

_↷word count: 1.3k ˎˊ˗

_↷warnings: cigarettes, making out ? ˎˊ˗

♡┊͙thinking about sharing a cigarette with him!! first fic pls go easy on me 😭

“I love you too, Andrew. And I love being alone with you as well.” You take a hit of the cigarette you stole from Andy’s right hand. You don’t know how long you stayed in that position for. How long the soft shake of the trees and the quiet of your heart beating played a soundtrack fond to Andrew. He could die, then and there, and he would not care if heaven and hell existed afterwards, because he’d already experienced something greater than heaven— you.

The sound of music and conversations surrounded the house. It carried itself through every hall, every room, only to be let out by the opened windows, and even then you could hear it from a mile away. Thank goodness Andrew’s house was miles away from the rest of civilization.

“Y/N!” A person calls for you, snapping you out of your thoughts, “Andy went to hide away in one of the rooms again!”

Christ sake.

Why had you even accepted the invitation to the outing knowing you would just be put on Andy-watch? As the constant chatter of people were starting to make your skin crawl, you were albeit a little thankful to be given the perfect chance to crawl away. You understood why he would leave his own party, some people started getting way too much. Still, couldn’t he have told you as to where he was going?

“Alright I’ll go find him.”

“Thank you! And tell him Alex is one minute away from leaving if he’s unattached from Andrew any more.”

You joke, “Fucking boyfriends” And with that you walk away, grabbing a plate of brownies before pulling out your phone to open Andrew’s contact up.

The people are looking for you

Are they sending you to look for me again?

Yes.

I come alone.

Baring peace and some brownies, if you let me

🧐

Is it the brownies I like best?

If you mean the ones I make, yes!

Peace offer accepted.

I’m technically outside.

Have fun trying to find me <3

Oh my god you hate to see me

Quite the contrary, I love to see you, especially when you’re all annoyed

I hate you, Andrew John Hozier-Byrne.

Yeah, Y/N M/N L/N, sure you do.

*message disliked by Y/N*

Good god. You were going crazy looking for him with only his vague ass hint. With the opening of his bedroom you were instantly greeted by the smell of cigarettes and a glass slide door revealing the balcony. There sat the person you had just been looking for, his back facing you. As he turned his face to meet you, a sly smirk grew, bringing the cigarette that rested on his left hand to his mouth,

“15 minutes! You had me waiting for you for 15 agonizing minutes.” He pats the empty chair to the right of him, gesturing for you to sit. You oblige, making your way towards him,

“It’s not my fault you didn’t tell me where you were. ‘I’m technically outside’ had me lost and confused.” You rested your brownies next of the ashtray on the table in front of you both,

“Where’s the fun in that? Plus. I am technically outside. And this is, quite literally, my bedroom. Why would I be anywhere else?” He teases.

You scrunch your face, getting more annoyed with him with every breath he takes, “You know, maybe downstairs, at the party you decided to host? You’re so lucky you’re pretty”

“Aw. You think I’m pretty.” He tried to cover it up, but he couldn't, the paleness of his skin was immediately greeted with a soft blush when the words left your mouth.

“Shush now, Andrew. May I please have a hit of your cigarette?”

He thought for a minute, his eyes darting between the cigarette and the soft pleads of your eyes, “You ask so kindly, but I don’t want to share till you confirm you think I’m pretty, you pure feek.” He takes another hit off his cigarette, but before he can exhale away from you, your body finds itself moving without much thought. Your hand softly guides his head back towards you, a shaky exhale being forced out of him as you lean in close enough to practically feel him exhale. The smoke fills the distance between you two, and without breaking eye contact with him (despite his eyes being glued to your lips at this point) you inhale the smoke he exhaled from his last hit.

“I think you’re a total ride.” You say as you guide the hand with the cigarette to your lips.

“Y/N.” The desperation seeped out of the call of your name like a plea. His hand takes back its control despite it unknowingly still on eachother.

You blow out the smoke, “Andrew.”

He watches you closely as you inhale and exhale, “Christ. You’re going to be the death of me.”

“I know, quite romantic, isn't it?”

He laughs, that intoxicating sound that could have fooled you for a siren, “Death by your hand. Put it on my gravestone.”

You two laugh at the thought for a minute, but when the laughter subsided, you’ve come back to the realization his hand still held yours. It felt nice, right, even, like that's where it should always belong. Or maybe it was just the prior drinks you took a short while ago finally catching up and making you crazy. Either way. His hands were soft, a stark difference to the vast amount of guitarists you’ve met with rougher hands. They were also long and slender, cuppings yours with no problem. He must’ve noticed you staring as he switched the hand that held the cigarette to the other. With his now open left hand, it found its way to your waist, tugging you only soft enough to get the message to you. You happily oblige to his unspoken ask. You stood up slowly, taking a step or two before reaching Andrew's chair and then straddling him beneath you, his hand hadn’t left your waist for a second. Even sitting down he was still taller than you.

“You look divine like this, my love. As close to me as can be. Away from the rest of the folks.” He grins that stupid smile you fell in love with long ago. You shake your head at that, leaning in to kiss him. He happily leans towards to meet you halfway. “I love being alone with you. I love you.” He pulls away and buries himself in the crook of your neck.

“I love you too Andrew. And I love being alone with you as well.” You take a hit of the cigarette you stole from Andy’s right hand. You don’t know how long you stayed in that position for. How long the soft shake of the trees and the quiet of your heart beating played a soundtrack fond to Andrew. He could die, then and there, and he would not care if heaven and hell existed afterwards, because he’d already experienced something greater than heaven— you. The sound of your voice had pulled him out of his thoughts like new music to his worn ears, “Andrew. Your stomach was rumbling.” Oh. When had it done that? He wonders. “Here. The brownies I made for you.”

He smiles and thanks you before immediately eating the plate full. Had he been this hungry and hadn’t known it? Oops. Guess he was too distracted by you. You took the last hits of the cigarette as it reached its end, putting it down on the ashtray, returning back to watch Andrew finish the brownies. You place your hand against his cheek and rub the crumbs off the corners of his mouth. His eyes turn soft with a small pleading look on them as your thumb stayed still on his lip. Placing a delicate kiss on your thumb, "Kiss me, please baby?"

You giggle, happily agreeing and leaning in to kiss him. The grip he had on you tightened. Even more when you went to pull away, “As much as I love being alone with you, Alex threatened to leave if he wasn't reattached to you.” You place a small pecks on the corners of his lips. He smiles at what you had said and done, loosening his grip just a bit,

“Can you promise me I have you the rest of the night?” He burrows his head back into your neck.

“I promise you I won’t leave your side.” You reassure him as your hands play with the curls of his hair.

You hadn't thought it was possible, but he had melted more into you, "Thank you for everything you do for me, Y/N" He murmurs softly into the skin of where your neck and collarbone met.

"You know you don't have to thank me for anything, Andy." He starts to slowly rock you both from the left to right, his arms around your waist, tight to make sure you don't loose balance and fall. And because he wanted to be in the comfort of your arms for longer, milking the feeling as much as possible.

"No. I'll spend the rest of our lives thanking you for everything you do. I'll love you for anything and everything." He finally leaves the comfort of your neck, pulling you in to kiss you again. You could feel him pour every emotion out to you in that minute.

You understood him. He understood you. That’s how well you two worked, words left unspoken could be heard, and words that were let out were messages received, no matter the phrasing. He wasn’t too happy about rejoining the crowd, but that didn’t matter, not when you kissed him so softly as a promise to what you had said earlier, and especially not when his hand was holding yours. He couldn’t care less as to where he was as long as it was next to you. Though he much preferred being alone with you.

.⋆｡⋆☂˚｡⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆.

Hope you guys enjoyed !! Please lmk what you think ☻

Also inspired by this version of To Be Alone ^^

#hozier #hozier x reader #hozier imagine #andrew hozier byrne #hozier smut #x reader #ooc #Youtube

[disneyprincemuke]

the great war * mv1

a look into the fight that led to the painstaking breakup

pairings: max verstappen x reader

warnings: a lot of cursing, toxic max, toxic you, mentions of cheating

notes: this is part of midnights!! i've had this fight mapped out in my head for so long that i KNEW i had to include it... take a shot every single time i write “three” or use “what” in dialogue (spoiler alert: you’ll get wasted!!!)

fun fact: i wrote the first half of that night i came home from the club

(series masterlist)

you twirl a piece of your hair on your finger, eyes stuck to the screen hanging above you. the headphones sit on your ears comfortably as you bite down on your lip.

in front of you is max’s car being dragged back into the garage by his engineers.

knocked out in p2 for the first time this season, on a track he’s never had much luck with in his career — you can kind of understand why he’d be annoyed. especially when their partner team has made it further than him.

normally, it would have been okay. but this is max’s season as he claims it.

you nod to yourself, and gently take off the headphones. you turn towards the door that leads to the paddocks. there are a few interview panels that max has to go through with the unexpected result.

with all that transpired, max wouldn’t be in the best mood. you’re just trying to make sure that it doesn’t get to his head and doesn’t project it to your conversations later.

your presence in the garage is no longer necessary since max would not bother passing by.

you’re stopped by lily in the paddocks, making some small talk about the restaurant her and alex tried when they arrived a few days ago. you share a laugh about not really knowing how to approach singaporean dishes.

but you agree to try out some local food for breakfast with max if you have the time. immediately, you briskly walk back to max’s driver’s room to make him some coffee.

the jetlag you both get arriving in singapore is never easy, no matter how many times you come back. the visit is always too short to make adjusting your body clock easy.

surprisingly, it doesn’t take him long to make it back.

you can’t decipher what made the process so quick: did he kimi raikkonen his way through it, or have the journalists finally learned their lesson when max has had a bad time on the track?

the frustration on max is obvious. he doesn’t greet you when he comes in, just locks the door behind him and makes a sharp turn for the table to his left.

you were seated on the couch to the right.

you wait to see if max would acknowledge your presence, or at least give some attention to the coffee in the mug on the table. but seconds pass as max organises his items, shoving articles of clothing and fan gifts into his bag without a word.

without even turning to drink the coffee that slowly cools from its hot temperatures.

“i made you coffee,” you mutter, finally standing from your comfortable spot on the couch. you walk towards him and stop in the centre of the room when he sharply turns his head to the mug. “just how you like it.”

“oh, thank you.” he can barely make out a firm sentence, his tone faltering and hands shaking as he reaches out for the mug. “i hadn’t noticed, darling. i’m sorry.”

you nod, whispering a reassuring phrase. something about you understand how he feels. “i’m sorry about qualifying.”

instead of a verbal response, like you’d prefer, he simply shrugs. he turns around to finally face you, hands carefully gripping the hot mug as he blows into it.

you smile slightly and shove your hands into your back pockets. “you know, if you’ve got nothing past 11, i was thinking we go to this place lily told me about. she went with alex a few days ago; i heard the local dishes they serve is really good.”

he shakes his head. “i’m really tired. not tonight, darling, i’m sorry.”

for the first time since he left his race car that night, he finally lifts his blue eyes from his blank stare at the ground to look at you. “maybe we can go on monday before we fly off to japan?”

you jaw hangs low, nodding slowly as you retract back to the couch behind you.

max notes this and finally pushes himself off the table he’s leaning on. “let’s order some food to the hotel after this? they’ve got good options for delivery.”

“sure,” you nod slowly.

you move your gaze away from him, now mimicking the blank stare he had on the ground.

you haven’t been seeing eye to eye lately, even having fought right before flying to singapore. it was about something you can’t even remember now; for all you know, it could’ve been something about the toilet seat being left up.

which, now that you think of it, is what you fought about.

“(y/n).” the mention of your name makes you lift your head up, tilting it to the side to urge him to continue. “you made my coffee with two sugars?”

“what?” your eyebrows furrow very slightly. max has always been particular with the way he drinks his coffee. so you’re very sure that you mixed three sugars in instead of two, a mistake you made earlier in your relationship. “of course, i made it with three. that’s how you like your coffee.”

you watch him take another sip, tongue running over his lips as he deciphers the drink in his mouth. he doesn’t say anything else, but he does put the mug down on the table.

you narrow your eyes into a glare. how different can black coffee be in singapore that the three sugars you put inside make such a difference?

a difference big enough for him to mistake it for two sugars?

you sink into the couch, following max’s every move in the small room. seriously, how different can the coffee be here? and why is it such a big deal that it tastes a little odd?

why couldn’t he have just secretly put in another packet of sugar when you weren’t looking like he used to? does he now enjoy the luxury of pointing out your mistakes because of how long you’ve been together?

“what,” max halts halfway across the room and turns to you, “the fuck are you staring at?”

“i don’t know, the ghost in the corner of the room,” your words drip with sarcasm, noticing the way this changes max’s expression. “obviously you.”

“what is it now?” he sighs impatiently, hands resting on his hips as he leans his weight on one leg.

“what the fuck do you mean?”

“you’re giving me that stupid glare again. when you’re annoyed, you glare at me like that,” he points at you knowingly, “so please. enlighten me as to how i’ve managed that tonight.”

you raise your eyebrow. your heart starts to pound in your chest as you tilt your head in disbelief. “why are you talking like i don’t have a reason to be annoyed at you right now?”

he hums as his eyebrow raises. “you're the one who made my coffee wrong.”

“i made it how you like it.”

“this is not three sugars, (y/n).”

“but it is. i made it, max.”

“i’m sure you did. but this doesn’t taste like three.”

“okay. whatever. i made it with three, though.”

“you know what? fuck you. this isn’t three sugars — i don’t know why you keep trying to defend yourself.”

“and why’d you have to point it out? will it kill you to literally just reach a little to your right in the drawers to add sugar in?” you push yourself off the couch now, hands on your hips as you stare at him. “it’s really not that serious, max.”

he scoffs. “i’ve had a long day, (y/n). seriously, all you had to make was one cup of coffee. it shouldn’t be that hard.”

your eyes widen at his words. you take a daunting step forward and fold your arms over your chest. “i didn’t have to make you that cup of coffee — it was out of courtesy. the least you could have done was say thank you.”

his stare softens, shoulders slumping ever so slightly. as if realisation had dawned on him, “thank you.” he pauses to sigh and the cold demeanour makes its comeback. “for nothing because you didn’t even make it right.”

“what the fuck is wrong with you, max? you’re so fucking dense, you can’t even say thank you anymore?”

“and what for? you’ve become unattentive, (y/n)! you’ve gotten lazy with our relationship!”

“lazy would have been just staying home instead of flying out here with you when i have a big presentation this week! i made the effort to come out here and support you.”

“i told you that you didn’t have to come if it’s too much! you insisted!”

“because i’m your girlfriend! i want to be there for you and make time. but if you don’t appreciate that, then fine. i won’t do it again.”

“that’s not even what i fucking said. come on.”

“but it is what you said. if having me around is more trouble than it’s worth, this will be the last race i’ll be at.”

“this isn’t even about you making time to be here? it’s about how you made my coffee wrong!”

“make your own coffee, then! or maybe you’d prefer if kelly did it for you?”

max closes his mouth as he finds the reply at the tip of his tongue sucked out. he looks at you in disbelief, hands now on his hips as he chews on the inside of his cheek. “what?” he shouts.

it’s been nothing less of a toxic cycle. you fight, you say things you don’t mean, you hurt each other, you cry, and then you make up.

but there’s a feeling you can’t shrug off in your stomach as you exchange strings of frustrated screams in his tiny driver’s room. neither of you notice the figure walking by the window before it briefly turns away when your screams come into range.

not even the fact that there is a group of your friends waiting outside at the rendezvous point in the paddocks, awaiting your arrival to invite you both for dinner.

they’ve just started making their way out after a distraught liam simply shrugs when they ask about your attendance at the gathering. the young driver simply shrugs and tells them that he doubts both of you will make it out tonight.

then they all just turn and make their way out to explore the city.

now, you're across the massage table in max's driver's room. the mention of kelly and your issue with the woman's association with your boyfriend sparked up a bigger fight.

you're no longer fighting about the coffee: now it's about who can hit who the hardest and come out triumphant from this fight.

it's now you versus max.

you lean forward propped up by your palms flat on the table as he stands at the other side waiting impatiently.

"what about that time you went to that party when i was away for a race? i told you not to go, (y/n)! you disappeared on me for hours!" max spits at you, hands thrown in the air as he gets into the fight.

"yeah, cause god forbid i have a life while you're out doing your own thing," you laugh dryly with an eye roll. "can't deal with the fact that my world doesn't revolve around you anymore, max?"

"totally not the point of my argument. you disappeared on me while you were out drunk - think of what could've happened to you. i was so worried."

"worried for my well-being or worried that i was out cheating on you?"

the room falls to silence, max dropping his hands to his side. you purse your lips together as you stare at him, your arms now folded over your chest. "what's wrong, max? hit too close to home?"

"and so what if i thought you were out cheating? it's valid if my girlfriend disappears on me on a night out."

you roll your eyes and wave off his concern. "so you admit - you thought i cheated on you that night. is this why you're always like this? the looming question in your head if i was, in fact, unloyal that night?"

he sighs, shaking his head. he turns away from you as he rubs his forehead in frustration. "what is the point of us having this conversation? this is not what we're fighting about at first."

"look at me and tell me you don't trust me anymore." your voice is tired, now multitudes softer than a few seconds ago. "what is the point of us now that this is what we've come to?"

a small part of you realise that this was the feeling you couldn't shake off when this fight had started. it's the inevitable thought of breaking up that would ease everything between you. after all of this fighting, all these misunderstandings and miscommunication, there's only one way to make it all go away.

your eyes sting as tears fill your eyes. you watch as max drops himself on the couch, leaning into the armrest as he rests his hand in his hands. you trudge over to where he is, head hanging low as you feel a sob shake your chest.

you shake your head and look down, avoiding his eyes as he turns to you when you slowly bring yourself down to the couch. "i can't do this anymore, max."

he doesn't answer immediately. you hear a shakey sigh pass his lips, melting into his couch more. "i'm tired."

your breath hitches with a sob. your head starts to feel light as you cry harder. you still don't look at him. "i think we need to break up."

minutes pass without a response from max. he doesn't even move an inch, his loud breaths and your muffled sobs are the only sounds that surround you.

you don't even notice all the scrambling outside from the team, packing up from their meeting to go back to the hotel.

you lift your head and turn to max. he's angled away from you, his fingers picking at his bottom lip with his tear-filled eyes. his breathing is steady as he stares at the blank dark blue walls.

you remind yourself: no answer is an answer.

so you do what you think is a favour to both of you. you get up and grab your purse from the ground, walking towards the door. the most painful part isn't all that he said to you that night, it's the fact that he just let you walk out without another utter of a word.

taglist: @merchelsea @leclercdream @labelledejourr @laneyspaulding19 @lpab @graciewrote @hollie911 @thatsojasminesworld @mycenterfold @princessria127 @ironmaiden1313 @dl-yum @crlsummer @brekkers-whore @minkyungseokie @honethatty12 @barelytolerabled @vellicora

#max verstappen x reader #max verstappen #max verstappen x you #max verstappen fanfic #max verstappen fanfiction #f1 x reader #f1 #f1 x you #f1 fanfic #f1 fanfiction #formula 1 #disneyprincemuke imagine #disneyprincemuke imagines #disneyprincemuke f1 #disneyprincemuke #formula 1 fanfiction

[swiftsdelucaa]

Hi 🫶

I was thinking about georgies younger hot sister who is also a prodigy ( like lexie) and karev being lovesick with her

He is just so dreamy, especially in the first seasons

Can you make it smut please?

Thank you!!!

❛ 𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒚𝒐𝒖 ❜ (𝒔𝒎𝒖𝒕)

𝙋𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜: Alex Karev x O'Malley!sis!reader ♡

𝘼/𝙣: Really, I don't know how to apologize for the wait, this time has been crazy, but I'm back and I hope you'll like this!! 🫶🏻

Your internship had started perfectly. You were a year under your brother George and all his friends, but you could say you were the best between them all. It's also been easy being friend with George's group, they had welcomed you well and unlike your brother you had a tougher character than him. There was this guy, Alex, he was surely the most interesting since you've seen him for the first time. You knew he was livesick of you, you just liked teasing him. Let's say it, you were very hot, his gaze couldn't help to be always focused on you. You enjoyed it.

While the others were spending time complaining about their days you both were too busy flirting with each other most of the time, and then you finally gave him the satisfaction of going out for an evening. George told you he didn't like Alex that much for you, but you didn't care. Sometimes he was too protective.

By the way, finally you accepted to spend an evening with him. You were kinda excited.

It hadn't been anything special, just enough, in his car eating some Chinese food ordered to the nearest restaurant since out was raining and both of you were very hungry. It was like the first time you were just talking spending time normally and not flirting or something else. You just talked about your first days of work and started knowing each other better. The he drove you to your house. Before you get out from his car you looked at him. Yeah he was still staring at you, his eyes looked at you lips but you just smiled.

"Good night Evil Spawn" you smirked and got up. You felt him grab your arm and pull you back inside.

"Not this time" he whispered before press his lips against yours in a pretty passionate kiss. You just kissed him back since this was all you were waiting for.

"Wait.." you stopped the kiss. "In my house there's more space" you said smirking. He smirked as well.

In a few time you were already inside, you pushed him towards the bedroom as you kept kissing. Suddently his lips were on your neck, biting your skin softly. You let out a little moan and then you pushed him onto your bed. You took off your top, he grabbed your hips to bring you closer and kissed you again. You put your hands under his shirt to signal for him to take it off, he did it and then went on top of you.

"Fuck the things that will happen in this room" he whispered. Only these words made you get more wet. You smirked at him and bit you lip when you felt his hand on your stomach.

"Never been so ready" you said.

He took off your bra, starting to kiss your chest and going down with his lips on your breasts, biting them softly but enough to make you gasp.

One moment later you were completely naked, you on top of him, moving your hips against his body. His hands were holding and squeezing you closer, your moans filled the room as you were looking at Alex. His eyes remained glued on you, enjoying that wonderful sight.

"God, I don't think I'll ever get enough of you" he said panting and feeling the contact of your bodies collide. You leaned down to kiss his chest, moving up his neck and finally meeting his eyes.

"Oh, really?" You smirked.

He kissed your lips, in a very passionate way, he positioned himself remaining sitting with you on his lap. He kept pushing you against him grabbing your ass. You moaned again feeling him coming inside you. Both sighed before letting your bodies fall onto the mattress. You let out a giggle.

"Say it, you had fun boy" you then whispered very close to his face.

"Who told you I've finished?" He asked smirking and going on top of you. He slipped under the blanket, you knew where he was going, so you just let your head fall back on the pillow looking at the ceiling, until you felt him teasing your weakest point with his tongue. He began to go deeper and sucking, causing you to moan, you liked that he was a little rough.

"Mmh.." you started moaning louder, the way he kept pleasuring you drove you crazy. He arrived to your clit, intensifying the movements with his tongue. "Alex..." you moaned, clinging to the blanket.

Then he started to move up, kissing your stomach, and reaching your face, savoring the taste of you on his lips.

"I will never finish with you, baby girl"

You would surely have had many more similar nights.

#alex karev #alex karev x reader #alex karev imagines #greys anatomy #grey's anatomy #greys anatomy x reader #greys anatomy imagine #fanfics #my writing #requests #smut

[adastrael]

Cod: mw ii characters as type of kisses (pt.3)

Pairing(s): gender neutral reader / könig, kim "horangi" hong-jin, alex keller, farah karim

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: mentions of canon typical violence, talk about anxiety and insecurities

A/N: the last part is finally here! I know most of these guys aren't technically mw2 characters, but I couldn't just leave them out of the fun haha! On another hand, I'm sorry if this seems more rushed than the previous ones, I haven't had the chance to get to know these characters as well as the others yet. Anyhow, thank you for all the love on this series, it means a lot to me! :)

König - "breathy kiss"

One of your favorite things was to share kisses with him. He was always so responsive to your touch, whole body reacting to every slight brush of your skin on his. It felt like he was comfortable enough to show you how he truly felt through them, not even trying to find a way to deny his love. It never failed to drive you crazy in the best way.

If there was someone easy to fluster, it was definitely König. Those times he happened to be confident were limited to when he was out in the field, so during the time you two spent alone together, it wasn't difficult to make him bashful. You tried not to take advantage of his reactions and contain the giddiness you felt when he got into such a state, but it was a feat; he always looked adorable tripping over his words, cheeks a nice shade of red and hands fidgeting as he tried to come up with an answer to you. You couldn't get enough of his shyness, but you made sure to never cross any lines and boundaries you two set up. Sure, messing with him was entertaining, but the most important thing was to never make him truly uncomfortable or upset. Not to mention, you could spend time with him without trying to make him crumble with cheeky words, and have just as a great time — if not even better.

A regular Friday forenoon, the weather was perfect for taking a stroll and visiting the markets nearby your house. There were a few things that needed to be replaced anyways, so you had a good reason to go out, besides the fact that you wanted to enjoy the Sun on your skin of course. Since your boyfriend was back home from his latest deployment, it was natural you wanted to ask him to accompany you. Any chance you had, you wanted to take and spend time with him, especially since he was away from home a lot. However, there was one little problem with that: the company of strangers put him into a heavily uneasy state.

It wasn't correct to say he was terrible with crowds; König always swore he was, but you knew he handled himself just fine. Of course you knew how bad his anxiety spiked when put into situations like that, but from the outside he usually looked like he didn't have a problem in the world — you always made sure to let him know how well he did every time you two went out, no matter what situation he had to ease into. You knew it was difficult for him to read and react to social situations, but he tried his best and you were more than grateful and proud of him. The longer you were in a relationship together, the more often he joined you for outdoor activities, and it made you extremely happy to see him make an effort to become better. And flattered for sure, knowing he wanted to get better at this for your benefit.

So, with the knowledge that he wouldn't say no to you this time either, especially since this would be a short and easy trip, you went to talk to him.

Quickly finding König in your shared bedroom, you softly knocked on the door to get his attention.

"Hey König?"

"Ja?"

"Would you come along with me to the market today?"

Sitting on the king sized bed in his worn out comfortable clothes, he looked so much smaller, no matter the fact that he was a 6 feet something giant of a man. As he started to fidget with his hands a little, gaze directed to the sheets under him, it was hard to resist the urge to join him on the beddings and caress his knuckles to reassure him.

"How far are we going?"

"Just to the end of the street, I only want to visit Dominik's and then Sophia's on the way back."

You knew it was important for him to know exactly where you would be going and who you had to meet, because it helped him prepare mentally in advance. It wasn't a bother to share your exact plans with him in any way, and it made him feel better, so you were always happy to make sure to share the needed information.

After a few seconds of him considering it, pointedly looking anywhere but you, you received a little nod from him.

"Okay."

In your defense, he looked too irresistible sitting there all shy, you just couldn't help yourself; flashing him a bright smile, you skipped over to the bed, gently cupping his face in your hands.

"Thank you. I promise I will be quick."

Leaning in, you intended to give him a chaste kiss, just something to show your gratitude besides words. König seemed to have other plans however: pushing his lips onto yours a little more firmly, he sighed through his nose and made a little sound in the back of his throat. He was usually clumsy when it came to kissing, but this time he seemed to get the handle of things. Pulling back only a few millimeters, gasping for air, then diving back to connect your lips together, his body was slowly melting under your touch, the previous uneasiness leaving him. You loved when he got passionate like this; anxiety absent from his mind, body shivering where your hands wandered, harsh breaths leaving his mouth as he poured his emotions into the kiss. You knew this was a way for him to let all the worries go, to show you how genuinely he felt, and it never failed to make your head fuzzy and heart warm with fondness.

Truly, you could have stayed like that, interwined with him forever, but unfortunately there were still things to do. So, with a gentle hand on his cheek, you managed to pull away. Gazing into his eyes and softly stroking his heated face, König was almost panting into your embrace, quick breaths leaving his mouth and a dazed expression on his face. He really was a beautiful sight to see.

Kim "Horangi" Hong-jin - "hesitant kiss"

He was confident in every sense of the word. His cocky, sometimes too narcissistic attitude should have been annoying, but it looked good on him, fitting if you got to know him. You never noticed a thing he did without his usual courage, not up until you two got into a relationship. Funnily, he wasn't such an egotistical man when it came to showing affection.

Finally finding the motivation to get up from your place on the couch, you popped your joints after sitting for so long. The TV show you've been watching just ended for the night, and as much as you would have loved to stay in a lying position, you still had to shower and get to your actual bed to sleep. It was better to avoid back pain after all.

"Where are you going?"

Looking down at the voice, your boyfriend was blinking bearly at you from between the pillows, clearly having just woken up. He always offered to keep you company while you watched your shows, even when he himself wasn't interested, but that sometimes resulted in this; him sleeping peacefully next to you, tucked under the blankets and pillows. You didn't mind too much to be fair: he was quiet when asleep, the opposite of what he was like when awake. You didn't mean it in a bad way of course, he just had a habit of commenting on whatever you were watching, often making you slightly irritated. Lucky for him that he was good at making it up to you, so it was hard to stay mad at him for long.

"Taking a shower."

"Come back."

You almost laughed at the way he reached his arm out towards you, then let it uselessly flop back onto the couch. You barely understood what he was mumbling, but you had the routine of these nights to help.

"Sorry baby."

"Why not?"

"We can sleep in our bedroom, you know?"

"Please?"

It was rare he begged, so taking pity on his pouting form, you sighed and turned your body back towards him.

"Fine. But what do I get?"

"Come here."

Plopping yourself down into his open arms, Horangi leaned up with the intention of kissing you. Before you could appreciate his affection though, he stopped suddenly, just barely before your lips could have met in the middle. His body went still under you, eyes more awake and blinking uncertainty up at you.

"It's okay, go ahead."

At your soft encouragement, he seemed to come back to himself. Blinking a few times he moved, finally cutting the distance between your lips short.

You knew he was insecure about the scars adorning his face, as much as he tried to hide it. Horangi always acted confident, no matter what he did or who he was with, but when it came to showing you who he really was, sometimes he seemed to shrink into himself and try to hide. You weren't giving up however; he's been doing much better with showing his love openly for you and not letting his insecurities get in the way of his actions, so you were proud of him for trying. You knew it wouldn't get solved from one day to another, but he has already given you much to love and believe. It was only a matter of time before he was his usual self-assured self when it came to kissing you too.

Alex Keller - "passionate kiss"

Any chance he got, he managed to make physical contact with you, one way or another. A hand on the small of your back, an arm across your stomach, forehead resting on your shoulder; you name it and he has done it before. This might have been because of the fact that he spent a lot of time away from home, but physical touch was simply just his love language really. Besides, you didn't mind how touchy he was, enjoying the closeness just as much as he did.

Thankful for the previously cut up vegetables on the wooden board, you turned just in time to catch your boyfriend entering the house. Closing the front door behind him, Alex looked a little rugged; he's been mowing and watering the lawn all morning, so it wasn't anything you haven't expected. Still, the sight made you shake your head with a fond smile, directing him to the bathroom upstairs for a cleanup before he even considered touching and dirtying you. He complied easily enough after some good-natured banter, promising to come back down clean a few minutes later.

Just as you were ready to put every ingredient into the pot placed on the stove, two strong arms wound themselves around your middle, pulling you into a solid chest behind you. As kisses found their way onto your neck, you couldn't help but laugh at the feeling of a mustache tickling your sensitive skin.

"Alex! Come on, you know that tickles!"

"But I'm clean now, so it's free game!"

"No please."

Slightly pulling away while giggling, you turned in his hold and laced your arms around his neck.

"You might be clean, but I have a soup to cook. If you distract me, lunch won't be ready anytime soon."

"Would that be such a bad thing?"

At his cheeky reply, you let one of your hands hit his chest gently, shaking your head at him. You couldn't deny how happy you were however, a smile ever-present on your face.

"It would. Now, let me work please."

"Just give me a minute."

Before you could reply, his left hand came up to hold your face tenderly. Leaning down, Alex kissed you, silencing whatever protest was on your mind at that moment.

Humming into his mouth, you reciprocated immediately, not caring too much about the food behind you anymore. As you deepened the kiss, enjoying the feeling of your lips on his, you let more of your body weight rest against him, making his hold tighten slightly. His other hand soon sneaked up from your waist, grasping into your hair lightly. He made sure not to pull and hurt you in any way, he was just anchoring you to himself even closer — more securely. It was a habit of his you learned to love very quickly, and he wasn't one to bother hiding how much he enjoyed it every time either.

After a few minutes have passed locked together like that, you finally pulled away and put some distance between the two of you.

"Don't think I will let you get away with this."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

Farah Karim - "forehead kiss"

Constantly fighting wasn't an easy thing, not for the body nor the soul. After days, weeks of being on the field and putting up with everything happening around you, it wasn't a surprise when relaxing and letting go became difficult to anyone who has experienced it. For her, it seemed especially hard, but with your help, she found there was a way to calm the storm inside her.

Your girlfriend wasn't big on showing signs of affection in public and you didn't blame her for that in the slightest. As a Commander and highly respected soldier, Farah had a front and reputation to uphold, and there wasn't really a place for being openly emotional. That didn't mean she didn't love you, and you always got reassured by the little things she did for you — waving when leaving from base, giving you a subtle nod to let you know something, sending you a little smile in a private way. It was hard to stay loving and affectionate when operating a whole Force, and you understood it enough to not demand anything she couldn't give or do.

Routinely, when Farah finally came home after a long period of time, it took her a few days to ease back into a calm state. She was always level-headed, out in the field or in everyday life, but all the fighting took a mental toll on her. She didn't like to let you know when she was doing bad or just had a difficult time getting used to the quiet and calm of home, but you always noticed anyways. It wasn't hard: when you know someone as deeply as you two knew each other, it was nearly impossible to miss signs like those. Fortunately, you had a good way of helping her, one that didn't require more than a little patience and your love.

"Love?"

You stepped into the bedroom while calling out for your girlfriend, putting a mug on the nightstand.

"I'm here."

Feeling her presence behind you, you turned and greeted her with a smile.

"Can I read to you?"

It was usual for you two to end up under the soft covers tangled up together, but free just enough to read one-one book by yourselves. It wasn't unheard of either that one of you offered to read aloud, because both of you found it calming and a good way to spend time effectively together. Now, Farah had a slight frown on her face, visibly considering your offer. Her stance was still stiff, gaze often darting back and forth in any room she stepped in. You understood of course; she was barely back from a long mission, it was tough to get back to your usual routine. After a few seconds though, her expression softened and with a nod, she closed the door behind her.

Turning around, you made quick work of the sheets and pillows, laying down in a way your back was still propped up onto the bed frame. Grasping a book you were half finished with, you opened your arms in an open invitation.

"Come here."

It didn't take long until you were both comfortably under the blankets, legs interviewed and her head on your shoulder. The room was quiet except for your soft words, and within minutes, Farah was breathing steady next to you, body finally relaxing.

It went like that for some time, and when you went to turn the page and start a new chapter, her voice stopped you.

"Thank you."

Untangling herself a little, she pulled herself up and gently kissed your forehead. It was unhurried and entirely chaste, just like her kisses usually were; in this form, they meant more than anything else in her book, and by default, in yours too. Sensing how grateful she was, you gave her a warm smile, and with a gentle hand on her back, you directed your attention back to the book in your other. It wasn't long before she was snoring softly against you, quiet breaths rhythmically hitting your chest.

#cod #call of duty #call of duty: modern warfare ii #cod mwii #modern warfare ii #könig #cod könig #könig mw2 #kim horangi hong jin #horangi #cod horangi #alex keller #echo 3 1 alex #farah karim #könig x reader #horangi x reader #alex x reader #farah x reader #cod x reader #type of kisses #kisses #fluff

[littlemissthunderstorms]

gorgeous

alex turner x fem reader

i don’t really know how to summarize it, so just read and find out!! it’ll be a fun little surprise! (also i quoted a line from better than the movies in here, i just finished that book and i LOVED it so dearly)

i couldn’t choose just one song 😣

late afternoon was dull. rain poured outside and the sky was grey, adding to the melancholy of the day. as you sit on the couch next to your best friend alex, you couldn’t help but stare at the rain pattering against the window, trying to distract yourself from your thoughts. you had just recently broken up with your boyfriend, you realized he wasn’t the one and it made you sad. it was easy to let your thoughts spiral, you wondered if you’d ever find your person, if anyone would ever love you that much. could you be loved? you didn’t want to be lonely forever and then become an old lady living alone with her fifty cats in an old apartment. would you die alone? oh my god and then who would even take care of the cats? would anyone even know you died? what if- “ahem.” you jumped slightly, raising your eyebrows at alex who was looking at you with a funny expression, accompanied by a head tilt.

“soo movie or no?” alex chuckled. “you ruined my train of thought.” you smiled as you kicked him playfully. alex had always been your best friend, you had always been there for eachother and this was no different. he’d been hanging out at your house practically the second your boyfriend had moved out and you didn’t mind at all. alex laughed softly, brown eyes not leaving yours. as you gazed at the boy, your smile faded into a frown, your earlier thoughts returning to haunt you. alex noticed this, furrowing his brows. “you alright?” you hadn’t really allowed yourself to overthink too much since your boyfriend left, and now that you had really thought about being alone, it destroyed you. anxiety plagued you, filling you only with distress and thoughts of loneliness.

“i dunno.” you shifted your gaze to your lap, fiddling with your rings. “you wanna talk about it?” alex shuffled closer to you on the couch. you shrugged, eyes still fixated on your lap, averting his gaze. “is it about him?” you noticed how close alex was, causing your heart to race a little faster. “um- no.” you paused. “well, yes, related. i mean, it’s not exactly about him, like the fact that i miss him or anything. which i dont. not really. that seems kinda mean, but it’s true.”

you looked up at alex nervously to find him looking back at you, silently urging you to continue talking. “its just- i’m nervous i’ll never find anyone. sounds fucking stupid now that i’m saying it aloud but um..” you gulped nervously. alex eyes were soft and caring and the effect he had on you right now was concerning. nevertheless, you continued.“i’m scared to be alone forever, i just want to love someone and be loved. and i’m so scared thats not going to happen and i’m scared nobody will ever find me pretty enough to love me. i dont know.” you weren’t even thinking now, the storm of anxiety that occupied your mind now letting loose. “i’m just nervous i guess. i dunno, its silly.” you sighed “maybe i’m just overthinking.”

you kept your gaze on your lap as you finished your rant, too flustered to look at alex. he was close. really close. why was your stomach all swirly? the thunder outside filled the silence for a few moments. alex grabbed your hand, causing you to meet his eyes. “hey. don’t think like that. you’re gorgeous.” the way alex was talking to you, the way he was looking at you, soft brown eyes shimmering in the candlelight, all smiley and sweet. it was getting hard to breathe. you were so distracted by him that you forgot to respond. “thank you.” you muttered pathetically, making him chuckle softly, hand not leaving yours. the house was quiet besides the muffled sound of thunder and rain from the nasty storm outside that was getting more intense by the minute. candles and lamps emitted a soft glow throughout the room, casting faint shadows on the walls.

the way he was looking at you made your heart flutter. your eyes darted down to his lips for a split second before quickly looking back up at his eyes. shit. don’t look at his lips don’t look at his lips. the tension was so thick you were sure lightning was bound to strike between you two any second. the house was too quiet. was he getting closer? you nervously broke eye contact for a split second, your stomach fluttering as you looked back at him. he didn’t move, eyes still locked on yours. your face heated. “um- so what movie did you wanna wat-“you didn’t even finish your sentence before his lips were all over yours, nose pressed into your cheek and hand cupping your face. he kissed you like it was his job and he wanted a raise. you eagerly kissed him back, squeezing his hand tightly as you brought your other hand up to rest on his shoulder. he leaned over you, gently pressing you against the arm of the couch as he kissed the shit out of you. you brought your free hand to grab ahold of his hair, deepening the kiss which elicited a sigh out of him.

the intensity of the kiss increased as a strike of lightning illuminated the sky for a few moments, a loud boom of thunder following, rumbling the ground. you pushed your hand up his shirt, his skin warm. his tongue slid across yours. his hands were in your hair. your leg was wrapped around his waist as the kiss deepened, teeth colliding and soft sighs filling the air. another rumble of thunder shook the ground and just like that, the lights were out. you broke the kiss, the two of you gasping for air. the room was dark, almost pitch black.

and if it weren’t for the soft light of the streetlamps, the glow of the candle in the other room, or the incandescent moonlight, you might’ve not been able to see alex smiling down at you.

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

hope this made you giggle and kick your feet, goodnight!

ps. this is like my third time writing anything ever so if it’s bad don’t come for me

#Spotify #alex turner #alex turner x reader #arctic monkeys #humbug #suck it and see #alex turner one shot #alex turner fluff

[f1stargirll]

Conversation Friends ° Lando Norris

Chapter Two

Word count : 1.658k

Description : slow burn, college!au (enemies to lovers) and more to come

Hey guys, sorry this chapter came out a week late, I was suffocating from homework. But here we are! And I'm currently on a week break from uni so I'll try to write as much as possible during this time, I have sooo many ideas. I think I'll even try writing oneshots so if anyone has requests I'm open to them! Hope you'll enjoy this chapter, and feel free to message me if you want to be tagged in the next parts 🧚🏼‍♀️

PSA : Since I’m STUPID, I’ve started writing on a side blog which means there’s a lot of things I can’t do!! So I’m switching to my main blog which is @f1stargurl !!! The next parts and the rest will be posted on there, so if anyone follows me here, if you could pls follow me on @f1stargurl 🤧 To quote mister Leclerc once ai gain, “I am stupid”

Hi Lando,

I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I’m sure that stupid encounter at the supermarket was just a result of the both of us being irritated and tired. As you can probably tell, my first few days here weren’t so easy and it might’ve been one of the reasons why I was so unpleasant, and once again, I apologize. 

I really am willing to put this stupid history behind us and get this program started!

I hope you’ll give it a thought and I look forward to hearing from you soon, have a good week! 

Sincerely, y/n

It’s been six days since I’ve sent Lando that email and pushed my pride to the side to organize a date. Well, it’s not a date, but still- I guess it is technically a date? Is it a date if we hate each other? It’s a meeting. Yeah, I was trying to organize a meeting. 

Still no response. 

Closing my laptop, I decided to take my mind off this situation and take a break at a coffee shop near campus. 

Taking a step inside the coffee shop I spot Daniel and Alex sipping on their drinks. Seeing Daniel again instantly put a smile on my face, we’ve been hanging out these last few days and having him by my side feels great. 

“What’s up guys!” I say while waving at them across the room. 

“Hey y/n!” They both got up from their seats to give me a hug.

 “Go get your drink and come join us,” Alex invited me, pointing at their booth, “we were talking about the party this weekend.”

“Don’t mind if I do then”, I respond smiling from ear to ear. 

After picking up my hot chocolate I sit down in front of them, Daniel makes fun of me for not liking coffee, again.

“I swear y/n you’re 21 and you still don’t like coffe? You need to grow up,’ rolling my eyes, I playfully shove Dani’s shoulder feeling his muscle tense under the light punch, so annoying, and buff, wow. We kept talking for more than two hours. I got to tell them all about Lando ghosting me and about the amazing cheese and garlic pasta I made last night. 

“I think he’ll come to his senses. He has to,” Daniel insists, crossing his arms in front of him. Ooh, veiny forearms… “the reason you guys hate each other is so ridiculous anyway, over freaking pasta!” he shakes his head in disbelief. 

“I think you did the right thing trying to reach out, at least you’ll be the bigger person” Alex says, his hand reaching for his matcha latte, “I’m sure you’ll be able to figure this out together.”

“Thanks for the optimism I really appreciate it” I say with a weak smile, not really believing in Linguini’s philanthropist potential, “I just hope this won’t ruin the program for me…”

“What? No way!” Daniel exclaims sitting up on his side of the booth, “Look, you’ve got your Conversation Friends right here” he says putting his arm around Alex’s shoulder who’s nodding and smiling in agreement, “and you’ve got Lola!”

“You’re right Dani, I’m not gonna give myself anxiety over a guy who can’t even be polite,” I state with confidence, “anyways, I’m so excited about the party this weekend!”

Once back in my room, I decided to check my inbox one more time. Just in case.

Still no response. 

The sight tugs at my heart a little. We have our first mandatory meeting in a few days and I still have no contact with my partner. I wouldn’t care so much about it if it was just about the two of us, but the whole group is supposed to visit a museum and I don’t want to be the only one there without a partner, that would be too embarrassing. 

But as I reminisce on the topic, I realize I’m not just sad anymore, I’m bitter. All week I saw everyone meeting up and doing fun activities with their partners, but I can’t get an email back? Even a “k” would’ve been enough… I’m stunned at how childish this boy is being. 

Putting my phone on my wooden nightstand, I close my eyes and try not to overthink about the situation. Is it my personality? Maybe it’s because of the way I look.

But I catch myself slipping, the last thing I need to do is to start doubting myself because of a man again.

God, this British Society class is really kicking my ass right now. Why did I even choose the 8am one, what is wrong with me? The professor starts off the first chapter of the class as we hear a loud knocking on the door. 

“Sorry I’m late,” I see Lando standing in the doorway, out of breath, his cheeks a light pink from the rush. His eyes search around the room for any seat still available until they meet mine. There’s one right next to me, but of course he’ll never take that one. He sets down his bag on the table front row and I feel my heart racing from embarrassment as my mind instantly jogs back to the email and how vulnerable it was. He turns around a final time and blankly looks at me. What is that supposed to mean? 

The class went by slower than ever, my mind speeding about different ways to go up to him and finally settle this ridiculous situation. 

8:55 finally strikes the clock as the professor concludes his explanation. As I put away my computer I see Lando clutching his books and bolting towards the exit. 

Not on my fucking watch. I head for his direction, calling out his name, “Lando! LANDOO!”

He turns on his heels in a swift motion, “What do you want from me?”

Suddenly feeling small, I still mustered up the courage to ask him about what’s going on, “Well you’ve read my email so I don’t know why you’re acting like you don’t know,” I grumble. “I feel like I’m making way too much effort here.”

“What email? What are you even talking about?” he asks, his thick brows furrowing in irritation. “I didn’t even give you my real email, the one I wrote down was just to fill the blank so the teacher won’t bug me,” he explains, still slightly confused as to what I was on about, “I just don’t want us to communicate outside of the mandatory attendings, got it ? We’ll meet there and that’s it.”

Well, at least that explains the total ghosting, doesn’t make it any less humiliating though. My lips close in a tight line, “Message received then, glad to know you’ll still be there for the museum,” I slowly nod my head trying to process what I’ve just been told. I feel my throat tightening up a bit and decide to leave before embarrassing myself any further, never looking behind me at the curly haired boy. 

Standing in line in front of the museum’s ticket office with my two favorite boys feels like we’re high schoolers on a field trip. I still feel uneasy about this upcoming afternoon, even if the run-in we had was terrible, he still assured me he’ll be coming today. 

But now, I don’t even want him to be here, I’m done with the idea of making any efforts with him, I’ve been way too kind to him. I’ll just stay glued to Dani and Alex and spend a nice afternoon at the museum with them, it’ll be way more fun than if he ever was to be here. 

“Still no news from Linguini?” Alex asks, trying to make sense of this situation, probably feeling bad for me. I really was pitiful.

“It’s not like I have a way of having any.” I half-joke trying to keep face despite anxiety and sadness creeping their way into my heart;

I found myself gazing at a beautiful photograph of a peony field, my favorite flower. The exhibition was showcasing the origins and the beauty of perfumes around the world. It involved a path filled with elements used to make our favorite scents through the use of pictures and different aromas being diffused all around the museum. I had clinged on to my favorite boys for twenty minutes before the teacher noticed, “I don’t care if your partner isn’t here, it’s a pairing of two only.” So now I was wandering around the exhibition and taking in the great sights and scents on my own. 

“Hey,” I turned around to see Lando looking ahead standing next to me, his hair covered by a green cap matching the crew neck sitting on his shoulders and the color of his eyes. Last time I thought they were blue, but they’re not. They’re the most gorgeous shade of olive green I had ever seen. It bothered me that I noticed these kinds of small details about him, he was the last person to deserve it. “Sorry I’m late.”

I kept my focus on the piece in front of me, “Alright.”

“Alright.”

“These are my favorite, my grandma used to grow some in her garden,” I tell him without really knowing why.

“My grandma had roses, those are nice too,” he answers, I just nod in agreement. We both keep looking at the photograph in silence for another minute when his phone starts to ring. 

“Hey babe,” he quickly picks up, “yeah it’ll be quick I promise - no I don’t care I just have to do this, you know that.” Wow, way to ruin the last speck of hope I had. He hangs up as fast as he picked up.

“You know you could’ve just told me you had a girlfriend and didn’t want to talk to me for that reason, I mean, It’s a little extreme but I get it.” I know that some girlfriends are overprotective and the idea of their boyfriends spending time with another girl can be a nightmare.

“It's not about her,” he spits out, “I just don’t want to be here, I’ve got better things to do,” and with that final sentence he rubs the salt in a wound that’s already way too deep for what it’s worth. 

“You don’t have to be here though, nobody’s forcing you to” I remark, my voice filled with resentment. I’ve had enough. 

“I do, though. I’m only doing this to pass my semester, so let’s just wrap this up,” he starts going for the rest of the exhibition in hopes of finishing early. When he doesn’t feel me following him, he turns around and stops, staring me down with his hands in his back pockets, his shoulders slumped in frustration.

Slowly shaking my head, I stand my ground and head towards the next step in the exhibition in silence, disregarding the icy stare from the green boy across the room. I’m not letting him get away with it this time. I’ll enjoy the rest of the tour and make sure to take my time. Might as well enjoy my own company if that’s all I’m gonna have for the rest of the program.

Taglist : @u5dthsduttd

#lando norris fanfic #lando norris x reader #lando norris #formula one #lando norris x y/n #lando x reader #formula one fanfiction #formula one x reader #formula one x y/n #college!au #enemies to lovers

[renranram]

HIIIII !! any chance you write for Charlie Slimecicle? I love the goober sm istg. Have a nice day :)

From The Start

sfw

fem!reader x charlie slimcicle

cute little one shot for our favorite goofy goober charlie charles charles

the whole ordeal of being karaoke buddies when you two met during the qsmp meet up, the two of you just clicked and by realizing your apartments were near eachother the two of you would have karaokes maybe once in two weeks

and maybe you have a growing crush on him, it suddenly felt very awkward of you whenever it's only you two left alone

" y/n wanna have a duet? " the goofy goober smiles at you as your friends inside the room cheers for you, alex, baghera, tina and foolish, " y/n! y/n! y/n! " they cheer as you sigh out of defeat

" sigh... i have so many fans " you flip your imaginary hair as they burst out laughing, charlie did too, and you couldn't help but crack a smile when he did

" okay.. what should we sing " charlie calms down as he grabs the song book, " uhm i have an idea, what about from the start? " you mutter as you swore you saw charlie's eyes sparkle, " oh my god! it's from that girl laufey! " he states, as you chuckle softly, nodding

your other friends can definitely catch what was going on, letting out ' ooohs ' and ' awws ', and all you can do is shake your head in shyness

" guys what if you kiss after the song? " foolish jokes as charlie chuckles, playing along, " me and y/n are actually in love guys " he states

oh how you wished that that was real

" just invite us to the wedding " alex chimed in as you laugh along with your friends

you two gave everything for the song, hitting notes but managing to have fun by your friends bickering in the background, teasing you two

charlie doesn't know how much you relate to the song's lyrics, " confess i loved you... " you sang in solo as you stare at him with admiration

" just thinking of you " charlie joins in, smiling back at you, " i know i've loved you from the start " the two of you shared the last line as your friends cheered

god how much you just wanna kiss him, you chuckle, " y/n, charlie, sitting on a tree- " baghera jokes, her french accent, thick as tina giggles, whilst charlie gently threw a pillow at her to shut her off

" .... okay! smoke break for me " you mumbles, passing the mic to tina next as you got out of the room, sighing, you wished confessing was THAT easy

you light your cigarette, shivering, it's cold, leaning your head on the back alley's wall

sighing as you then felt a warm cloth on your back, charlie followed you, you flinched noticing his jacket resting on your back, " i saw that you were shivering " he smiles at you

" ah.. yeah.. it is kinda cold " you fixed his jacket, "... thank you " you smile at him as he gave you a small nod, leaning his back on the wall next to you

awkward silence fills in, you're too shy to continue the conversation

" so... is from the start your favorite song? " charlie asks as you pause, puffing your cigarette, " kind of " you reply

" it's a cute song you think " charlie mutters as he glances at you, nodding im agreement, " ... you're cuter tho "

your cheek immediately flushed pink, coughing on the smoke of your cigarette as he gasps, patting your back as he chuckles, " jeez.. you need to be more careful "

" yeah.. " you mutter, awkward silence again, as charlie just sighs out, " y/n " he calls out your name as you face him

" im just gonna be blunt because i dont wanna make things awkward, but i really really really like you and i think you're really pretty and cute and i have a huge crush on you from the start and i treasure our friendship so im scared that ill ruin it if i actually confess to you so please be honest if you like me back or no " he blurts those words out in one breath as you pause

the heat on your cheeks rising, " i.. wow.. uhm... " you mumble, fidgeting with your cigarette, " was i too fast? " charlie asks, chuckling, as you notice a faint pink blush on his cheeks

" no... im just.. flabbergasted " you reply, " i just.. thought that you'd never like me back " you chuckle, confessing as he gasps, " y/n! you're so amazing! of course id like you! " charlie cups your cheek

" in fact! i found you amazing the day we first met! " he states with confidence as you chuckle, " .. thank you...? " you mumble, still a bit awkward

" y/n.. would i make things awkward if i say i love you? " charlie asks, " no...not really " you mutter

" then..., i love you so much y/n " charlie hesitantly fixes your hair for you, not wanting to make you uncomfortable, " i.. i really really love you too charlie "

#chuckle sammy #chuckle sandwich #charlie slimecicle #charlie slimcicle fanfic #fluff #karaoke #charlie slimcicle x reader #charlie slimesicle x reader #charlie slimcicle x y/n #charlie slmccl #charlie slimcicle fluff #from the start #live laugh love laufey

[thenewausten]

A letter to you, with Quackity. [Part 2]

Part 1: here!

"Alex,

Wow. I wasn't expecting this letter, and no, I didn't get mad with my best friend for her giving you my new address, it's okay!

First of all, uh, I don't know what to say. Like, I really don't. I didn't know you were dating, and I didn't know you still love me. Our relationship ended so fast and so suddenly, like, we both had our problems at that time, right?!

As you said, I didn't know how to speak for myself, I was just too young to understand that, in a relationship, we need to have conversations that might be uncomfortable.

It's not easy to have 18 years old and study to be a doctor and it wasn't easy for you to have 18 and study to be a lawyer. I don't blame myself, but I don't blame you either for our mistakes. We're just too young.

I, sometimes, still think about you, still think about that time of our lives. And of course I still remember it all, I, actually, remember it all too well. All our conversations about our futures, the making out on your car and the parties we went together. We'd laugh so hard and have so much fun, I wish it had never ended, you know?!

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and look to my boyfriend, wondering: What if it were you in his place?! I can't help myself, I feel guilty, but it just appears in my mind and there's nothing I can do about it.

Our relationship was very great to me, you were very great to me, Alex. No man I've ever met has treated me as well as you did at that time. Of course, my boyfriend treats me well, but... I don't want to talk about it, but I can say it's not the way you treated me.

I can relate to you when you say you look for me at your girlfriend's eyes. I look for you at the eyes of my boyfriend and when I listen to his beating heart when I lay on his chest, but even the sound of his heart is different. It's not like yours.

It's crazy, right? You meet someone once and then this person lives with you for the rest of your life, even when this person is already gone. Somehow, she does it, and the feeling's ravishing.

Alex, you'll live forever with me. On my heart. There's a special place for you here, for everything we passed together, for all of our beautiful moments, our crazy moments, the laughs and even the fights became a treasure to me. Something that not even the time can erase.

I must admit it, I love you too, 'Lex (do you remember this nickname???). I think I will always love you. Time will pass, five years will become ten years and I'll still love you.

We used to watch "Dirty Dancing" almost every weekend and I can say that I've had the time of my life with you, boy. You know, I'd give a lot of things to dance to this song with you again, in your college bedroom. Do you remember the Pulp Fiction poster of your friend on the wall? I accidentally tore it when you tried to spin me. We laugh so much that day and I still think your friend hates me for the poster, I never had the chance to buy him another one.

Alex, I want you to write for me again, please, do it! I never went after you because I thought you had forgotten me, not because I'm angry with you or something. I could never be angry with you, silly!

I'm happy, and I hope you're happy too, because you deserve it so much!

Thank you for everything, but most importantly, thank you for saying that my Facebook posts are funny, I'm glad you laughed with it!!!

We can meet again, but please, not in a hospital, I already work on there. When I go to LA to visit my family I'll send you a message (or a letter). ;)

I love you, 'Lexie!

Y/N."

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy the writing! :)

Requests are open!

#quackity #qsmp #qsmp brazil #quackity imagines #alex quackity #qsmp brasil #quackity x reader #quackity imagine #quackity x y/n #quackity x you #quackity fluff #quackity fanfic #quackity headcannons #quackityhq #qsmp quackity #quackity scenario

[halothenthehorns]

Chapter 2: THE BRONZE DRAGON

Magnus saw that last word and just stopped. Just sat there frozen and looked like he wanted to cry. Why? Why was Percy's life like this?

"Magnus?" Under any other circumstances, Magnus would have been equally confused and delighted why Alex sounded so concerned over him.

"The, Bronze, Dragon," he slowly drug out every word like he was trying to suck the water off of a rock. A very pointless and disgusting task.

"Whatever nice things were said about Hephaestus need to be revoked right now!" Percy agreed with every dreaded line on Magnus's face.

Nico made a little yeep noise as well, his first thought being Bianca leaping into that thing's mouth and making it do the chicken dance as well.

"Please let this be an adventure about you getting shrunk down and fighting an armadillo lizard*," Jason was the only one who sounded excited. Then Percy considered for a moment and even nodded like that could have some fun before Magnus read on in dread before anybody else got crazier ideas.

One dragon can ruin your whole day.

"One dragon can ruin someone's whole life Percy!" Magnus groaned. He begged of the following words to please be something like Peleus with a stomach ache! An actual, made-up bad dream? A very oddly themed birthday party for some kid not cursed by the universe?!

"Surely that's why I'm there, to make it go from one to the other," Percy offered with half-hearted hope of his own he just had to help a dragon egg hatch or something cute and innocent... like his life was ever that easy.

Trust me, as a demigod I've had my share of bad experiences. I've been snapped at, clawed at, blowtorched and poisoned. I've fought single-headed dragons, double-headed, eight-headed, nine-headed and the kind with so many heads that if you stopped to count them you'd be pretty much dead.

"Nobody was ever going to ask you to reminisce about the hydra Percy," Thalia sighed. Why couldn't that have been his worst dragon experience?

"Frankly all that just made me think to ask you, again, how are you alive?" Jason nodded.

"Luck and some mild skill," Percy reminded.

But that time with the bronze dragon? I thought for sure my friends and I were going to end up as Kibbles "n" Dragon Bits.

The evening started simply enough.

"It always does with you," Will nodded without surprise. He alone seemed to have a pretty good idea what this one was about, and aside from rubbing Nico's arm to help chase those shivers away he didn't want to spoil the fun for anyone.

It was the end of June.

"Oh," Percy said in surprise as he did a double take. "This happened, before that thing with Clarisse though! That explains the weird smell!"

Nobody else had a clue what he was talking about, they just all kind of assumed Clraisse smelled like motor oil.

I'd come back from my most recent quest about two weeks before, and life at Camp Half-Blood was returning to normal. Satyrs were chasing the dryads. Monsters howled in the woods. The campers were playing pranks on one another and our camp director, Dionysus, was turning anyone who misbehaved into a shrub. Typical summer-camp stuff.

Magnus stopped cold like he'd been the one turned into a shrub. Which was ridiculous, he didn't have a single leaf on him.

"He turns them back Magnus," Will shrugged.

Magnus counted to ten in his head before deciding against asking for further details.

After dinner, all the campers were hanging out at the dining pavilion. We were all excited because that evening capture the flag was going to be totally vicious.

The night before, Hephaestus's cabin had pulled off a huge upset. They'd captured the flag from Ares – with my help, thank you very much –

"Nobody was thanking you Percy," Thalia scoffed.

"Well maybe more people should," Percy tried to give her big pouty eyes, but it was ruined by everybody laughing to much and he couldn't begin to hold it.

which meant that the Ares cabin would be out for blood. Well... they're always out for blood, but this night especially.

On the blue team were Hephaestus's cabin, Apollo, Hermes and me – the only demigod in Poseidon's cabin. The bad news was that for once Athena and Ares – both war god cabins – were against us on the red team, along with Aphrodite, Dionysus and Demeter. Athena's cabin held the other flag and my friend Annabeth was their captain.

"I need politics and details stat!" Jason turned and pleaded to Percy like he was going to fall on his knees.

Will lit up, clearly all for going into the latest drama that had caused such shifts in dynamics to occur, but Thalia and Percy groaned in sync, quite loudly. Seems as if unless they were the ones running the teams they weren't going to happily sit around and play back who had pranked whom, what revenge was needed, and the height of impressing others.

Jason sighed but reluctantly gave in that could take hours just to get caught up on a week's worth, but gave Will a very obvious look as if book marking him for later.

Annabeth is not somebody you want as an enemy.

"Which is why Percy seems to make a life goal of it!" Alex chuckled with a very pointed gesture at him like they'd missed her target.

"I only aim for the best," Percy puffed his chest up with pride and swooped back his hair.

Thalia smacked him in the stomach, causing him to deflate and the gray strands of hair to fall back in place as she smirked, "in everything except grades."

Right before the game, she strolled up to me. "Hey, Seaweed Brain."

"Will you stop calling me that?"

"I didn't call you anything," Will said innocently.

Only Nico laughed while the others groaned even louder at the terrible pun. Though Magnus ignored them all with interest. That was, in fact, the first time he'd heard Percy wanted her to stop that, and as far as he could tell from the light-hearted smile on his face now and the passive eye-roll, Percy hardly meant it.

She knows I hate that name, mostly because I never have a good comeback.

"The worst atrocity I could name," Alex sighed.

"You should never be brought to a comedy show," Percy said with a hint of dread. She'd heckle anybody and get herself thrown out...though Percy wouldn't believe that wasn't her goal going in.

She's the daughter of Athena, which doesn't give me a lot of ammunition. I mean, "Owl-head" and "Wise Girl" are kind of lame insults.

"Lame but classics," Alex nodded contemplatively. "Surely you could get creative with all the world of nerd insults. Poindexter might suit her, or-"

"We are not going to sit around and make up insults about her, or her cabin," Thalia sighed.

"Just trying to keep the playing field even," Alex said, though raised her hands quickly in surrender.

"You know you love it." She bumped me with her shoulder, which I guess was supposed to be friendly, but she was wearing full Greek armour, so it kind of hurt.

"Both," Jason snorted.

"Definitely both," Percy agreed as he rubbed his shoulder with the biggest smile.

Her grey eyes sparkled under her helmet. Her blonde ponytail curled around one shoulder. It was hard for anyone to look cute in combat armour, but Annabeth pulled it off.

"Cute, huh?" Will's little laugh was so infectious even as he rolled his eyes hard. "How, on earth, Travis ever bet against me that you two would end up together I'll never know when you literally had these thoughts running through your brain."

"Why were there bets?!" Percy seemed to be missing the teasing part of that as he once again frowned at Will. "Where is this magical bulletin board?"

"Right next to the one with play tryout dates," he said saintly. "Up in the Big House, don't know how you've missed it."

Percy didn't seem able to close his mouth to properly get anything back and Magnus took pity on him and moved on before he'd have to.

"Tell you what." She lowered her voice. "We're going to crush you tonight, but if you pick a safe position... like right flank, for instance... I'll make sure you don't get pulverized too much."

"Retreat! Re-treat!" Jason enunciated very clearly. "This is a trap! Percy, please run for your life!" He said it in a pretty bad imitation of a robotic alarmed voice for some reason like a crappy fire drill.

Probably because it would have had as much effect on Percy then as it did now, who was to busy grinning at the challenge to hear a word.

"Gee, thanks," I said, "but I'm playing to win."

She smiled. "See you on the battlefield."

She jogged back to her teammates, who all laughed and gave her high fives. I'd never seen her so happy, like the chance to beat me up was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

"Percy is doomed," Thalia agreed casually. "Apparently even without fighting with me he can't avoid screwing up these games."

"I helped win the last one!" He spluttered, breaking out of his delusion of her hair escaping its helmet to glare at Thalia non-effectively. "You could have a little faith in me, I know her, her tricks!" He ended with a pretty sad stutter and crossed-eyed concern if this was a trick in a trick to make that any kind of believable.

Beckendorf walked up with his helmet under his arm. "She likes you, man."

"Sure," I muttered. "She likes me for target practice."

"Both," Jason said again with absolute confidence.

"Definitely both," Alex chuckled.

"I almost believed you that time," Percy sighed.

"Oh we're serious," Jason and Alex assured.

"Nah, they always do that. A girl starts trying to kill you, you know she's into you."

"What is this, playground rules?" Magnus sighed. He was no fool, he knew full well his cousin liked Percy back, but it was clearly complicated with her for several reasons and he assumed that's why she didn't act on it more. Who was this ding-dong, whose name he only vaguely recognized, trying to assure Percy of anything?

"Makes a lot of sense."

Beckendorf shrugged. "I know about these things. You ought to ask her to the fireworks."

Percy sighed. He'd really been wanting to talk to somebody about this back then, and Beckendorf seemed like the guy all of a sudden, but now that the moment was here...it felt like a waste of breath. What could he say Percy didn't already know?

I couldn't tell if he was serious. Beckendorf was lead counsellor for Hephaestus. He was this huge dude with a permanent scowl, muscles like a pro ballplayer, and hands calloused from working in the forges. He'd just turned eighteen and was on his way to NYU in the autumn. Since he was older, I usually listened to him about stuff, but the idea of asking Annabeth to the Fourth of July fireworks down at the beach – like, the biggest dating event of the summer – made my stomach do somersaults.

Then Silena Beauregard, the head counsellor for Aphrodite, passed by. Beckendorf had had a not-so-secret crush on her for three years. She had long black hair and big blue eyes, and when she walked the guys tended to watch. She said, "Good luck, Charlie." (Nobody ever calls Beckendorf by his first name.) She flashed him a brilliant smile and went to join Annabeth on the red team.

"I think she was beckoning to him," Alex said with a brilliant smile. Will and Nico both laughed hard at the pun while Jason and Magnus joined the groaning this time.

"Uh..." Beckendorf swallowed like he'd forgotten how to breathe.

I patted him on the shoulder. "Thanks for the advice, dude. Glad you're so wise about girls and all. Come on. Let's get to the woods."

Percy laughed along loudest of all. Finally, somebody else's girl misshaps wasn't at his expense!

...it felt a tad forced in his throat for some reason though he didn't like. A nagging idea in the back of his mind that had sporadically been cropping up. Now here, thinking of the beach, talking to Silena, the thought tried so hard to crystalize into something- but the idea was gone as his stomach pitched in pain and his skin felt a great flush of heat. He knew that feeling, he knew better than to mess with a memory like that.

Naturally, Beckendorf and I took the most dangerous job.

"Naturally," Will repeated in a very posh, british voice.

"Because if we gave Will the most dangerous job he'd stop to sniff the oranges to much," Nico smirked.

"We all have our strengths," he agreed without batting an eye.

While the Apollo cabin played defence with their bows, the Hermes cabin would charge up the middle of the woods to distract the enemy. Meanwhile, Beckendorf and I would scout around the left flank, locate the enemy's flag, knock out the defenders and get the flag back to our side. Simple.

Why the left flank?

"Because Annabeth wanted me to go right," I told Beckendorf, "which means she doesn't want us to go left."

"Please tell me you at least considered a double cross? Then a triple cross. Then a quadruple cross-"

"Jason!" Percy groaned. "I'm well aware Annabeth's going to pull one over on me, but I had to pick a lane! I'm sure I threw off her whole plan by just showing up."

Jason just shook his head at him, but then, he also would have been interrogating Annabeth about every layer of her plan if she were here and refused to tell him, so Percy didn't feel that bad about stopping him from pitching every way he was going to be wrong.

Beckendorf nodded. "Let's suit up."

He'd been working on a secret weapon for the two of us – bronze chameleon armour, enchanted to blend into the background. If we stood in front of rocks, our breastplates, helms and shields turned grey. If we stood in front of bushes, the metal changed to a leafy green. It wasn't true invisibility, but we'd have pretty good cover, at least from a distance.

Alex threw her head back laughing. "Somebody got jealous of Annabeth's hat!

"Ooo," Thalia said with interest. "Where's mine?"

Percy had some half-baked remark about her doing extra chores for him to help get Beckendorf's favor, but he choked on the words and nothing really came out except some spit while Thalia patted him on the back with a troubled smile she tried hard to look real.

"This stuff took forever to forge," Beckendorf warned me. "Don't mess it up!"

"You got it, Captain."

Beckendorf grunted. I could tell he liked being called Captain.

Thalia was still listening with great interest, and clearly decided she had her own turn at co-captain with him stuck in her craw more than letting him dwell on why he kept pressing his thumb between his eyes.

"Oh sure, him you just conceded the throne to! I was born to be a righteous, mighty warrior to lead armies, but this guy you just hand the crown."

Percy's shaking hand fell, a teasing smile instantly back. "Try getting accepted into college Thals, then maybe I'll watch you run your own team right into the river."

They even started bartering back and forth about who would get which cabin before Magnus bravely cleared his throat and waved the book around before they realized Annabeth would have to pick a side. That was a blood bath waiting to happen.

The rest of the Hephaestus campers wished us well, and we sneaked off into the woods, immediately turning brown and green to match the trees.

We crossed the creek that served as the boundary between the teams. We heard fighting in the distance – swords clashing against shields. I glimpsed a flash of light from some magical weapon, but we saw no one.

"No border guards?" Beckendorf whispered. "Weird."

"Overconfident," I guessed. But I felt uneasy. Annabeth was a great strategist. It wasn't like her to be sloppy about defence, even if her team did outnumber us.

Jason was over there muttering, "trap, this is a trap," and even spelling it out under his breath repeatedly while Thalia was still smirking and muttering about Percy botching this up like he had to hers. Percy sighed again about what great faith his friends seemed to have in him, but at least the headache was staying at bay.

We moved into enemy territory. I knew we had to hurry, because our team was playing a defensive game, and that couldn't last forever. The Apollo kids would get over-run sooner or later. The Ares cabin wouldn't be slowed down by a little thing like arrows.

"What about trick arrows?" Alex asked with interest. "Tip them in all kinds of fun stuff, or attach any number of things to activate-"

"I think we should just ban Alex's desert privileges before she even gets there," Percy grinned.

"Take away my chocolate, dudette, see what happens," she smirked.

"That sounds like a Chiron problem," Percy shrugged, picking at the hem of his shirt without concern.

We crept along the base of an oak tree. I almost jumped out of my skin when a girl's face emerged from the trunk. "Shoo!" she said, then faded back into the bark.

"Dryads," Beckendorf grumbled. "So touchy."

"Am not!" a muffled voice said from the tree.

Magnus was pretty proud of himself for laughing along at the mild moment instead of, say, freaking out the tree's could decide to kill them all in their sleep. Again.

We kept moving. It was hard to tell exactly where we were. Some landmarks stood out, like the creek and certain cliffs and some really old trees, but the woods tended to shift around. I guess the nature spirits got restless. Paths changed. Trees moved.

"They what?" Magnus yelped like his tail was on fire. "They just, move their whole tree, and roots, and plant them, and, they what?"

"It's pretty funny to watch, they just hike their leaf skirts up and their branches get top heavy sometimes so they-"

Thalia finally smacked Percy to get him to stop while the others couldn't stop snickering at the look of miserable acceptance on Magnus's face when he couldn't decide if Percy was telling the truth, or worse, nobody had any clue how or why the dryads did that and it was just another level of crazy.

Then suddenly we were at the edge of a clearing. I knew we were in trouble when I saw the mountain of dirt.

"A child of the ocean's worst enemy," Thalia snorted. "Take notes Nico."

"I've never tried just throwing soil around," he admitted with a smile that didn't mean he wouldn't be willing.

Percy narrowed his eyes contemplatively who would beat whom, earth-shaker versus child of the Underworld. He'd just have to challenge him to a digging competition to prove it later.

"Holy Hephaestus," Beckendorf whispered. "The Ant Hill."

"Do you all take your parent's names in vain?" Jason startled in surprise.

"Well it would just be weird if he said Holy Aphrodite, now wouldn't it," Percy shrugged.

"So who should Jason pray to? Merlin's Mankini," Alex smirked.

"If I've ever dabbled in witchcraft Alex, I would use whatever spell I could to burn that image from my mind," Jason sighed.

I wanted to back up and run. I'd never seen the Ant Hill before,

Why is Ant Hill capitalized, Magnus let the stray thought flit through his mind without interrupting to point it out. He just wanted a few more seconds of delusional peace this was just a sacred place and they were in awe of all its nonlethal help.

but I'd heard stories from the older campers. The mound rose almost to the treetops – four storeys at least. Its sides were riddled with tunnels, and crawling in and out were thousands of...

"Myrmekes," I muttered.

"Oh this is bad," Jason already realized. Percy never remembered the name of a monster otherwise.

That's Ancient Greek for "ants", but these things were way more than that. They would've given any exterminator a heart attack.

"Me too," Magnus promised with an opener like that.

The Myrmekes were the size of German shepherds. Their armoured shells glistened blood-red. Their eyes were beady black and their razor-sharp mandibles sliced and snapped. Some carried tree branches. Some carried chunks of raw meat that I really didn't want to know about. Most carried bits of metal – old armour, swords, food platters that had somehow found their way out here from the dining pavilion. One ant was dragging the glossy black hood of a sports car.

Magnus face planted the pages and groaned with misery. He'd been expecting a dragon, he'd been trying to mentally prepare himself for scaly beasts that could eat them! Now there were two, or more likely two thousand more deadly things running around! Why was Percy's life like this?!

"Now those are the kind of bugs that can take over the world, survive the apocalypse and become our new lords of the land," Alex grinned with wild delight, wondering if she could turn into something metal.

"They have to work on their infrastructure before I'd consider it," Percy said, resisting the urge to plug his nose through memory.

"They love shiny metal," Beckendorf whispered. "Especially gold. I've heard they have more gold in their nest than Fort Knox." He sounded envious.

"Don't even think about it," I said.

"Now that's a roll reversal if I've ever heard one," Nico chuckled in surprise. His stomach was pitching in disgust at the idea of mounds of treasure, he could all to easily picture Bianca in there picking up a hair pin and his old figurine again...so it was much more fun to imagine Beckendorf holding Percy's straps back at the idea of these things getting their jaws on a gold skateboard.

"I was not one of those weird kids who tried to drown and burn ant hills," Percy sniffed.

"Dude, I won't," he promised. "Let's get out of here while we..."

His eyes widened.

Fifteen metres*50 feet away, two ants were struggling to drag a big hunk of metal towards their nest. It was the size of a refrigerator, all glittery gold and bronze, with weird bumps and ridges down the side and a bunch of wires sticking out the bottom. Then the ants rolled the thing over, and I saw a face.

Magnus was about one word away from throwing this book in that trashcan that vanished things to nowhere. He'd give Percy better memories, he'd make up ones that didn't involve...all of this.

I just about jumped out of my skin. "That's a –"

"Shhh!" Beckendorf pulled me back into the bushes.

"But that's a –"

"Dragon's head," he said in awe. "Yes. I see it."

"So it's only his head," Magnus sighed in relief, the book's saving grace. "I can live with that."

"Right, buddy, you keep thinking that," Will muttered low enough Magnus only squinted suspiciously at him. What on earth made the poor guy think the rest of the body wouldn't come with the head?

The snout was as long as my body. The mouth hung open, showing metal teeth like a shark's. Its skin was a combination of gold and bronze scales, and its eyes were rubies as big as my fists. The head looked like it had been hacked from its body – chewed by ant mandibles. The wires were frayed and tangled.

"Robot dragon," Magnus sighed, trying to decide if that made this horror better or worse. On one hand he could imagine Tyson punching it in the face a little easier. On the other...robot dragon!

"I bet Percy sticks his head in that and tries to scare Annabeth," Alex snickered.

"I'm worried where the rest of the body is," Jason frowned how a camp had a whole dragon buried somewhere in there and what else was just under their feet.

"Hey, I just realized," Magnus looked a little extra miserable now for some reason. "Where's Tyson? I'd feel better with a fire-breathing machine around if he was."

"He went back to the Cyclops forges the week before," Percy said reluctantly. "Trust me, I was missing him right about then too."

The head must've been heavy, too, because the ants were struggling, moving it only a few centimetres with every tug.

"If they get it to the hill," Beckendorf said, "the other ants will help them. We've got to stop them."

"I take it back," Nico said with a puzzled frown. "Everybody at your camp is just nuts."

"So glad to not be the exception for once," Percy nodded his agreement.

"What?" I asked. "Why?"

"It's a sign from Hephaestus. Come on!"

Magnus dropped the book in his lap and pressed his hands to his ears. "I never want to hear of another sign from your parents!"

"This is a good one," Will tried to soothe, though his voice hitching a bit gave away the lie, so he finished, "eventually."

Magnus gave him a baleful look and wondered how many people the robot dragon killed just by stepping on them before that eventually happened. There really was just no point arguing though he should skip to that, Percy's reaction was probably going to be worse than whatever the dragon did.

I didn't know what he was talking about, but I'd never seen Beckendorf look so determined. He sprinted along the edge of the clearing, his armour blending into the trees.

I was about to follow when something sharp and cold pressed against my neck.

"Surprise," Annabeth said, right next me. She must've had her magic Yankees cap on because she was totally invisible.

"I guess that makes sense," Jason chuckled. "She'd know better than to take her eyes off of you."

"She just wanted to jack that armor for herself," Alex smirked.

"She doesn't need it," Magnus said blankly.

"But I'm sure she has a whole speech ready about Percy stealing her thing," Alex insisted.

I tried to move, but she dug her knife under my chin.

"You've been held at knifepoint enough in your life," Nico shook his head, "I think I'm with Alex, she's just jealous she never got her turn at that too."

"I'm sure Annabeth has a list somewhere of what she wants revenge on Percy for and this was just a convenient outlet," Will chuckled.

Silena appeared out of the woods, her sword drawn. Her Aphrodite armour was pink and red, colour coordinated to match her clothes and makeup. She looked like Guerilla Warfare Barbie.

Thalia laughed way to hard at that one, but she'd been making Barbie jokes about that cabin for years and was probably just mad and appreciative of Percy getting to that one first.

"Nice work," she told Annabeth.

An invisible hand confiscated my sword. Annabeth took off her cap and appeared before me, smiling smugly. "Boys are easy to follow. They make more noise than a lovesick Minotaur."

Magnus looked newly traumatized at that sentence. "Who, who would he be lovesick after?"

"Geryon probably, he's the only monster with enough heart and a love of cattle," Alex said slyly.

Most of the others didn't seem to know whether to laugh or gag at that input and Magnus decided to read around her for it.

My face felt hot. I tried to think back, hoping I hadn't said anything embarrassing.

"You did not actually," Jason said helpfully, for once. "Though I'm sure it's just a matter of time."

There it was.

No telling how long Annabeth and Silena had been eavesdropping.

"You're our prisoner," Annabeth announced. "Let's get Beckendorf and –"

"Beckendorf!" For a split second I'd forgotten about him, but he was still forging ahead –

"Right towards the deadly ants," Will sighed.

"Annabeth truly will block out any other thought," Nico sounded grudgingly impressed.

straight towards the dragon's head. He was already twelve metres *40 feet away. He hadn't noticed the girls, or the fact that I wasn't behind him.

"Not the, greatest backup," Jason frowned.

"Credit for determination," Thalia shrugged.

"I bet he invents something that forces people to eat his dust," Alex chuckled.

"Come on!" I told Annabeth.

She pulled me back. "Where do you think you're going, prisoner?"

"I imagine her dragging you all the way back to Alcatraz and throwing you in the cell Braries used to be in just to prove her point," Magnus admitted.

"Labyrinth or no Labyrinth," Percy agreed.

"Look!"

She peered into the clearing and for the first time seemed to realize where we were. "Oh, Zeus..."

Beckendorf leaped into the open and struck one of the ants. His sword clanged off the thing's carapace. The ant turned, snapping its pincers. Before I could even call out, the ant bit Beckendorf's leg, and he crumpled to the ground. The second ant sprayed goo in his face, and Beckendorf screamed. He dropped his sword and slapped wildly at his eyes.

The collective shudder that went around the room may have knocked a few more support beams off their hinges. That went from zero to a hundred real quick from a friendly game to a death sentence. If this kid died, or even was maimed from these horrible injuries Percy was going to take that very personally...

I surged forward, but Annabeth pulled me back. "No."

"Charlie!" Silena yelled.

"Don't!" Annabeth hissed. "It's already too late!"

"What are you talking about?" I demanded. "We have to –"

Then I noticed more ants swarming towards Beckendorf – ten, twenty. They grabbed him by the armour and dragged him towards the hill so fast he was swept into a tunnel and disappeared.

Magnus was left sitting there shivering for several moments at the brutality of that. Bianca's and Zeo's deaths had been blunt, but not so much an out of the blue considering who they'd been fighting and the quests they'd been on. They didn't even know this guy, and it had just shot out of nowhere, like all those shrouds at camp were still waiting to float up.

"No!" Silena pushed Annabeth. "You let them take Charlie!"

Jason took an uneasy breath, trying to keep well off his face he wasn't sure how to take that. She'd saved Percy and Silena's life by doing so, but the cost felt ruthless.

"There's no time to argue," Annabeth said. "Come on!"

I thought she was going to lead us on a charge to save Beckendorf, but instead she raced to the dragon's head, which the ants had momentarily forgotten. She grabbed it by the wires and started dragging it towards the woods.

Percy's mouth was a fantastic showing of his feelings for that. She had never once shown an inclination for stuff over somebody's life, she hadn't even blinked at throwing Deadlus's wings away, she was as much a figurehead in that camp as him for kids to look up to. He'd follow her lead, but not exactly without hesitation when she was going to be crazier than an automaton about it.

"What are you doing?" I demanded. "Beckendorf –"

"Help me," Annabeth grunted. "Quick, before they get back."

"Oh, my gods!" Silena said. "You're more worried about this hunk of metal than Charlie?"

"Did that sign from Hephaestus involve some part of saying a child of Athena would become addicted to dragon heads?" Magnus asked in absolute concern for her mental health.

"You'd be lucky if a sign from a god had a message that clear," Thalia scoffed.

Annabeth spun around and shook her by the shoulders. "Listen, Silena! Those are Myrmekes. They're like fire ants, only a hundred times worse. Their bite is poison. They spray acid. They communicate with all the other ants and swarm over anything that threatens them.

"I liked my world better when I didn't know all of that," Magnus huffed, doing a poor job of ignoring Alex grinning in fascination and studying her hands like she was already imagining them with feelers.

If we'd rushed in there to help Beckendorf, we would have been dragged inside, too. We're going to need help – a lot of help – to get him back. Now, grab some wires and pull!"

Will watched as Percy clenched his hands and prepared to do as asked. He'd been about to follow Beckendorf without a clue. As much as everyone at Camp considered him a leader, it was really they all followed Percy's lead. Annabeth keeping Silena's head on was something to be proud of, Percy was the camp's beacon of who to shine the light on.

I didn't know what Annabeth was up to, but I'd adventured with her long enough to figure she had a good reason for what she was doing. The three of us tugged the metal dragon's head into the woods. Annabeth didn't let us stop until we were fifty meters* 55 yards from the clearing.

Magnus whistled in appreciation. "You drug that thing half a football field!"

"Almost a full blue whale," Alex grinned.

"At minimum as long as these books are laid out," Thalia rolled her eyes.

"It felt as long as the Jersy Turnpike," Percy groaned as he rotated his shoulder in vivid memory.

Then we collapsed, sweating and breathing hard.

Silena started to cry. "He's probably dead already."

"No," Annabeth said. "They won't kill him right away. We've got about half an hour."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Is she an entomologist too?" Jason sighed with envy.

"She's a Greek-ologist," Percy reminded with pride.

"I've read about the Myrmekes. They paralyse their prey so they can soften them up before –"

Silena sobbed. "We have to save him!"

"What Silena's siblings are probably thinking of her being in Annabeth's company for to long," Nico muttered. That girl didn't have an ounce of tact...and he was kind of annoyed he probably would have gone into details of their eating habits too without realizing that wasn't helping.

"Silena," Annabeth said. "We're going to save him, but I need you to get a grip. There is a way."

"Call the other campers," I said, "or Chiron. Chiron will know what to do."

"I don't think an exterminator has enough bug spray for this problem, let alone him," Magnus shivered.

"Where's a monster ant eater when you need one," Jason agreed.

"Why would you want Echidna back right now?" Will looked at him strangely.

Annabeth shook her head. "They're scattered all over the woods. By the time we got everyone back here, it would be too late. Besides, the entire camp wouldn't be strong enough to invade the Ant Hill."

"Then why is it there?!" Magnus cried in exasperation, he looked very near tears. "I demand an explanation why you and your entire nutjob of a family feel the need to have this in your backyard!"

"Lots of monsters got in before Thalia's tree was blessed," Will shrugged, completely unphased by his minor tantrum. "As you just read, we can't exactly kick them all out even if there was a reason to."

Magnus sighed and muttered an apology, reminding himself there was just no point in arguing any of this.

"Then what?"

Annabeth pointed at the dragon's head.

"Okay," I said. "You're going to scare the ants with a big metal puppet?"

"Annabeth does love taking part in our play, she's nearly always the star," Will snickered.

Percy gave him a long-suffering sigh. He was not going to strangle Will, he promised himself. He was just having fun, that was overkill, he would not strangle this idiot because of a joke...

"It's an automaton," she said.

That didn't make me feel any better. Automatons were magical bronze robots made by Hephaestus. Most of them were crazed killing machines, and those were the nice ones.

"What does that make Daedalus?" Alex mock whispered.

"The best of the worst," Percy snorted.

"So what?" I said. "It's just a head. It's broken."

"And sadly, I think the mermaids realize that, considering they dragged it there," Magnus sighed.

"Myermeks," Thalia corrected.

"Not if they're going to kidnap people back to their lair and drown them in acid they're not," Magnus sniffed.

"Percy, this isn't just any automaton," Annabeth said. "It's the bronze dragon. Haven't you heard the stories?"

I stared at her blankly.

"How to sum up these books in one sentence," Nico smirked.

Annabeth had been at camp a lot longer than I had. She probably knew tons of stories I didn't.

"Percy, you really don't have to keep repeating yourself," Jason shook his head.

"We just assume Annabeth knows every story ever, she's read every book and probably sleeps on a throne of them," Magnus rolled his eyes.

"I bet her favorite is probably still something mundane, like Star Wars," Alex said with a little wrist wave.

"Star Wars has a book?" Percy asked blankly.

"Would you guys stop trying to confuse the poor guy," Thalia said with a tragic expression as she moved to cover his ears, "you're crumbling his entire worldview!"

Percy smacked her away and called them all clowns and a few other choice words.

Silena's eyes widened. "You mean the old guardian? But that's just a legend!"

"Whoa," I said. "What old guardian?"

Annabeth took a deep breath. "Percy, in the days before Thalia's tree – back before the camp had magical boundaries to keep out monsters – the counsellors tried all sorts of different ways to protect themselves. The most famous was the bronze dragon. The Hephaestus cabin made it with the blessing of their father. Supposedly it was so fierce and powerful that it kept the camp safe for over a decade. And then... about fifteen years ago, it disappeared into the woods."

"Ooooh," Nico said in surprise. "Beckendorf's reaction actually does make sense now."

"Better than some other ancient prophecy about the end of the world," Percy agreed.

"And you think this is its head?"

"It has to be! The Myrmekes probably dug it up while they were looking for precious metal. They couldn't move the whole thing, so they chewed off the head. The body can't be far away."

"But they chewed it apart. It's useless."

"Not to mention, um, why did its batteries run out?" Magnus frowned. What did these things even run on? He'd never thought to ask.

"I'm pretty sure Annabeth could make a toadstool useful," Percy reminded.

"Not necessarily." Annabeth's eyes narrowed, and I could tell her brain was working overtime. "We could reassemble it. If we could activate it –"

"It could help us rescue Charlie!" Silena said.

"Hold up," I said. "That's a lot of ifs. If we find it, if we can reactivate it in time, if it will help us.

"I'm surprised that has you pausing," Thalia said. "Your life is a big series of what if's."

"What if I die, what if I die, what if I die?" Jason repeated, throwing up a finger for each.

"The day I stop worrying about that is the day I get cursed with immortality," Percy reminded with nothing but dread.

You said this thing disappeared fifteen years ago?"

Annabeth nodded. "Some say its motor wore out so it went into the woods to deactivate itself. Or its programming went haywire. No one knows."

"Do they hibernate?" Alex grinned. "Did it go off looking for a mate? Maybe he wanted to go on a better adventure where some poor farm boy finds him and saves the world."

"I need you to keep your ideas far away from Cabin 9," Will frowned at her. "If they make these things any more realistic, I will cry right along with Magnus."

"I'm just trying to foster encouragement and creativity," but Alex batted her eyes in a purely menacing way, a clearly deep want to have a robot dragon that she could ride into battle and slay the entire planet.

"You want to reassemble a haywire metal dragon?"

"I want Annabeth to have normal hopes and dreams," Percy sighed.

"Sorry Perce, wanting to date you doesn't fall on that list," Jason smirked.

Percy considered for a moment if the trade would still be worth it for his bladder's sake, but he didn't get the chance to linger on it.

"We have to try!" Annabeth said. "It's Beckendorf's only hope! Besides, this could be a sign from Hephaestus. The dragon should want to help one of Hephaestus's kids. Beckendorf would want us to try."

"Never have I yet heard being related to any of this stuff has made it more friendly! With the exception of Tyson!" Magnus balked.

"Exactly, I think some of the other kids are due for some," Thalia shrugged.

I didn't like the idea. On the other hand, I didn't have any better suggestions. We were running out of time, and Silena looked like she was about to go into shock if we didn't do something soon.

Will had a very unpleasant bubbling feeling in the pit of his gut. Wondering at Silena's decisions, if she'd been considering calling Luke for help in some deluded idea. He'd gotten a first hand look at the kind of despair that had been on her face for days and had no wish to keep thinking on all this in the slightest, but it's not like he could boot her out of Percy's memories.

Beckendorf had said something about a sign from Hephaestus. Maybe it was time to find out.

"All right," I said. "Let's go find a headless dragon."

"Maybe if you don't attach his head back he'd be less scary?" Magnus sighed.

"I hope they name him Reid!" Alex grinned.

We searched forever, or maybe it just seemed that way, because the whole time, I was imagining Beckendorf in the Ant Hill, scared and paralysed, while a bunch of armoured critters scuttled around him, waiting for him to be tenderized.

"To bad you can't start a bucket brigade from the kitchens," Jason frowned, "dish soap and lava would probably clear this problem up easier."

"We'll call that plan B," Percy shivered, well aware they only had one chance at plan A for Beckendorf to live...and there was a really horrible feeling deep inside him that made him worry if he even did...

It wasn't hard to follow the ants' trail. They'd dragged the dragon's head through the forest, making a deep rut in the mud, and we dragged the head right back the way they'd come.

"Talk about going around in circles," Percy sighed as he rubbed the back of his neck, "this head's doing full 360's."

"And somehow still making more progress than you on your capture the flag game," Jason muttered, well aware that wasn't on anyone's radar right now, but a part of his mind that never stopped working regardless.

We must've gone five hundred meters* over 500 yards – and I was getting worried about the time – when Annabeth said, "Di immortales."

We'd come to the rim of a crater – like something had blasted a house-size hole in the forest floor. The sides were slippery and dotted with tree roots. Ant tracks led to the bottom, where a large metal mound glinted through the dirt. Wires stuck up from a bronze stump on one end.

"You just know that thing would have some crazy rumors about it if you didn't know what it was," Alex chuckled. "Zues's wifi hotspot, tree that used to house a magic tree house that went evil, flying fish spawn from there."

"I am convinced you are the child of whatever god of stories is out there," Thalia shook her head in pure endearment of her.

"And I love it!" She threw her arms wide and smacked Magnus in the face while the others got a mild laugh from her antics.

"The dragon's neck," I said. "You think the ants made this crater?"

"Ant's are great at excavating their own mounds, but how well do they dig up stuff?" Magnus agreed in surprise that sounded kind of deep in the earth for them to have just found.

"Annabeth would know," Percy frowned he had no clue what was really going on, as usual.

Annabeth shook her head. "Looks more like a meteor blast..."

"Though now I am absolutely over here wondering if Hepeahsuts's big sign was his recreation of the dinosaur event or something," Nico grumbled if he'd thrown a meteor to take this thing out and his kids were just uncovering the remains.

"Hephaestus," Silena said. "The god must've unearthed this. Hephaestus wanted us to find the dragon. He wanted Charlie to..." She choked up.

Jason winced, that didn't seem very in line with these gods he'd heard of. Heaphusts hadn't even flinched when told the camp might be overrun, but he wasn't going to argue the point with anyone right now.

"Come on," I said. "Let's reconnect this bad boy."

Getting the dragon's head to the bottom was easy. It tumbled right down the slope and hit the neck with a loud, metallic BONK!

"I wonder if he enjoyed the ride," Thalia chuckled.

"That had to have been better than getting dragged away from his body," Will nodded, while Percy shivered at the idea of this thing being awake while all that happened.

Reconnecting it was harder.

We had no tools and no experience.

Annabeth fiddled with the wires and cursed in Ancient Greek. "We need Beckendorf. He could do this in seconds."

Alex took a deep breath before saying, "The man who built it doesn't want it, the man who bought it doesn't need it, the man who needs it doesn't know it."

"Are you seriously invoking the freaking sphinx right now?" Percy groaned. "One monster at a time isn't enough?"

"Oh, I know!" Jason waved his hand.

"Poor timing Alex," Magnus agreed while Jason was still glaring at Alex with his hand raised.

"I just thought it particularly appropriate right now," Alex said with the whole hope it didn't actually come true. "And since when do you need permission to talk around here Jason?" She shot at him in exasperation.

"The answer's kind of morbid, just making sure I should," he finally lowered his hand with a shrug.

"No morbid jokes until after the person is rescued," Thalia said swiftly as Percy started looking a little gray around the edges again the longer this dragged on.

"Isn't your mom the goddess of inventors?" I asked.

Annabeth glared at me. "Yes, but this is different. I'm good with ideas. Not mechanics."

"There's an I in both of those words though, so I'm kind of surprised to hear that," Jason chuckled.

"Annabeth's never claimed to be a solo act," Magnus reminded with a hopeful smile. "Even from Percy's first quest she knew she needed someone to get her out of camp rather than trying to go it alone."

Percy grinned with delight at that nugget while Jason nodded his agreement in mild apology.

"If I was going to pick one person in the world to reattach my head," I said, "I'd pick you."

I just blurted it out – to give her confidence, I guess – but immediately I realized it sounded pretty stupid.

"Well at least you finally realize the stupid shit that comes out of your mouth," Thalia chuckled. "Progress."

"Will it stop him from doing it? No," Nico smirked.

"Stop me from doing what?" Will asked innocently.

"Stop encouraging him Nico! You did that on purpose!" Percy groaned in protest to every word of this. Nico was to busy snickering to even pretend otherwise, and it was so far removed from the depressed little kid Percy only had memories of he didn't have the heart to act on that strangling threat again.

"Awww..." Silena sniffled and wiped her eyes. "Percy, that is so sweet!"

"Was it?" Nico asked blankly. Well crud, he clearly had no idea how to flirt.

"Annabeth wasn't impressed, so it's anyone's guess," Percy sighed, a slight blush still on his cheeks.

Annabeth blushed. "Shut up, Silena. Hand me your dagger."

I was afraid Annabeth was going to stab me with it.

Causing very unfair laughter around the room while Percy hung his head. He already had no clue what was going on, did he need a live audience for it?

"Does she kiss you again?" Alex asked eagerly, leaning on the edge of her seat.

"Then we'd have to call her out on bad timing," Magnus shook his head. "Beckendorf's about to die, not him."

Percy was rubbing his lip with a mosh pit of butterflies in his stomach, he couldn't make himself speak or they'd all come out. It's not like he was opposed to the idea, though that was ten times more morbid than even Alex could probably ever be if it was some odd new tradition like holding his hand underground was...

Instead she used it as a screwdriver to open a panel in the dragon's neck. "Here goes nothing," she said.

And she started to splice together the celestial bronze wires.

It took a long time. Too long.

I figured capture the flag had to be over by now. I wondered how soon the other campers would realize we were missing and come looking for us. If Annabeth's calculations were correct (and they always were), Beckendorf probably had five or ten minutes left before the ants got him.

"I trust Percy's internal clock pretty accurately too," Thalia shivered for that poor guy, even knowing the other Huntresses would consider her a traitor for doing it. "He always gets to the microwave right before it goes off."

"The one thing I've never managed to explode, it was to vital to my life," Percy agreed.

Finally Annabeth stood up and exhaled. Her hands were scraped and muddy. Her fingernails were wrecked. She had a brown streak across her forehead where the dragon had decided to spit grease at her.

Percy's fingers curled tight around his camp necklace to try and hide the fact his heart skipped a beat. How was it possible the worse she looked the more he couldn't look away?

"All right," she said. "It's done, I think..."

"You think?" Silena asked.

"It has to be done," I said. "We're out of time. How do you, uh, start it?

Alex frowned and paused and sighed. She knew she shouldn't get offended at them calling the dragon an it, but she'd have preferred if they just kept referring to the creature as the dragon, or even used they, them pronouns. This was a machine though, and she didn't want to start picking fights about that kind of topic right now.

 Is there an ignition switch or something?"

"I really hope nobody left the key in their pocket, we don't have time to find out where the hotwire is," Nico frowned.

Annabeth pointed to its ruby eyes. "Those turn clockwise. I'm guessing we rotate them."

"Are we sure she doesn't have a manual shoved up her sleeve somewhere," Jason looked fascinated how she'd found that out from some wiring and was probably going to be picking up a new hobby soon...hopefully not specifically of the metal dragon variety.

"If somebody twisted my eyeballs, I'd wake up," I agreed.

"Good to know," Thalia nodded to Percy's eyeballs great concern. "My next course of action was to start cutting out teeth if you didn't soon."

"I wake at the drop of a hat," Percy tried to defend.

"When your life's in danger," she completely agreed while Percy looked pleadingly at the ceiling.

"What if it goes crazy on us?"

"Then... we're dead," Annabeth said.

"I always admire her confidence!" Will burst out laughing.

"Yeah, because you've never been on the receiving end of it," Nico muttered.

"Great," I said. "I'm psyched."

"Psyched as an ADHD kid in a filing cabinet," Thalia snickered.

Together we turned the ruby eyes of the dragon. Immediately they began to glow. Annabeth and I backed up so fast we fell over each other.

"Awww, the first thing it sees is what we all put together in the first five seconds too," Alex said with a posh wave of her hand. "So sweet of you guys not to leave him out!"

"You're lucky that dragon's probably color blind Alex, or you'd be his dessert," Percy rolled his eyes.

The dragon's mouth opened, as if it were testing its jaw. The head turned and looked at us. Steam poured from its ears and it tried to rise.

When it found it couldn't move, the dragon seemed confused. It cocked its head and regarded the dirt. Finally, it realized it was buried. The neck strained once, twice... and the centre of the crater erupted.

The dragon pulled itself awkwardly out of the ground, shaking clumps of mud from its body the way a dog might, splattering us from head to toe.

Percy had gotten some in his mouth and he spat nothing out in here in disgust. Silena had looked more like Mud Bath Barbie, and Annabeth seemed to have gone brunette there for a strange moment she was so caked down.

It was, by far, the least important thing to be happening in this memory, but struck Percy as strange all the same why he couldn't get the idea out of his head.

The automaton was so awesome, none of us could speak. I mean, sure it needed a trip through the car wash,

"Which Percy has ample practice in," Jason chuckled.

"I still might need a few test runs to make sure I get the settings right," Percy gave him an obvious look. "Are you volunteering?"

"Only if you promise no flesh eating horses or robot dragons are in there at the same time," he sighed because he knew he wasn't getting out of it now.

and there were a few loose wires sticking out here and there, but the dragon's body was amazing – like a high-tech tank with legs. Its sides were plated with bronze and gold scales, encrusted with gemstones. Its legs were the size of tree trunks and its feet had steel talons. It had no wings – most Greek dragons don't – but its tail was at least as long as its main body, which was the size of a school bus. The neck creaked and popped as it turned its head to the sky and blew a column of triumphant fire.

The longer the description dragged on the quieter Magnus's voice got, until he was sunk far enough back into his seat it looked like it was eating him and he was whispering.

Alex sighed and had no other clue how to get him out of this silly funk, it's not as if a dragon was going to appear in here. So she leaned very close to his ear, he didn't even notice as his eyes never left the page, and casually said, "boo."

Magnus startled, fell out of his chair still hugging the book to his chest, and then lay across Alex's feet for several moments glaring up at her before raising the book to hide her face and continuing to read in a normal volume like nothing had happened.

"Well..." I said in a small voice. "It still works."

"Thank you Percy!" Magnus jabbed at him, letting the book fall against his nose for a moment without care.

"Here to help man," Percy nodded, studying him in concern what they were supposed to do if Alex stepped on his face.

Unfortunately, it heard me. Those ruby eyes zeroed in on me, and it stuck its snout five centimetres* an inch from my face.

Magnus shivered from head to toe, probably causing a new crack in the floor where he lay. He was likely to curl up into the fetal position in moments, and Percy couldn't blame him as he gagged on the remembered smell of gasoline and tabasco filling his nose and the pitiless hunger in those ruby sockets.

Instinctively, I reached for my sword.

"Dragon, stop!" Silena yelled. I was amazed her voice still worked. She spoke with such command that the automaton turned its attention to her.

Silena swallowed nervously. "We've woken you to defend the camp. You remember? That is your job!"

The dragon tilted its head as if it were thinking. I figured Silena had about a fifty-fifty chance of getting blasted with fire.

"The other half is getting her head ripped off like a real Barbie," Thalia informed in case they'd missed that.

"Nah, she's got this," Will grinned. There was a lingering sadness to his smile nobody else understood, but he had full knowledge she could lead anyone into battle, even a dragon.

I was considering jumping on the thing's neck to distract it

"Percy!" Thalia smacked him upside the head. "Why, in the gods names, is that, your, first, thought?" She started smacking him repeatedly on the arm.

"Because I'm pretty sure it would work," Percy shrugged, watching in mild fascination as it seemed to hurt her hand more than he felt it the longer she kept going.

when Silena said, "Charles Beckendorf, a son of Hephaestus, is in trouble. The Myrmekes have taken him. He needs your help."

At the word Hephaestus the dragon's neck straightened. A shiver rippled through its metal body, throwing a new shower of mud clods all over us.

The dragon looked around as if trying to find an enemy.

"We have to show it," Annabeth said. "Come on, dragon! This way to the son of Hephaestus! Follow us!"

Just like that, she drew her sword, and the three of us climbed out of the pit.

"For Hephaestus!" Annabeth yelled, which was a nice touch. We charged through the woods. When I looked behind us, the bronze dragon was right on our tail, its red eyes glowing and steam coming out its nostrils.

It was a good incentive to keep running fast as we headed for the Ant Hill.

Magnus's voice was pitching in and out like bad reception now, ignoring the glitter of Alex's toenails in the corner of his eye easily enough as he still wasn't as convinced as Percy seemed to be that dragon probably wasn't so much as following them but chasing them.

When we got to the clearing, the dragon seemed to catch Beckendorf's scent. It barrelled ahead of us, and we had to jump out of its way to avoid getting flattened. It crashed through the trees, joints creaking, feet pounding craters into the ground.

It charged straight for the Ant Hill. At first, the Myrmekes didn't know what was happening. The dragon stepped on a few of them, smashing them to bug juice.

"Good dragon," Alex crooned.

Then their telepathic network seemed to light up, like: Big dragon. Bad!

"Somebody get me a magnifying glass!" She yelped.

"Alex, it was dark out when this was happening," Nico reminded.

"I can use the moonbeams, I'll get creative," she promised.

Nobody was really sure how that was going to start or end, and they were kind of scared to ask. Magnus, however, finally sat up and leaned against his seat now that at least the dragon's focus wasn't on Annabeth and Percy anymore.

All the ants in the clearing turned simultaneously and swarmed over the dragon. More ants poured out of the hill – hundreds of them. The dragon blew fire and sent a whole column of them into a panicked retreat. Who knew ants were flammable?

"Every psychopath I've ever met," Magnus scoffed.

"Guess you meet more interesting people than I do Magnus, and that's saying a lot," Percy said with a raised brow. The place had been lit up like a bonfire in seconds, how the rest of camp hadn't come running was an honest mystery.

But more kept coming.

"Inside, now!" Annabeth told us. "While they're focused on the dragon!"

Silena led the charge; it was the first time I'd ever followed a child of Aphrodite into battle.

A hiss of pain fell from Percy's lips this wouldn't be the last, but though he rubbed his temple he was almost smiling at the bad feeling too. It was kind of cool to realize in the moment this was Silena coming into her own, getting a chance to realize a memory was so awesome the first time doubled.

We ran past the ants, but they ignored us. For some reason they seemed to consider the dragon a bigger threat. Go figure.

"Their mistake," Jason scoffed.

"I'm not arguing the point," Percy rolled his eyes.

"Because you're an idiot," Thalia chuckled with nothing but affection.

We plunged into the nearest tunnel and I almost gagged from the stench. Nothing, I mean nothing, stinks worse than a giant ant lair. I could tell they let their food rot before eating it. Somebody seriously needed to teach them about refrigerators.

"Would Chiron and Mr. D be okay with them piggy backing off their electric bill though?" Nico smirked. "I already don't think they're holding up their share of the rent."

"It smelt worse than Smelly Gabe," Percy insisted. "I would donate- okay, I don't even get an allowance there, but if this is a recurring problem I'd flip the breaker switch or something!" He smiled at the others getting a laugh out of this while he fought the urge to gag. He was happy for them, truly, they only had to hear about this and not live it...though it only made him miss Annabeth more every word she'd be plugging her nose same as him.

Our journey inside was a blur of dark tunnels and mouldy rooms carpeted with old ant shells and pools of goo. Ants surged past us on their way to battle, but we just stepped aside and let them pass.

"To bad they're not all storming out to argue which is better, Antz or Bugs Life," Alex sighed.

"I'm sure they'll go back to their clubs and debats as soon as their home isn't under attack and the kiddos are full of goo," Nico said with her level of chipper, which was kind of starting to concern Percy. He hadn't sounded depressed in hours.

The faint bronze glow of my sword gave us light as we made our way deeper into the nest.

"Look!" Annabeth said.

I glanced into a side room, and my heart skipped a beat. Hanging from the ceiling were huge, gooey sacks – ant larvae, I guess – but that's not what got my attention. The cave floor was heaped with gold coins, gems and other treasures – helmets, swords, musical instruments, jewellery. They glowed the way magic items do.

"That's just one room," Annabeth said. "There are probably hundreds of nurseries down here, decorated with treasure."

"That's kind of cute," Magnus grudgingly admitted, all of his long, messy blonde hair still mostly on one side he was ignoring and reading through. "I wonder if they burst out and pick a favorite toy or something."

Alex resisted the urge to run her hand through the mess and straighten it out for him as she instead hummed in agreement.

"It's not important," Silena insisted. "We have to find Charlie!"

Another first: a child of Aphrodite uninterested in jewellery.

"I bet if it was cursed jewelry she'd at least hesitate," Jason said in mild defense.

"Nah, she'd find a way to work that curse with her outfit, it's their own magical gift," Percy sighed.

"Right up there with yours getting into trouble," Thalia shook her head.

We forged on. After six more metres* 20 feet, we entered a cavern that smelled so bad my nose shut down completely.

"I'm going to be sick," Percy promised, his stomach rolling at the memory alone.

"This is not class Mr. Jackson," Alex said in a snooty voice. "You were not excused!"

"Does anything get us out of your class Miss Fierro?" Will asked curiously.

She thought about it for a moment before shaking her head. "Nope, you will all sit and listen to my brilliance or so help me you will get homework!"

"You're not even reading," Magnus frowned up at her accusingly, giving her the excuse to swat his bangs into his face and watch him for a moment shake his long hair out to fix it.

"You're more evil than Mrs. Dodd's," Percy frowned, though his hand fell lax from his stomach at the distraction.

"I'm not the one forcing you to read this," she reminded with a touch of hurt, "and the homework is encouraged to be worked on together."

"Okay, just as evil as Chiron," Percy chuckled.

The remains of old meals were piled as high as sand dunes – bones, chunks of rancid meat, even old camp meals. I guess the ants had been raiding the camp's compost heap and stealing our leftovers. At the base of one of the heaps, struggling to pull himself upright, was Beckendorf. He looked awful, partly because his camouflage armour was now the colour of garbage.

"Damn, I don't even think Silena could find a way to match shoes with that," Jason heaved a tragic sigh.

"Hospital gown," Thalia said flatly.

"Charlie!" Silena ran to him and tried to help him up.

"Thank the gods," he said. "My – my legs are paralysed!"

"It'll wear off," Annabeth said. "But we have to get you out of here. Percy, take his other side."

Silena and I hoisted Beckendorf up, and the four of us started back through the tunnels. I could hear distant sounds of battle – metal creaking, fire roaring, hundreds of ants snapping and spitting.

"What's going on out there?" Beckendorf asked. His body tensed. "The dragon! You didn't – reactivate it?"

"Afraid so," I said. "Seemed like the only way."

"But you can't just turn on an automaton! You have to calibrate the motor, run a diagnostic... There's no telling what it'll do! We've got to get out there!"

"I'm now imagining him with seven kinds of wrenches having a fit over a monkey belt or something," Nico admitted.

"Think it's just called a tool belt Nico," Will offered. Nico smiled as he imagined Will pouring over car manuals to try and impress his dad, and then Will showing him a few.

As it turned out, we didn't need to go anywhere, because the dragon came to us. We were trying to remember which tunnel led to the exit when the entire hill exploded, showering us in dirt. Suddenly we were staring at open sky. The dragon was right above us, thrashing back and forth, smashing the Ant Hill to bits as it tried to shake off the Myrmekes crawling all over its body.

The sudden blast of air and light felt like a second rise out of the underworld. Percy remembered gaping up at that monstrosity, fire and smoke setting its golden face like the sun of a new day, sparks flying from every scale as it roared in pain. That dragon had saved their life, and he was once again just left wondering if Grover would want a hug from it or would consider that a first class meal.

"Come on!" I yelled. We dug ourselves out of the dirt and stumbled down the side of the hill, dragging Beckendorf with us.

Our friend the dragon was in trouble. The Myrmekes were biting at the joints of its armour, spitting acid all over it. The dragon stomped and snapped and blew flames, but it couldn't last much longer. Steam was rising from its bronze skin.

Even worse, a few of the ants turned towards us. I guess they didn't like us stealing their dinner. I slashed at one and lopped off its head. Annabeth stabbed another right between the feelers. As the celestial bronze blade pierced its shell, the whole ant disintegrated.

"Great, another thing to lug back," Alex huffed.

"We did not need a trophy of this event," Percy groaned.

"Slackers!" She sniffed.

"I – I think I can walk now," Beckendorf said, and immediately fell on his face when we let go of him.

"There's a right and wrong place for a pratt fall man," Jason said with a nervous laugh.

"Nobody ever said to Percy," Thalia finished for him.

"Charlie!" Silena helped him up and pulled him along while Annabeth and I cleared a path through the ants. Somehow we managed to reach the edge of the clearing without getting bitten or splashed, though one of my sneakers was smoking from acid.

"What is it with your bad luck and shoes?" Jason frowned.

"I was destined to be bigfoot in another life?" He shrugged.

Back in the clearing, the dragon stumbled. A great cloud of acid mist was roiling off its hide.

"We can't let it die!" Silena said.

"Awww," Alex grinned. "Don't ever let someone say I never agreed with a child of Aphrodite!"

"How I wish that would have been her mother's response," Thalia nodded along sternly. The goddess of love was probably up on Olympus somewhere watching and applauding at all the drama instead of actually swooping in to help, if she wasn't engrossed in a hollywood celebrity magazine first.

"It's too dangerous," Beckendorf said sadly. "Its wiring –"

"Charlie," Silena pleaded, "it saved your life! Please, for me."

Beckendorf hesitated. His face was still bright red from the ant spit, and he looked as if he were going to faint any minute, but he struggled to his feet. "Get ready to run," he told us. Then he gazed across the clearing and shouted, "DRAGON! Emergency defence, beta-ACTIVATE!"

The dragon turned towards the sound of his voice. It stopped struggling against the ants, and its eyes glowed. The air smelled of ozone, like before a thunderstorm.

Thalia gave a not-so-quite chuckle at the rare power she allowed to course through her. It was a heady feeling she wouldn't ordinarily enjoy sharing with a dragon for a moment, but this one had saved a camper's life.

ZZZZZAAAAAPPP!

Arcs of blue electricity shot from the dragon's skin, rippling up and down its body and connecting with the ants. Some of the ants exploded. Others smoked and blackened, their legs twitching. In a few seconds there were no more ants on the dragon. The ones that were still alive were in full retreat, scuttling back towards their ruined hill as fingers of electricity zapped them in the butt to prod them along.

Magnus snorted fantastically and threw his head back laughing.

"Are you done acting like the world is ending again?" Alex asked as she watched the nerves twitch around in his throat. He had a really strong jawline usually obscured but for this angle.

"For now," he agreed as he hoisted himself back into his usual seat.

The dragon bellowed in triumph, then it turned its glowing eyes towards us.

"Now," Beckendorf said, "we run."

This time we did not yell, "For Hephaestus!" We yelled, "Heeeeelp!"

Magnus immediately groaned again, eyeing the floor as if considering how much less he'd looked like a dragon sized snack from down there.

"Don't even think about it," Alex huffed as she grabbed the back of his shirt.

"I am being punished for a crime I did not commit!" He huffed.

"The two kind of sound the same," Will offered in a not at all helpful kind of voice. "Maybe the dragon just thinks they're charging off again to a wasps nest next."

"Will, that's worse," Magnus yelped. "You hear how that's worse, right?!"

Percy finally cleared his throat and reminded him to either get it over with or give it up, because, you know, he'd already lived through it.

The dragon pounded after us, spewing fire and zapping lightning bolts over our heads like it was having a great time.

Jason couldn't help a little snort of laughter he tried his hardest to pass off as a muffled sneeze. He couldn't help it, that dragon had been through it and sounded more like a puppy having fun without yet realizing his playmates weren't squealing with delight.

"How do you stop it?" Annabeth yelled.

Beckendorf, whose legs were now working fine (nothing like being chased by a huge monster to get your body back in order)

"There's a whole world of self-motiavting posters and workout videos missing out on this dragon marketing," Thalia nodded.

"One that the mist should keep them very far away from!" Percy frowned accusingly at her.

shook his head and gasped for breath. "You shouldn't have turned it on! It's unstable! After a few years, automatons go wild!"

"Would he have rather they left him for dead?" Nico asked conversationally.

"Not a hundred percent sure being rescued into a dragon chase is what I'd call great," Magnus reminded with exhaustion in every syllable.

"Good to know," I yelled. "But how do you turn it off?"

"Someone really needs to tell Hephaestus it's a design flaw not to be voice activated shut down with a secret password," Will would give them that.

"I'll do it," Percy said without hesitation, which was pretty much the worst person to be sent to do it and also the only one who would tell a god to do it.

Beckendorf looked around wildly. "There!"

Up ahead was an outcrop of rock, almost as tall as the trees. The woods were full of weird rock formations, but I'd never seen this one before. It was shaped like a giant skateboard ramp, slanted on one side, with a sheer drop on the other.

"You guys, run around to the base of the cliff," Beckendorf said. "Distract the dragon. Keep it occupied!"

"That, is the worst sentence, in the English language," Magnus looked pained he'd said those words together.

"Followed very closely by, look, I didn't want to be a half-blood," Percy actually nodded his agreement.

"What are you going to do?" Silena said.

"You'll see. Go!"

Beckendorf ducked behind a tree while I turned and yelled at the dragon, "Hey, lizard-lips! Your breath smells like gasoline!"

The dragon spewed black smoke out of its nostrils. It thundered towards me, shaking the ground.

"Maybe that's a compliment in dragon?" Jason asked bemusedly.

"You are way to calm about this man!" Magnus groaned.

"Percy's not freaking out," he reminded, throwing a thumb at him. "He just kind of looks annoyed at this, I'm betting because he lost his chance to win capture the flag more than this."

Percy smiled his automatic reaction was to agree with that...but it didn't erase the insistent strain on him through all of this. There was something he was forgetting about all of this, something about Beckendorf and Silena, but the circumstances didn't feel right. This did feel like just another day at camp, so it wasn't bothering him to much.

"Come on!" Annabeth grabbed my hand. We ran for the back of the cliff.

"So we can now put underground, and being chased by a dragon on that list," Thalia snickered.

"I, have a minor preference," Percy said, smiling like a dope and not like someone who was being threatened by a dragon. Magnus really felt alone that should be a bigger concern than it was.

The dragon followed.

"We have to hold it here," Annabeth said. The three of us readied our swords.

The dragon reached us and lurched to a stop. It tilted its head like it couldn't believe we'd be so foolish as to fight.

"No, no, like a baby unsure what to do next," Jason grinned in delight. "Think a puppy waiting to see if he gets treats for doing a good job."

"Jason, you are not adopting the electric murderous dragon," Will sighed.

"Aw, come on!" Jason frowned. "He sounds so cool, and I bet Beckendorf keeps him in great order."

"Mrs. O'Leary has a playmate her size," Nico couldn't help but chuckle along.

Alex whooped in delight and loudly seconded that, well hiding Will's wince and no actual answer.

Now it had caught us, there were so many different ways it could kill us it probably couldn't decide which to use.

"Well the fire's obviously his go to, but he probably used up all that on the ants," Magnus said with dripping disdain.

"Stomping you means he'd have to dig out Percy from between his toes, I don't know if they like to groom themselves as well as cats," Thalia nodded along.

"I bet his bite force is, the best, he might want to slice you up just for fun so you don't go down in one swallow," Alex said seriously.

"I am going to find a way to bury this dragon back where he came from," Percy frowned.

"Aww," they all mock groaned like Sally had just threatened to take their new toy away before busting out laughing.

We scattered as its first blast of fire turned the ground where we'd been standing into a smoking pit of ashes.

"Still think this is cute Jason?" Magnus shot at him.

"Like a puppy who doesn't understand he shouldn't bite," he agreed with a sunny smile.

Then I saw Beckendorf above us – at the top of the cliff – and I understood what he was trying to do. He needed a clear shot. I had to keep the dragon's attention.

"Yaaaah!" I charged. I brought Riptide down on the dragon's foot and sliced off a talon.

Its head creaked as it looked down at me. It seemed more confused than angry, like, Why did you cut off my toe?

"Percy, that was just rude and a complete overreaction," Thalia couldn't help but play along with Jason's joke now.

"I got Mrs. O'Leary already trained," Percy said deadpan. "I'm sorry if I hurt the murder-happy dragon's feelings!" He finished in complete exasperation at the pair.

Then it opened its mouth, baring a hundred razor-sharp teeth.

"Percy!" Annabeth warned.

I stood my ground. "Just another second..."

"Percy!"

And just before the dragon struck, Beckendorf launched himself off the rocks and landed on the dragon's neck.

The dragon reared back and shot flames, trying to shake off Beckendorf, but he held on like a cowboy as the monster bucked around. I watched in fascination as he ripped open a panel at the base of the dragon's head and yanked a wire.

"I want that engraved on the cabin's door," Alex said in awe.

"That's, not a bad idea," Will agreed, his tone as light as usual, but a little more wistful than it should have been.

Instantly, the dragon froze. Its eyes went dim. Suddenly it was only the statue of a dragon, baring its teeth at the sky.

Beckendorf slid down the dragon's neck. He collapsed at its tail, exhausted and breathing heavily.

"Charlie!" Silena ran to him and gave him a big kiss on the cheek. "You did it!"

Annabeth came up to me and squeezed my shoulder. "Hey, Seaweed Brain, you okay?"

"Fine... I guess." I was thinking how close I'd come to being chopped into demigod hash in the dragon's mouth.

"You were great." Annabeth's smile was a lot nicer than that stupid dragon's.

"We all have our own idea of beauty," Jason snickered.

"I'm more surprised he's not thinking, monkey see monkey do?" Thalia rolled her eyes at where he kept touching his cheek as if Annabeth had abandoned him on a real reward.

"You, too," I said shakily. "So... what do we do with the automaton?"

Beckendorf wiped his forehead. Silena was still fussing over his cuts and bruises, and Beckendorf looked pretty distracted by the attention.

Percy huffed and grumbled for a moment he wouldn't know what that would feel like, since Annabeth had gone to studying the dragon like it was another Parthenon she'd need to know every detail of. At least he'd been a part of this story, he realized with a surprised smile. Now next time some idiot kid didn't know the story of the bronze dragon, Percy would get to enlighten them for once.

"We – uh – I don't know," he said. "Maybe we can fix it, get it to guard the camp, but that could take months."

"Worth trying," I said. I imagined having that bronze dragon in our fight against the Titan lord Kronos. His monsters would think twice about attacking camp if they had to face that thing. On the other hand, if the dragon decided to go berserk again and attack the campers – that would pretty much stink.

"Or we could host cowboy events to see who can wrangle it into submission again," Alex offered.

"Chiron will make you sleep in the strawberry fields if you suggest any such thing!" Percy tried to splutter and protest, but some part of him worried their activities director would go for it as some kind of communal practice.

"I can live with that," she grinned in delight, and Percy felt a smile tugging at his lips in admiration. Nothing scared Alex, not a threat even Mr. D could try to put against her would dampen her.

"Did you see all the treasure in the Ant Hill?" Beckendorf asked. "The magic weapons? The armour? That stuff could really help us."

"And the bracelets," Silena said. "And the necklaces."

"There it is!" Thalia nodded like a heavy weight of concern had been lifted away.

"What would you do with all your free time at Camp if you didn't have a feud with them?" Will snorted.

"Be very bored I'm sure, probably help Alex bring more fun into that place. You boys could use the practice," she grinned a smile worthy of a dragon that made all of them silently weep a bit.

I shuddered, remembering the smell of those tunnels. "I think that's an adventure for later. It would take an army of demigods even to get close to that treasure."

"Maybe," Beckendorf said. "But what a treasure..."

Silena studied the frozen dragon. "Charlie, that was the bravest thing I ever saw – you jumping on that dragon."

Beckendorf swallowed. "Um... yeah. So... will you go to the fireworks with me?"

Percy still vividly remembered the first time he'd gotten a compliment from Annabeth, after he'd run that bus with the furies off the road. It was a feeling of such power flowing through him, like he could do anything in that moment.

Sadly, Annabeth was rather stingy with her compliments, or he probably would have been able to defeat Kronos by now.

Silena's face lit up. "Of course, you big dummy! I thought you'd never ask!"

Will savored the laughter that blasted through the room with his eyes closed for several moments. It was probably the last laugh Silena and Beckendorf would ever get. Even Nico and Thalia probably didn't know in detail what was about to happen. They knew she was the traitor, but they probably didn't even know Beckendorf as more than just another name in a long list of people they'd lost in the war, they just weren't around camp enough to know as he did what was soon coming.

Beckendorf suddenly looked a whole lot better. "Well let's get back, then! I bet capture the flag is over."

I had to go barefoot, because the acid had eaten completely through my shoe. When I kicked it off I realized the goo had soaked into my sock and turned my foot red and raw. I leaned against Annabeth and she helped me limp through the woods.

The laughter increased ten-fold, Will's always somehow had the power to do that as Percy's tapered off with a flush of embarrassment. "It, it really hurt guys, have you ever walked on twigs barefoot, and um, there were rocks around-"

"Just stop Percy," Thalia was rubbing a stitch in her side, her eyes swimming with delighted tears.

"Yeah," he agreed with a shameless sigh. He'd been trying to find any excuse to pluck up the courage and ask her, having her to lean on so close just like always felt like a comfort rather than a hindrance.

Beckendorf and Silena walked ahead of us, holding hands, and we gave them some space.

Watching them, with my arm around Annabeth for support, I felt pretty uncomfortable. I silently cursed Beckendorf for being so brave, and I don't mean for facing the dragon. After three years, he'd finally got the courage to ask Silena Beauregard out. It wasn't fair.

"Some things never change," Jason said with a shake of his head that didn't suit him, he had that tone like one speaking twice his age again. "You'll be fifty and still stumbling over a compliment for her again."

Percy smiled at the dream he was painting, he found it hard to imagine he lived another birthday, let alone so many compliments later, but it was a nice idea.

"You know," Annabeth said as we struggled along, "it wasn't the bravest thing I've ever seen."

I blinked. Had she been reading my thoughts?

"Um... what do you mean?"

Annabeth gripped my wrist as we stumbled through a shallow creek. "You stood up to the dragon so Beckendorf would have his chance to jump – now that was brave."

Percy's mind froze...and then went more haywire than a dragons. Wait, she had been talking about him, right?! Not some other doofus who stood up to a dragon and cut its toe off? Did she want him to ask her out or was she just mocking him? Had she ever called Luke brave? What if he asked and she looked at him like he was covered in ant goo-

"Or pretty stupid."

"Percy, you're a brave guy," she said. "Just take the compliment. I swear, is it so hard?"

We locked eyes. Our faces were, like, centimetres apart. My chest felt a little funny, like my heart was trying to do jumping jacks.

"I really thought reading the rest would help him break out of, that," Magnus said, gesturing at his sagging face.

"Guys, I think we broke Percy," Alex announced grandly.

"It was bound to happen eventually," Thalia sighed, waving her hand in front of his face. "I half expected this back when she kissed him in the volcano."

"I'd just go ahead and finish man," Jason said without bothering to hide the laugh in his voice. He always was extra animated when a capture the flag game went on, and this seemed to have surpassed the others. "She'll call him an idiot here in a sec and things will go on like normal.

"So..." I said. "I guess Silena and Charlie are going to the fireworks together."

"I guess so," Annabeth agreed.

"Yeah," I said. "Um, about that –"

I don't know what I would've said, but just then, three of Annabeth's siblings from the Athena cabin burst out of the bushes with their swords drawn. When they saw us, they broke into grins.

"You're alive!" Jason mock cheered. "We already had the search parties assembled and everything with practice!"

Percy finally gave himself a little shake and looked around at him. "How terribly inconvenient of us, how about we skip back into the woods and play hide and seek next, oh wait, we just ruined that game!"

"The game probably wasn't ruined for everyone," Magnus offered, "I'm sure somebody had fun tonight." It just never seemed to be him.

Judging by the smile lingering on Percy's face though, they were pretty sure he was happy with his hour returned of seeing her covered in a new coat of mud, oil, and sweat as his arm stayed around her only in his mind.

"Annabeth!" one of them said. "Good job! Let's get these two to jail."

"Doesn't defeating a dragon and living through Myrmekes get him a get out of jail free card?" Magnus protested.

"I never even manage that in Monopoly," Percy sighed. She was as scary as Tyson, he usually went broke before he even got close to drawing his first card.

I stared at him. "The game's not over?"

"Damn," Nico said in surprise. "I really think Percy spaced out watching her a little to much, I thought much more time had dragged on too."

Magnus was at least laughing in surprised agreement again while Jason was looking at the book with a very calculating expression.

The Athena camper laughed. "Not yet... but soon. Now that we've captured you."

"Dude, come on," Beckendorf protested. "We got sidetracked. There was a dragon, and the whole Ant Hill was attacking us."

"Uh-huh," said another Athena guy, clearly unimpressed. "Annabeth, great job distracting them. Worked out perfectly. You want us to take them from here?"

Annabeth pulled away from me. I thought for sure she was going to give us a free walk back to the border, but she drew her dagger and pointed it at me with a smile.

"Nah," she said. "Silena and I can get this. Come on, prisoners. Move it."

I stared at her, stunned. "You planned this? You planned this whole thing just to keep us out of the game?"

"No way," Thalia sounded way to proud even if she shook her head. "No way she managed all of that."

Magnus didn't really think so either. As clever as she was, even she couldn't have put all that together.

"Percy, seriously, how could I have planned it? The dragon, the ants – you think I could've figured all that out ahead of time?"

"She did!" Jason gasped, causing a flare of jealousy in Percy at the look of admiration on his face. "She totally did! Oh my gosh, this girl is a genius!"

"Annabeth wouldn't put those two in danger like that," Magnus insisted.

"Not on purpose," he still had a wild grin in place, "but I'll bet you anything she somehow tracked down where that dragon was buried, unearthed it just enough to show the head, and then waited, hoping the ants would time it with her game."

"Her game?" Percy groaned. He thought Annabeth was a genius too, but she might believe someone as smart as Jason over him.

"That's a lot of if's," Magnus looked personally offended now if his cousin had decided to put a deranged dragon back into activation for a flag.

"It probably all didn't go according to plan," Jason was getting wound up now as he babbled excitedly. "I bet she planned on Percy and Beckendorf seeing this by telling them which direction to go and hoping Beckendorf would spend his time fawning over the dragon and forget about the game, not go charging the ants!"

"How on earth did she excavate a whole crater and find that thing and I didn't even notice?!" Percy demanded.

"Maybe she got Tyson and the forest dryads to help before he left," Jason shrugged, "maybe she-"

"Guys!" Thalia finally interrupted with a bright smile as Percy was clearly winding up to argue back. "One of these days, we're going to get out of here and you can interrogate Annabeth all day."

Jason still had a smug, 'I'm right,' look on his face while Magnus and Percy exchanged, 'I hate every minute of this' expressions, but Magnus was almost done with one more of these, and that was enticing enough for now.

It didn't seem likely, but this was Annabeth. There was no telling with her. Then she exchanged glances with Silena, and I could tell they were trying not to laugh.

"Yeah, I'm on Jason's side," Alex grinned along. The plan had probably gone to hell, but those two badasses had brought it back and still come out on top.

"Well don't look at me," Will reminded as Nico was watching him as if waiting to see if he was holding out. "I was on Percy's team! They weren't going to be sharing that kind of info with the enemy!"

"You – you little –" I started to say, but I couldn't think of a name strong enough to call her.

"Owl breath," Alex offered.

"Traitor," Magnus grumbled, she was the cause of this heart attack.

"Genius!" Jason crowed.

Thalia couldn't stop laughing at all of them, she had a pretty good idea Percy wasn't going to be the only one tackling Annabeth when they met now.

I protested all the way to the jail, and so did Beckendorf. It was totally unfair to be treated like prisoners after all we'd been through.

But Annabeth just smiled and put us in jail. As she was heading back to the front line, she turned and winked. "See you at the fireworks?"

Kronos might as well have appeared and trapped him in a time bubble. Percy froze with whatever expression was on his face. Had she just asked him out?! Like on a date!? The fireworks were on a beach, where they might just stumble into the ocean and, and... he sighed as the rest of the night's events swam easily to mind now. Still a little foggy around the edges, but with clarity that he was trying to connect two events that were not having it. The fireworks had been a spectacular show, he'd watched every color of the rainbow flash across her face that night and heard her laugh at the amazing designs their fellow campers created. She had gone down to the ocean and rinsed herself off, but there had still been mud creased into her skin and a streak of oil in her hair that nearly covered up her gray bangs.

She had been happy, on this night, but when Connor and Travis went racing past yelling in delight and throwing popcorn and hotdogs around from a stand no one seemed sure where it had come from, and Chiron announced how good it felt to have so many here on this night as he held a moment of silence for those they lost, Annabeth had bowed her head and clutched the beads on her necklace Percy had never been a part of. She wasn't there yet, with him or Luke.

She didn't even wait for my answer before darting off into the woods.

I looked at Beckendorf. "Did she just... ask me out?"

He shrugged, completely disgusted. "Who knows with girls? Give me a haywire dragon any day."

So we sat together and waited while the girls won the game.

Percy laughed along with everyone else. There was a relief in it, the tension in the room always just under the surface at being locked in here managed to vanish for just that moment that they knew they couldn't hang on to. Percy's life was hectic and chaotic, sometimes it felt like his closest friends made that worse rather than better, but it was his life being shared with them, and he wouldn't have it any other way...otherwise he might not ever find out how he got down here.

PJOPJOPJOPJO

Annabeth absolutely planned this and you cannot convince me or Jason otherwise.

Though I don't think she meant for Beckendorf to get captured. Most likely she expected Percy and him to try and find the dragon's body and for Beckendorf to fix it and wake it up while they followed invisibly to keep an eye on them and all that would have taken up time until the game was won. Annabeth only stepped in when she realized Beckendorf split off, but I don't think she saw or heard where he split off to.

*Not a goofy name I made up by the way, but a real animal. Go look them up, they're adorable!

#pjo #Percy Jackson #Thalia Grace #Jason Grace #nico di angelo #will solace #Alex Fierro #Magnus Chase #happy the dragon #charles beckendorf #silena beauregard #annabeth chase #percabeth #solangelo #big three kids

[neuroprincess]

Law & Order: SVU - You meet again (Preferences)

Classification: Fluff

Pairing: Alex Cabot, Casey Novak, Liz Donnelly, Olivia Benson and Rita Calhoun

Warnings: None

Word count: +900

Alex Cabot

- It's been 18 years since you saw each other in person, during your teenage years you kept sporadic contact through letters and phone calls. You felt proud of her every step, supporting her in all the courses, internships, sleepless nights studying, but two months before high school graduation the blonde cut ties abruptly, there were many unanswered phone calls and letters that returned or were never answered. This didn't stop you, years later, from sending one last letter to congratulate her when you heard that Alex had graduated in Harvard, her dream since you were kids. In the meantime you went on with your life, graduated, bought a house in Texas and got married at 30, divorced at 32, the dream house was sold and you started your own business in NY, a coffee shop in a good spot. Weeks after opening a group of detectives walked in and you immediately recognized a blonde head accompanying them. Much taller than you remember, wearing a feminine suit that fit her body well, eyebrows coming together in a thoughtful expression that you know well. She took a moment to choose something in the display case, and when she looked up, she was in shock. Your name escaped through her lips in a whisper.

Casey Novak

- A simple softball game got you three days off work, a mild concussion and a pretty purple eye. The ADA visited you every day since the event, on the day you returned to work the veteran detectives made a few unfunny jokes about you being able to handle big men but getting knocked down by a ball, giving you slaps on the back in consolation for the attempt. At lunchtime you received a bouquet of yellow roses, a box of Swiss chocolate and a handwritten apology card inviting you to dinner to make up for the hospital trip. You had exchanged phone numbers at the hospital, so making the appointment was easy, finding a space in your professional calendar was not, and after two weeks you met at a restaurant a few blocks from your apartment.

Liz Donnelly

- As you work together you frequently bump into each other in the hallways, there are always cordial greetings and brief conversations about the case you are working on, but nothing beyond that. Two months go by quickly, you seem to have fallen in everyone's favor and perform your tasks with competence, making Alex proud and excited to celebrate your work, especially for being your first formal job in the law area, you meet after work in a chic Manhattan bar, not far from the office. About 15 minutes later another blonde joins you, dressed more casually than usual, a smile painting her lips as she walks toward you after meeting you by happenstance. "Well well well, Cabot and her ward, so what are we celebrating? I'll pay for the drinks."

Olivia Benson

- The same night of the misunderstanding the Captain sends you a message apologizing for the situation in front of your house. You talked for a few more minutes and she thanks you for always being the one with Noah on the occasions she can't, in the end you agree to let the kids meet on a weekend after their punishment. For your children it was long, but just two weeks forbidden to go out play after school and video games. Evelyn was anxious, running around the house to make sure everything is ready for Noah's arrival, initially you had arranged with the Bensons to meet at the park but the rainy weather made you change your plans, finally deciding on a day of board games. Catan, El Dorado, Detective, Monopoly, even Jenga and Twister, there is a table full of snacks and treats, a wine is kept in the back of the cupboard in case Olivia enjoys it, you don't know what they like so you buy everything. At the appointed hour the doorbell rings and you find mother and son as excited as you are. It would be a fun day.

Rita Calhoun

- She didn't show up for weeks, every Tuesday you drove customers to other tables to reserve that special one in the hope that Rita would show up, which didn't happen. After the fourth Tuesday in a row you gave up. The new manager didn't harass you anymore, while he didn't make things easy at work, denying you overtime and events that usually pay a little more, after all, the generous tip from those rich people is what pays your bills. You chose to resign when you realized that there was no advantage or anything that bound you there, the emergency fund lasted long enough until you got another job, this time in an Italian restaurant, not as fancy as your previous job but much more welcoming. Monday is usually a slow day, you found out after two months as a waitress, so you are alone with the chef, working overtime late at night when she enters the homely environment, looking out of place in her expensive suit and high heels worth a rent. "Miss Calhoun?" you whisper, an involuntary smile on your lips. "I told you to call me Rita, sweetie." she sits up and signals for you to come closer. "What are you doing here? Forgive me, but this restaurant… it's not up to your level, it's not fancy." deep down you wait for the answer that comes next, not being able to think of any other explanation for her being on the other side of the city alone on a week day. "I came after the service of my favorite waitress."

#law & order: special victims unit #svu fanfiction #law and order svu #alex cabot x reader #casey novak x reader #liz donnelly x reader #olivia benson x reader #rita calhoun x reader #preferences #female reader

[sublimecatgalaxy]

You and @tee-swizzle write Rafe Cameron so well. Brb messaging her too.

I've read both of your masterlists for him and need more-

Could you do prompts 1 and 3? Maybe some angst??

Also have fun on your vacation! I hope that you have a super fun time and can relax for a bit. I know that it's been a really rough year for you but I'm so thankful that you're here and can share your beautiful mind with us.

Oh my god, this is so sweet. Thank you so much for the kind words- I love whoever you are, this made my whole entire day. The world has not been kind on me or my community lately but I'm hoping it gets better soon. I adore you.

"Why are you here?" I ask with an annoyed tilt of my head, watching Rafe shield his eyes from the rain beating down on him from above. I wait patiently as he comes up with a sad excuse, his eyes flickering from between my face to the ground, ashamed.

"I needed to see you." He mutters, trying to step closer to me but I hold my hand out to him, stopping him from coming any closer as I feel my heart begin to crack in my chest.

"Bullshit, what do you really want from me?" I demand, trying to keep my composure but it's so hard when I can tell from the look in his eyes that he's hurting. "Were you lonely or something-"

"Something, look can I please just come in?" He begs, voice dripping with desperation and I pause for a second, weighing the pros and cons before my head dips and I step out of the way for him to enter my apartment.

"Fine." I huff and he immediately slips past me and into the warmth, rubbing at his arms. "I know you get off at being scary and making women feel shitty about themselves but I'm not afraid of you."

"Contrary to popular belief, I don't like that everyone hates me, okay?" He snaps, an apologetic expression passing across his face immediately when he says it.

"Then be a nicer person and people might like you more." I cross my arms over my chest in an attempt to guard myself a bit more but he just gives me a sad smile and presses a hand to his chest.

"Ouch." He hisses, stripping himself of his jacket before flopping down on my couch. "I know that I deserve you kicking the emotional crap out of me for breaking up with you but seriously go easy on me." He pleads, eyes softening as I bite at the inside of my cheek, debating on whether to believe him or not.

"What happened?" I ask, ignoring my gut, sitting down beside him on the couch but keeping enough distance between us so that I don't give him the wrong idea.

"My dad." He mutters with a deep pained sigh, eyes flickering down to his lap where he plays with the strings on his sweatpants. My heart cracks even more at the thought of him going through this, the abuse, alone. But he chose to end our relationship. "Just needed to get out, didn't know where else to go."

"Maybe not your exes house." I tease, trying to ease the tension in the room the slightest bit but it doesn't appear to work, his frown just deepens even more.

"Like I said, this is the only place I could go." He sniffles, reaching up to run his hand through his hair, tugging gently as he shakes his head before pushing his face into his hands.

"You can stay, but don't think this is me forgiving you."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o- Taglist: @bubblebuttwade @rafelover2405 @leslienjazzy @sorceresss @grxnde-dwt @alex–awesome–22 @bunnietoof @niyamar1e @serialghost @plantlungs @geniusohn @akaliltimmytim @lilaalouuxx @xshariex @elliotsbeigeguitar @elle4404 @lelieja @srhxpci @joselyn001 @taysirene @spinkspanther @thedivineuphoria @peter-maximoffs @tsukishimawhore @poohkie90 @szlaco @distantsighs @nstyles4299 @wolflover384 @givemefoodandlovesstuff @vane28282 @yeswhatever33 @amirrahfranson @vvaalleennttiinna @f-mu @yaspillz @jeyramarie @skylievin@abbybarnes17 @jointherebellion215 @visiondaddy @steezysimfinds @its-ya-gay-boi-luigi @crunchytoenailsyum@glizzymcguirex @beth123lg @melovesmut @rafecameronswhore @ariianelle @write-from-the heart @vampviolets@haylee-e @honee-chai-tea @lokiandbuckywife

@officiallyunofficialperson@heyaitsklaudia@rosepetalsparks @bluetreecloud20 @scenesofobx @double-shot-of-tequila @1dluver13xx @colbysbrocks @iamasimpingh0e @loveshineslikethesky @id-3-kbro @diorsitgirl @errorfound101-allideasburnedout @neverwillknowme18 @ellyskey @taylors-folk @loversjoy @myaloveee @thyris-is @lagataprrr @aaaaslaaaan @witxhy-lexx @minjix @luvroseee @tee-swizzle @savageneversaw @admiringlove @hysteriahall @piceous21 @starlightandfairies @igotmajordaddyissues @drewstarkey-wife1 @manyfandomsfanvergent @revesephemeres @bungunz

#rafe #rafe x reader #rafe cameron #rafe cameron x reader #the outerbanks #the outerbanks fic

[lurksunderthebed]

Hi, I saw that you had a discussion about the queerness of our beloved characters. I really hope you’re not tired of that topic, because I wanted to add another point.

First of all I don’t really care. I really like the dynamic between most of the characters, especially Ghost and Soap, but I don’t care if it’s interpreted as besties or lovers. I think both is fun.

I just wanted to add that maybe all of the MW story feels so fucking gay, because we lack cool women? We have Farah and Laswell, but let’s be real Farah is basically married to Alex (I thought they were a couple at first) and Laswell is married to a woman. Now people go great lengths to ship the male characters with female villains, who only appear in a small fraction of the story and have no real chemistry. I mean they can do whatever floats their boat, but I don’t really see the point here.

Which leaves us with a bunch of man ‘flirting’ with each other vor comedic value. I think given this and the points you already said on your account, I think it’s even a bit intended that most of our characters might not be the straightest.

Sure, a bunch of straight men can exist without women and still be straight and the military still might not be the most women friendly institution, but I think having more girlpower would have been an easy way to make everyone appear more straight and the devs didn’t go that route sooooo… (I still would love to have more cool women, but that’s another topic)

Anyways, I hope you have a good day and I wanted to add that I really enjoyed your character analysis posts <3

Ahh thanks for enjoying my analysis posts. 💞🥹 Honestly, I'm still surprised people are reading them lol. (And asking me about it haha)

But yes, I don't think I'll ever be tired of the ol' queerness discussion. It's a fun topic to debate especially with these characters in this particular game.

Controversial take, but I actually don't think adding any extra female characters would've been helpful in making the 'gay' go away.

(gonna be a long discussion here, settle in if you want to read it haha 😅)

What we have to put in mind, is that this game wasn't made for the female audience. The vast majority of the people buying and playing it are going to be male. That's the facts. It's going to cater to men.

A game made for men is going to have a majority of those characters be male. Adding new female characters in a REBOOT series is a delicate task when a good chunk of the population playing have played the OG and want to see legacy characters back (which are all male—the OG was all men).

That means that when we look at why certain things are framed and why there aren't many female characters, and especially why there isn't much of any confirmed (het) canon romantic ships between any characters, it's because the game itself isn't focused on it.

That same vast majority of men don't actually care about ships in general and with people trying to be more progressive, any female characters introduced are painstakingly written to omit any overt possibility of romance. In one sense, it's a welcome change from the action movie style plot line where man + woman = relationship with the women being just side characters/window dressing to the MC.

Women here are shown to be tough, that they don't need a man at all. They have their own agency. It's pretty nice actually that they did that. None of the female characters are infantilised nor is there a sense of them being there to "check boxes" in the minority bag. They make sense in the framing the game has placed them in.

But we do have this interesting dynamic whereby removing the romance factor, but having female characters in a setting that most are conditioned to read as man + woman = relationship, it de-emphasizes heteronormality and actually emphasises the relationships between the core characters.

And with a game full of men, that means the relationships between men are going to be the focal point.

Adding extra female characters, wouldn't have changed any of this, because the writers have gone out of their way to not make romance a plot of any sort. (There's a whole other discussion on the flaws of trying to give women agency/proving strength of character, but by doing so, taking away their sexualities by removing any sort of romance, but that's beside the point)

I think there's also an argument to be had that meaningful relationships with others don't have to necessarily imply romance between characters. It's totally fair to be sick of always having romance injected in to these sorts of relationships. That's an extremely valid take.

But there most definitely is a double standard that everyone is operating on. And we see that when we compare Alex/Farah's relationship with Ghost/Soap's.

Alex's most meaningful relationship is with Farah. He sacrifices himself for her cause and loses a leg for it. He comes back and stays by her side. Most people assume to take it as Alex is in love with Farah. We never see any type of flirting between the two. In fact it's mostly Farah testing Alex and looking at their dialogue you can tell there's respect between the two, but anything more is undefined/up for interpretation.

Yet it's just assumed by virtue of Alex and Farah being man + woman, that they must be together because of how much Alex had sacrificed. Completely ignoring the possibility of Alex doing so because he believes in Farah's cause and was sick of being jerked around with no choice by higher ups who largely didn't care about the suffering of Farah's people. Suffering that the man had personally witnessed. But no, he must be in love with her. (If Farah was a man, their whole relationship would be read as platonic with Alex's beliefs as a focus, not him being potentially in love)

Ghost's most meaningful relationship is with Soap. Soap has changed Ghost's whole MO as a lone wolf, and has challenged his very notion of trust. Ghost tests Soap and is proven wrong when Soap survives despite the odds. We even see them have plausible deniability flirting/snark. They are framed as a unit and on the off times (off of missions in cutscenes), they are always physically together. There's definitely respect between the two, but anything more is undefined/up for interpretation.

By itself, their relationship seems innocuous, but looking at the context we see a very different picture. Context matters heavily in seeing how this relationship has changed Ghost/the importance of it to him. It's assumed that Soap is the first person in god knows how long, that Ghost is emotionally attached to. What constitutes a normal, albeit flirty and snarky, friendly relationship for most, is amplified for Ghost in the glaring fact that he really doesn't do this for anyone else ever. As far as we can tell for a man that appears to live his job, Soap is Ghost's most important person.

We can even arguably say that Ghost and Soap had a flirtier, friendlier, more emotional relationship than Alex and Farah ever had, yet it's assumed (by the male audience) to be completely platonic by virtue of them both being men.

For all those people who argue to stop shipping characters, those same people turn around and are completely implicit in the notion of Alex and Farah being a thing.

It's a really annoying take, because you and I know that it's not the romance they're bothered by. It's the idea of having a character that exemplifies the silent male loner badass archetype as anything but the pinnacle of masculinity. IE, totally and utterly straight.

I feel I could go on about all the ways Ghost surprisingly subverts his archetype, but I'll leave it there. This is prob already too long 😅

But yes, having new cool female characters is always good, but it still wouldn't settle any sexuality debate since they would most likely be written without any hint of romance between the core 141 group and that potential new character. Just like how Farah and Laswell, as you said, have been both removed completely from the romance/sexuality debate, any new female character would also be put under similar framework.

I suppose it would just make them appear more straight (and get rid of all the speculation) if they had a new female character added into 141, but I don't see the point of adding a new character for that sole purpose. And tbh, it would come across as insulting to women if they did for that one reason.

Given how little character development we had in the latest game, I heavily doubt they would introduce new characters at all when they barely showed anything of the current ones we have already. We need more development of the characters we have, adding someone new would arguably take away from building proper relationships/dynamics between the characters we do have currently.

But yeah, heh. I'll stop for real now. If you got this far in my latest Ted Talk™, kudos to you good sir 🫡, you have all my love ☺️

Hope you have a great day too nonny, and I hope this helps with the discussion. Feels like I went off on too many side tangents. 🤔🤔🤔

#ask #ghostsoap #soapghost #cod mwiii #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley #ghost x soap #simon riley #call of duty #soap x ghost

[the-blind-assassin-12]

Ready To Hope

1200 Words for 1200 Followers #2

A/N: Hi friends! Welcome to the 12-A-Palooza! This event is my way of saying thank you for sticking with me. Your support and kindness toward me and my writing is out of this world and I’m grateful for every last one of you! Rolling right along with the second piece - which is set in the same AU as Every Color Illuminates. This “color soulmates” trope has been really fun to play with, so it might be pretty easy to convince me to write more for them ;) 

Warnings: Talk of past relationships, Teresa makes a tiny cameo 

Requested by: @alraedesigns - Song: Shake It Out - Character Choice: Marcus Pike (Thank you so much for sending this, Alex! I know you love this sweet cinnamon roll man, so I hope you enjoy the continuation of this AU! 💚) 

Summary: When Marcus contacts a renowned Art Gallery in hopes that a Color Ambassador can help him with some details for a case, he’s reminded of the fact that asking for help to see color hasn’t always worked out for him in the past. This time, though, things will be different. 

“This might be a shot in the dark, but-” Marcus clamped his phone between his ear and shoulder so that he had both hands free to pay the coffee vendor. Mouthing a ‘thank you’ to the man, he took his beverage, dropping his change in the tip jar. “You don’t have a Graysight CA who can walk me through the exhibit, do you?”

He held his breath and readjusted the phone, gripping it with his right hand. I hope she says y-

“We do.” Michelle, the director of the National Gallery of Art responded. “Actually, our best Color Ambassador sees in Graysight. And you’re in luck, Agent Pike, because she’s here today.”

Marcus released his held breath in a relieved sigh, lips lifting into a smile. Amazing. “That’s great.”

Admitting that he - the regional head of the FBI’s Art Crimes division - needed a CA always gave Marcus a hint of anxiety. It wasn’t because he was embarrassed that he hadn’t found his match yet. It was because he knew that people made assumptions about him based on his position, and that sometimes when they found out that he couldn’t see in color, their assumptions turned to doubt in his ability to do his job. But here was a fellow professional within the art community telling him that the best person for the task at hand was someone just like him.

Clearing his throat, Marcus tilted his left hand, careful not to spill his coffee, so he could read the time on his wristwatch. It was just after 11. No time like the present, right? “Would it be too much trouble to meet with them this morning? I can be there in half an hour.”

“Of course not, Agent, anything we can do to help. There’s a group tour finishing with that section of the Gallery now, but once they’re done I’ll rope off the wing so that you won’t be disturbed while you’re here.”

She excused herself then, telling him that she needed to go speak with the CA who would be guiding him. Marcus thanked her and hung up the phone, sliding it into his jacket pocket. He let out another sigh, this one heftier and more satisfying as it left his lungs.

Finally, a break in this case that goes my way.

Heading away from the coffee cart and toward where his car was parked, he tried to keep the next thought from materializing. He failed.

It’s not just this case that I haven’t caught a break in. It’s been… everything.

Though it had been nearly eight months since he’d left Texas, the way things ended between him and Teresa still stung when he thought about it. The sting was made worse by the fact that if their roles were swapped, she wouldn’t need a CA to assist on the case, because she had matched and had lived with color for years.

Jane had been the one to let the spectrum into her life. It had given Marcus pause at first, when she told him. But Teresa had insisted that it was simply because they were such good friends - that they connected on a level that was purely platonic. Hers hadn’t been one of those sudden, blinding explosions of color that some people experienced, but a steady glow as she got to know the man. That, along with the fact that Jane had been able to see color before meeting Teresa - his match had been his first wife - had been enough to convince Marcus that a serious relationship with her was possible.

Not everyone matched with their partner. He knew that. It didn’t mean a relationship was doomed.  

There were other signs though. He frowned as he sipped his coffee. Other things I ignored.

Like the time he asked Teresa to describe the colors of a sunset they watched together . “I don’t know, Marcus.” She looked at him as if he’d asked her to solve a complex mathematical equation instead of helping him to understand the world around him. “It’s orange.”

“Yeah,” he’d said, one arm wrapped around her to bring her closer to his side, his lips landing near her temple. “But what does that mean? What does it make you feel?”

She’d only stared at him, shaking her head. “Warm, I guess? I don’t know, I can’t explain it. Hopefully someday you’ll be able to see for yourself.”

That had been the end of that conversation. Marcus never tried to get her to describe colors to him again. He told himself that he didn’t want to put her on the spot. But if he was being honest, it was because he didn’t want to think about what it meant that she wasn’t even willing to try.

But I can’t think about that right now. I need to… Need to think about this case. And I need to let go of what happened in Texas if I want to have any hope of finding something real.

Reaching his car, he got in and entered the address of the Gallery into his GPS. The automated voice and the gray arrow on the screen helped him concentrate, and before long he was pulling into the visitor parking lot.

Alright, Pike. He took a long swig of his coffee to drain it, setting the empty cup - one that he was told was brown with green stripes but only saw as light gray with darker gray lines - into the holder in the center console. Time to focus.

As promised, Michelle had roped off the Rothko exhibit, a security guard leading him there after Marcus showed the man his badge. As he waited in the room, he walked around and looked closely at the various color-blocked paintings on display - squares and lines and rectangles that all appeared to be in grayscale.

I can’t even imagine what it would be like to see these. Really see them.

Before he could get too lost in his fantasy, he heard a pair of footsteps getting closer. Turning, he saw you and began closing the distance.

“Agent Marcus Pike,” he introduced himself, holding his hand out to you with a smile.

You returned the smile and the introduction, fingers wrapping around his hand to bring your palms together. The moment you did, the room erupted in hues he didn’t have names for. The paintings that surrounded him seemed to glow, their colors radiating from the frames to shine directly on you. He sucked in a breath, a rush of emotion coursing through his chest.

I… I can see. It’s her.

He hadn’t taken his eyes off of you. Not even to glance around at the heavily saturated works he was there to study.

“Marcus?” Your voice came out as a whisper, and he saw the wonder in your expression, noticed the way that your breath came quickly and unevenly. He noticed the way that he felt relaxed and calm as blue and green shimmered in the corners of his vision and a soft tingle spread along his spine. “I… I don’t think you need me to-”

“No. I do.” He said your name again, smiling around it, letting it roll off his tongue. “I definitely do.”

.

.

Thank you for reading! If you’d like to be added to or removed from the tag list, please feel free to let me know. You can also fill out the form on my Masterlist! :)

Tags: @something-tofightfor @littlemisspascal @mishasminion360 @nyctophiliiiiaaa @alraedesigns @practicalghost @tanzthompson @amb11 @haylzcyon @harriedandharassed @woodlandmouth @swtaura @thescarletfang  @trickstersp8 @princessxkenobi @imtryingmybeskar @wildmoonflower @mswarriorbabe80 @theredwritingwitch @silverstarsandsuns @pedro-pedrito-pascalito @jedi-in-crocs @hannahkatharinee

#12 a palooza! #1200 followers 1200 words #marcus pike x f!reader #marcus pike x female reader #pedrostories #marcus pike x you #soulmate au #marcus pike the mentalist #marcus pike fic #pedro pascal character #ready to hope

[onboardsorasora]

Um, I love your Disney Princess AU, can you please write more?

Hii HitGirl!! Sorry I took so long. Thank you for this ask, I'm so truly happy you enjoy it so much! Please don't be hesitant to prompt me for this verse, I'm all too excited to write it- and I truly appreciate that people love it as well <3

I took a bit of extra time because I wanted to get all of Alex's cats right! so I went searching lol Also this is unedited so hopefully it doesn't suck

Part 1 | Part 4

Part 5

Getting to Alex's wasn't as difficult as Max worried it would have been. Considering all that has happened so far, Max thought Daniel would have had issues getting into a car. but it turns out the main problem ended up being getting Daniel out of the car. 

He loved to drive and he loved to race. Max had to promise to let Daniel drive at some point in the future. 

Pinky swears because those were unbreakable. Daniel's face had taken on a seriousness that Max found out of place. He agreed easily because he hadn't been lying and it was such an easy thing that made Daniel happy.

Lando had tried to prepare Alex, he really did. But there was nothing that could get you ready for seeing literal magic in real life– if you'd never experienced it before. Alex knew about magic, it was a cultural thing, but he'd never encountered it in exactly the way Lando tried to explain.

Daniel was in heaven. That's what Alex's house was! Alex was fun, he was tall and his smile was bright but then the noise had overwhelmed Daniel for a little. So many curious voices! And he was so excited to meet everyone.

Very soon he was in the middle of a kitty pile; there was Horsey but he also answers to Stan, Duckie, MooMoo, Sasha, Frooky, Goosey, Lookie, Gucci— there was no way Daniel was going to remember everyone. He apologized so many time already and Tino said it was fine. They were all just happy to talk to someone new and Daniel was so so happy to meet everyone.

He was overwhelmed in the best way and his grin told everyone just how ecstatic he was. Max could only stare at Daniel, while Lando and Charles tried to fill Alex in on what they knew. There wasn’t that much information other than what was happening in front of them.

Alex’s girlfriend Lily came home with boxes of pizza and Daniel swayed happily in his purring pile. She placed the boxes in the kitchen counter and bounded happily over to Daniel. Alex had been texting her updates and she wanted so much to meet Daniel.

“Hi! I’m Lily, its so nice to meet you!”

Daniel beamed at her, entranced by the glitter that sparkled over her eyes. It shimmered green in one direction and purple in another. Lily was beautiful and Daniel sang as much, he reached out for her face and the rose on the back of his hand bloomed more petals than it had before. 

The pile of cats vibrated with purrs that would probably register as a seismic event if Jimmy and Sassy were there as well. Tino and Otto started their own awhoos and then it was chaos because Alex joined in, awhooing with the dogs. Lando followed suit because he loved all forms of chaos. 

Max and Charles were left watching the madness from the kitchen, because even Lily fell to Daniel’s charms– giggling and blushing at the magic around her.

It took a little while for everything to die down, and reach a baseline level once more. Pizza was shared and Daniel positively vibrated out of his skin. He hummed the entire time that he wasn’t chewing or swallowing– though he did try hard.

“Lily…” Daniel asked when the boys started playing FIFA, it was interesting but he was way more interested in the glitter Lily wore. MooMoo said it was eyeshadow and Daniel believed them because they would know best. Cats never lie. Michelle never wore make up like this, she stuck to neutrals, this would look amazing on her.

“Yes?” She smiled sweetly at him, looking up from petting Horsey.

“How did you get the glitter– on your eyes? It's really pretty.” He asked shyly, biting the side of his finger.

“Oh! I can show you– come!” The cats shuffled away, letting them get up from the couch unhindered. Lily lead him out of the living room– Max’s eyes following them– to one of the bedrooms, but there was no bed. It had all sorts of sports tools and there was a desk with lights and a large mirror. Lily turned on the lights and started digging through a drawer. With an aha! She showed him three small pots of sparkly powder.

Grasping his left hand, she opened one of the pots and dipped her index finger in, before smearing a bright red shimmery pigment over his rose. Daniel’s eyes widened in surprise and his mouth opened in an O as he shifted his wrist to see how the colour shimmered in the light. The rose bloomed even prettier with the added colour.

“May I?” He asked reverently and she nodded, handing him a pot of bright sapphire blue. She uncapped it for him and he tentatively dipped a finger in, admiring how the whorls of his fingerprint were now shimmery. “So pretty,” he whispered before smearing the colour in the fluttering wings of his cherub. The tattoo smiled at him before shooting an arrow in glee.

“That’s beautiful!” Lily gasped, entranced by the site. Daniel smeared the rest of the pigment on the belly of the cherub who giggled, which made him giggle.

“I can’t wait to show Max!” Daniel smiled in wonder, his big brown eyes watching the play of shimmer as he moved his wrist and forearm. Lily smiled sweetly at him, “you should show him now.”

“But he’s playing–”

“He won’t mind.” She grinned conspiratorially and he grinned in return, nodding once before skipping out of the room, humming a happy tune.

“Max! Max– look! I sparkle!” He sang proudly, kneeling by the bewildered man who sat crosslegged on the floor and pushed his arm in his face. Lando and Charles snickered behind them.

Max looked at Daniel’s fluttering and shimmering tattoos before looking up at his beaming face, “yes, very beautiful Daniel.” He responded softly, his tummy swooped– as if he just took the checkered flag– when Daniel blushed.

Part 6

#oh Max is already gone for him! #enchanted au #maxiel #max/daniel #disney princess dan

[sparring-hyena]

Olay loved the first kiss prompt very much. Can i ask a hot makeout session after they had their first date for Mc and Becs

it’s not technically their first date. Becca doesn’t know what the exact number is, but it is the first time they’ve acknowledged what it is out loud.

it feels significant, important, and Becca feels a cold coil of nerves twist in her stomach. they aren’t doing anything big.

“just a movie,” Alex had said.

“a movie date?” Becca had said, because she needed to make sure. needed them to be on the same page about what they were about to do. because it’s one thing to spend an entire quarter quietly hooking up and sometimes going out together—but not together together—it’s another thing to go see a movie together out in public where anyone from Hartfeld can see them.

“yeah. is that okay?”

Becca had smiled softly and nodded. “more than.”

“great!” Alex leaned across the kitchen island to place a quick kiss to Becca’s cheek. “meet you by the front door at seven.”

it’s almost seven now and Becca’s been dressed and ready for the last hour, but she can’t bring herself to go downstairs. can’t settle her mind because what if this is when it all goes wrong?

Becca shakes her arms and shoulders. she looks at herself in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door, and tells herself that this is Alex. Alex who is kind and selfless and actually likes her. that last bit is still taking some getting used to, but every time she thinks about it, it fills her with warmth.

she goes downstairs at seven on the dot and Alex is by the door. as soon as she sees Alex, Becca feels herself relax.

“hey.” Alex smiles at Becca from her place by the door.

Becca jumps the last step and stops right in front of Alex. “hey.” she hesitates for a second looking between Alex’s lips and over her shoulder to the kitchen.

“Zack’s in there making dinner so if you aren’t—”

Becca kisses her. she throws her arms over Alex’s shoulders and presses a firm kiss to her lips. it’s a little easy to get lost in. a little easy to forget they’re still standing by the front door of their shared house.

“what was that for?” Alex asks, and her eyes look a little hazy and there’s some of Becca’s lipstick smudged against her lips.

Becca shrugs and cleans the smudged lipstick away with her thumb. “felt like it.”

Alex grins and presses a quick kiss to Becca’s cheek. “we should go so we don’t miss the start of the movie.” she takes Becca’s hand, lacing their fingers together and calls back over her shoulder to Zack in the kitchen. “we’re heading off!”

Zack sticks his head out and waves them off. “have fun and make smart choices!” he doesn’t even bat an eye at their joined hands.

their movie date doesn’t feel like a date, but in that really good way where it’s just two people spending time together with no pressure or expectations. it’s easy. Becca reaches for Alex’s hand as soon as they find their seats near the back, and Alex offers her jacket when they’re walking back to the car when she sees Becca shiver.

Becca keeps her hand on the centre console as she drives them home, and Alex takes her fingers and gently plays with them. Becca hopes that everyday can be like this.

“i had fun tonight,” Alex admits as they walk up the path to their house. “thank you for coming.”

“thank you for asking.”

they’re at the front door now, standing just off to the side. Alex is leaning against the front porch railing, and Becca is looking at her not looking at her.

“is this the part where i try kiss you and we awkwardly say goodnight?” Alex asks.

“bit hard to do that when we live together.”

Alex hums, her gaze fixed firmly on Becca now. “does that mean you don’t want me to?”

“want you to what?” Becca knows, of course, but it’s kind of fun to play this game. pretend that it’s a first date and they’re both gittering balls of nerves. they never got the chance to indulge in firsts like this together. they sort of did everything all out of order—living together before a first official date.

“make a move. woo you.”

“woo me?” Becca quirks her brow up and steps into Alex’s space.

“you know, like…” she trails off, gesturing with her hands in the air. when Becca stops in between her legs, Alex’s hands fall from the air to settle on her hips.

“like…?”

Becca leans forward, still waiting for Alex to finish her sentence but also sort of hoping that she doesn’t because this is just so much fun.

“like… um…” Alex’s eyes go a little cross eyed in her attempt to keep them locked with Becca’s. their lips are so close now, they can feel each breath, each subtle and careful movement. “fuck it.”

Alex surges forward and captures Becca’s lips with her own. it catches Becca little off guard but she sinks into it and matches Alex’s enthusiasm.

Alex’s hands slide down from Becca’s hips and over her ass. she squeezes and Becca moans into Alex’s mouth.

“bit much for, um… for a first… first date,” Becca says when Alex’s mouth moves to her jaw and then neck.

“want me to stop?” Alex pulls away just enough to smirk.

“don’t you dare.” she pulls Alex back in, kisses her firm and hard, and slips her tongue into her mouth. Alex moans and Becca thinks she could spend forever chasing that sound.

“inside?” Alex asks.

Becca nods and leads Alex by the hand inside. they’re so giggly and lost in their own world that they don’t see Zack, Chris, and Kaitlyn all huddled around the TV watching a movie.

“and what sort of hour do you call this?” Zack says, voice firm like a father but smile bright like a best friend.

“you promised to have her back by eleven,” Chris, this time, says.

Becca isn’t sure who their playful teasing is directed at, but she doesn’t really care. it feels warm in the only way that family can.

“we’re very disappointed,” Kaitlyn says as she shakes her head but there’s a beaming smile on her face.

Alex flips them off in the way that best friends do and turns her full attention to Becca.

Becca suddenly doesn’t care that tonight was technically a first and that they’re standing in their living room with their best friends. she kisses Alex firmly and smiles against her lips when their friends cheer and wolf whistle.

she pulls Alex over to the second couch and settles herself comfortably against her side.

“what are we watching?” Becca asks.

Alex grabs the blanket from the back of the couch and tosses it over both their legs.

“some holiday horror flick Kaitlyn found,” Chris says as he offers them the bowl of popcorn.

“perfect.” Becca brings her legs up to rest across Alex’s laps.

they resume the movie and in the dark and gentle quiet around them, Alex leans in to whisper in Becca’s ear. “will you go on another date with me tomorrow?”

Becca nods and leans in to kiss her gently.

#request #playchoices #my writing #becca davenport #anon #becca x mc #the freshman #the junior #the senior #the sophomore