#alternative title was the weight of a *crying* star

[planetsandmagic]

the weight of a dying star

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #tsukumo yuki #artists on tumblr #my art #alternative title was the weight of a *crying* star #in reference to the previous star plasma vessels #we know she can hear them. shakes the cage i need more yuki lore

[today-only-happens-once]

Pitch Black

Title: Pitch Black

Word Count: 2398

Summary:  “Come on, Virge,” Roman grits out. “I don’t know what he did to you, but you can fight this. You can.” Generic fantasy!AU. Platonic DLAMP, platonic Prinxiety. Mind-controlled!Virgil. 

Warnings: mind control via magic, angst (happy ending), violence and blood, serious (but non-permanent) injury to a main character, Logan and Janus have and use magic, mention of killing, Logan lowkey kills a bad guy, elements of self-sacrifice. Mention of cursing but no actual curse words are written. Please let me know if I should tag anything else. 

A/N: You know that trope of “Character A has been mind-controlled and must fight their loved ones who refuse to hurt them while trying to break them out of it?”. This is that trope. Because I love that trope. Edited by yours truly so all mistakes are mine. 

...

“Wh-what did you do to him?” Roman demands, unable to take his horror-stricken eyes from Virgil. Virgil cocks his head like an unnatural twitch, his pitch-black eyes inhuman and distinctly not Virgil.

The throne room around them had taken them days to reach. The large, circular room was dotted with marble pillars around the outer edge. Burgundy, silver, and black banners hang on the walls. Torches set in sconces offer a dim flickering light, helped slightly by the larger fire pits that sit on either side of the large onyx throne a few yards in front of them. 

In front of the throne, the sorcerer stands in black and silver robes. His long, dark hair is slicked back and falls around him like a hood. Virgil stands beside him, like they’d both been waiting for them to push through the doors. So much for taking the sorcerer by surprise. 

The sorcerer sneers, but it’s Virgil’s mouth that opens to respond. “I would worry more about what I’m about to do to you, Princey.”

Roman’s stomach twists painfully at Virgil’s voice because it’s not him but it sounds painfully familiar. Roman flexes his grip on the sword in his hand, casting a glance to Janus to his left and Logan to his right. Behind him, he hears Patton release a disbelieving breath.

“Janus,” Roman says under his breath, “Can you do anything?”

“I can try,” Janus growls, the edge in his voice razor sharp. His form ripples before it vanishes and Roman hears the quiet scuff of his feet against the marble floor beneath them moving away from the group.

“The sorcerer is mine,” Logan says darkly. “Just keep Virgil busy.” He’s gone, skirting around the cylindrical room away from Roman in the opposite direction that Janus had moved.

“Virgil,” Roman tries, unable to hide the desperation in his tone. “Please, listen—”

Virgil charges, the dagger in his hand glinting in the firelight from the torches.

Roman braces himself for impact, afraid that if he were to side-step, he’d manage to get Patton. Virgil—the real Virgil—would never forgive himself if he hurt Patton.

Roman catches the edge of Virgil’s dagger on his sword and uses the clash to shove him back. “Virgil, stop. This isn’t you.”

Roman risks a glance behind Virgil’s shoulder just in time to see Logan duck around a pillar and a blue glyph flicker in his hand. Logan was working some kind of magic, but Roman wasn’t close enough to tell what type. It’s all he can tell before the glint of steel grabs his attention and he barely manages to duck in time for Virgil’s knife to whistle past his ear and clatter against the stone behind him.

“Virgil!” Patton calls from somewhere to Roman’s left. “Snap out of it!”

Another flash of something and Roman instinctively flicks his sword. A throwing star cracks against the marble pillar to his right. Virgil rushes forward, hands empty. Roman doesn’t think about it. He drops the sword, grabbing for Virgil’s arms instead.

“Janus!” he shouts to the open. “Now would be great!”

“Ah, ah, ah,” the sorcerer tuts, before a streak of red light slams into the wall somewhere in the direction Janus had run. Roman hears a shouted, alarmed curse that was unmistakably Janus’s voice.

In his face, Virgil flashes teeth in a snarl. “That all you got, Roman?” he growls. His grip against Roman’s arms is cold—frigid—and he focuses on everything he can except Virgil’s black eyes. They remind him of the worst, darkest shadows. The ones that held nightmares and in which monsters lurked.

“Come on, Virge,” Roman grits out. “I don’t know what he did to you, but you can fight this. You can.”

Patton appears behind Virgil, grabbing for his arms as well to help pull him off Roman. “Kiddo,” Patton says, his voice strained and Roman doesn’t think it’s only from the physical effort, “Please. We need ya back.”

If Roman had blinked, he knows he would have missed it. But he swears there’s a flicker of clarity in Virgil’s eyes. A flash of white and brown, before the black swirls over again. 

“Yes!” Roman cries out. “Yes, Virgil, that was it. Keep fighting.”

A growl that doesn’t sound fully human wrenches from Virgil’s lungs and he shoves Roman back. Roman feels the air rush out of him as he collides with a pillar beside him. Virgil jerks out of Patton’s grip, stumbling to one knee. 

In the distance, Roman sees a flash of blue followed by a streak of red. Logan’s sharp, pained cry echoes against the walls. Roman is still blinking the stars from his vision, but he thinks there’s a moment where Virgil freezes at the sound. 

The prince can feel his heartbeat in his throat. “Virgil, you don’t want to hurt us. I know you don’t.”

Metal screeches against stone as Virgil snatches up the discarded throwing star to his left and hurls it at Roman. The prince barely has time to roll out of the way before it cracks against the pillar. Roman scrambles to his feet. Across the throne room, Roman sees flashes of red and blue as Logan and the sorcerer hurl spells at each other. A bright flash of yellow on the other side tells Roman that Janus is trying from his own assortment of spells as well. 

Virgil growls low in his throat and dives for his dagger. Roman’s eyes sweep frantically for his sword, and sees it discarded several feet away. He can’t get to it. 

Roman holds up his hands, sinking his weight and preparing to dodge. “Virgil--”

Virgil moves to lunge, but Patton is just a fraction faster and rushes to tackle him to the floor. Virgil stumbles but doesn’t fall, baring teeth in a furious snarl and slashing with his dagger over his shoulder. 

Roman’s eyes widen in horror, feeling like he’s watching in slow-motion. The dagger sinks into Patton’s shoulder and tears. With a strangled, pained cry, Patton releases his hold on Virgil and staggers back a step, pressing his hand to the wound. He trips, his back hitting the nearby pillar and sinking to the floor. 

“Patton!” Roman shouts, and he scrambles to get to his sword. He snatches it up in less than a second. Patton is already pale, his eyes squeezed shut tightly. 

The dagger in Virgil’s hands--stained dark with blood--clatters to the floor. Virgil presses his hands to his head, his face twisted tightly into a pained wince. He sways, then drops to one knee. Roman can see the way his whole body is trembling. 

“Roman,” he says, his voice strangled. Roman starts. That voice sounds like Virgil. Their Virgil. 

“Virgil--”

“Please,” he manages. “I--I can’t--” His voice breaks off, clutching his head harder. His fingers fist in his hair. 

Roman doesn’t understand what Virgil wants. 

And then Virgil’s eyes open (and Roman feels a wave of relief so intense he thinks he could cry at seeing his brown eyes rather than black) and settle on the sword in Roman’s hands. 

Roman’s blood turns to ice. “No.”

There’s a bright flash of red light and Virgil yelps, his eyes squeezing shut again and curling around himself. “Roman.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to,” Virgil snaps through clenched teeth. “I can’t--I can’t fight it. Please, Roman.”

The throne room is awash in flashes of red and blue, getting faster and brighter and more intense. The cracks and sizzles of ricocheting spells still does not drown out Patton’s distant, shallow breathing. Virgil looks up at him through his disheveled hair. 

Roman’s hands are trembling. 

“It’s okay,” Virgil presses, the desperation in his voice sinking like stone in Roman’s stomach. “It’s--” 

The black cloud in his eyes swirls over and Roman makes a noise in the back of his throat as he drops the sword (because he can’t, he just can’t) and lunges for him. The edges of Roman’s vision are blurring. He wrestles Virgil’s lean, athletic weight to the ground. He gets behind him, wrapping his arms around Virgil’s to anchor them against his sides. 

He holds on for dear life as Virgil thrashes. Come on, Logan, he pleas silently. 

“I’m not giving up on you, Virgil,” Roman says in his ear, grunting with effort when Virgil tries to knock his head against Roman’s. The prince barely dodges the blow. “So you’re not allowed to give up on us. Not today. Not ever.”

Roman’s eyes flash to Patton, still on the floor by the pillar and clutching the wound in his shoulder. The prince is certain he sees a flicker of someone else appearing beside him as the room flashes red, then blue, then red again. 

It’s Janus. Roman remembers that some of Janus’s magic deals in healing wounds, and Roman goes slightly weak with relief. 

It’s a mistake.

Virgil twists out of his grip and scrambles to his feet, snatching the discarded sword from the floor and pointing the edge of the blade towards Roman’s throat. Roman goes very still, looking up at Virgil towering above him. His eyes are completely black. His chest heaves with exertion. In the alternating flashes of arcanic color, Roman can see the sheen of sweat to his brow. 

“You made a mistake,” Not-Virgil growls. “Not killing him when he asked you to. You’re weak. Just like him.” 

Roman feels a burning fury ignite in his chest. He glowers. “Virgil isn’t weak. He’s fighting you, and he’s going to win. He’s our protector.” 

“Unfortunate for you,” he says darkly, and Roman doesn’t miss the way his grip flexes around the hilt of the sword. “Because then who is going to protect you all from him?” 

Logan suddenly shouts something arcanic--his voice high and desperate and echoing--and there’s a blinding flash of white light that fills the space. Roman shuts his eyes against the sudden onslaught, turning his face into his shoulder. 

When the light fades, the alternating flashes of red and blue have stopped. The only light in the throne room comes from the torches attached to the walls. Roman looks frantically over towards where Logan had been and sees him standing, barely. He’s leaning against the wall, but the sorcerer is an unmoving heap on the floor by the throne. Roman’s eyes flash over to Virgil, still standing above him. 

Virgil blinks rapidly, the black clearing from his vision again. His brow furrows in confusion. His gaze is distant. Roman, very slowly, pushes himself to his feet. 

“Virgil?”

Virgil’s gaze flickers up to him. He sways, his face rapidly draining of color. He looks down at his hand, still holding the sword, then back up at Roman. He drops the weapon, and the clatter of the steel against stone echoes loudly in the sudden, deafening silence that had followed Logan’s final spell. 

“Princey?” 

His voice doesn’t sound desperate and strained and choked anymore. Tired and confused and small, yes, but no longer like he was fighting for every word. And the voice is still unmistakably Virgil. There’s a sudden, hard lump in Roman’s throat. 

“There he is,” Roman manages with a weak smile. “Welcome back.”

Roman sees the exact moment Virgil regains clarity, because he watches the horror dawn in his dark brown eyes. Virgil goes perfectly still. He looks like he’s going to be sick. 

“Hey,” Roman says quickly, closing the distance between them to put his hands on Virgil’s shoulders. “Hey, it’s not your fault.”

“Patton--”

Janus is the one that speaks up this time, from a few yards past Virgil. “Will be fine,” he says. He’s still kneeling by Patton’s side, his hands glowing with a golden aura as they hover over Patton’s shoulder. “The bleeding has stopped. Wound is closed to avoid infection. A little rest and hydration, and Patton will be back to normal.”

“Easy peasy,” Patton chimes in lightly but weakly, but Roman sees the crease of concern between his brows as he looks at Virgil, who still hasn’t turned to face him. 

“I…” Virgil swallows hard. “I almost…”

“But you didn’t,” Roman tells him, softly and with conviction. “You didn’t, Virgil.”

“But I tried,” Virgil insists, his voice carrying a very faint tremor. His gaze flashes up to meet Roman’s. His eyes look haunted. He swears under his breath and averts his gaze. “I tried.”

“Falsehood,” Logan says as he crosses back to the group. He’s pale, Roman realizes. And he seems a bit unsteady on his feet, but he’s alive and standing and Roman counts it as a no small win that they all are in one piece. 

“Logan’s right,” Roman adds, with a nod of both acknowledgement and appreciation. “What you tried to do, Virgil, was fight it. That’s what matters. That is the only thing that matters.” 

Virgil shrugs out of Roman’s hands and takes a few steps away. Roman pretends he doesn’t notice the way his eyes were getting glossy. It also doesn’t escape his attention that Virgil still hasn’t looked at Patton. From the slightly distressed look in Patton’s eyes, he’s noticed the same thing.

“Virgil,” he begins, but Logan interrupts him gently.

“We should get out of here.” Logan’s eyes meet Roman’s steadily. “It won’t be long before backup arrives, and I don’t know how much I’ve got left in me. For that matter, none of us are really in fighting shape.” 

Janus says something quietly to Patton that Roman doesn’t catch. Patton nods once, and Janus helps him to his feet, ensuring he’s steady before letting go. Roman takes a breath, then nods his agreement. He snatches his sword off the ground. He sees Logan pick up Virgil’s dagger, wipes Patton’s blood off on the inside of his cloak, and then cross to Virgil. 

He hands it to him. Virgil shakes his head but Logan says something in a low voice and Virgil hesitates only a moment longer before taking it from him. 

Roman has the feeling that it will be a long time before Virgil is okay again. But as far as Roman was concerned, he would still trust Virgil with his life. This didn’t change any of that. And he’s pretty sure that Logan giving the dagger back to Virgil was him telling Virgil the same thing. 

Virgil makes them better. And Roman’s certain they’ll spend as long as necessary proving that to Virgil until Virgil begins to believe it again himself. 

...

Tags: @creativenostalgiastuff, @helloisthisusernametaken, @ren-allen, @quoth-the-sparrow, @princelogical, @random-pianist, @ravenclawicecream, @erlenmeyertrash, @milomeepit, @at-least-seven-pretty-potatoes, @rileyfirstname, @pinkeasteregg, @sassy-in-glasses, @vigiliantvirgil, @generalfandomfabulousness, @lacrimosathedark, @thepoolofthedead, @monikastec, @heir-of-the-founders, @yourworstnightmare999, @artistictaurean, @kanejandkruge, @cdragontogacotar, @damienswifeolicitydallysgirl, @angst-patton, @savingshae, @noneed4thistbh, @awesomelissawho, @unikornavenger, @bopthesnoz, @spiralofsilencetheory, @finger-gunsss, @crownswriter123, @swlotakulady34, @gaylotusthatexists, @analogical-mess, @dolphidragon, @flix-net, @narniasfinestavengingsociopath, @friedlieb-ferdinand-runge , @bibbidy-bobbidy-booyah, @procrastinations-my-middle-name, @theburntesttoast, @monroig, @secretlyawyvern, @puddinglec4t, @give-me-a-minute-to-think, @whispers-stuff-in-your-ear

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides fanfic #platonic prinxiety #platonic dlamp #fantasy au #blood #injury #death #killing mention #self-sacrifice #mind-control #mind control trope #angst #virgil sanders angst #let me know if anything else should be put into the tags

[fandom-monium]

For the Holidays - Part 5

Summary: In which there is no forgiveness or grudges. Only chance. “Okay, let’s try.”

WC: 1.3k

Tags/Warnings: Spencer Reid x GN!Reader, fake-dating, pining (so much pining), fluff, slight angst but not from unnecessary trauma, emotional-support Reader, reunion arc, song fic, FINAL PART

I can deal with the bad nights When I'm with my baby, yeah Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

“So, what’s the plan?”

Spencer runs a hand through his hair. “I’m not sure.”

He really isn’t. But that’s because he isn’t thinking.

It’s not often a brilliant mind like Spencer’s, usually if not always running, finds itself in a deep lull. For once, he’s not contemplating his next step or calculating how to get the best possible outcome. He’s not sprinting to be productive.

He’s just… existing.

What a rarity.

In the dark, deserted library time has slowed to a stop. If cheery holiday tunes and the murmur of guests didn't continue to float down the halls, it's almost like you're in your own little time pocket. He imagines this is an alternate reality, one consisting of only the two of you; there's no unsubs to hurt you or tear you apart, rip you away from each other when you’re just within reach. It’s just the two of you, existing together.

Add the catharsis of crying and you warm against his side, it's the perfect sedative. He's completely lethargic.

He wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Unfortunately, no matter how much he wants to stay, all good things come to an end. Your little bubble pops when thunder crackles outside.

You watch him carefully. "Are you... ready to head back?"

Spencer nearly gives himself whiplash, snapping his head to you. You wince, not needing to see his face, hearing the betrayal in his voice. "What? Why would I want to go back?”

“Hey, it’s just a suggestion,” You put your hands up in defense, voice thoughtful as you shrug. “We did come for a reason, and here they are on a silver platter. I know it's not going exactly as you imagined it but—”

“Are you saying I should forgive them?” Forgive comes in a hiss.

You grimace. “What? No, that's not what I was saying. You heard Alexa.”

He glances away, and he knows you catch the slight turn of his head because you’re a profiler and you’re trained. He’s embarrassed; he’d been blindsided, disoriented, by his own rage and confusion that he couldn’t register anything passed ‘sorry’.

Understandable. You’d probably go into shock too if your childhood bullies dropped the retribution bomb over a decade later.

You continue, “Well if you'd been listening, you'd know they want to try to get to know you. Or at least understand you? I kind of get where they're coming from, but I don't think it'll do harm to give them a chance."

After a moment of deliberation, Spencer groans, "How is it between the two of us, you're the voice of reason?"

"Ha ha. Just because you're the genius doesn't make you always right."

"I never said I am!"

"Yeah but you were thinking it. Now come on, let's head back," You stand up and offer your hand. There’s a flash of lightning, and for a second he catches your eyes, steadfast and dancing in the dark. Maybe you didn’t give him an award-winning pep-talk, but the way you look at him makes him feel like he can survive the night at least.

You make him feel strong.

Here you are, in this dusty library. He’s had two break downs since arriving and you didn’t even blink.

You’ve matched him step for step, never faltering.

Another streak flashes from the window, and your lips curl into a shadow of a smile. "Operation: Holidate is a go."

Maybe. Just maybe he can match yours.

Yes. If he can survive tonight, everything will  be fine. It’s the least he can do, making you come all this way. Make your time here worth while.

And who knows? He might actually gain something from all this.

Taking your hand, Spencer gives in and you pull him up. He lets you guide him back to the entrance, your footsteps echoing through the hall as you make your way to the gym, music pounding over the rumbling thunder.

He doesn't let go. If you're bothered you say nothing.

—

"So Holidate? Is that what you're calling this?"

“Okay, you know what, Doctor? I’d like to see you come up with a better name.”

“Well—”

“That doesn’t involve some obscure reference to literature or philosophy or Star Trek.”

“Actually, I was going to suggest-”

“Or Doctor Who.”

“... Holidate it is.”

—

Christmas music fills the gym. The night has turned the elegance of the reunion into a nightclub as people dance with drunken laughter and off-key singing, and as far as you can tell, the group hadn't left the table, shouting over the music and exchanging hesitant looks. They have the decency to stand as you approach.

Spencer clutches your hand and you squeeze it. He squeezes back.

Harper opens her mouth, "Reid—"

"Before you say anything," Spencer clears his throat, gathering his thoughts. "I'm... sorry for what I said before. Not that it didn't need to be said, but I could have worded things better and I shouldn't have lashed out the way I did." Brown eyes harden, distrustful and terrified. "Did you mean what you said before? About making amends and trying to become friends?"

With a collective murmur, they nod, "Yes."

"And you understand I don't have to accept your apology. That I don't have to forgive you?"

"Yes, of course."

Pain flits across Alexa, Harper, and the team's faces, expressions grim. As if they don't like the possibility he won't forgive them but know better than to argue. That he at least has the right. Good.

Spencer's eyes roam over them. And under tinted lights he sees them.  He doesn’t feel like he’s been dropped back in time. He's no longer twelve and they're no longer teenagers. Formal dresses and suits don’t seem as strange on them anymore. His suit doesn't feel like it hangs off him, suddenly fitting, the watch over his sleeve nice and snug around his wrist, and his slacks less baggy.

They're adults; they've learned from their mistakes and are mature enough to own up to them. Mature enough to confront them.

Spencer swallows, takes a breath, before gripping your hand tighter. The storm roars above you, drowned out by With You This Christmas.

"Okay. Let's try."

Strange, the words leaving his lips a weight lifting off their shoulders. There's sighs of relief, and you take your seats at the table.

He feels your hand shift in his. You haven't let go since you dragged him out the library, his safe haven—God, how he misses it already—and his heart sighs as your thumb circles the back of his hand comfortingly.

So what if it's awkward? So what if it's uncomfortable and tense? So what if he wants to make a dash for the nearest exit?

Spencer knows this will be hard, the road to forgiveness. A part of him doesn't even want to try.

But as you meet his eyes and give him a reassuring smile, seemingly unbothered by his sweaty palms, Spencer tries to relax. Under your warm gaze every muscle, every part of him wound tight like a spring trap ready to go off seems to release.

You look at him like he can carry the world on his shoulders. If you asked him to, he certainly would try.

And he realizes it won't be so bad because you're here. You are here, you have no intention of leaving, and he has your full support.

Spencer can't think of a better person he'd rather have his back. No matter what happens, it'll be fine, as long as he's by your side.

Even if it’s just for the holidays.

AN: Status: Finished - 5/5. Open ending unlocked.

Yes, I did drop that title.

I remember bopping to I Don’t Care by Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber and thinking this would be a good song fic for Spencer if he went to his hs reunion. Then this baby came along. Initially, it was supposed to be a one-shot but after 8k i thought it was better as a mini series.

I’m quite proud, leaving the ending open. Whether he forgives them or not is up to yall. 

The fake dating was always a bi-product to the plot! This was supposed to be about confronting his past okay.

Thank you for reading! See you in my next mini series!!

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #mgg x reader #matthew gray gubler x reader #mgg x y/n #mgg imagine #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid #matthew gray gubler x oc #matthew gray gubler imagine #mgg fic #mgg fanfiction #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds x y/n #criminal minds x oc #criminal minds

[deanmarywinchester]

3, 4, 20

hi noa, hope your firefighters are winning!!!

ok these answers are gonna be about my wip that I’ve been calling “wife dean fic” but that’s titled “men like me,” which is an alternate s13 in which dean says yes to au michael during the widow arc

4: Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

I just really like this bit from dean and cas’s reunion. “did it look cool like in the movies” ass

But out of the corner of his eye, Dean sees Michael’s true form lunge, and Jack yelps, and the world dissolves into nothingness.

An eyeblink later, the three of them are back in the bunker, and Jack’s saying “Oh, I guess I can fly with passengers now! Cool,” and Dean’s saying, automatic, “I told you, flying sounds stupid. Call it teleporting. Like Star Trek,” and then it all becomes too much for him, the fight and Michael and the inexpert flying and the way he froze all over when Cas appeared, and he’s throwing up on the war room floor.

20: what’s some meta (themes, symbolism, characterization) you want to ramble to people about?

one of the things im trying my best to get right is having jack learn “do as I say, not as I do” from Sam. sam considers jack worth standing up for in ways where he won’t stand up for himself, and protects jack in ways where he’s willing to throw his own life away. and Jack’s learning from Sam’s actions, not his words

3: what is one scene you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be bothered to write all the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it anyway)

THANK you for this question which I will shamelessly use to post a scene that it’s killing me to cut bc I had to cut the context. below the cut, a newly vampired Max Banes talks hunting with dean. it’s from an earlier version where sam’s hunter community is made of OG hunters not au hunters, but I ended up having to use au hunters as a shorthand. SOME version of this scene is going in my next (banes-centric) fic, i hope!

“You’re taking this pretty well.”

Max gives a short laugh, like he’s testing it out to see if he can find the humor in it. Dean isn’t sure if he succeeds. “Yeah, well. Vampires. Kinda hot, honestly, maybe I’ll pull better with a certain type of guy.”

“You sure you want that type of guy? I’ve met the kind of chicks who are into that Twilight crap, and man, they are not worth the effort.”

“Yeah.” Max’s mouth turns down at his reflection in the rearview mirror, and then he bares his fangs consideringly. “Not exactly Edward Cullen, but this is cooler. More useful than his teeth on a hunt until I can get it fixed, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

“You’re still hunting?”

“Hah. Yeah, I get why that would be surprising. You, I know you have some sort of demon trauma, whatever. Me and Alicia, we weren’t raised to hunt monsters, though. We were raised to hunt witches. And witches are, they’re fuckin’ human, man. I don’t know.”

He pries up his lip to study the way his fangs retract in the mirror, avoiding Dean’s eye. Not that Dean is too interested in interrupting, anyway. He’s no good when people get philosophical about whatever got them this far in the life, so he tends to clam up and let them say what they’re going to say. They usually do.

Max isn’t an exception. “You know I was fifteen,” he says, his voice carefully conversational, “the first time I put Mama’s sawn-off against the back of a man’s neck. By that time, he’d killed eight people. Low-level hex bags, pretty amateur stuff, but the victims had no way of stopping him. I did. So I stopped him.

“I got home and I told Alicia what I did, and she just started crying. Like, instant waterworks, I’ve never seen her like that before or since. And I just knew she was thinking, I’m a witch. What if someone does that to me? What if it’s you?

“So after that, Alicia and me took a long vacation from our mom. She was pretty pissed, but she understood. And we decided, you know, that we would keep doing what we were trained to do, but not if we could help it. If we can bind witches, we bind them. If we can reason with them, we reason with them. If they’re just some poor idiot who needs to be taught or threatened into not getting into more than is good for them, we do that. But if not--” Max cocks an imaginary shotgun, the gesture practiced and ironic. “I’m not stupid. I know we’re probably going to hell for being judge, jury, and executioner. But we do our best to keep people from getting killed, either by witches or, you know. Me.”

Dean lets the silence stretch out. Tries to picture sudden, unstoppable tears on Alicia’s face, where he’s only ever seen determination or a cocky grin. Thinks about Dad telling him he might have to put Sam down like a mean dog that can’t be trusted. Thinks about Jack--

Max shoots a glance at Dean in the rearview mirror and glances down, looking suddenly self-conscious. He flips his sunglasses back on, too studied a gesture to be as nonchalant as he wants it to come off. “Look at me, giving you my whole sob story when I know you’ve seen worse. You old-school hunters, man, you’re the most emotionless, John Wayne bastards I ever met. You still wash your wounds with whiskey or are you not too cool for store-brand antibiotics?”

Dean feels a pang at that. The guy’s got him wrong, not that he knows how to communicate that. “Nah, cool won’t cure an infection, I learned that the hard way. And. You know.” He glances over at Max, catches him fidgeting with the arm of his sunglasses. Wills him to understand the hand he’s reaching out to Max. “Tough thing for a kid to do. Any kid.”

Max lets out a short breath, surprised. “Yeah, well. Guy had it coming. At least if I have to kill a witch, I know they dug their own grave. Creatures, though, they sound like a lot more trouble than they're worth. Don’t know how you can tell which ones are gonna be a problem.”

“You can’t,” Dean says. “Some hunters put down any they can get their hands on. Some let ‘em go if they seem harmless enough. Sam and I’ve done a little of both.” And both have gone bad on us, Dean thinks but doesn't say. Both have left him waking up feeling like a heavy weight was pressing down on him, a weight of something he did, a worry that he let a killer go.

“Well, I promise not to bite anyone that doesn’t deserve it, and you promise to tell me if you’re going through one of your kill-anything-with-fangs phases, deal?”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, man,” Dean says, low. Something in his voice makes Max look to him, then back out the window again.

#thank you noa!! #spnposting #I need a wife dean fic tag #men like me tag #my posts #grace’s writing #ask #calico-max

[pitiless-achilles-wept]

2020 Can Take My Hair, But Not My Hope

My hair started falling out on election night.

I thought at first it might be the anxiety, that I was literally pulling my hair out with worry over numbers I already knew were not going to be definitive before the night wore into morning but which I stayed up until 3:30am watching anyway. I tweeted rapidly, reassuring my jittery timeline that not only had we all known that the night would bring no results but that we had even expected Trump to lead in key states because of the greater number of mail-in ballots from urban areas that would largely count for Biden. We knew. We all knew. But we were all terrified, flashing back to 2016 and already dreading another four years of living life on high alert, in constant survival mode.

I posted a selfie with a tweet that read, "Could be the last presidential election I vote in (blah blah stage 4 cancer blah blah) and I wish it were better and clearer than this but it's a crucial privilege to have voted. Remember, whatever the outcome, the last thing they can take from you is your hope."

To me that last sentence has been a mantra for these years and for my treatment. I have consistently refused, despite overwhelmingly terrible odds, to lose hope. The story of Pandora's Box tells us that the very last thing left inside was Hope--that even once all the demons were out in the world there was that tiny, feathered creature left to hang on to. It hasn't been easy, but I am one of the most stubborn people you will ever meet (and if you doubt this just ask anyone who's ever fought me on anything!) and it has turned out to be a saving grace rather than an irritating personality trait. Feeling like the world was trying to take my hope away made me angry. And when I get angry I will fight back.

I know I'm not alone in feeling like we entered some kind of alternate nightmare timeline on election night 2016. To that point, despite periods of immense personal difficulty, nothing truly terrible had happened to me. Then, in short order, my marriage ended and I was diagnosed with and began being treated for a terminal illness, all against the backdrop of a regime so deliberately hateful that it was truly incomprehensible to me. Then, a global pandemic and national crisis swept away the small consolations I'd found in my new life with cancer. The temptation to feel hopeless was strong and I struggled with it, particularly in the isolation of quarantine. I'm struggling with it now, facing a winter of further lockdowns, social isolation, continued chemo, and the added indignity (and chilliness!) of not having any hair. But somehow the coincidence of my hair loss with election night seemed like a good omen for the future, if a sad thing for the present.

I heard the news that they had called Pennsylvania for Biden at a peaceful Airbnb in the Catskills after stepping out of a shower where lost hair in handfuls. It felt oddly like a sacrifice I had made personally. I joked about this with friends on the text chains that lit up and that (despite my promise to myself and my writing partner that we'd "go off the grid") I responded to immediately. Instant replies, with emojis and GIFs, participated in the fiction: "Thank you for your service!!!"; "We ALL appreciate your sacrifice!"; "Who among us would NOT give up their hair for no more Trump?". The feeling was real for me, though. It was as though the good news demanded some kind of karmic offering. You never get something for nothing, I thought, and really it was a small price to pay.

The rest of the weekend passed too quickly, with absorption in the novel I plan (madly, given that I also work full-time) to work on for "National Novel Writing Month" (NaNoWriMo), walks in the unseasonably warm woods, and nighttime drinks on the back deck under the stars, watching my hair blow off in fine strands and drift through the sodium porch light. My friend and I read tarot and both our layouts contained The Tower, the card for new beginnings from total annihilation, the moment of destruction in which (as the novel's title says) everything is illuminated. "This might sound dumb," he said, "but maybe yours is about your hair." It did not sound dumb.

[shaved heads, the 2020 election, and a couple pics under the cut]

There is probably no more iconic visual shorthand for cancer than hair loss. It happens because chemo agents target fast-proliferating cells, which tend to inhabit things that grow rapidly by nature (hair, fingernails), or that we need to replenish often (cells in the gut), as well as out-of-control cancer cells. But not all cancer treatments, not even all chemotherapies, cause hair loss. In my 20 months of being treated for cancer and my three previous treatments (four, if you count the surgery I had) nothing had yet affected my hair beyond a bit of thinning. This despite the fact that my first-ever treatment (Taxol) was widely known to cause hair loss for "everyone." I had been fortunate with this particular side effect in a narrow way that I have absolutely not been on a broader scale. "Maybe," I had let myself think, "I can have this one thing." The odds were in my favor too; only 38% of people in clinical trials being treated with Saci lost their hair. I liked the odds of being in the 62% who didn't. But--as we all felt deep in our gut while they counted votes in battleground states--odds aren't everything.

I had come to treat the "strength" of my hair as a kind of relative consolation (though as with everything cancer "strength," "weakness," and the rhetoric of battle have nothing to do with outcomes). I treasured still having it, not just out of vanity (though I have always loved my hair whatever length, style, or color it has been) but because it allowed me to pass among regular people as one of them. I had no visible markers of the illness that is killing me, concealed as first the tumor and then the scars were by my clothing. "You look wonderful," people would tell me, even when I suffered from stress fractures from nothing more than running or sneezing; muscle spasms in my shoulder and nerve death in my fingertips; nausea that I swallowed with swigs from my water bottle that just made me look all the more like a hydration-conscious athlete; and profound, constant, and debilitating fatigue. Invisible illness had its own perils but I would take them--take all of them at once if necessary!--if only I could keep my hair and look normal.

It was not to be. A part of me had known this, since a lifetime with metastatic cancer means a lifetime of treatments a solid proportion of which result in hair loss. But I had hoped. And I had liked the odds.

The hardest thing for me is having to give up this particular consolation before knowing whether or not my new treatment is also working on my cancer. Unfortunately, there really isn't a correlation between side effects like hair loss and effectiveness of treatment. If it is working then I will feel that--like the election to which I felt I had karmically contributed--it was all completely worth it. Yet, even in this best case scenario, there's a new reality for me which is that while I am on this treatment I will stay bald. When you are a chronic patient you hope for a treatment that will work well with manageable side effects. And if this treatment works--and if the other side effects are as ok-ish as they are now--then I will remain on it.

It's that future that I am furious about more than anything else. I want to continue to live my life, of course, but I don't want to have to do it bald! In part that is because I don't want to register to people constantly as an archetypal "cancer patient" when I know that I am so much more. It is also in part because I don't want to think of myself as being ill, and living every day having to disguise my absent hair will make that all the tougher. I have already noticed that I feel, physically, as though I am sicker because of my constantly shedding hair. How could I not, in some ways, when every move I make and every glance at myself (including in endless Zoom windows) shows me this highly visible change?

For that reason, I'm shaving my remaining hair tomorrow (Wednesday). It's a way to feel less disempowered--less like hair loss is happening to me--and wrest control of the situation back. I will try to find agreeable things about it: wigs, scarves, cozy caps, bright lipstick, statement earrings, and a general punk/Mad Max vibe that is appropriate to 2020. But I don't want anyone to think for a second that I find this agreeable, or even acceptable, or that I don't mind. I mind a whole hell of a lot. My hair was my consolation prize, my camouflage, my vanity, my folly, and my battle cry.

I dyed it purple when I was first diagnosed because I knew (or thought I knew) that I would be losing it soon. I didn't, and I came to cherish it as a symbol of my boldness in the face of circumstances trying to oppress me, to make me shrink, to tempt me to become invisible. I refused and used it to "shout" all the louder in response. Because of what it came to mean to me, I'm nearly as sad about losing the purple as I am about losing the hair itself. It both symbolized the weight I was carrying and also that I would not let that weight grind me down. It was my act of resistance and my sign resilience all at once.

I sent a text to my friends, explaining this and offering, as an idea, that I could "pass the purple" to them in some way, small or large. It would feel more like handing off a torch or a weight (or the One Ring) than anyone shaving their head in solidarity. (After all, if they did that it would just remind me as I watched theirs grow back that, in fact, our positions were very different.) You're welcome to do it if you'd like too, internet friends, with temporary or permanent dye or a wig or a headband or one of those terrible 90s hairwraps or whatever. But I don't require that anyone do it because I feel support from you all in myriad ways, all the time. (But if you do, please send me pictures!)

It's November 2020. The election is over and Joe Biden has won. I still have cancer and I'll be bald tomorrow. I hope it's a turning point, both personal and global, because it feels like one. We've given up a lot in the last four years and I cannot say that I feel in any way peaceful or accepting about having to give up yet one more thing. But in losing my hair I absolutely refuse to also give up my hope.

(On our walk we did also seem to find a version of The Tower, all that was left of an abandoned house)

#life update #my life as a cancer patient #stage 4 #mbc #metastatic breast cancer #losing my hair #unfair things #election 2020 #I just have a lot of feelings #the tower #us politics

[bexterbex]

A Soul to Mend His Own | Ch. 55

Warning, PLEASE CHECK TAGS IF YOU SEE SOMETHING YOU DON’T WANT TO READ THEN DON’T READ. Tag lists are closed

Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Will tag as I go along, Will update tags, Slow Burn, Influenced by Star Trek and other Sci-Fi themes, References to We Happy Few, Tons of References and quotes to George Orwells 1984 see if you can find them all, The First Order is the new Big Brother,  but who is really surprised, Blatant Nazi Symbolism, Interrogation Themes, Eventual Smut, Eventual Romance, Really just drawn out Slow Burn, Don’t repost without permission, Torture themes, Suggestive Themes, Execution themes, Disturbing Themes, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Verbal Abuse, Controlling Kylo Ren, Physical Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Possessive Kylo Ren, A character shamelessly based on Zelda

A Kylo Ren x Modern! Reader in a soulmate au with some canon divergence. —————————————SLOWBURN————————————–

He is already the Supreme leader, searching the universe to find you, his Empress. Your name on his wrist has been the only constant in his life, while you have doubts about his existence and his acceptance of you. He isn’t in the database and why did the name Kylo Ren cover Ben Solo?

MASTERLIST

Chapter 55: Execution

*************Warning this chapter contains exactly what its title says. Proceed with caution.**************************************************************

Kylo entered in a flurry of black. In an instant, his helmet was off and he was next to you, pulling you up into his arms. Kisses were peppered along your neck and collarbone before he took your face between his hands and asked, “Are you all right?” His lips ghosted against yours as he waited for your answer. 

 “I am fine, nothing happened to me, Adlez saw to that, but is tomorrow’s execution really necessary? I mean, other than trying to take my things and spook Adlez, is there really a need to kill him? Or her for that matter, I thought she was demoted? Or does that not matter anymore?”

 His hand found its way to your lower back and pressed you against him. Flush against him. His eyes were burning deep into yours, “You forget that you are the Future Empress of the First Order, that you are currently the First Lady, what they did are threats against your safety. And shall I be lax against threats against you? What sort of message would that send the rest of the galaxy? That you can be threatened or attempt to be replaced without any consequences? No. You are mine, so you will be protected.”

 His hand then slid down to your ass, groping along it, squeezing. His lips grazed your ear as he whispered sensually in your ear, “And besides, I should be the only man that handles your intimates, even if I wish you wore none.” 

 A shiver ran down your spine as his lips made their way to yours. He tipped you back in a romantic way as he deepened the kiss. Your body flooded with warmth and arousal. That small part of your brain set off sirens to tell you that you needed to eat dinner. You were thankful that a small portion of you remained rational while in his grasp.

 You placed a hand on his chest and pushed you two apart. “We should eat dinner.”

 He huffed in response; you were pretty sure that if it was up to him, he would be devouring you for dinner instead of eating real food. You made your way to the dining room. Where you instructed him to pull out your chair for you, “I would like to practice for the dinner.” 

 He obliged and responded, “And I see that you are taking the general’s advice. Did he call me a heathen when he talked about my manners?” 

 “No, he did not. But I did take his advice to try to practice my table etiquette, and he made the suggestion that it would not hurt to have you practice too. I want to make a good first impression at my first official event as Lady Ren.”

 Your food came, and the droid set out your food in the formal dining placement. You started with your salad, and you saw Kylo watching you and following your lead. You then started to explain to him what you were doing and why you were doing it, just like the general did earlier that day. 

 You still weren’t at the stage to really ask about each other’s day with any sort of normalcy. That was still a rather foreign concept for you two. He seemed to prefer to eat in silence. Maybe because he could already see how you were doing in your mind? He was also rather private with his own thoughts and feelings and you didn’t want to push anything tonight. 

 After dessert was done Kylo pulled out your chair for you and took your hand, leaving everything to the droid. Instead of making your way to the bedroom like normal, he guided you ‘outside.’ He prompted you to lay back on one of the lounge chairs while he did the same. He pressed something on the remote and suddenly the fake darkening sky that you were used to changing to allow you to see through the large windows that encased the room.

 Your world was filled with the night sky, you felt like you were floating amongst the stars. Neither of you said anything but a droid came in with a chilled bottle of champagne and glasses. It seemed that he was insistent on another romantic night. You had no idea if this was to appease you or if it was something he genuinely wanted to do. 

 You had drunk more of the champagne than he did, and when it came time to go to get up, you could feel it. He silently helped you into your dressing room where he called Adlez to get you ready. She showed up a few minutes later after he had already left you alone, knowing that she did not like men in your dressing room. 

 When she looked at you she tutted, “Now, now m’lady let’s get you ready for bed. You have a big morning tomorrow.” She then removed your shoes and then jewelry for you. 

 You weren’t paying much attention to anything as your head was still fuzzy from your bubbly drink. You did have the hiccups which plagued you while you were finishing getting ready for bed. Adlez disappeared for a few minutes before returning with some sort of drink in her hand, “Drink, you can thank me in the morning.” 

 You followed your orders. “I at least hope he gave you good champagne. You deserve nothing less.” She was always the one to tell you your worth. You were thankful. 

 Once you were finished with the drink, she took the glass from your hand and brought you over to the full-length mirror. “Now remember your stance, m’lady. Don’t let him trick you into anything.” 

 You don’t know if you had the energy for anything, your body feeling the weight of the alcohol you had consumed. She then brought you to the bedroom where Kylo was getting ready for bed. He was just in his pair of black lounge pants when he noticed the two of you. You could hardly stand by yourself as exhaustion hit you. 

 Kylo came to your side, taking your arm from Adlez and dismissing her for the night. You leaned your entire body weight into him, the buzz fully taking you. He helped guide you to the bed. 

 “I have changed the permissions on the door, you should no longer need to allow the knights, the general, the lieutenant, or your ladies-in-waiting in. So in the morning, they can come get you out of bed.” He deposited you onto the bed, crawling to the side of you. 

 His hand-carded itself through your hair, his lips found their way to your lips, his body pressing into yours. 

 “Do I really have to go tomorrow,” you ask sleepily. You were really lazily not returning the kisses. 

 “Yes, but I can make it easy for you, make the pain and dread go away.” His kisses were unreciprocated as you drifted off into sleep. You could feel his hands grope a bit before you felt a blanket come and cover you. You then drifted off into sleep. 

 You dreamed of a family. A man, a woman, and their young son, who looked to be around the age of 3, just from his size alone. You couldn’t see their faces as they moved about the house around you. The man seemed to be leaving, the woman seemed to be dressed in a fancy dress ready to go out. They were arguing about something, you couldn’t hear what but, they were yelling.  And they both left. Left the boy by himself in his baby corral.

 Time seemed to both standstill and fast forward at the same time. You watched as both of the parents walked in and saw the boy, who cried himself to sleep. They both yelled at each other and woke him up, his crying, starting up again. They both ignored him in favor of yelling at each other before eventually the woman picked up the boy and put him in his nursery. That’s when the dream shifted. 

 You saw the same woman, older now, staring off as the boy was older being taken away by another man. The father was with that man before he turned away to walk to the woman. The boy was much older. Your heart broke for him. The dream shifted again. 

 The woman was now staring off into some endless sea, with a blazing fire behind her. She was much older now, you still couldn’t focus on her face. This was the first time you could hear her say something clearly, “Ben, where are you?”

 You woke up to a familiar pressure behind your ear, “Wake up Kitten.” The pressure turned into a full wet like which caused your face to scrunch up in disgust. “I need to go with the knights but I will return to fetch you for the morning assembly.” With that, he gave you one long hard kiss and bid you goodbye. 

 You stayed in bed and didn’t stir until you heard Adlez say, “M’lady you absolutely have to get up. We need to get you presentable.” You were then practically yanked out of bed. And marched into the dressing room. Where you sleepily just allowed them to manipulate you into whatever they needed you to do. 

 You were dressed in a dress instead of your usual classic casual outfit. Adlez muttered something about whether or not you would need to change for dinner if you just kept the dress on all day. Once they were finished dressing you the lieutenant, and they joined you for breakfast. 

 You all exchanged pleasantries, but this was the first time you got to see the lieutenant and Olivia-Rose together since you sent her away last night. You watched as they exchanged glances and blushed at each other every once in a while. You shared a look with Adlez, your mission was accomplished. She smirked in response. 

 “We all have the mandatory assembly this morning. The Supreme Leader will come and get you Lady Ren, but we must leave before you,” said Mitaka. “Then you have nothing on your plate until your lesson after lunch.”

 “I was thinking after the assembly we should go over your dress for the formal dinner and make sure it is something you want to wear,” said Adlez. 

 You nodded to her in agreement. Not really caring in particular what you did, so long as it took your mind off what was going to happen. You finished your breakfast, and you all got up to leave the dining room. You went to go sit in the living space to wait for Kylo while the others all left. 

 Kylo once again entered in a flurry of black, but this time there was also the paleness of his strong arms that came in with him. He was helmetless like he usually was when he trained with the knights in the morning. He rushed up to kiss you before saying, “Let me shower and grab something to eat quickly and then we can go.”

 He was off down the hall to the bathroom; he was gone no more than five minutes before he appeared back near you, and he entered the kitchen that you had yet to step foot in since your initial tour. He walked out and finished a smoothie looking drink before setting the empty container on the bar top. He was dressed in his usual black uniform, his hair was freshly washed and appeared to be rather dry already. He donned his helmet before taking your arm and whisking you down the halls of the Supremacy. 

 You came to a large set of doors that opened upon your arrival. The stadium-like room was filled with officers, stormtroopers, and enlisted members. You felt sick as Kylo led you to the stage in the front of the room. There on the stage were Phasma and Hux waiting with the two officers who were about to be executed and a handful of other officers, stormtroopers, and of course the knights.   

 You felt immensely sick, not only were you going to watch these two lose their lives, but you were now on spectacle for what seemed to be a couple hundred thousand people. You could also see that there were camera droids floating about and capturing this whole thing. Behind the stage, there were large projector screens, large enough that the people in the nosebleeds had a rather decent view. 

 You felt like you were going to throw up as you reached the chair that Kylo was sitting you down in. It was near a podium that held the First Order’s insignia. You watched as the general stood at attention next to Phasma, who held a large axe in her hands. 

 A wave of calm washed over you as Kylo began to address the assembly. “As you all know this assembly has been called to order to address the crimes against your first lady, Lady Ren.” He gestured to where you were sitting. “Any crime committed against her is a crime committed against me. And any crime committed against me is punishable by death.” You heard a roar of excitement in the crowd. They wanted this. 

 “Both of these fellow members of the First Order have committed such crimes and bring down the purity of our regime.” He gestured to them where they knelt and were bound to the floor. “Today they will meet the consequences of their actions. Being your gracious Supreme Leader, I have made the decision to run a lottery amongst the ranks as to who will be the executioners. One for JL-9843 and one for GV-2367, two separate executioners.” The roar was deafening now. You felt as if you were sent back into ancient Rome now not some futuristic space society.

 Hux stepped forward with a data pad in his hands, he called out two identification numbers, “WY-9287 and EQ-2997 please come forward.” You watched as one male and one female started to descend down the stairs from their seats. The male seemed to be holding himself back from running with glee towards the stage. The female had a smug air about her as she came forward, her head held high with her nose in the air.

 Both looked to be about the same ages as the two who were about to die, and by your memory of uniform rank identification, they seemed to be similar ranks too. You felt the nausea hit you again as you bent forward in your chair. It immediately dissipated when Kylo’s hand came to rest on your shoulder. He was right. He was going to ease whatever holdbacks you had about the execution, but you were still going to have to watch it. 

 “Both of you have the honor of purging impurities from the First Order, those who wish to cause disruption to our superiority over the rest of the galaxy. We have one simple purpose: to maintain order. Now it is your duty to restore that order.” The general then placed them next to their soon to be victims. 

 You watched as Kylo’s other hand lifted into the air, both of the soon to be executed slid back into positions on the floor, facing each other and over high blocks. You watched as the chains that held them to the floor tightened and pulled them down, so they rested on the blocks, assuming a position for execution. 

 Phasma first handed the axe to WY-9287 as he was going to execute JL-9843, who had been in your room the previous day. He gladly took the axe, almost vibrating at the thought of committing this act of execution. The room fell silent as they waited for the order. You clamped your eyes shut; you heard a thud against the stage floor and then the room erupted in deafening cheers. 

 You heard footsteps, and the room fell silent once more. Without opening your eyes, you knew the axe had been handed over to the woman. You heard another thud just before the room grew loud again. Your eyes were clamped so shut that you started to see white, instead of the usual darkness. 

 You were hauled to your feet by Kylo; you didn’t dare open your eyes yet. He brought you to the edge of the stage, where you felt compelled to open them. You saw the faces of adoration and jubilation among the crowd. You felt as if you had no control over your body as you smiled at them.

 Your eyes shut once more as you felt Kylo guide you back down the stage and out of the assembly hall. You didn’t open them until you were back in the safety of your chambers, where he held you in his arms while tears slid down your face. 

 “I did this to protect you. It was a message to the galaxy. I am sorry it had to be this way Kitten, but it had to be done.” You don’t remember him taking his helmet off, but his lips were against your crown and his fingers in your hair. 

 You wondered just how many more executions you would have to witness. Was this going to be a common thing? Would the message get through to the rest of the galaxy? That you were not to be harmed, less they wanted to face the wrath of Supreme Leader of the First Order Kylo Ren. You didn’t have an answer to your own questions, but you knew an answer would come sooner or later, you just had to wait. 

#kylo ren #kylo ren x reader #kylo ren imagine #kylo x reader #kylo x you #star wars #first order #star wars imagine #Star wars soulmate au #sw first order imagine #star wars first order #first order propaganda #a soul to mend his own #i might be evil #but who really checks these tags anyways #insert evil laugh

[desperationandgin]

Mood board One Shot!

Rating: General Audiences

Also Read On: AO3

Summary: Jamie and Claire have a conversation while in the thick of World War 1.

A/N: Thank you so much to @enormouseffort for the mood board and to @iamnottrisha & @outlanderlush for putting this together! And thank you to @filledwithlight​, @smashing-teacups​, @happytoobserve​ and @fierceweebadger​ for looking this over for me! Also, it’s midnight east coast time so surprise!!!

The Uncertainty of War

When she comes to him, it’s with a bloodied apron still tied around her neck and curls askew. Someone’s blood streaks her upper arm, smeared into a dried out whorl thanks to a hasty wipe. A glance at her and Jamie knows tension lies between her shoulder blades like a lead weight and that the balls of her feet are aching.

He’s no better off than she is, exhausted to the very marrow of his bones. He’d been ready to close his eyes and welcome sleep until she crept in, but now his only thought is of following through on the warm bath he’d conjured for her in his mind. It takes time to fill, but the moment he helps her into the tub and she sighs, he knows he would do it again, even so late at night. Reaching behind her head, his fingers find the material holding her curls at bay and lets it go, sending them chaotically floating free.

“Close yer eyes, a nighean.”

She does as she’s told and becomes malleable under his hands as they meticulously work to rub her feet under the hot water.

“I haven’t sat since five-thirty this morning.” Her words leave her on a weary sigh; the moon and stars have been out for hours now.

“Ye push yourself too hard, Sassenach. If ye dinna do more to take care of yourself, yer body will decide to slow down for ye,” Jamie chides gently, hands working a calf, delighting in her soft groan.

“Who’s the medical professional, here, Captain?” She cracks one eye open to look at him. “I know you only arrived here a few moments before me, and you were gone when I woke.”

He’s quiet as his hands move back to a foot, pressing his thumbs into the arch gently and rubbing outward. When he replies, his eyes flicker toward her face. “Cannae do reconnaissance in the bright, open daylight, Nurse Beauchamp,” he retorts with her own title. “And the day cannae be done only because I was workin’ early.”

“So, you’re saying that telling me how much sleep to get isn’t hypocritical?”

She’s won when he can’t think of a good retort, and she smiles smugly, proud of herself for outsmarting him there.

“It’s no’ a bad thing to take a break when ye can get it, was my point.” He switches feet, focused on his task.

“Hello, pot. I’m kettle,” she teases, though it’s really quite sweet, his worry for her. It endears him even more to her heart, though he’d done well enough the day they’d met two years ago, buying flowers from her at the park for his young niece.

“We both do too much and we ken it, but—”

“—but we have one another to lean on,” she finishes, smiling as he moves to the head of the tub in order to capture her lips in a kiss. One of his large hands cradles her face and she reciprocates, enjoying the feel of his stubble against her fingertips.

“I missed ye today, mo nighean donn,” he murmurs huskily, ducking his head a little further to press his lips to her neck.

“I thought about you earlier while I was debriding a wound,” Claire informs him, even as her head tilts this way and that to grant better access to skin begging to feel the imprint of his lips.

“That’s no’ a verra pleasant association,” he notes, pulling back as an eyebrow raises, looking at her in faux disgust. “What did I do to deserve it?”

With a light thwack against his arm, Claire leans forward as Jamie moves behind her to begin rubbing her shoulders. Enjoying it for a moment, she closes her eyes and practically purrs as he pauses to pour warm water over her skin. She gets around to answering just as his thumbs gently begin to work against a small knot at the base of her neck.

“I mean, I thought of you when I saw the extent of the man’s injuries.” Her tone softens. “I was more worried about you today than usual. I heard about the impromptu raid.”

There’d been a chance to get close to an enemy camp under the cloak of night, from a direction so heavily wooded the Austrian officers likely wouldn’t have thought to put more than a handful of men on the perimeter. Jamie’s assumption had been right, and within moments it was clearly a fight they could win if he made the call to charge. He did, and they had; the fighting had been done within fifteen minutes, though a victory today couldn’t guarantee the next fight would be won as well.

“By the time ye heard of it, I was likely already plotting our next course of action wi’ the General,” he points out.

“What does that matter?” she asks in confusion. “I’d be lucky if I received word within the month if you—” The phrasing of her statement sits bitterly on her tongue and she pauses to reach up, covering his hand on her shoulder. For a moment, both of them are still until she speaks again. “I see men die every day, Jamie, a countless amount of them. Too many to keep up.”

The hitch in her voice, as subtle as it is, is enough for him to move around in order to see her face. Reaching out, he rubs his thumb over her temple in slow circles in an effort to soothe. “May I tell ye something, Sassenach?”

As he helps her lean back against the tub to relax, she nods. “You can tell me anything.”

Fishing for the washcloth and soap, Jamie lathers it before beginning to wash her body slowly, starting with her closest arm. He’s quiet as the cloth travels up and under her arm, then across her chest to the other side. He’s working his way down a hip by the time he speaks again.

“Before every battle, I think of ye. I think of how I left ye that mornin’, warm in bed and sprawled out right in the middle.” She’s taken to sleeping draped over him, and when he rises for any reason, she curls into the heat he’s left behind. “I think of the way ye look when ye fall apart beneath me, crying out my name, and I remember the way it feels to have yer lips press to mine. When I’ve thought of all that, Sassenach, then I pray for God to protect me, so I can live to feel ye again.”

Claire looks at him with wide, amber eyes that reflect the fire in the small hearth behind him.

“And are you ever afraid?”

“Christ, aye,” he quickly admits. “But no’ of death itself.”

She doesn’t ask the question, but it’s there in her eyes before he raises her hand to his lips to kiss her knuckles.

“I ken what losing another person would do to ye, Claire.” Her father first, then her mother, her uncle, a husband. Everyone who had pieces of her heart has taken them to the grave. “So it terrifies me, the thought of leaving ye.” The ugly truth is that men are dying so quickly there are moments Jamie isn’t sure how anyone will survive to the finish. It could happen any moment, the bullet or bomb that ends it all.

“Then you’d better see to it that nothing happens, soldier,” she commands over a lump in her throat that she knows he can hear.

Done washing, the cloth is lost to the water again as both large hands cradle her face. “I would find ye, Sassenach. If we were ever parted by death, I would find ye. Even if it meant enduring purgatory to pay for my sins, for every lie from my tongue and death by my hands, I would wait and be tortured if it meant being wi’ ye again.”

“We’ve picked a terrible time to be in love, Jamie.” Tears spill over in warm rivers down her cheeks, and Jamie reaches out to wipe them away with a gentle touch.

“Even if I should fall tomorrow, I’ll ken that in my time on this Earth, I was given a rare woman.” His smile is warm, letting his thumb drag across the apple of her cheek. “And when I stand before the Almighty, I’ll be able to tell Him that in the time we had together, I loved her well.”

“Don’t be in a rush to relay that message,” she manages, sniffling even as her tears continue to quietly drip into the bathwater.

Jamie kisses her damp cheeks, shaking his head, murmuring, “The Devil himself would have to drag me away from ye, mo chridhe.”

Quietly, they breathe one another in until the bath is cold and he lifts her out, helping her dry. Donning a thin nightgown, she slides into bed first, and when he’s beside her she scoots against his side with her head resting on his chest. Her mind is still moving too quickly to relax, caught up in what ifs and endless horrific scenarios.

He knows it, can feel it in the way her body stays tensed. She’s dragging her fingers up and down his arm slowly — something she only does when her thoughts are tumultuous. He doesn’t push her to speak; instead, Jamie alternates running his fingers through her hair and massaging the back of her head.

Everything she can think to say she’s said before, but it doesn’t stop her from saying it again.

“I don’t know what I would ever do without you, James Fraser.”

“Dinna think of it, Sassenach,” he urges, brushing his lips across her temple.

“You still have to marry me after this great bloody war,” she points out, raising her head to look at him. “I told you when we started to get serious—”

“Aye, that ye never wanted to marry again. But somehow, I convinced ye then, didn’t I?”

She huffs a little, some of her tension beginning to give way. “You were stubborn.”

“I had to be more stubborn than you.” The last word is said even as he absorbs a light smack for the comment. “Ye only lash out because that’s the truth of it,” he chides with a slight smirk.

The truth of it was, five weeks into their relationship, he’d helped her carry her groceries into her flat, and when she’d tripped on a corner of the rug, he’d caught her effortlessly. It was the sort of thing depicted in frivolous romance novels she claimed she never read; their eyes met, and somehow she’d known he would completely demolish the walls she’d built around herself, brick by brick.

Now, there’s a war raging on with no guarantees, and she burrows closer to him.

“Tell me more about Lallybroch,” she requests, sleepiness creeping into her voice. “Tell me what our lives will be like.”

Once they’re both settled (Claire’s weight a comforting warmth draped across him—except for her cold-as-ice toes against his legs), Jamie’s eyes close, arms wrapped securely around her as he imagines it.

“There are so many rolling green hills it looks as though they go on forever, Sassenach. And the house itself, the moment ye walk through the doorway the love and warmth wraps ye up and lets ye know yer home. I remember my mam, Jenny, Willie, and I waitin’ for my da to arrive home from the fields every evenin’, sitting on the front steps.”

Claire makes a soft hum of acknowledgment, imagining it between drifting thoughts. When she murmurs, her voice already sounds far away.

“And how many children do you envision?” she asks, unaware, for now, of the life growing in her womb.

Jamie smiles to himself, rubbing the back of her head with his fingertips. “Four, at least. A good, even number. I ken ye like my red hair, but that gives me the odds of at least one bairn wi’ your coloring, mo nighean donn.”

“We’ll see. I think even your traits are stubborn.”

He squeezes her with a low chuckle, then goes quiet, the pull of sleep tugging at him, as well. Still, he has room for one more thought, unsure now if in the lapse of conversation she’s fallen asleep.

“We’re going to be alright, Sassenach. We’ll go home, love one another, and no’ ever worry about being apart again. We’ll lose track of all the evenin’s I come home to ye.”

He waits for a response, and when one doesn’t come, he realizes her breathing has evened out in sleep. Raising his head, his lips press softly to her hair, his words coming easily in the Gàidhlig.

May the Almighty protect you and watch over you. Carefully, slowly, one hand moves between them, so awkwardly angled that only his fingertips can brush her stomach.

May He protect you and our children from harm. Now, and always.

With a final kiss to her forehead, he lowers himself back down to the pillow and keeps Claire as close as he can.

Until morning, when the uncertainty of war rages on.

#jamie x claire #outlander #outlander fic #jamie fraser #claire fraser #mood board oneshot #my fic

[st-just]

I've seen you post a few times some interesting world building snippets, is there a setting your working on at the moment, or are they unrelated? (Feel free to use this an invitation to talk about the world, I'd love to hear about it)

Well, since you did ask for it!

They’re mostly theoretically written to be in the same setting, with a sort of acceptance that when put together it’ll probably be a bit incoherent around the edges. Given that it started as the setting for a D&D game that ended like a year ago and has just stewed and metastasized since then, that’s kind of a given, really.

But honestly, the initial impetus was reading...I think it was Strangers Drowning?, anyway, there was a discussion of how rather than just ‘selfish versus selfless’, a more useful distinction is how people distribute moral weight between themselves, their friends/family/close circle, and the general public/world at large. And, being an utter nerd, my second or third thought was “huh, that’s a pretty decent chassis for an alignment system that’s meaningfully distinct from good vs. Evil”.

So then I ended up working out three Great Powers for a world as sort of ideal types/expressions of each extreme, and then coming up with cultures and aesthetics that seemed kind of fitting after the fact, which I’m fairly sure is not how you’re supposed to do it, but anyway.

So on the one extreme you’ve got the Sublime Commonwealth, called the Esheri by everyone without a government job. A universalist, bureaucratic state, governed by Janissary-technocrats plucked from orphanages and schools, without family or property or the right to any sort of legacy beyond what they can contribute to the Common Good. Mandatory public education, but it’s solely in the equivalent of Esperanto. Religious freedom, as long as the temples accept state funding and choose their preachers and officials from government-approved seminaries and madrassas, with the more or less explicit goal that after a few generations of modernist theology and Higher Criticism the whole thing will be unnecessary. Family ties considered broken at the age of majority, or when the parents are deemed negligent, with newly formed households encouraged to take their name from some civic virtue or geographic feature rather than anything related to their cultures or ancestries. Public sanitation and healthcare and food relief, but also if the Committee on Strategy determines that they really need a new naval port you might find out you’re moving in a month, all your sacred rites and trade secrets will be carefully recorded for inclusion in the next edition of The Encyclopedia, and so forth. Titles like “Empiricist.” “Special Adviser to the Secretariat,” “Alternate Member of the Committee on Industry and Progress”.

The second power would be the Holy Ilyrin Empire, or possibly Ilyrin-Belthaya, depending on who you ask and where you’re standing. Not so much a unified ‘state’ as a vast and sprawling collection of crown in personal union, sworn vassals, various sorts of tributaries and protectorates, and a thousand other sorts of distinctions fit to make any central administrator cry. The Empire’s exceptionally big on tradition, you see and while the Queen-Empress is clearly the Heavens’ chosen Vicegerent, she and her court have no special authority to meddle in the natural and organic constitutions of her various subjects, save to defend them from unnatural innovation or outside influence. Family, lineage, and inheritance  are all exceptionally important, with infertility being treated like a malignant tumour that’s too humiliating to discuss in public, and disinheriting a child or repudiating ones family being more or less unthinkable, though the particulars of just who counts as your ‘family’ or ‘children’ can vary quite a bit, depending on location and circumstance. Regardless, nepotism and patronage are so widely accepted there’s barely words for them, and certainly no stigma attached-really, not going out of your way to help out distant relatives or family friends with any jobs or trading tips you happen to be able to hand out is what would get you ostracized and looked down upon. Religion is everywhere, and all-encompassing, but despite what the Hierarch in Imir might desire, most minority faiths have sort of official compact with their lords and ladies mandating toleration as long as they keep to themselves and know their limits. Education is handled through guilds and churches, without any sort of central organization or certification scheme, and the vast majority of really useful or impressive knowledge is hoarded by particular sacred orders or guilds or family lines. Absolutely all relief against misfortune relies upon your local churches and notables and whether your family or social circle can support you, but on the other hand if you’ve got a good thing going there’s essentially zero chance someone is going to come in from on high and destroy it, and if some system works then it’s going to be allowed to keep working. Titles like “Earl Marshal,” “Lady Protector.” “Witchfinder-General”

Third and the Free Cities, or the Federal Republic, or the Unconnected Collection of City-States Who Share Many Prominent Citizens And Trading Interests. Words are wind, and honour is an affectation, duty and loyalty are chains the cunning try to fasten around the necks of the strong. Notably, the only democracies-in a somewhat Athenian sense, with crimes against the City being tried before an assembly of citizens and determined by popular vote, without reference to written law, and open campaigning for command of armies and bidding for the right to exact tribute from the various hinterland tribes. As a matter of principle, there is no obligation that is not freely accepted, whether to family or faith or sovereign. The great and good of the Cities enrapture the masses with their feuds and romances, and a vital part of any political career is providing grand spectacles and public feasts to entertain and sustain the masses living on the street, the vast majority of whom can rely upon no other source of charity. Religion is commonplace, though objectively a large fraction of them are probably better called ‘cults’, sustained by direct sponsorship or force of personality, feuding with all the other street gangs and syndicates in bloody, shadowy affairs, each sect rising and burning out like a seasonal fashion, though each City has something like an official patron and a few festivals widely observed enough to have the mob firmly behind them. As the City Assemblies assign duties or assignments and not occupations, there’s officially speaking no title higher than the elected captain of a ship or mercenary company. Not allowing this to humble them, it’s an accepted practice for the famous and important to take various grand sobriquets and epithets-”The ingenious,” “the magnificent,” “Maestro of Falling Stars,” “Weaver in Blood and Bone,” and so on.

....I can keep going on pretty much indefinitely, but I’ll stop writing their in the interest of actually posting this relatively soon after receiving it.

#reply #veraphiums #writing #worldbuilding #ask meme

[lightspeedrobin]

Dormouse - Sakuma Ritsu X Reader

A/N: Finally back again with a fic on the 1st year anniv of this blog (not that this has been active most of the year lol).

Have some Ritsu fluff and a bit of Sakuma bros bonding!

P.S. This happens after the Scout Story: Tea Party, but you can read this one without reading the scout story.

Title: Dormouse

Characters: Sakuma Ritsu, Sakuma Rei, Reader

Pairing: Sakuma Ritsu/Reader

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 2512 words

-

“Maa-kun’s busy again today…” You hear Ritsu complain as you two enter town on your way home. With Mao busy with his unit practice and squeezing in the Student Council work that came up today, you two are left to walk home by yourselves.

You cross your arms over your chest and turn to Ritsu, who’s walking listlessly with a faraway look. “Well, we can’t help it if he’s still practicing with Trickstar. I hear they’re getting more jobs lately too since they’re becoming more popular now.”

He lets out a long sigh. “I drank a lot of tea today too during club so I’m beat. I wish Maa-kun would give me a piggyback-ride...”

“Oh, you had club activities today too, huh? No wonder Mao texted me to come pick you up. I had some stuff to do after class too.” You reply, remembering the sudden message you received from Mao at lunch. Sorry, I might stay longer in school today. You and Ritsu should go on ahead without me, it says. 

“Yeah, we got caught up in playing those characters from Alice in Wonderland that I didn’t notice how much tea I had.”

“Oh, which character did you play as?”

“The Cheshire Cat.”

You place a hand under your chin and try to imagine it. Oh, that actually suits him, you think. “Well you do seem like a cat sometimes. Wanting to be spoiled, napping in unusual places and all. Plus you can get a little mischievous sometimes...”

“But if we’re talking about napping, wouldn’t the Dormouse be a better character? I just need to lie down and do nothing else. Easy, easy...” He says, bobbing his head up and down as if to satisfy himself of his own reasoning.

“I guess”, you reply. The two of you make your way through town, occasionally engaging in some small talk. Ritsu talks about his clubmates and unitmates and you talk about a big play your class is preparing for. 

On the way, you see Ritsu yawn for the nth time since you two started walking home and you begin to wonder if he’s been sleeping his usual amount lately. Knights must be slumped with idol work recently, as expected from one of the top idol groups in the school. 

Ritsu has been silent for a while now and you wonder if he’s starting to get sleepy. Just when you are about to ask him, he collapses on your back and his hands fall on your shoulders, half of his weight shifting towards you. He gives a satisfied hum. “Ritsu, come on. You know I can’t carry you all the way home like this.” 

“Nnn...” He only groans in response and nuzzles his head on your shoulder. You put a foot forward to accommodate the sudden weight and to prevent the both of you from tumbling down the sidewalk.

“Is this how Mao carries you home everyday? You’re too heavy, Ritsu!”

“How rude. I’m not even eating too much.”

“Well, you’re taller than me so that’s more body mass!”

“...Nnnn...”

“Ritsuuuu….”

With all the strength you can muster, you manage to drag Ritsu to a nearby bench. He curls up as soon as you lay him down. “Okay now you’re acting like a cat who just found a nice napping spot.”

“...I told you… I’m a mouse… a dormouse...” He mumbles, sleep clearly taking over from his tone. He must’ve been tired from his club activity if he’s being extra sluggish on the way home. But then again, the sun’s already way down the horizon that you assume he should be getting more active by now. Either way, without Mao, you two aren’t going anywhere. 

You turn to him. “Ritsu do you need to rest a little? I really can’t carry you the whole way.”

“Mmhh...” He mumbles something you can’t make out as you sit down on the other end of the bench. The next second, he wiggles over your lap to use as his pillow. “You’re so warm… I think I might stay here foreeeveeeeeer...” 

Seeing a content smile on his face as he once again drifts off to sleep, you lean back on the bench and look up at the sky. As expected from being in the city, there are fewer stars visible and he only bright object you can see is the moon as it begins to rise.

Ritsu shifts a little on your lap and makes a little noise. You can feel his steady breathing, the sight of him sleeping peacefully almost lulls you to sleep but you quickly turn your attention elsewhere so as to not nod off too. 

You don’t know how much time has passed since then when you feel your phone vibrating from your pocket. You quickly fish it out, careful not to move too much to wake Ritsu.

A message from your mom. Saying that she’ll be a little late for dinner. Wait. Dinner?

“Oh no!” You nearly jump in your seat but the sudden cry wakes the sleeping idol on your lap. Ritsu starts to groan. “...You’re too loud… Don’t shout...”

“We need to get home! Now!” you exclaim, hastily tapping his shoulder. 

“Whaaaat? Let me rest a bit more… It’s not like I need to be home early today. ” 

“But I need to be home right away. I need to make dinner!” you spell out. You still need to take out the meat you planned to use from the freezer to defrost it, and the other ingredients would also take time to prepare. You were excited to try out a new recipe today, too.

“You know, it’s not bad to have takeout every once in a while.” Ritsu comments, not moving an inch on your lap. 

“Yes, and we already had that the other day. Now would you please sit up so I can get my stuff?” 

Ritsu doesn’t move. “...Five more minutes.”

“Ritsu...” you call one more time.

“...”

After giving up trying to wake him, you consider carrying him again so you two can get moving, but carrying a sleeping Ritsu would feel much heavier than a half-awake one from a while ago. And you’re already struggling to stand up the first time.

“That’s it. I’m calling him.” Pulling out your phone from your blazer jacket, you easily find the number you’re looking for and tap on the dial button.

Shifting from your lap, you feel Ritsu’s head perk up. “Him. You mean Maa-kun?” You didn’t get to reply though, as you hear the voice from the other line picking up.

“O-Oh, um… sorry for suddenly calling. I was wondering if you’re around the park by the convenience store… Yes, the one on the way home.” Ritsu sits up and leans closer to try and listen. He doesn’t hear much though except for your voice humming in response to whoever’s on the phone. 

“I have Ritsu here with me but he’s too tired to walk and I can’t carry him all the way back and— Oh you’re coming over? That’s a great help, thanks!” Ritsu strains to filter out the noise so he can hear his beloved Maa-kun even for just a few seconds. 

However, to his absolute horror, he hears a familiar giggle, the unmistakable deep voice sending warning signals through his entire system that finally jolted him awake. 

“Just you wait, my adorable Ritsu! Onii-chan’s on the way to get you~.” 

And the call drops.

You return your phone to your pocket as he watches you in shock. “You called my idiot brother?!”

“Well, who else am I supposed to call? Mao’s probably still practicing with Trisckstar.” You retort, expecting that reaction from him. His eyebrows knit together in displeasure.

“No one. We could’ve gone home by ourselves.”

“No, we couldn’t. You’re heavy and we still have halfway to go before we even get to our neighborhood. You didn’t even want to get up.”

“Tell that bug to go back.”

“No can do. And even if I tell him to, there’s no stopping him now from any opportunity to spend time with his cute little brother.”

“Ughhh....” He falls again onto your lap. Happy that he’s finally given up, you exhale a relieved sigh. You don’t notice, though, the sneaky hands crawling to your sides until they began tickling you. 

“As punishment, I’m gonna torture you until you send him away.”

You try to push him off you but you’re too distracted from all the tickling that you can only jolt from side to side. “Ritsu—! Stop!” You try to say in between laughs. 

“No can do.”

You attempt again to swat his hands away and throw him off your lap. You raise your knees alternately to force him to sit up and he does, and you immediately edge yourself away from him on the bench.

Ritsu slides from his seat to follow you, though. “Oh no, you’re not getting away.” He says in a clearly playful tone. 

You reach the end of the bench and almost fall off when your hands landed on nothing beside you, and you know you’re doomed to another tickling. Your reaction didn’t go unnoticed by Ritsu and he lets out a mischievous laugh. 

“Got you~.” 

But just as he got close enough for his hands to reach you again, a sing-song voice grabbed his attention.

“Oi~! Ritsu~!” Ritsu snaps his head at the distant voice approaching. He clicks his tongue in annoyance. “Oh great. He’s here.”

Recovering from the tickling session, you wipe a tear on your eye as you see Rei come into view. You stand up to greet him. “Rei-san. Good evening!”

“Good evening, little lady. Thanks for calling.” Rei flashes you a grateful smile before turning to Ritsu. “Now, is my precious little brother too tired to walk home? Come here to Onii-chan and I’ll carry you~” And, without waiting for a response, Rei easily scoops him up.

Ritsu pushes away as he’s forcefully made to lean against his brother’s chest. “Put me down, stupid brother! I didn’t ask for you to come! Let go of me!” He kicks his legs up and tries to wriggle off him.

Rei pouts at his little brother’s rejection. “Aw, but you used to love me carrying you like this home.” 

“Can you please not talk about that embarrassing past? It’s disgusting!” Ritsu spats, feeling Rei’s hold on him loosening. “How are you here already anyway?”

“Whenever my dear brother’s in need, I’ll always arrive at the speed of light.” Rei proudly says, obviously not the answer anyone is looking for. After seeing the irritated look from Ritsu and the nervous laugh from you, he finally explains. “I just finished a job with Undead in the area and we’re staying at a cafe nearby at Kaoru’s suggestion.”

“Oh, you were with your unit mates, then?” you say, beginning to feel guilty. “Sorry for calling you so suddenly when you had a prior appointment.” 

“Oh so you apologize to him but not me?” Ritsu grumbles, still holding on to the small grudge from earlier. You pretend to not hear him.

Rei adjusts his hands under Ritsu before he replies. “It’s quite alright, little lady. It’s just a detour we made before we part ways and go home.”

You hesitate but with how Rei is close to rubbing his cheek against Ritsu’s, who is still trying to push him away, you think that he was glad he got the call too. You giggle at the rare sight of these two brothers.

“Hey! Don’t just laugh at me, help me get off of this idiot.” Ritsu calls out. 

You try to hold another laughter in but it spills out when Rei starts rocking Ritsu to maybe try and get him to fall asleep. “I’m sorry, Ritsu. It’s impossible to not watch this!” 

Ritsu pouts at you in betrayal. Oh, how you wish to take out your phone and quickly snap a photo of his face.

“Now, now. Come on, Ritsu. Onii-chan will carry you home so you can sleep here in my arms~” Rei smiles wide, another rare sight. Ritsu continues to struggle in his brother’s hold, but then suddenly stops and drops his head down, his bangs covering his eyes.

Rei stops as well. Did Ritsu give up resisting? “Ritsu?” Rei hesitantly tries to meet his eyes, and then you see him flinch.

“Put. Me. Down.” Ritsu shoots Rei with a murderous glare. His tone clearly shows he’s had enough of this. “Or I’ll report you.”

Rei, taken aback by this brother’s warning, frowns but still moves to set him down. Ritsu dusts himself off and glares at Rei.

Seeing the clear rejection from his younger brother, Rei starts to sniffle, rubbing the corners of eyes in fake tears. “Oh Ritsu, you’re so mean to your dear big brother!” 

Almost immediately, Ritsu snaps back. “My only family here is Maa-kun and...” He steps closer to you and, without warning, latches onto your arm. 

You were surprised by the sudden gesture, not sure how to react. You hesitantly call his name but he’s busy sending death glares to his brother, who now wears a distinct pout.

Finally, Rei gives a defeated sigh. “Well, it seems i’ve been rejected yet again today. I’ll head back to the cafe. You two be careful on your way home.” 

You feel bad now for calling him out here. He must’ve been looking forward to spending some time with Ritsu. But Rei must’ve sensed your growing guilt and smiled at you, as if assuring you that it was no problem at all. He did get to carry Ritsu, after all, even if it was for a short time.

You smile back at him. “Thank you and sorry for the trouble! Please be careful as well!” And you give a small bow before he turns and walks back the direction he came. 

“Finally he’s gone.” Ritsu speaks, voice starting to tone down. “Now I can rest in peace.” He lets go of your arm and sits back down on the bench. He pats the spot you were sitting on earlier. “Come on.” 

But you don’t move and as he looks at you in confusion, you smugly grin at him. Calling Rei might’ve been a good move after all. “Oh good, you’re wide awake. Now you can get home by yourself, right?” You say and turn on your heel to start walking.

You hear Ritsu make a surprised noise from behind you. “What? Noooo… don’t leave me heeeeereee...” He quickly rises from his seat and reluctantly trails after you. You can’t see his face but you’re sure he’s sulking right now. Just that image of him in your head is enough to make you giggle. You slow your pace down though so he can catch up, but as soon as he does he hooks an arm around yours.

“Ritsu, if you’re thinking of having me carry you again—”

“This is fine as long as I’m walking, right?” 

You sigh. This one really is a handful, but he can be cute sometimes.

“Okay, fine.”

—

Heya! I’ve also started uploading my fics on AO3. You can follow me @lightspeedrobin​ !

#ensemble stars #enstars #sakuma ritsu #sakuma rei

[miguel-manbemel]

Aspects & Fanfics Ep. 26: A Side is Born Part 1: Virgil’s Pregnancy

Today is one year since the first episode of this story inspired on Sanders Sides by Thomas Sanders and Joan S. was released. I figured I had to do something special to celebrate it and I decided to try something new. And I decided to do something that hasn’t been done even on the original Sanders Sides: a five part epic serialized story starring the Sides.

The fun fact is that this originally started as a regular entry and the idea of a multipart episode came when I wrote the ending. And yes, the title is quite revealing. A new original Side is joining the story and it’s gonna be Roman and Virgil’s son. They’re not human so why not making a male pregnancy possible in this universe? I hope you enjoy this silly opening for this story which will be released on a weekly basis. So, until next week.

WARNINGS: The story features a physical childbirth with the struggles and pain usually associated with it, including a scene of vomiting, if it could be a trigger. Existential doubts for Virgil are to be found in the story too. Also romantic prinxiety and logicality, and a brief hint to romantic receipt played for laughs. Because yes, Remus appears, but he’s an ally in the story. This doesn’t prevent him from doing his anctics of course.

SYNOPSIS: Thomas feels strangely nervous, so he feels something’s wrong with Virgil. He’s sick and nauseous and his belly starts growing so they all deduce that Virgil must be pregnant. Now they wonder how this happened and Virgil has doubts about if he’s gonna be a good parent or not.

EPISODE INDEX

[Thomas is reading from his cell phone]

THOMAS: Merci… Gracias… Grazie… Go raibh maith agat… Efharisto… Danke schön… Tack så mycket… Dank je wel… Hvala… [noticing the camera] Oh, there you are. What am I doing, you say? Well, I’m learning how to say “Thank you” in as many European languages as I can. Soon I’ll be traveling to Europe and I want everyone to understand at least that from me… The next thing I’ll learn will be how to say “I love you”. What? That’s so me, you say? Well, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart and I’m grateful and proud of having you as my wonderful followers, the best followers anyone could ever ask for… but I don’t know what you mean by “that’s so me”.

[intro sequence]

THOMAS: What is up, everybody? Today hasn’t been a really good day. I don’t know why, but I have been feeling on the edge all day. Really, really nervous, and I don’t know why, cause we didn’t have specially stressful projects today. Well, I guess you know what comes next. If an emotion of mine spirals out of control, I have the advantage of being able to talk to that emotion face to face, so here we go. Virgil? Could you come here, please?

[Virgil rises up. He looks pale and sick]

VIRGIL: What do you want… [retches] Thomas?

THOMAS: Whoa… Are you okay, Virge? You look sick…

VIRGIL: Very observant, detective Sanders… I’ve been feeling awful today.

ROMAN: [rising up] Why didn’t you tell me any of this, my love?

VIRGIL: I didn’t want to concern you, Roman. Probably it’s just something I’ve eaten that’s not agreeing with my stomach.

ROMAN: Still, my duty as your husband is taking care of you when you’re feeling bad. I thought we had agreed on not hiding things from each other.

VIRGIL: Don’t worry, Roman, I’m sure this is not serious.

PATTON: [rising up] What is this about not feeling well, son?

VIRGIL: Oh… don’t worry, dad, I’m…

[Virgil can’t end his statement, as he suddenly turns around and starts loudly vomiting off-screen. Faces of disgust are shown from each of the Sides and Thomas]

THOMAS: Oh, my gosh…

ROMAN: It… It’s the first time that I see… magenta vomit?

PATTON: It would be cute if it wasn’t so disgusting…

THOMAS: What the heck did you have for breakfast today, Virgil, a bag of ink cartridges?

VIRGIL: [turning front] Do you think I am Remus or something? I’m sorry for this mess, Thomas. I… I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. I didn’t eat anything unusual today.

ROMAN: I don’t know… Could it be indigestion over too much eating?

VIRGIL: What do you mean?

ROMAN: Well, I’m sorry, my love, I didn’t want to say it, but… I think you’re gaining a bit of weight lately.

VIRGIL: What?

ROMAN: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, but… look at your belly.

[Virgil looks at his belly. His purple shirt is too tight on it]

ROMAN: Your delicious abs are gone right now. Don’t get me wrong. I love that chubby belly and I’ll love you in any body shape, but I’m just worried about how you’ve gone chubby so suddenly.

VIRGIL: [angry] I’m not chubby! And I’m not fat, for the record! It’s just the belly what has got thicker! [suddenly outbursts crying] Why you have to be so rude!?

[Virgil starts crying, sobbing, with both hands covering his face]

ROMAN: [scared] I’m sorry! I’m sorry, my love! I’m sorry!

THOMAS: Morning nausea, protuberant belly, irritability and emotions on the edge… Heh… It’s funny. If you weren’t a man I would say that you’ve got all the symptoms of being pregnant.

[Virgil slowly lowers his hands from his face and looks at Thomas with a face of horror]

THOMAS: [serious] Wait… don’t tell me that you can…

VIRGIL: Oh… my… goodness… [putting his hands on his belly] For the love of Gerard Way…

THOMAS: But… this is not a Sims game! Since when can a person with male reproductive organs get pregnant!?

ROMAN: [in shock] I… I didn’t know that was possible either.

VIRGIL: [stuttering] I wasn’t certain if it could be possible. But these past months I was thinking… How did Patton have me? All of us, the Sides of Thomas, are male like him, so there were only two options. Either Patton got someone pregnant who delivered me, or he got pregnant with me at some point. In any case, there was a male Side delivering me. The alternative is me being created by the Mind Palace itself, like most Sides, and therefore Patton not being my real father, which I know it can’t be true, given the special kind of love and connection that we share. I refuse to believe that Patton is not my real father. That’s out of the question.

PATTON: You are my son, Virgil. Never have any doubts about it, because the connection that exists between us both, the kind of pure, unconditional love that I feel for you and you feel for me, that wouldn’t exist otherwise. However, I’m a bit confused. By that time, I hadn’t been with anyone yet… and I haven’t got any recollection of having you through pregnancy. Is that how kids are…?

VIRGIL: Either way, it probably was so long ago that you don’t remember how it happened, just as I don’t remember being born as a Light Side, then turning Dark. [makes a sudden pause and looks at Patton with a serious face] Wait… what do you mean by “by that time”, dad? Do you mean that after I was born you have…?

ROMAN: [interrupting Virgil, nervously] Um… Thomas, I think we need Logan to shed a light to all of this, don’t you agree?

THOMAS: Yes, I’m so confused that I think my head is going to explode. I hope Logan can help us. Logan, could you come here, please!?

LOGAN: [rising up] How may I serve you, Thomas?

THOMAS: It’s not me who needs help. It’s Virgil.

LOGAN: Well, what’s the problem?

VIRGIL: I know it doesn’t make any sense and that it defies all laws of reproduction, but… I think I might be pregnant.

LOGAN: [unconcerned] Okay. How do you feel?

THOMAS: What? You think it’s completely logical that a male individual can get pregnant?

LOGAN: Well, I would find it completely illogical if Virgil was human. But he’s not, and as you know, not all laws of science apply to the Mind Palace, so in theory is perfectly possible for him to get pregnant. It is the first time that I’ve seen it with my own eyes, though. [looking furtively at Patton] That means we’ll have to take extra precautions when…

ROMAN: [nervously, looking at Logan with a murderous glance] Um… yes, Logan we all must always take precautions when. But it’s a little late for you to tell us this, don’t you think?

LOGAN: Well, you should be happy, Roman. I thought your biggest concern was your apparent inability to, following the laws of your principality, conceive a legitimate heir to the throne of Sandersia because you didn’t want to spend the rest of your life with anyone other than Virgil. Now that’s solved and you’ll get the legitimate offspring you always wanted to have while preserving your true love.

ROMAN: I… I hadn’t thought about that… But that’s right, Virge, I always wished to have offspring and you made the miracle possible. I love you.

VIRGIL: Well, I love you too, but I would have wished to know that this was possible beforehand, so that we could have planned this all more carefully.

LOGAN: First, before we continue theorizing, I think it would be best if I made a little check on Virgil to verify or counter-verify the news. It would be silly to talk about it when we don’t know yet if you’re really expecting. For all we know, it could just be a bad case of gas.

VIRGIL: I wish, but I don’t think so. Do I have to pee in a glass or something?

LOGAN: That won’t be necessary, just relax and let me do my work.

ROMAN: Won’t the shaking energy you use be dangerous for the baby, if they exist?

LOGAN: Don’t worry, I’ll be working on low power to avoid any damages to the child. Virgil open up your hoodie and lift up your shirt. I’ll need direct contact with your skin to be able to make a low-power check on you.

VIRGIL: Okay, Logan, you’re the doctor.

[Virgil opens up his hoodie and, with some difficulty as it is already too tight, he lifts his shirt up to the chest. Logan approaches Virgil and puts his hand gently on Virgil’s belly button, then starts caressing Virgil’s belly gently]

VIRGIL: It’s funny, I feel like a weird tingling sensation wherever Logan places his hand…

THOMAS: Incredible, it looks as if your belly was growing bigger by the minute as we speak… No offense, dude, I have felt that sensation myself sometimes after eating too much pizza.

LOGAN: Guys, be quiet, please. It’s harder for me to compile data while working with this low amount of power, I need silence or I won’t read anything.

THOMAS: Sorry, Logan.

[Logan slowly caresses Virgil’s belly up and down, left and right for a few seconds with a face of huge concentration. Roman, Patton and Thomas watch in expectation]

LOGAN: [taking his hand off] Okay… it’s done.

[Logan returns to his place]

VIRGIL: [on the verge of hysteria] Well, what did you see!?

LOGAN: Congratulations, guys. It’s a boy. Not surprising, though, as all Sides of Thomas share with him the same sex, gender, and attributes.

ROMAN: So, it’s true, then. We have a bun in the oven.

LOGAN: [confused, looking at the kitchen] I… I don’t think so, Roman, the oven is unlit and there are no signs of dough on the counter… And what does that have to do with this case, anyway?

THOMAS: It’s an expression, Logan, write it down on your vocab cards. Well, guys, I think we must call the others to give them the news. Deceit! Honesty! Remus!

[Deceit and Honesty rise up. Remus pops up]

DECEIT: What’s the ma… [looking in shock at Virgil, who is still with his shirt up as his now too bulging belly doesn’t let him lower it down] …what is going on here?

[Virgil summons his shirt away and zips up his wider hoodie with no shirt underneath]

VIRGIL: This is going faster than I thought. Wasn’t this supposed to last for nine months or something?

HONESTY: Nine… nine months? You mean that…?

ROMAN: Yes, guys. I don’t know how this happened, but we’re having a baby!

REMUS: Well, we’re all adults, Roman. We all know how babies do happen. [smirk] Wow, you really were hungry after these two months away from your husband! [wiggling his eyebrows] You two made the most of your time together, right?

PATTON: I didn’t know that’s what you had to do to make babies happen. I didn’t really know this thing existed until recently, so…

VIRGIL: Until recently? So you recently have…

ROMAN: [interrupting, looking at Patton with another murderous glance] Is no one going to congratulate us?

HONESTY: Of course, Roman. Congratulations!

DECEIT: Congratulations, Virgil. I… I’m happy for you.

VIRGIL: Thank you, Dee.

REMUS: That means that now I’m gonna be an uncle! [gasps realizing something] I’ll be Uncle Remus! [starts singing to the tune of the Disney song] Zeep-a-dee-doo-dah! Zeep-a-de-day! My, oh, my, what a wonderful day… [speaking] I hope you don’t pretend that I don’t exist like it happened to that other famous Uncle Remus from Disney.

THOMAS: Nah, you don’t need to worry. We already tried that and it doesn’t work. Not completely at least.

PATTON: And now not only I’m gonna be a dad! I’m gonna be a grand-dad too! I’m so happy!

[Patton jumps to hug Roman and Virgil, squeezing them a little bit. In doing so, the magenta puddle on the stairs behind Virgil is exposed]

REMUS: Wait, what is that magenta puddle behind Virgil?

[Patton goes back to his spot]

VIRGIL: [looking at the puddle] Oh, that’s right, I forgot to clean it up. I went really sick a moment ago and I puked this magenta… goo.

REMUS: It has a really pretty color… Can I eat it?

EVERYONE: [yelling at the same time] NO!!

REMUS: Ugh… But it looks so delicious… Why letting go to waste such a cute delicacy? [Virgil summons the puddle away] Okay, fine… I’ll make my own magenta puddle later. And I won’t share!

THOMAS: Thank God the vomit’s gone. I was fearing how long it was gonna take me to clean the stain off the carpet.

VIRGIL: One thing I don’t understand is… why was that vomit all magenta? I don’t get it.

LOGAN: Well, magenta is the result of mixing red and purple. Roman is red and you are purple. The Side that is inside of you, about to be born, will be magenta, for sure.

VIRGIL: [in pain, putting his hand on his belly] Aw!

ROMAN: [scared] What was that, Virgil! Are you okay?

VIRGIL: I… I think so… He moved inside me, and kicked me really hard from my insides. It was so weird…

ROMAN: Seriously, Logan. How can this go so fast? This morning he was having the first nausea and now he looks as if he was six months pregnant already!

LOGAN: Well, as I told you, we’re not human. Maybe instead of nine months, Virgil’s pregnancy will be only nine hours. Probably less, judging how fast it’s going.

THOMAS: I was thinking…

LOGAN: What?

THOMAS: When we lost Ira, you said that, one day or another, the Mind Palace would create a new Side to substitute him as Wrath. Could it be that the Side that is about to be born will assume my Wrath functions?

LOGAN: I don’t think so, Thomas. Roman is Creativity and Virgil is Vigilance and Anxiety. The Side that is born from them must have traits from them both, just like Virgil, son of Patton, shares with him that he’s a feeling. Wrath as an aspect is not directly tied with Creativity and Anxiety, it could happen as a product of Anxiety, but it can also happen on its own without it. Besides, it is up to the Mind Palace to create the new Side of Wrath, he won’t be born like this. We’ll still have to wait for the new Wrath to arrive someday.

THOMAS: Okay, if you say so, Logan. But then, what Side of me will he be?

LOGAN: I can’t tell yet. I’ll need to check him when he comes out. Then we’ll know for certain.

VIRGIL: [scared] Guys… How is the baby going to come out from me? Unlike women, I don’t have any ducts in my body through which he could come out.

REMUS: Yeah, is he going to burst out through his chest like in the movie “Alien”?

[Virgil grimaces]

ROMAN: [angry] Remus, please!

REMUS: What? That’s exactly what Virgil was thinking about, only that I put it out into words so you all know what he wanted to say. You’re welcome, Virge.

LOGAN: It’s okay, Virgil. When I checked you out I also checked the baby’s basic biology and status. Remember that our bodies can shape-shift?

VIRGIL: Yes…

LOGAN: Well, so the baby can. When the moment of delivery comes, he will come out through… any open conduct of yours as if it was some kind of gaseous smoke, safely solidifying in your arms without any damage for any of you.

REMUS: So, he’s literally gonna fart my nephew out? [clapping hands excited] That is so my aesthetic! I love it! I wanna have a baby too! Dee, will you help me out!?

DECEIT: [horrified] Whoa! Don’t stay away from me!

REMUS: [happy] Yay! Let’s do it!

DECEIT: [nervous] No, I really meant to say that! When I get nervous I tell the truth! Ugh! Don’t step back! [Remus starts approaching Deceit with his arms wide open and a sick smile] Dang it! Why did I have to be the embodiment of lies!? Guys, don’t help me!

[Deceit starts running away, Remus runs after him. They run in circles for a while while Patton shows a face of confusion, Honesty a face of shock, Logan facepalms, Thomas shows a concerned face and Roman just stares with a void expression. Then Virgil is shown with a face of angry struggle until he snaps]

VIRGIL: [yelling] F… [bleep] …ING SHUT UP!!!

[Everyone looks at Virgil, Deceit and Remus stop and look at Virgil too]

VIRGIL: FOR F… [bleep] ‘S SAKE, SHUT UP! AW! IT HURTS!

ROMAN: Virgil, what’s the matter!?

VIRGIL: How do you want me to know!? This thing inside of me is so heavy now! And it hurts! Aw!

LOGAN: Uh-oh! I think the time has come!

VIRGIL: What!? So soon!? I’m not ready yet!

LOGAN: Well, the baby is gonna pop out, whether you’re ready or not. Come to the couch, come on.

[Roman and Logan grab Virgil’s arms and help him walk to the couch, where he lies down]

VIRGIL: This is horrible! I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt!

LOGAN: No, I said it wouldn’t damage you. I never talked about pain. Your whole abdomen is full of gas as the baby takes that form to get out. How wouldn’t that hurt? Once you start delivering, the pain will disappear, you’ll see.

VIRGIL: Gosh… this all looks so ridiculous! Are you sure this is not some short of stupid nightmare!?

PATTON: It is not, but if it was a dream, why call it a nightmare? This moment, even with the struggle right now, should be something beautiful for you. Is it not?

VIRGIL: I don’t know, dad… I don’t know if I’m ready to be a father.

PATTON: Why?

VIRGIL: How am I going to take care of someone else when I can barely take care of myself, and with difficulty? I’m gonna suck as a parent! I’m not good enough for such a huge responsibility! I’m so scared!

ROMAN: [holding Virgil’s hand] You are good enough, Virgil. You’re the one who always takes into consideration all the possible outcomes to any situation before it even happens. The kid wouldn’t be in safer hands than yours.

VIRGIL: But I’m wrong a lot. What if he turns into some kind of manic paranoid because of me? What if I spoil him and turn him into a sad excuse of a Side? What if…?

ROMAN: Enough with those “what ifs”, Virgil! That’s not gonna happen! I’m a little scared too. I think it’s normal to feel unsure when a new life comes into the world and it’s your responsibility to take care of him. But remember that you’re not alone in that responsibility. This child is also my son and I’m gonna take my part of the duty too.

PATTON: And we’re also here to help you two in any way you need.

ROMAN: I’m sure we’ll figure it out. As long as we’re together, we can do it, you’ll see.

VIRGIL: Roman…

ROMAN: Yes?

VIRGIL: Please, don’t drop my hand while it happens.

[Roman smiles lovingly at Virgil and kisses his forehead]

ROMAN: Never. I only beg you something.

VIRGIL: What?

ROMAN: Please, when you’re pushing, don’t break my finger bones while you’re holding my hand… I need it to write.

VIRGIL: [titters] I’ll try… [suddenly in pain again] Nnghh!

LOGAN: Okay, now calm down, Virgil, and listen to me. I’m gonna be your midwife during the process and I’ll help you go through it safely. This is not gonna be like a regular human delivery with contractions and all that stuff. What you’re feeling right now is the baby, in the form of smoke, circulating inside your body, trying to find the way out. It is as if you had a bad case of intestinal cramps. That can really hurt sometimes in a regular situation, so imagine having your whole intestine full of it.

VIRGIL: [in pain] Oh, they’re really bad cramps, I can confirm! Roman, if you want any more babies, you’re gonna carry them!

ROMAN: I… I think one will be enough…

LOGAN: When the smoke reaches the exit, the pain will be gone and will be replaced by the happiness of having your son in your arms, and you’ll think that all you’re going through right now was really worth it. But until that moment comes, I need you to be strong. Okay?

VIRGIL: [whining, his forehead is full of sweat] Okay…

LOGAN: Now, I’m sorry, but I need you to be in more suitable clothing for the operation.

[Logan moves his hands and Virgil is now dressed with a purple hospital gown]

LOGAN: [positioning next to Virgil’s feet] That should do it. It’s open in the back so that the baby can come out… from where he has to come out… while respecting your own privacy.

VIRGIL: Thank you… [in pain] Aw! Here comes the pain again, and it’s worse than ever!

LOGAN: Okay, as I said there are no contractions, but what doesn’t change is that I’ll need you to push.

VIRGIL: Couldn’t I get the epidural?

LOGAN: It’s too late for it to take effect. You’ll have to cope. It will be over in less than a minute.

VIRGIL: Seems more like a century! [yelling] Aaah!

LOGAN: Now, push!

[Virgil makes a gesture of pushing while groaning. Roman looks at Virgil with the hugest concern. Then Virgil stops and loudly pants]

ROMAN: Come on, my love! I believe in you! You’re strong enough to do this!

LOGAN: It’s not enough yet. Push again… now!

[Virgil pushes again. A loud rasping noise is heard]

VIRGIL: Is it out yet?

LOGAN: [with a face of disgust as if smelling something unpleasant, fanning with his hand] No, sorry, that was just a regular fart. But it’s a good sign. The next thing coming out of there will be the baby. Now, one last time, use all your might you have left and push as if tomorrow would never come. Now!

VIRGIL: [pushing] NNNNNGGGGGHHHHHAAAAAAA!!!

LOGAN: Here it comes!

[A bright magenta smoke comes out of Virgil’s body. As it comes out forming a magenta cloud, Virgil’s belly shrinks until it returns to its normal flat form, while he shows a face of huge alleviation. Then, the cloud floats to Virgil’s chest and after some seconds, it disappears, to reveal a little baby dressed only with magenta diapers. The baby starts crying]

LOGAN: Well, it’s done. Good job, Virgil.

VIRGIL: [with his eyes full of tears] I… I… look at him, Roman.

ROMAN: [crying] I’m looking at him, Virgil. He’s as handsome as his dad. And I mean you.

THOMAS: [with his eyes full of tears] He looks just like me when I was a baby, I’ve seen photos of that. Congratulations, guys. I’m so happy for you.

VIRGIL: Thank you, Thomas.

ROMAN: Thank you.

THOMAS: Now, how are you going to name him?

VIRGIL: Well, first we need to know what aspect of your personality he’s going to represent. I want him to have a suitable name. [kissing the baby’s crown] A perfect name for a perfect boy.

LOGAN: Let me check the baby now and I’ll tell you what Side of Thomas he is.

[Logan touches the baby gently for a couple of seconds then looks at the couple]

LOGAN: Well, I can tell you confidently that this baby represents Thomas’ creative angst. He’s also his emotional sensitivity, his empathy and the Side that helps him connect his creativity with his emotions. That was probably inherited from his grandpa. Congratulations to you too, Patton, by the way.

PATTON: Thank you, my lo… [noticing he was about to mess up] …o-o-o-gan.

VIRGIL: Okay, I was too busy being worried about what was happening to me earlier. But now that that’s taken care of, what are you three hiding from me? And yes, I’m looking at you too, Roman, don’t think I didn’t notice it earlier. And you called me out for hiding things from you?

ROMAN: I’m sorry, Virgil, I…

PATTON: Sorry, son, I asked him to keep the secret for us. I promise we were gonna tell you eventually.

VIRGIL: Tell me what?

[Logan’s face is bright red. He looks nervously in all directions]

PATTON: I can tell them if you want me to.

LOGAN: No, what kind of teacher would I be if I couldn’t deliver a simple sentence stating a true fact about us? Well, the truth is that… [starts stuttering nervously] well, that Patton and I… well…

[suddenly, out of nowhere, Logan shows a determined face, looks at Patton and plants a long kiss on his mouth. All the Sides look at them in shock]

LOGAN: [breathing heavily] There! That should do it. [pulling out a vocab card] They say that “an image is worth a thousand words”, and since I was never gonna be able to put my feelings down in words, I decided to use the real language of feelings to communicate how much I’m in love with Patton. [embarrassed] Oh, wait, I did say it…

[Virgil looks at Logan and Patton. Notices how red Logan’s face still is and starts slowly giggling. Soon the giggling becomes a loud cackle and the laughter spreads to the rest of the Sides. In the end, even Logan is faintly giggling]

VIRGIL: Wow, I really needed this laugh after what I have just gone through. I’m happy for you two, guys. You really make a cute couple.

PATTON: Thanks, kiddo. Well, I don’t know if I should call you kiddo anymore, now that you’re a father yourself.

VIRGIL: Please, dad, no matter how old I get, and how many children I’ve got – which will only be this one, by the way – never stop calling me kiddo. I’ll always be your kiddo, okay?

PATTON: [heartwarming smile] Okay… kiddo.

ROMAN: Glad that the secret is out. Do you know how many times I was tempted to strangle you every time you messed up? You both suck at hiding secrets.

PATTON: Sorry, Roman. And thank you for staying true to us even if we made it so difficult. And now, kiddos, what name will you choose for the baby?

VIRGIL: I’m too tired right now to choose a name. Roman, you’re the creative one. Choose a name for our son.

ROMAN: Well… Since he’s now royalty, he needs a name worthy of a prince. Creative angst, you said? Hmm…

[all the Sides and Thomas look at Roman in expectation while Roman is thinking]

ROMAN: [talking to himself] Creative angst… Creative angst… If I rearrange these letters, remove some of them and add some more… [yelling to the others] I got it! His name will be Christian. Prince Christian Gerard Sanders. Gerard is in honor of Gerard Way, vocalist from My Chemical Romance, cause I know how much Virgil loves that band. And if you shorten the name to Chris Sanders, it sounds like the famed author of Lilo & Stich and How to Train Your Dragon. Even though that director’s full name is Christopher, I still think the name Christian really suits our boy. Do you like it, Virge?

VIRGIL: Like it? I love it, Roman. Just as much as I love you.

[Roman leans towards Virgil and kisses him]

THOMAS: Well, I think we should all let them rest. Feel free to rest on my couch all the time you need, Virge. You can stay over for dinner if you want.

VIRGIL: Thank you, Thomas, I’d really appreciate that. I need some time before I feel ready to stand up.

THOMAS: Of course, take all the time you need.

VIRGIL: For starters, Logan, would you mind giving me my outfit back? This gown is still open in the back and I can feel something itchy from the couch getting on my higher back and in my… [looking at Patton] … lower back.

THOMAS: Sorry, Virge. I’ve been so busy these past few days… that I didn’t have time to vacuum the couch for a couple of weeks. There probably are crumbs of pizza everywhere and you must be lying on them. I didn’t expect Logan to put you in that open gown.

VIRGIL: Thomas! I’m gonna be itchy for a week!

PATTON: Let me hold the baby, son. Roman, help him brush his back okay?

ROMAN: Okay…

THOMAS: [to the camera, putting himself in front of it, blocking the action behind him] Okay, to all of you out there, thank you much for watching this… weird session of ours we had today, and until next time, take it easy, guys, gals and non binary pals. Peace out!

[end card]

[Virgil is sitting on the couch, already with his usual hoodie on. Roman is next to him. They’re having a pizza that Thomas ordered]

VIRGIL: Is it weird that I feel as if everything today had happened like a decade ago? I can barely remember anything of the bad, [looking at Chris, who is sleeping on a light blue cradle Patton summoned earlier] just the good that came in the end.

ROMAN: Yeah. You never know what life has in store for you. Yesterday we were living our lives like always, and now here we are, facing the ultimate adventure of life that is parenthood.

VIRGIL: It’s a good thing that Logan told us that I can’t produce milk and that I have to summon bottles of formula for him. I don’t know if I could have stood the sensation of having to breastfeed the baby through my nipples. And women can go through this and an even a harder kind of delivery labor than mine? Women are the real superheroes. Kudos to them all.

ROMAN: Yeah… I don’t know why stories like the ones I usually star in always portray women like a delicate creature that needs someone like me to save them. When in reality, most of the time, it’s them who save us in so many different ways.

THOMAS: Do you want any more pizza, guys?

VIRGIL: Oof… thanks, Thomas, it was great pizza, but I’m full.

ROMAN: Me too…

CHILD-LIKE VOICE: [off-screen] Pizza…

[Thomas, Roman and Virgil get quiet]

THOMAS: What was that?

VIRGIL: It sounded like the voice of a kid…

ROMAN: Did the neighbor kid sneak into your apartment to steal your meals again, Thomas?

THOMAS: I hope not. I seriously talked with his parents and they promised me they would severely ground him if he did that again. He wouldn’t dare to…

VOICE: [voice] Pizza! Pizza!

THOMAS: Again! Who’s there!? Where are you!? Show yourself!

ROMAN: Whoever it is, they’re in the same room.

VOICE: Pizza!

VIRGIL: The voice comes from the cradle! [jumping to the cradle] Whoever you are, get away from my son!

ROMAN: I have a samurai sword and I’m gonna use it!

VOICE: Pizza! Gimme pizza! Pizza!

VIRGIL: Um… guys…

ROMAN: What?

VIRGIL: It looks like our little baby is not so… little… anymore… Look…

[Virgil takes Chris out of the cradle. Except that it is now a three year old boy]

CHRIS: [giggling and poking Virgil’s nose] Dad, I want pizza!

THOMAS AND ROMAN: [overlapping] Whaaat!?

[A sign reading “To be continued, guys, gals and non binary pals appears]

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #virgil sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #deceit sanders #remus sanders #sympathetic deceit #sympathetic remus #sanders sides fic #sanders sides fanfic #fanfic #prinxiety #romantic prinxiety #logicality #romantic logicality #fanfiction #sanders sides fanfiction #aspects and fanfics

[jjungkookiex]

Agust D 2 Review

Moonlight

This is one of my top 3 tracks, I adore the little conversation he has in the beginning as he introduces the new era of Agust D. The theme links this song with Moonchild by Joon and Moon by Jin so that the celestial trio is indeed complete. It love the way that he finds comfort in the eternal aspect of nature when compared to his ever growing fame and wealth that must at times be overwhelming. Instead he concentrates on his artistry and love for music in its purest form that have been consistent in his life. The vibe is very groovy and relaxed making for a very pleasant listen at night. 

Daechwita

This is a distinctly unapologetic title track that is accompanied by a cinematic masterpiece of a music view. The blend of traditional Korean pansori alongside the fiery rap make for a unique auditory experience that is addictive (no jokes this song was played at least 100 times on the first day itself for me personally). In the music video Agust D splits his persona in half by playing both the tyrant king and the commoner assassin. This dichotomy allows him to explore the various aspects of his self and the eventual death of the king by the hands of the commoner, for me, represents his desire to stay humble, grounded and passionate, setting himself apart from the weak ‘pill poppers’ who lack drive and conviction. 

What do you think?

Agust D does not hold back and his haters better run for cover because this track is acerbic, sarcastic and a harsh slap of reality to those you doubt them. The rhetorical question in the title mockingly questions those who had underestimated the group that are the most popular boy band on the globe and threatens them to question them more, what do you think if we win a Grammy? He aggressively silences the ignorance of the media who persists in questioning them on their enlistment, and the way that he raps the four words hold more than a touch of wildness, showing the world that you do not mess with Agust D and his brothers.

Strange

This tracks begins with an ominous, distorted synth beat that is largely reserved for the end of songs, however its inclusion in the beginning helps to set the tone for a track that is unsettling and unable to be definitively pinned down. This track has a conversational tone, similar to Respect but lacking the playfulness; it’s strange younger brother. It discusses the way that wealth is the driving force in society, where capitalism injects hope as morphine into the youth, for it to never materialise in the way they wanted. Namjoon’s rap (which is so incredibly attractive purely in his intonation and accent) “for God’s sake everything’s under control” isn’t reassuring in the way we’d expect the words to be, instead the song questions our perception of the world and the strangeness of it all. 

28

This song reminds me of walking down a bustling street in the midst of summer, feeling incredibly isolated yet overwhelmed with the intensity of life. As one of the most reflective songs on the album it discusses the difficulty of crossing the vague border between youth and adulthood. This is not a border that makes for an easy passage, one will lose things in the process and emerge a changed person. Age is highly subjective, our mental state does not follow a linear line and our experiences vary, thus our true age varies. Agust D has lived an extraordinary life but is he truly an adult? He muses over whether it is better to not cross that barrier, if that journey means losing the dreams and passion that make him youthful. This is something highly relatable for us all, where we are pressured to become members of society and adults without a full awareness of how that process will transform us. 

Burn It

This track is hauntingly intense and dark and Max’s vocals fit in so well with Yoongi’s rap. That’s one of the things that I adore about the album- all the collaborations feel so natural and cohesive. The song raises the questions of whether we relate or recognise the individual we see in the mirror and if not we should burn it. Yoongi’s urgent refrain of yeah yeah burn it, is unforgettable and in my opinion, links to how he said in one Vlive that giving up is ok and that it requires great courage. This song highlights how everything, even the people we are, are constantly evolving and why should we be burdened with a past, or present self that it alien to us? Better to burn it down and create something worthwhile to our existence. 

People

This has got to be my favourite track of the whole album. The tropical esque beat at the beginning is lowkey and light, setting the mood for gentle contemplation rather than intense self reflection. The alternation between ‘why so serious?’ and ‘I’m so serious’  feels almost like a conversation between two people, thus continuing the album’s theme of duality. We are all people, but we live wildly different lives. Something normal to a person like walking freely down the street is extraordinary to a celebrity like Agust D, however to me or you it would be ordinary whereas we could never dream of playing stadiums which is the regular for BTS. This song comforts the listener by singing that no matter what stage in life you are, it’s ok if you cry and feel sad sometimes because no matter what, we are all people. 

Honsool

This track begins with a beat that is slightly drowsy and distorted, mimicking perfectly the notion of drinking. The title means ‘drinking alone’ a time of the day when we are the most nostalgic and reflective. The lyrics separate the ideal from the reality. Agust D had preconceptions of fame and fortune but our visions rarely match our reality and we find him musing over the disparity between the two, something that must be a torment and struggle for any celebrity. We see him attempting to consolidate his success and position in life in this moody track that is perfect for the after hours of a tiring day. 

Set Me Free

This is an incredibly beautiful track and singer Agust D truly comes through! It’s incredibly raw and relates the mental health struggles that the weight of the crown can have upon someone who is on an elevated platform in the world. The chirping of birds indicate the start of a new day, almost as though he wants to be set free and rejuvenated, to go to a world where things do work his way, where he can escape and truly be free of all the criticism, the spotlight and retreat to be with himself. I think we can all relate to the feeling of being trapped, and the melancholic yet euphoric refrain is highly emotive.

Dear My Friend

This song is one of the most heartbreaking out of the whole album. It is confessional and nostalgic, and dwells on how the passage of time ends friendship and changes people, leaving us with nothing but the fragments of memories. Yoongi reminisces over a friend he had when he was 20, a friend who’s existence and loss left a deep imprint upon his heart that Kim Jong Wan beautifully vocalises. This audible letter to his lost friend tugs at my heartstrings for I too lost a friend who I thought would be with me forever and whilst we do not come into contact anymore I still remember our time together vividly and hope they are happy wherever they are. I see this song as Yoongi’s last goodbye to this person who touched his life in such an intense way. 

This album was incredibly raw and confessional and I’m so proud of Yoongi for creating a work that is so authentically him. Each track is meticulously crafted much like his whole ouevre of work and the progression of himself both personally and musically is evident. 11/10 stars from me 

#agust d 2 album review #d 2 album review #suga #bts #agust d #daechwita #bts album review

[chwetuan]

+ the one where you and yugyeom are kinda in love with each other, alternatively titled: 15 years

Yugyeom stands before you, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, hands shoved deep (well, as deep as they could go) into the pocket of his skintight jeans.

You’ve known him since you were 12, and each year since, he’s found a way to become a different pain in your ass.

“Well, we’re not not dating.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

He shrugs, leaning over your shoulder and gesturing to a drink in the refrigerator.

The corner store is empty on weekdays. There’s no one else but the cashier and security guard, who sit together at the register sharing a bag of chips and watching cartoons.

An odd pairing, indeed.

If you were someplace bigger, some place less blackhole-y and boxed-in, maybe the security guard would stand outside the door, and the poor cashier wouldn’t look bored out of his mind. Perhaps the store would be buzzing with life, with people, with children and couples, teenagers and old people.

Instead, it’s just you and Yugyeom, like it is on most evening.

You’ve outgrown your little town.

Sighing, you grab the juice out of the fridge, handing it to him.

“We made a pact, remember?”

“Yugyeom. We were thirteen. I’ve never regretted anything more in my life.”

“I’m just saying, our birthdays are right around the corner and last time I checked, neither of us have rings on our fingers or people in our beds.”

“You want me in your bed?”

“No, I would just like to reap the tax benefits you come with. And you’re honestly not that bad of a cook.”

“I hate you, a little.”

He sighs.

“Look, all I’m saying is that we should probably start dating.”

“Are you drunk?”

He rolls his eyes and takes the shopping basket from you.

“This is the most confusing conversation I’ve had with you throughout the course of our friendship.”

You don’t know what he’s on about, but you’re slowly piecing the puzzle together.

“It’s not that confusing, if you really think about it.”

You grunt in response, making your way to the register with him following behind you.

The cashier pauses the video in his phone while he scans your items.

“Hey, do we look like we’re dating?”

He’s caught off-guard, furrowing his eyebrows and nudging his glasses. He opens his mouth to answer, but before he can, the security guard is speaking.

“Yeah.”

The cashier sighs and shrugs his shoulders. “I mean, yeah, I thought you were.”

You groan and Yugyeom pays for the drinks and snacks.

Bidding goodnight to them, you begin your walk home, plastic bag in hand and music coming from Yugyeom’s phone.

“Just say you need a fake date and be done with it.”

He looks suspicious. “How do you know I need a fake date?”

“You’ve been my best friend since middle school and you think I can’t read you?” 

He scoffs but doesn’t respond.

“Well, do you need a fake date?”

Clearing his throat and pausing the music, he answers. “You’re not wrong.”

“For what?”

“My dad’s wedding.”

“He invited you?”

A sad smile appears on his lips. “You don’t need to act like you don’t know.”

“Sorry. Yerim told me.”

“I know she did.”

Silence falls upon you as you make your way to the steps of Yugyeom’s front porch, sitting down side by side and watching the stars twinkle in the sky.

“I know it’s stupid... To be this upset over something from so long ago. But none of it feels fair.”

He leans back on his palms, and in moments like these, you know it’s best to keep quiet.

“He tore the foundation from under our family, left my mom and I struggling with Yerim, left us with $10,000 and a pathetic excuse of an apology note. 15 years.” He scoffs, sipping from his soda and shaking his head. “And he builds this beautiful life for himself. Takes vacations every summer and mingles with his snobby friends. And he doesn’t think of us, not even once in those 15 years.”

His cheeks are flushed red, and you can feel the frustration seeping through his tone.

Because, it wasn’t just 15 years.

It was 15 years of hearing his mother cry. 15 years of hungry, sleepless nights. 15 christmases and 15 birthdays.

“And I don’t know, he calls me talking about how he wants this new beginning for our relationship. How he wants to see me and know all about me and you know? It stings. Because I feel like I haven’t done shit. I work at the airport and watch people like him fly out on private jets to places I’ll never get to see. And maybe, it’s still stupid, because besides my sister and my mom, you’re the only good thing in my life. I just want to shove it in his face, and tell him that yes, this is what happens when you stick around for 15 years. You meet beautiful people with beautiful hearts who fucking give a damn about you. And they don’t pick up and leave.”

“I’ll go with you. There’s no need for your angsty monologue.”

He rolls his eyes. But your heart beats in your chest, heavy and fast with the weight of his words.

You gesture him closer, turning to whisper.

“I’m only going to say this once.”

He nods.

“You’re the best thing in my life, period.”

He smiles — not the sad one from earlier, but a genuine one. The one that forces you to confront the butterflies in your stomach and the flutter of your heart.

“And your dad’s an asshole. And I know you don’t like it, but your airport job is kinda cool and you look hot in the uniform.”

“You think that catastrophe is hot?”

“I just think there’s a vibe to the whole thing,” You pause, grabbing a handful of chips and shoving them into your mouth. “You know?”

“You’re so incredibly graceful.”

You nod, and through a mouth full of hot Cheetos, you continue. “Anyways, I just think you’re kinda hot in the uniform. That’s all.”

“I hate you, a little.”

He doesn’t. Neither do you.

It’s quite the opposite, actually.

.

.

.

#got7 imagines #got7 drabbles #got7 reactions #got7 scenarios #got7 x reader #yugyeom x reader #kpop drabbles #kpop reactions #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, @Froggydarren!

To Jen: Merry Christmas!  In this story I hope you find a few of your favorite things.  May your holidays be filled with love and joy, great food, relaxation, and GREAT FIC!  

Title: stepping out of body

Rating: T

Word Count: 7K

Tags: Hypothermia, Hurt/comfort, Bed sharing, Accidental baby acquisition, alternate reality, parallel universe, dreams, hallucinations, Hobrien, Tyler Hoechlin/Dylan O’Brien, swearing, sexual innuendo, kissing  

Read on AO3

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steppin out of body

Stiles is ninety-seven percent sure he’s going to die out here.

The violent shivers and chattering teeth ceased ten minutes ago, and not even the line of Derek’s werewolf heat down his right side makes any difference. It turns out the discount boots he bought last year from Bob’s Bargain Bin aren’t such a bargain; frigid water seeps through the seams, turning his toes to ice, to fire. He wiggles them regularly as they trudge through the thickening carpet of heavy snow, fearing the numbness he could easily succumb to.

Stiles isn’t stupid. He can decipher the messages his very-human body broadcasts loud and clear.

“No,” Derek commands, slapping at his cheek with a gloved hand, the impact dull and muted against his frozen skin. “Eyes open, Stiles. Stay with me. Stay with…”

Damn the Nemeton, screaming out to every worthless supernatural pain-in-Stiles’-ass. This time it called down a Chenoo, a man-eating ice giant from the Great White North. The demon slid down the west coast like an avalanche, bashing through the border, ushering in plummeting temperatures, a torrent of wind-driven snow and sleet slashing Stiles’ face like werewolf claws.  Vicious gusts of icy wind followed, slithering inside Stiles’ thin jacket to coil around his heart and crush his lungs. Stiles would have preferred it brought Kraft dinner and Molson Canadian, like a typical tourist.

A California boy born and bred, his genetic makeup lacks an adoration of arctic temperatures. He’s ill-equipped for a blizzard in November.

Even Derek’s nose glows Rudolph-red from the chill.

“You can kill a Cheeno by melting its heart with salt,” Deaton supplied earlier that afternoon, “but a few legends claim you can save the man within the monster.”

“Save a cannibal? Yeah, fuck that noise,” Stiles had said, tossing down the magazine he’d been reading and grabbing the cannister of Morton’s Iodized, slipping his feet into his crappy boots. It seemed like a good idea at the time, he and Derek against the latest monster of the week. Nothing new. But now a blanket of white makes it impossible to see ten feet in front of them, flakes floating down from the sky like errant feathers, dancing in front of his eyes like a whirl of stars. It blinds him, envelopes him. Every minute lasts an hour.

He should have taken the FBI assignment offered when he attended the academy. Memphis. It didn’t snow in Memphis. Why hadn’t he taken it? Oh yeah. Scott. His father. Derek.

The sun dips below the horizon, adding insult to injury.

Stiles can’t feel his nose anymore, or his toes. He inhales broken glass with each breath. The longer he stares into the white void, the more everything starts to feel peaceful and pointless. Stiles closes his eyes.

“Do you hear that?” Derek hisses. Stiles’ eyes snap open in time to see the breath billowing out of Derek’s windburned lips in rolling clouds of steam. “It sounds like…”

Stiles hears the violent wind rattling dry, bare branches of winter-dead trees, and the random song playing on repeat in his head. Going down with my wings on fire, guess I’ll see you in another life. He prays that in a few years, in a decidedly less stark and frozen landscape, the lyrics will blast through Roscoe’s shitty speakers, and Stiles will stop and listen, say “ah yes, that time I almost froze to death,” just another moment unfolding in the supernatural shitstorm of his life, and not the soundtrack to the end of it.

But Derek cocks his head, eyes narrowed into slits, frost clinging to his bushy black eyebrows, so Stiles tugs up the ear flaps on his hat, strains to hear past the snow’s white noise, so like a chorus of howling werewolves. Yowling, squalling, wailing…

“A baby,” Stiles gasps, voice rasping through blue-tinged lips, knees threatening to buckle in shock. Who would ever bring a baby out in this storm? He was tired, drained, and dispirited before, and now, a thin film of desperation stretches over it all like saran wrap. “I hear a baby crying.”

Derek pulls Stiles impossibly closer, abruptly turning them to the left and floundering through calf-deep snow mounds and crushing darkness. Derek blunders toward the cries with steps as uncoordinated as a newborn foal, his confident gait lost to the storm. Stiles grits his teeth and slogs on.

Mother nature pummels him into a Popsicle.

“Oh,” Stiles says some indeterminable time later, “I see something.” Up ahead, a small cabin materializes, rising from the bleak isolation like a desert mirage, windows alight with a dim glow. Every blink of his heavy eyelids brings the cabin into better focus; green tin roof, stainless steel chimney pipe puffing out grey clouds of smoke, two rickety steps leading up to a narrow porch laid with red cedar planks.  

Derek takes Stiles under the armpits and hauls him up over his left shoulder, heading toward shelter with Stiles bouncing clumsily into Derek’s back with each step. He pauses at the bottom of the stairs, going statue-still.

“Wha?” Stiles mumbles toward Derek’s ass.  

A moment of hesitation. “I only hear one heartbeat.”

The desperate mewling raises in pitch. “Derek, can we please go inside? If the damn Cheeno has somehow lured us here, at least I’ll be warm when I die.”

Derek drags them both through the front door, leaving a track of icy puddles and slushy clumps of snow as they stumble over the threshold. Stiles finds himself dumped unceremoniously onto an oriental rug in front of a slowly dying fire. “Get your clothes off!” Derek barks at him as he kneels in front of the weak flames, pulling off his gloves and reaching for the stack of wood next to the stone fireplace.

Stiles always wanted to hear Derek say those words, and he’s honestly a little pissed they’re wasted on a life-or-death situation.  

Stiles isn’t capable of finesse on his best days, but his numb fingers fumble pathetically at the snaps and zippers of his clothes. Each new piece of blue and purple dappled bare skin he uncovers sets alarm bells peeling inside his skull. “Wh-wh-where is the b-b-baby?” The chattering teeth return, his neck swollen and stiff as he turns it this way and that until his gaze lands on a bassinet in the corner.

“Fire first, then I’ll get the baby,” Derek says, blowing on the growing blaze. “Take everything off. All your wet clothes.” He closes the wire mesh curtain across the hearth and stands, shedding his own clothes piece by piece as he crosses the small living space. Derek blows warm breath into his cupped hands before he reaches into the bassinet, pulling out a wiggling red blanket and clutching it gently to his bare chest. It’s a sight to behold, but Stiles can barely keep his eyes open.

Unable to stand, Stiles reaches for the corner of a quilt thrown haphazardly over a worn plaid couch, dragging it down and pulling it across the floor. Derek keeps the baby in one strong arm and hoists Stiles’ limp body onto the quilt with the other, settling down next to him on the carpet.

“Come here,” Derek says, reclining with one arm around Stiles’ shoulders, maneuvering him, so Stiles’ backside faces the fire, and Derek’s werewolf body heat blazing down Stiles’ front, the baby a warm weight on Derek’s ribs.

“The parents?” Stiles slurs, imagining the bloodbath that will ensue when an unsuspecting mother and father find two butt-naked grown men cuddling their kid.

“I can’t detect any other scents. It’s just us.”

“Hmmm.” The heat of the fire and the safety of Derek’s body make Stiles’ eyelids very heavy.

“Don’t go, Stiles,” Derek orders. “Stay with me. Please.”  For a brief moment, a white halo frames Derek’s beautiful face.  He cups Stiles’ jaw, and Stiles could swear his fingers feel like scratchy wool mittens.

“I’m always with you, dumbass,” Stiles replies and promptly falls asleep.  

❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄

Stiles wakes with the luxurious Saturday morning feeling of having slept in with no alarm, despite early dawn light seeping into the room through sheer curtains, casting everything in soft dream-like shades of gray. He’s so warm and content he buries his face back into the plush pillow under his head, determined to retreat once again into sweet oblivion.

“You know I adore your mom, but she was wrong about this co-sleeping thing. Best decision we ever made,” murmurs a tender voice behind him. The words get emphasized with some semblance of a kiss, all hot, soft lips and tongue leaving goosebumps in their wake as they travel lazily down the back of Stiles’ neck. The easy-going morning disperses like mist as Stiles blinks open his eyes to see the tiny, angelic face of a baby–presumably the same one from the cabin–wrapped in a thin red muslin blanket and sleeping next to him. It lies in a strange contraption attached to the bed with three breathable mesh sides, atop a fitted sheet adorned with fluffy dancing sheep wearing nightcaps. As Stiles watches, the baby’s tiny bow mouth makes adorable little sucking motions.

Wait a minute.

Stiles knows he’s in trouble when the baby makes sense, but the king-sized bed he’s woken up in doesn’t.    

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Stiles has run with wolves since age sixteen and can keep a tight lid on a furiously beating heart. “Pretty sure this place did not look like this last night,” he says, words falling from his mouth in a smooth line as his stomach ties itself in knots.

A huffed laugh. “I’ll do the laundry today, I promise. Who knew a baby could go through so many clothes?”

Not me, Stiles thinks, sitting up in bed and kicking away a blue sheet. He’s wearing unfamiliar light-gray sweatpants and a maroon t-shirt. The man next to him grunts at the loss of body heat, and Stiles glances over. Yup, it’s Derek, black hair sticking up every which way like he stuck his head in a blender.  

Stiles crawls to the foot of the bed, tip-toes to the sliding glass doors leading to a balcony, and parts the curtains an inch. Pre-dawn light paints the curving facade of the U.S. Bank Tower mellow orange. Stiles has only ever seen it in movies. Free from alien encounters and earthquake damage, the staggering architecture looks like a staircase up into the pink morning clouds. He puts his hand up to the cold glass. “We’re in L.A.”

Another grunt behind him. Stiles’ head pivots back and forth between the skyline and the majestic view of Derek sprawled on his stomach, broad shoulders tapering down a smooth, naked back. He follows the line of Derek’s spine to his boxer-brief clad backside on full display. The cotton clings to every dip and curve of Derek’s perfect ass.  

“How did we get to L.A.?”

Derek’s head rises from the pillow. “Huh? Come back to bed before you wake Conor.”

“Yeah, that’s another thing.” He scrubs a hand down his face, huffs out a breath. “The bed. That wasn’t here before. Or the fancy baby crib, or your underwear, or the god-damn city of Los Angeles.”

Derek twists, sitting up in bed and rubbing crust from his eyes. “Are you feeling okay?” He asks. Then he does something so crazy Stiles thinks he just may have died out in the snow.

Derek smiles.

Not just any smile. Stiles’ has seen Derek produce some mean ones, some faux-flirtatious ones, some blood-thirsty ones, but he’s never seen one like this: huge, happy, full of white teeth. It lights up Derek’s whole face, makes his green eyes go adorably squinty.  

“No, nope, uh uh.” Stiles tries to take a step back, but his shoulders collide with the slider. What imposter wears Derek’s flawless butt and happy face? Stiles has a mini heart attack.

“Who are you?”

Now the smile falls away, leaving behind comically-wide green eyes and an arched brow. His Derek would never show this level of befuddlement. He’d school his face into an impossibly hard mask.

“Dylan,” he answers, very slowly, “I’m your husband.”

———-

Imposter-Derek’s name is Tyler, and he remains unfailingly patient and positive in the face of his husband’s epic freak out and insistence that a mythological creature in an alternative universe cursed him.  ”I should have paid more attention to Deaton when he talked about annihilating the Chenoo, but there was a fascinating article in Entertainment Weekly.”

“This better not be a ploy to get out of diaper duty,” Derek-Tyler says with a smile.  Honestly, the guy’s demeanor baffles Stiles. This level of sweetness doesn’t exist outside a candy store.  

Baby Conor wakes up with a chortling wail, demanding food and a clean butt, which Tyler supplies as Stiles does a convincing imitation of a lost puppy and follows him around.  “You’re good at this whole thing. At parenthood,” Stiles praises. The sight of Derek–or a Derek look-a-like–gently cradling a tiny infant in his massive beefcake arms, holding a warm bottle of formula in his meaty fist, makes Stiles want to swoon.  Even the greedy pig-like noises Conor makes causes a strange effervescent bubbling behind Stiles’ ribs. What in the world is happening to him? Gas? Or did he show up in this parallel universe with a uterus and a biological clock? He pulls the waistband of his sweatpants away from his torso.  Well, at least the equipment on the outside remains the same.

Stiles and Tyler get dressed, and migrate into the kitchen through a narrow hallway and spacious living room; walls painted the color of buttery suede. Books and baby toys litter the floor, framed family photographs, and baseball paraphernalia hanging on nearly every wall of their home.  Upon closer inspection, Stiles finds one of the pictures is of Tyler in a Sacramento River Cats uniform, mid-run, right arm slung back, ready to throw.  

“Dude, do you play professional ball?” Stiles asks, impressed, fingertips tracing the edges of the black wooden frame.

Tyler blushes, becomingly, one muscular arm cuddling the baby closer to his broad chest.  “Yeah. I played baseball in college and got drafted, but I injured my hamstring a few years ago. I doubt I’ll ever get called up to the major leagues. Want some water?  Juice?”

The seamless transition of conversation, the quick, subtle deflection onto Stiles and away from himself is such a Derek move it leaves Stiles dizzy, struggling for balance as he straddles two worlds.

“Water,” Stiles croaks.

Tyler opens the refrigerator, reaches for the Brita with his free hand, and at least twenty glass bottles stacked on the door shelves clink together like Christmas bells. “Uh, why do we own so much root beer?”

Tyler shrugs.  “You’re a big root beer guy.”

Huh.  Stiles can’t remember the last time he had root beer, but his mother adored root beer floats “Actually, I’ll take one of those.”  

At the kitchen table, Tyler leaned his chin into his hand, gazing at Stiles while he sips his carbonated sugar. A shaft of late-morning light catches the fizzing bubbles surging up the neck of the bottle, sending little sun sparks dancing across the wood between them.

“I don’t know how you can remain so calm in the face of all this,” Stiles says for the millionth time in the few short hours they’ve been awake.  “Does your husband typically try to convince you that he’s someone else?”

Tyler props Conor on his shoulder, gently rubbing and patting his back. “Only when we role-play.”

Root beer sprays from Stiles’ mouth in an inelegant arc, splattering all over the tabletop.  Fantastic, now his overactive brain supplies him with enough jerk-off material to last a century.  It’s just his luck to land in a universe where Derek smiles and laughs and is kinky to boot.

“But seriously, Dylan, we’ve been through worse than a little memory lapse.”  Stiles lays his head down on the wet surface, resolutely refusing to ask. He doesn’t want to know.  Knowing would mean caring. “Though I do wish you’d reconsider going to the hospital. They could run some tests and-”

Stiles holds up a hand.  “No. No tests. At least, not today.  If we wake up tomorrow and nothing has changed, then yes, I promise I’ll go to the doctor. Just…” He remembers having an MRI, the fear and panic before rolling into the claustrophobic tube, the loud clunks and bangs, of what bad news the results will bring.  Because it’s doubtful skipping universes like a pebble on a lake produces anything positive. “Not today.”

Tyler nods.  “Okay. I have an idea.  Here, hold Conor.” He passes Stiles the baby and walks into the living room, opening the doors on a TV stand and pulling out an old DVD player.  Stiles watches as he fiddles around behind the flat-screen television, plugging it in and powering it up. “I’m going to grab our wedding DVD,” Tyler says, heading toward the bedroom.

Stiles is left alone with Conor for the first time.  “Hi, little man,” Stiles whispers into the crook of the baby’s warm neck.  He smells sweet and powdery, and the unique scent kind of makes Stiles feel high.  He’s adorable and small, and fragile, and now that Stiles thinks about it for half a second, completely panic-inducing.  Who in their right mind would leave Stiles in charge of a baby?! He breaks everything. Hopefully, this Dylan guy is a bit less accident-prone than Stiles.

Tyler pops in the video, and they lay the baby on a blanket in the living room with a few toys, and Stiles gets to watch two hours of footage of himself marrying Derek.

Half-way through the reception Erica and Boyd waltz by, and Stiles sees Isaac in profile, standing at the bar laughing at something Jackson says. He desperately wants to ask, but doesn’t think he could handle it if these pack members, lost to lies and danger and that merciless bitch the Grim Reaper, are just phantom faces with different names.

“That was sweet and kind of funny,” Stiles says after listening to himself recite his vows.

“Yeah,” Tyler agrees.  “You’re pretty amazing.”

Is this who Derek would be if there’d been no Kate? No Jennifer?  No Paige? Seriously, it’s like a case of the body snatchers. Fuck Stiles’ life (but not this one! This one’s pretty perfect).

“Did it jog any memories?” Tyler asks when the TV goes black.  

Stiles hates letting down someone so earnest.  “Sorry, man.”

“It’s all right.” Tyler squeezes one of Stiles’ shoulders in a firm grip.  “I have one more idea if it’s okay with you. Then we can give it a rest until tomorrow.”

“Yeah, okay.  But first, do you mind if I shower?”  A phantom layer of dried sweat from his trek through the snow yesterday still sticks to Stiles’ skin.  

Dylan and Tyler’s shower has soapstone walls, duel jets, a rain massage showerhead, recessed lighting, and a cedar plank ceiling.  If he ever gets home, he’s convincing Derek to build a replica of this shower, and let Stiles use it any time he wants. Derek’s trust fund should go to something other than tight pants and dark colored shirts. Something that benefits Stiles directly (since the clothes benefit his eyeballs indirectly).

After he’s dressed, Stiles leans against the sink, wiping the fog from the mirror with the corner of his damp towel. He studies his reflection—same number of moles on his cheeks, same wide amber eyes.  Fingertips poke at his cheeks, eyebrows, forehead. A hand rubs between his eyes. Why do you get to keep him in this universe, but not your own? his reflection asks.

Hushed voices filter in from the living room, and he sneaks a peek around the door jamb. A pretty middle-aged woman stands by the front door, shooting a frown at Tyler, her head tilted.  “What do you think it is?” She asks, shrugging out of her cardigan sweater and draping it over the oversized recliner. “Stress? PTSD?”

“I don’t know,” Tyler replies.  Wait, PTSD over what?  “If the memory loss persists, we’ll go to the doctor tomorrow.  I thought maybe seeing you would help him.”

Stiles steps into the living room, capturing their attention.  The woman isn’t familiar, he’s never seen her in his life, but he knows her face the minute she looks at him.  Stiles’ father has filled his life with love, but there’s no substitute for a mother. And that’s who this woman is, his mother.  No one’s looked at Siles this way since he was eight years old. A razor edge of pain cuts into his heart.

His eyesight blurs, and red, blotchy heat creeps up his cheeks. Stiles swipes a thumb under one eye and tries to make it look like he’s scratching his cheek.

“Oh, Dylan, sweetheart,” she says.  “I’m your mom, Lisa.”

—————

Halfway through Lisa filling him in on Dylan’s early life growing up in New Jersey, their move to California when he was twelve, and his stint in a band, Stiles’ stomach lets out a growl loud enough to rival a werewolf.  

“We haven’t eaten anything all day,” Tyler says. “Root beer doesn’t count.”

“Why don’t you both go out for dinner,” Lisa offers.  “I’ll watch Conor.” She makes kissy faces at their son, who yanks at her brown hair, and warmth swells in Stiles’ chest.  He’s missed being part of a family, and this one sits gift-wrapped like a present just for him.

They walk outside, shoulders bumping. “We could drive into downtown,” Tyler offers, “but the traffic will be terrible, even at this time.”

Stiles shoves his hands into the pockets of his borrowed jeans, scoping out the view of the city skyline in the distance. “Whatever, dude. I’m game for somewhere local.”

Tyler eyes him, weighing the options, then graces him with another one of those megawatt smiles. “I think this day calls for The Coop.”

Stiles finds himself at a hole-in-the-wall, family-run pizzeria, scarfing down the best-tasting pizza ever. They split a large pie, ordered off a red menu adorned in green and white writing that makes Stiles think of Christmas.

Tyler wipes the grease off his lips with a paper napkin and leans back, resting his elbows on his chair arms. “You love eating here,” he tells Stiles. “We don’t often come here because I’m usually trying to stay in decent shape for baseball, but when we get here, we always order the works, hold the pineapple. You’re known to demolish an entire pie by yourself.”

At least this Dylan guy has good taste in pizza.  Slow roasted tomato sauce and melted cheese punched him in the nose as soon as he walked in.  

Stiles throws down his napkin, a white flag signaling his defeat to the single slice left on the pizza pan. He picks up the red plastic cup half-filled with root beer–turns out this stuff is pretty addicting– and gnaws on the cardboard straw between sips. “So, how’d we meet? Did I accidentally traipse across your yard, and you tell me I was trespassing?”

Tyler blinks. “That’s weirdly specific.” He picks up his beer bottle, takes a swig. “No. You’re a sports broadcaster, and you came to one of my games to interview me.”

“Love at first sight?” Stiles inquiries, tongue chasing his straw across his lips.

Tyler raises a brow, gesture a mirror-image of Stiles’ Derek. “That’s very distracting. Who taught you to use a straw?”

Stiles places the cup back down on the lacquered tabletop. “Sorry. D-” he pauses. “My friend back home complains about that too.”

“This friend who looks suspiciously like me?”

“Yeah. Him.”

Tyler laughs. “I’m sure he finds it distracting, too. Give the poor guy a break.”

“Anyway…” Stiles doubts he’s ever the person to steer a conversation back on track, but today is a day of firsts. First time I woke up in bed with Derek.  There’s more, but his brain keeps getting stuck on that one. “Was it love at first sight for you and your husband?”

Tyler’s eyes go soft, unfocused. “We clicked right away, but no. Every date we went on just got better and better until we eventually moved in together.”

“When did you know he was the one?” Stiles asks, trying to imagine a world where he and Derek didn’t immediately clash like oil and water.

Tyler’s cheeks bloom apple-red. Oh, there’s a story here, and I want it.  “I knew the first Christmas we spent together when I watched you hump an artificial tree. I said to myself, ‘Tyler, you’ve gotta keep this one.’”

Laughter bursts out of Stiles’ mouth. “Please,” he wheezes, “tell me more.”

Tyler does.  

“How’d we end up an old married couple with a kid?” Stiles asks as they push through the doors of the restaurant, spilling out onto the warm pavement. Stiles thinks of the freezing temperatures of the blizzard he trudged through with Derek the day prior and shivers despite the sun’s heat.

Here Tyler hesitates, shoulders pulling high and back, spine lengthening. It’s Derek’s ’going into battle’ pose. Stiles has seen it enough times to know it by heart, his own body reacting on instinct, stepping closer to Tyler, creating a united front.  

“We were going along great,” Tyler says, “having a good time. We both figured we’d get married, eventually. Our careers kept us busy; we didn’t rush into things. But one day, I’m in Sacramento, practicing at Raley Field, and my manager calls me off second base to tell me I’ve got to get home; you’d been in an accident.”

“What kind of accident?” Stiles asks. Just as disaster-prone, I see.

Tyler’s hands clench at his sides. “A car hit you at work.”

“Huh,” Stiles says, stupidly. I’m usually the one running over people.

“You had a terrible concussion, the doctors worried about brain damage, and pretty much the entire right side of your face needed reconstructive surgery.”

“Jeez.” Stiles presses fingertips to his right cheekbone. “I can’t imagine your terror.” Derek’s reactions every time Stiles gets hurt is bad enough; he can’t imagine what Tyler must have gone through watching the man he loves lay injured in a hospital bed.

“All of a sudden, things didn’t seem so carefree. The thought of losing you was-” Tyler stops, takes a deep breath. Before he registers the movement, Stiles grabs Tyler’s hand, entwining their fingers and squeezing reassuringly. Tyler smiles shyly, presses back, and air stalls in Stiles’ lungs. Quicksand paves the road they’re walking down; the more Stiles flails around in memories of a life that isn’t his own, the deeper he sinks.

“We got married a year later after you’d recovered from surgery. We know we’re lucky to have this nearly stolen life, and we wanted to share that with someone. Now, we have Conor.”

Tyler stops walking, turns to face Stiles—to face Dylan. “It took us a long time to get here.” He pulls Stiles into a tight hug, and Stiles willingly goes, lets himself get wrapped up in arms he never thought he’d feel around him. “But we got here.”

———-

They dismiss Lisa with a round of hugs and promises to call in the morning if nothing has changed. Conor gets a bath in a tub they place in the ample kitchen sink, gurgling happily over the plastic bath toys Stiles flies around his bald head while Tyler scrubs him down. “My mom used to wash the Thanksgiving turkey in the sink,” Stiles tells them.

“Are you comparing our son to overstuffed poultry?” Tyler honest-to-god giggles. Did Derek ever giggle? Could Stiles help him find that much joy?

Stiles pokes at one of Conor’s adorably chubby legs, earning a gummy smile. “The resemblance is striking.”

Tyler does the bedtime routine, and they eat a quiet, amicable dinner of grilled chicken and baked potatoes at the kitchen table.

“I don’t know about you,” Stiles says around a yawn, “but I’m freaking beat, man. This day has been an emotional rollercoaster.”

“Agreed,’ Tyler replies, rolling his shoulders. “Sleep?”

“Totally.”

“I can take the couch?” Tyler offers when they walk into the darkened bedroom. Stiles eyes the bed between them, bathed in the milk-light of the moon streaming through the curtains. Conor is a tiny lump in his bassinet, soft snores echoing around the room.

Stiles shakes his head. “No. It’s totally fine. Married people sleep in the same bed.”

Tyler smiles, shoulders dropping from where they’d migrated to his ears. Stiles has stared at that smile all day, but he’s still not immune. It’s a flash of lightning, bright and dazzling, rolling through him like thunder. He’s shaken. “I’m glad. Honestly, I always sleep better when you’re with me.”

I’m always with you, dumbass.

Stiles can see why. As soon as they slide under the covers—Stiles in the sweatpants and T-shirt ensemble from the morning, and Tyler in his boxer-briefs and nothing else—Tyler cuddles up next to him, sighing deeply. He’s a comforting line of heat and weight, and Stiles turns toward him, instinctually. Tyler’s already drifting off, blinking sleepy half-lidded eyes at him.

“Goodnight,” Stiles whispers.

“Mmm, goodnight,” Tyler replies. He leans forward, rubs the tip of his nose against Stiles’, and brushes his mouth against Stiles’ lips, tongue lazily surging, tasting like mint, fresh and sharp. Is this wrong? It doesn’t feel wrong. It feels right. Tyler threads his fingers into Stiles’ hair, pulling him closer, cradling the back of his head like he’s something precious, beloved. Large, strong hands skim across Stiles’ skull, cup his face, thumbs brushing featherlight over his cheekbones. Stiles hums contentedly into the kiss.

“I’m sorry,” Tyler slurs, pulling away just far enough to look into Stiles’ eyes. “I know you don’t remember, and I-”

“Tyler, kiss me again.” The next few moments simmer between them, threatening to boil over, but they dial back the heat, let it cool until their foreheads pressed together, lips and noses gently rubbing.

Stiles closes his eyes and lets himself believe that Derek Hale, the king of drawing lines in the sand and chasing Stiles back to the other side, cards long, gentle fingers through Stiles’ hair as he falls asleep. Stiles could get used to this; he wants this. And because Stiles lies to himself on the daily, he refuses to acknowledge that he has desired this for as long as he can remember knowing Derek.  

Would it be so wrong to stay here and keep this life? It’s a luxury he hasn’t dared to allow himself to ponder since he woke up in this alternate reality.

Conor lets out a couple of guttural, cranky sounds. Tyler grumbles and starts to stir, jerky, half-asleep movements, “Shh,” Stiles says, running a long-fingered hand down Tyler’s back. “I’ve got this. You sleep.”

He carries Conor—his son—to the changing pad atop their dresser, and flicks on the lamp. It casts the little corner of their world in a soft golden glow. “We got this, buddy,” he tells Conor in a sing-song voice. “I’ll be a diaper changing expert in no time.” Conor blows spit bubbles at him. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Stiles answers. “We’re both doomed.”

Changing diapers is a little more involved than Stiles realized, and he ends up with baby pee all over his shirt and Conor’s onesie. He divests Conor of his wet suit and takes a moment to plant a few raspberries against the soft soles of the baby’s feet, earning delighted squeals and flailing limbs. “This little piggy went to the market, and this little piggy stayed home,” Stiles recites, wiggling Conor’s tiny toes. “This little piggy ate roast beef, and this little piggy had none. And this little p—”

Stiles rubs his eyes frantically, blinks hard a few times. Counts. Counts again. One, two, three, four, five…

Six.

He studies the other foot. Six toes. Heart in his throat, he takes Conor’s grasping little hands in his and counts. No, no, no. Six fingers on each side.

How do you tell if you’re awake or dreaming?

Your fingers. You count your fingers. “You have extra fingers in dreams,” Stiles tells Conor, and then he wakes up.

❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄

Stiles wakes in a panicky stupor, faces of nurses, doctors, and the Sheriff, who looks like he’s aged ten years, staring down at him, blurring together like paint on a canvas.

He flings out one hundred-pound arm, reaching for his child, for Tyler, for a world where his pack is alive and well and happy.  I’ve only had the perfect life for a day and a half, but if anything happened to it I’d kill everyone in this room and then myself. A giggle hiccups out of his dry throat.

“…nerve damage…dead tissue,” the surgeon explains, but some morphine-derivative courses through his system and he listens to it all from the deep end of a warm tunnel. “The bad news is, you lost the one toe to frostbite, but I saved the others. And the loss of a pinky toe doesn’t impede balance at all.”

Stiles nods. The conversation hangs around him like a dense fog. “That sucks,” he croaks out, words lengthening as the drugs pull his tongue like taffy. “But…where is my husband?”

Behind the doctor, two nurses exchange glances, eyes wide over their surgical masks. His father shakes his head back and forth. “Stiles… you’re not married.”

”I am, ” he insists.  ”And my baby. I have a baby.”

“Completely normal,” the doctor consoles. “Nothing to worry about. Some patients experience hallucinations and dreams as the anesthesia wears off.”

Oh yeah. Conor’s happy squeals, Tyler’s glorious smile, having a mom again. None of it was real.

“Recovery time typically takes between two and six weeks. You’ll have to keep the incision clean diligently and the stitches covered, but before you know it, you’ll walk again,” the doctor tells him. “You’ll run.”

Laughter gallops up his throat like a wild horse. He’s shaking again as he did in the snow, bones rattling and teeth clicking audibly together even as he desperately tries to clench his jaw and keep them still.

I’ve been running since I was sixteen. I don’t want to run anymore.

His father plucks a Kleenex from the box on his hospital tray, hands it to him. The thin tissue is sandpaper between Stiles’ raw fingertips. “Wh-why are you g-giving me this?” Stiles asks between gasps of air.

“Son,” his father says softly, “you’re crying.”

———-

His hospital room smells like a funeral parlor. Lily of the valley, morning glory, and peony. Scott charges in the moment Stiles can receive visitors outside the pathetic roster of family members, carrying a vase of blue dicks. “Get it?! Because you had hypothermia! You were freezing your-”

“Yeah, buddy. I get it.”

Get Well Soon the generic message on the flower card commands, but the problem is, Stiles isn’t sick. He’s grieving. But how can I mourn a life I never had?

By lunchtime, the snow stops, the sun shines, and Derek saunters into his hospital room as if he owns it. He looks stoically handsome in his black leather jacket and signature scowl, calm and composed, and smells like fresh air. Stiles’ emotional state soars dangerously from elation to despair, settling somewhere in the realm of weary acceptance.  

“They obliterated my toe,” Stiles tells Derek when he approaches the bedside, pulling back the sheet to reveal his foot wrapped up in a mountain of gauze.

“I know,” Derek replies, pulling up a folding chair and falling gracefully into it. He props his sneakers up on top of the room’s air-conditioning unit. “I brought you here and stayed until your Dad could come. The doctor said he’d try his best, but…” Derek shrugs. He knows all about good intentions.

“Scott told me you went back out after I got out of surgery, killed the Chenoo.”

Derek grimaces. “I have salt in crevices where salt should never go.”

“I’m ah, I’m sorry I was wea-”

Derek holds up a hand. “Stiles, stop. Never apologize for your humanity.”

But it’s more than physical feebleness.  It’s the mental weakness that settles on Stiles’ shoulders like a villains cloak—stitched with shame, edged in anger, dyed red because he looks damn good in red, and no one can tell him otherwise.

Stiles pulls a flat hospital pillow into his arms, holding it across his chest like armor, curling tighter around it with each word. ”Scott said you know about the hallucinations.”  Might as well get this over with now, when the wound is still fresh enough to heal with a minimal amount of scarring.

”I do, ” Derek replies.  ”Did Scott tell you I stayed the entire time? I only left this morning to kill the Chenoo.”

”He may have mentioned something along that line.” It’s the sole reason Stiles is brave enough to tackle this conversation now.  Dude, Scott had said, Derek stood outside the ICU for hours.  Your dad totally thinks you’re boning him.

“Derek?” Stiles fidgets with the sheet covering his leg. “I need to ask you something.”

Gold-flecked green eyes bore into him. Lacking Tyler’s delicate laugh lines, they feel sharper than a knife. “You can ask me anything, Stiles.”

He already grilled his father in every detail, but he needs to hear it from Derek’s mouth. “Did we find shelter from the storm in a cabin in the preserve? Was there a…” He stumbles; Conor’s face flashes before his eyes. “Was there a baby there? A baby boy in a red blanket?”  

Derek’s punctuates his gentle but firm statement with a shake of his head. “No, Stiles. You passed out, and I carried you here.”

“From the preserve? Dude. That’s like… Miles.”

Derek nods. He doesn’t say it, but somehow Stiles can hear the unspoken And I’d do it again because he’d do the same for Derek. Sadness surges like a wave, sudden and powerful, the words pulled from his mouth in the tide. “I dreamt we were a family.”

“We are family, Stiles. Pack is family.”

“No.” Stiles bites his lip. “I imagined it all, made it up in my head, but it felt so damn real. We were a family; you, me, and our son.”

Derek’s feet drop back to the floor, his spine a tautly pulled string. “Okay,” he says. “Tell me more.”

Stiles tells him everything.

“Wait,” Derek says after Stiles finally stops speaking. “This sounds vaguely familiar.” Derek unfolds from the chair and moves toward the hospital room door.  

“It does?” Stiles asks, hope igniting inside his chest. Maybe Derek’s dreamed about this before too.

“Stay right there,” Derek commands, eyebrows furrowed as he walks out of the room.

“Where do you imagine I’m going to go?” Stiles calls. “My foot is—”

“Yeah. I thought it sounded familiar!” Derek declares as he rushes back into the room, waving a magazine in front of Stiles’ face.

“What the heck, man?” Stiles struggles to sit up. “Did the nurses at the desk see you using werewolf speed?”

“Look,” Derek says, ignoring Stiles as usual. “Your surgery took two hours, and your father was scrambling for coverage so he could get over here. I sat in the waiting room, reading every magazine they had. I read this one.” He flips open an Entertainment Weekly and holds it under Stiles’ nose. There’s a handsome, dark-haired man in profile on the cover, looking down at a baby in a red blanket nestled in his arms. Another man flanks the infant; a smiling face turned toward the camera. The cover line reads, Tyler and Dylan may have ended their run on Teen Wolf, but their story is far from over.  

Oh my god, you are such an idiot.

“Oh my god, I am such an idiot!” Stiles squeals, snatching them magazine out of Derek’s hand. No. No, it can’t be. Stiles did not almost die of hypothermia just to imagine he Freaky Friday-ed with a couple of actors.  

“I knew Tyler and Dylan sounded familiar. They’re those actors who got married in real life, the ones on that stupid teenage werewolf soap opera you and Scott loved. And then they—”

“Adopted a baby last month,” Stiles finishes, flipping through the familiar pages. He’d perused the same magazine in Deaton’s clinic while they discussed how best to destroy the Chenoo.

“It makes perfect sense, Stiles,” Derek says, laying a hand down next to him on the bed. “Your brain latched onto the last thing you focused on before we left to hunt the Chenoo. It’s almost like that one episode of the show where Dylan’s character ends up in the Phantom Train Station between dimensions.”

“Hey,” Stiles gives Derek the stink eye. “You swore you never watched the show.”

An overly exaggerated eye roll. “I may have caught a couple of episodes.”  

Stiles’ eyebrows smugly say, I told you so, and Derek’s answer, shut the fuck up, Stiles.

“Which one were you again?” Derek asks. “Which guy?”

Stiles looks at the happy face of the actor. “Dylan.”

“So I was Tyler?” Derek grimaces. “That guy looks like he’s thirty-five.”

“Yeah, but in the best way,” Stiles insists.

He huffs, but Stiles sees the tips of his ears burning bright pink. Derek looks down, rubs the back of his neck and sighs. “You know I’m not him, right?” Derek asks, pointing to the handsome, besotted face on the magazine cover. “I’m not some happy-go-lucky ray of sunshine.”

Stiles tosses the magazine to the window ledge, where it falls between two flower vases. “Yeah, I know,” Stiles softly replies. Butterflies flutter in his stomach; they tingle at the ends of his ten fingers and nine toes. “Doesn’t stop me from loving you, though.”

Derek climbs into Stiles’ hospital bed, presses his face into Stiles’ throat and sighs, warm breath fanning over Stiles’ skin, words vibrating. “The entire trek to the hospital, I was terrified.”  Derek brushes an errant lock of hair from Stiles’ forehead. “Then we got here, and they wrapped you up in this insulation, trying to raise your body temperature. It took hours, and I spent every minute thinking I might never get the chance to tell you…I don’t know for sure what’ll happen; marriage, kids, all of the above, none of the above. But I know I never want to lose you.”

And he remembers Tyler, standing on the busy streets of Los Angeles, looking like a lost little boy when he talked about almost losing his husband.  It’s the same face Derek wears now.

“I’m always with you, dumbass,” Stiles answers.  Why did he think this would be hard? It’s as natural as breathing. “Important question, though.  This might make or break everything, so think hard before you answer. How do you feel about bathroom makeovers?  I have some ideas.”

“I feel strong to very strong about dual shower jets.”

“Dude,” Stiles says.  “There’s a definite possibility we’re soulmates.” And then, Derek smiles. It’s not as big or as bright as Tyler’s, not nearly as all-consuming as his subconscious conjured, but Stiles thinks, with time and love, it will get there.

They’ll get there.

#froggydarren #stereksanta19 #*fics19 #*gifts19

[slurrmp]

not another info sheet.

                                        sasha o’neill (stargate sg1)

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME: sasha maria o’neill PRONUNCIATION: SASH-ə MEANING: defender, helper of mankind REASONING: named after her mother’s grandmother NICKNAME(S): sash (most common), ash, asha, kid PREFERRED NAME(S): just her full name or sash BIRTH DATE: october 20th 1972 AGE: 33 (as of season 9) ZODIAC: libra GENDER: female PRONOUNS: she/her ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: biromantic SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual NATIONALITY: american ETHNICITY: white CURRENT LOCATION: colorado springs, cheyenne mountain LIVING CONDITIONS: a little apartment in the city, but will mostly stay at jack’s home. TITLE(S): miss

BACKGROUND

BIRTH PLACE: san francisco HOMETOWN: fairfax SOCIAL CLASS: fairly wealthy, but not exactly rich EDUCATION LEVEL: almost finished college FATHER: angus o’neill (deceased) MOTHER: maria o’neill (nee barnes) (mia) SIBLING(S): none BIRTH ORDER: only child CHILDREN: none PET(S): a pet gold fish named bruce, however, is too busy with work to actually have the dog she always wanted. OTHER IMPORTANT RELATIVES: jack o’neill (uncle), sara o’neill (aunt), charlie o’neill (cousin) (deceased) PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: max turner (four years), jonas quinn (two years), cameron mitchell (??) ARRESTS?: when she was a teenager and her father passed away, and her mother basically disowned her - sasha rebelled against her aunt and uncle, doing petty crimes such as shop lifting and grand theft PRISON TIME?: spent two nights in the county jail for stealing a car from the mayor

OCCUPATION & INCOME

PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOME: working for the sgc SECONDARY SOURCE OF INCOME: it’s really disguised as working for the air force TERTIARY SOURCE(S) OF INCOME: she writes a column in the local paper APPROXIMATE AMOUNT PER YEAR: uhhhh couldn’t tell you, but it’s enough to live comfortably CONTENT WITH THEIR JOB (OR LACK THERE OF)?: very much so PAST JOB(S): worked at a fast food chain until she was 17, then worked for a supermarket (but was caught stealing & was fired) SPENDING HABITS: she knows what she loves and will always buy what she needs MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION: her father’s dog tags, which she constantly wears around her neck

SKILLS & ABILITIES

PHYSICAL STRENGTH: she was a cheerleader in high school before her father passed - moving into senior year of high school, sasha locked herself away from others and herself - which meant that she wasn’t as physically fit as she used to be. she was never overweight, but she couldn’t do a cartwheel to save her life anymore. however, joining the sgc - she’s managed to gain back her fitness and once again can do that cartwheel. OFFENSE: no DEFENSE: yes. her fighting style is more protect her body than anything else. SPEED: she’s not incredibly fast, but if something is chasing her, she has the will to go faster. INTELLIGENCE: rather intelligent, however, it is less mathematical smart and more historical smart. ACCURACY: she grew up in a military family, she’s very accurate AGILITY: after working back her fitness, sasha’s very good at climbing walls and leaping across tall buildings. STAMINA: it’s fairly good but no where near as good as it should be TEAMWORK: she depends on her team to survive and they depend on her to keep them alive TALENTS: can translate a different language within an hour, rather good at the piano SHORTCOMINGS: she’s judgemental, snippy and can be rather short with people. all in all it’s that o’neill charm LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN: english, german, russian, dutch and japanese DRIVE?: yes JUMP-STAR A CAR?: yes CHANGE A FLAT TIRE?: yes RIDE A BICYCLE?: yes, badly though SWIM?: yes PLAY AN INSTRUMENT?: kind of, without practice she loses her skill PLAY CHESS?: no (daniel’s trying to teach her though) BRAID HAIR?: yes TIE A TIE?: yes PICK A LOCK?: yes

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE & CHARACTERISTICS

FACE CLAIM: alyssa milano EYE COLOR: brown HAIR COLOR: brown HAIR TYPE/STYLE: there’s almost a different style each year. season one: short and almost in a bob. season two: it has grown out more and now reaches her shoulders - curls. season six: it was shaved almost completely off. season three, four, five, seven, eight, nine and ten: it remains at shoulder length and wavy. GLASSES/CONTACTS?: only for when she’s reading DOMINANT HAND: right HEIGHT: 5′2″ WEIGHT: 60 kg BUILD: athletic EXERCISE HABITS: spars with teal’c once a week, while also uses the gym equipment at the sgc twice a week SKIN TONE: pale, but is able to tan rather easily TATTOOS: one on the back of her neck and one on the left side of her lower back PEIRCINGS: both lobes, including seconds, has her nose pierced as well MARKS/SCARS: there is a birthmark over her left hip. a scar just on the right side of her upper lip (which she got when she fell over on the driveway of her family home when she was six), a scar through her left eyebrow - which eerily is like jack’s, however, it was given to her on a mission NOTABLE FEATURES: her eyes and the mirroring scar in her eyebrow, just like jack. USUAL EXPRESSION: she is beaming most of the time - bright and bubbly expressions CLOTHING STYLE: very modern, loves a crop top and low cut jeans, but while she’s on base it is the typical sg uniform. blue fatigues mostly, considering the green makes her look sick JEWELRY: nothing too fancy considering her line of work, a couple of rings and bracelets ALLERGIES: peanuts, bees BODY TEMPERATURE: a normal body temperature DIET: she’s lived with jack for most of her life, it mainly consisted of bbq steak and when she was old enough beer. donuts, and snacks. PHYSICAL AILMENTS: continuously breaks limbs, but nothing too serious to bench her from off world work.

PSYCHOLOGY

JUNG TYPE: enfj ENNEAGRAM TYPE:  the achiever MORAL ALIGNMENT:  chaotic good ELEMENT: air PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE TYPE:  logical-mathematical APPROXIMATE IQ: 124 MENTAL CONDITIONS/DISORDERS: struggles with ptsd after the death of her father and the events that have occurred in her life so far SOCIABILITY: very out going and loves to meet new people EMOTIONAL STABILITY: she’s been hurt so many times that sasha has started to pull away from anything emotional lately, so not good, but she hides it well with her outgoing personality OBSESSION(S): making sure that everything is perfect, making sure that missions will go correctly and nothing bad will happen. PHOBIA(S): tight spaces, spiders, flying, ADDICTION(S): none DRUG USE: none ALCOHOL USE: limited, loves a good beer every sunday afternoon PRONE TO VIOLENCE?: if push came to shove

MANNERISMS

SPEECH STYLE:  she’s very articulate with her words. when the occasion calls for it, she can speak in a rather professional manner. but when she’s around friends or family, she won’t talk quite as stiff ACCENT: very clearly a west coast accent QUIRKS: she bounces a lot when she’s excited or even happy. it’s absolutely because she’s the shortest of the group and it makes her feel tall HOBBIES: reading is a big one - basically what she does to escape the ‘real world’, mainly romance and comedy novels because horror/sci-fi and action is what she lives on a daily basis HABITS: she has a habit of biting her lower lip, usually when she’s thinking or worried.  NERVOUS TICKS:  bounces her leg up and down when nervous, she will also pace a lot DRIVES/MOTIVATIONS: one is absolutely to save the world from the goa’uld, while the others is her family and her friends FEARS:  losing said family and friends. she has a terrible habit of latching onto people she’s met - which isn’t good in her line of work. however, it helps her  POSITIVE TRAITS:  loyal, strong willed, will fight for her family NEGATIVE TRAITS:  falls in love too easily, tries to see the best in everyone - which usually gets her into trouble SENSE OF HUMOR:  very dry, it’s that o’neill sense of humour though DO THEY CURSE OFTEN?:  on and off CATCHPHRASE(S):oh for crying out loud

FAVORITES

ACTIVITY: reading ANIMAL: fox BEVERAGE: beer BOOK: pride and prejudice CELEBRITY: brad pitt COLOR: pastel brown DESIGNER: vera wang FOOD: fried rice FLOWER: sunflower GEM: diamond HOLIDAY: christmas MODE OF TRANSPORTATION:  mini cooper MOVIE: sleepless in seatle MUSICAL ARTIST: elton john SCENERY: snowy day next to a fireplace in the city SCENT: lavender SPORT: football SPORTS TEAM: 49ers TELEVISION SHOW: simpsons WEATHER: winter VACATION DESTINATION: bora bora

ATTITUDES

GREATEST DREAM: to see the goa’uld destroyed and to have her family safe GREATEST FEAR: to lose the planet and her family MOST AT EASE WHEN: things are going the right way, no matter the scenario - could be in the middle of a mission, but as long as she knows what’s she’s doing, sasha can breeze through it LEAST AT EASE WHEN:  everything is going wrong, mainly when missions stuff up. as well as when she has no control over a situation WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN: one of the alternate world’s reality, becoming her reality. the goa’uld taking over the world and enslaving humanity BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: finally getting into college BIGGEST REGRET:  losing her daughter MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT:  it’s not everyday that you come face to face with a new species, it’s also not everyday that you decide to trip UP stairs when coming to greet them, falling flat on her face and breaking her nose BIGGEST SECRET:  max and sasha were expecting a baby - but they were not compatible and the baby died during the first trimester, she never told anyone besides janet TOP PRIORITIES: her job and her family

#ch. sasha o'neill. #promise that you'll never find another like me. #* & MEET MY OC'S. #stargate

[jacksgreysays]

Viridescent: Or, Tetsuki Goes Under New Management, (2020-04-27)

Related to this, but not required reading

~

Tetsuki is sent on a mission to yet another dimension with yet another group of people who she could help, but only if they pay an equivalent price in whatever the Shopkeeper has sent her to retrieve. It's a standard mission, all told, fairly straightforward for all that she's dealing in mercenary work exchanged for what should be intangible concepts. It doesn't even take that long. Only six days--not the shortest she's ever been on, that had been only six hours, and far from the longest--before she's ready to return to the Shop 

(Then again, what with the different dimensions and all, six days for her does not guarantee six days at the Shop.)

So she returns--with a bottled curse and a beloved keychain weighted with cherished childhood memories she had Assessed to be the equivalent exchange--and is only mildly surprised that on the other side of the Dimension Doors is an entirely different Shopkeeper than the one she left behind.

For a moment, Watanuki-kun doesn't look it. Startled and staring--as bewildered as the teenager she first met, tempered with a yearning grief--but that is quickly and carefully shuttered beneath the neutral guise of the Shopkeeper.

"Ah, you've inherited..." she says mildly, giving him time to compose himself, "... my condolences for your loss."

He nods his head, but doesn't say thank you, because he knows words have power, especially his own, now. But perhaps his education was not so thorough, because then he asks, "My loss, but not yours, senpai?"

Tetsuki blinks, but only because her eyes require it. "You're the Shopkeeper, I am no longer your senpai," she corrects, "And your loss, yes, not mine. Don't get me wrong, I liked Yuuko-san, but to me she was my employer, the Shopkeeper first and foremost and, well..." she does not gesture around her, because that would be unnecessary. 

"The Shopkeeper is dead. Long live the Shopkeeper."

Watanuki-kun's face doesn't even twitch, stays placid even under the wave of emotional turmoil she can feel off him. Good, he's a fast learner.

Now, the real question is, "Did you also inherit the title of Dimension Witch?"

---

The longest mission Tetsuki had ever been sent on lasted for six years: a grueling, grudging thing which was largely set in, of all places, Scotland.

The client was foolish, mismanaging his resources, and somehow both frustratingly vague and tediously inefficient with his Wish, besides. She even offered suggestions that she Assessed would suit the situation: it certainly wouldn't be the first time she bodyguarded someone from a villain obsessed with immortality or, alternatively, assassinate said villain.

(Yes, even including the whole magical soul container bit. Although, to be fair, most liches only bothered with the single phylactery.)

But Dumbledore only wanted her to observe and teach and no more.

And so for six years Tetsuki was Professor Babbling's apprentice and teaching assistant. Almost literally as far away from the important events of the mission as she could get while still being in the same castle. She never even had the Chosen One in any of her classes! 

She did get close in her third year, when the staff were deciding how to schedule around Professor Lupin's lycanthropy. Briefly they considered having her substitute for him--he would assign reading or have open study, so she didn't really need to be a master in the subject--except then Professor Snape swooped in, eager for his opportunity to sabotage, and made the matter unnecessarily complicated: she ended up covering the first and second year classes for both Defense and Potions so that Snape could go and torment the upper years.

Though at least Dumbledore paid his share of the price for the utter waste of her time, expensive as it was. Truly, it would have cost less if he had chosen to put a hit out on Voldemort. As if she didn't know how to extract a soul shard from a living vessel without harming said vessel--and that even before she learned magic.

At the end of six years, she returned to the Shop, having never spoken to either Harry James Potter or Tom Marvolo Riddle, but getting their payments, nonetheless.

And Yuuko-san--for who, it seemed, only six weeks had passed--raised an eyebrow, smirked, and asked, "Did you have fun?"

Tetsuki, irritated, refused to answer.

At least she was able to actually learn Ancient Runes, for all that it seemed less effective and more volatile than the various fuinjutsu, ofuda, and mahoujin she had picked up over her existence. Then again, that seemed to be the way of that particular dimension:

A whole lot of adversity for an unequal amount of payoff.

---

The first few missions Watanuki-kun sent her on were largely... local... as far as other dimensions went. Only dimensions he or either of the Mokona Modoki had already been to. Which, to be fair wasn't exactly a small list--Soel's journeys nearly too numerous to count. But it was a far cry from the literal infinity Tetsuki was used to.

"I've seen eight versions of the same person in the past ten missions, and six of them Wished for romantic help," she complains as she steps through the Dimension Doors, a clumsily made but charmingly heartfelt necklace in hand. She passes it on to Moro, to be placed in the store room, and takes a place at the table where Watanuki-kun is beginning to serve tea for three. Him, her, and a Doumeki-kun.

(She can never be sure which Doumeki it is--and it's not just her being unsure of the flow of time. They all physically look and magically feel identical--so it's best to just refer to them the same way)

"If I have to do one more mission involving playing messenger or clearing up misunderstandings for star crossed lovers, I'm going on strike," she says, once Watanuki-kun has taken his seat. The corner of this particular Doumeki-kun's mouth twitches up, even as he hides it by taking a drink--so not the most stoic of Doumeki, but certainly not the least either.

Watanuki-kun glances sharply at her, the Shopkeeper recognizing the wording of a transaction, informal as it was. "Is that--" he stops, hesitant, then reconsiders, "Does it feel equivalent to you?"

Tetsuki takes a moment to drink her own tea and Assess, the ability vital to her missions, something she had purchased from Yuuko-san at the very beginning of her employment at the Shop.

Truthfully, it would be more useful to Watanuki-kun now. He still struggles sometimes to make equivalent exchanges--generally skewing too much in the favor of his clients, and ending up paying the remaining price. But it's something he'll develop naturally as he gains experience as the Shopkeeper--to deprive him of that growth would be equally harmful.

"Well, it's not the most specific contract, though that works in our favor," Tetsuki begins, patient in her explanation. She understands why Yuuko-san was as hands off as she was, but it certainly hasn't helped the new Shopkeeper embrace his role, "Your Premonition ability isn't quite at the level it needs to be to know what the missions you send me on entail and so it's not as if you can screen which missions I do or don't go on at this time. It would be harsh to punish you for something you aren't doing purposefully. Luckily, I didn't say how long the strike would be for, nor did I define what concessions I would want to end said strike."

She shrugs, "I may just take a nap and request a specific dish for dinner, and if you cook it then we can either consider the exchange complete or renew the contract entirely."

Watanuki-kun splutters, "That's it?" he asks, more apprentice than employer. This particular Doumeki-kun barely bats an eye at this behavior, so either he's one of the earlier Doumeki or he is actually one of the more stoic ones.

"Sometimes specificity helps--it guides you in the right direction and prevents imbalance--but too much and it can make the prices too steep or inhibit the exchange entirely," Tetsuki shrugs again, "A lenient interpretation will serve you well until you are able to Assess for yourself."

~

A/N: I was briefly considering the idea that Tetsuki unknowingly inherited the title of Dimension Witch while Watanuki only got the Shopkeeper, but I didn’t like locking her in this limbo when, ostensibly, she started working for Yuuko because she Wished to go home (although, which home is the part where a lack of specificity will bite her in the ass). In a way, her training Watanuki to be an effective Dimension Witch/Shopkeeper is kind of her last mission before she finally completes her payment for her Wish.

#jacksgreyson #writing #fanfiction #viridescent #tetsuki kaiza #xxxholic #harry potter #kimihiro watanuki #yuuko ichihara #albus dumbledore

[auggggggie]

I’ve been working on a Fallout 4 fic so here’s part of it 🥺👉👈

(this fic is posted and updated on Wattpad and AO3)

Chapter 1. Emergence.

Naomi cringed as she heard the knock on the door. That damn Vault-Tec representative wouldn’t leave them alone and she wasn’t sure she wanted to buy into what they were selling. The end of the world? Oh, the dramatics. Her husband, Nate, had fought in the war and had seen so much. He always reassured her that Vault-Tec was just trying to scare people. “Why don’t you just answer?” Nate called. “Maybe he’ll stop if we listen to him.”

“Why don’t you answer it?” Naomi smirked.

Just then, Shaun started crying. “Because it sounds like our son needs a little fatherly love.” 

“Yeah, you got lucky.” She muttered as she opened the front door.

“Good morning! Vault-Tec calling!” The man in the hat and trench coat smiled almost unnervingly wide.

“Mornin’.”

“You can’t believe how happy I am to finally speak with you! I’ve been trying for days! It’s a matter of most utmost urgency, I assure you.”

“Okay?” Naomi shifted her weight onto one leg and crossed her arms.

“I’m here today to tell you that because of your family’s service to our country, you have been pre-selected for entrance into the local Vault, Vault 111!” He shook his hands with a flourish.

She rolled her eyes. “Sounds great…”

“Oh, it is. Believe you me.” The representative clearly didn’t pick up on her irritated tone. “Now, you’re already cleared for entrance, in the unforeseen event of,” he cleared his throat, “total atomic annihilation. I just need to verify some information.”

Naomi entertained the rep’s attention until all of the ‘logistics’ had been settled. “Is that all?”

He finally seemed to pick up on her irritation. “That’s… everything… Just gonna walk this over to the Vault! Congratulations for being prepared for the future!”

“Whatever.” Naomi all but slammed the door in his face. “I hope I never have to see that man again.”

Nate had taken a seat at the kitchen island in the middle of her conversation with the rep. He let out a low chuckle. “Hey, it’s peace of mind. That’s worth a little paperwork, right?”

She smiled. “Anything for my boys.”

From down the hall, Shaun started to cry again. “Miss Naomi!” Codsworth called.

“I’m on it, Codsworth!” She strolled down the hallway to the nursery. “What’s the matter, Shaun?” She picked him up and held him close to her. “Momma’s here, everything’s fine.” She bounced him lightly and he started to calm. She didn’t know how tough caring for a newborn would be when her and Nate fell pregnant, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. Her life was perfect. “See? Nothing to be sad about.”

“Nothing like a mother’s love, huh?” Naomi turned around to see Nate leaning against the door frame. “Listen, I was thinking tonight we could head to the park with Shaun and stargaze? Tonight is supposed to be the peak of a meteor shower and I know how much you love watching the stars.”

“Sounds great.”

“Sir? Mum?” Codsworth’s worried voice carried from the living room. “You should come and see this!”

The two of them hurried, Shaun now in Nate’s arms, to the living room to see the newscaster delivering solemn news. “I repeat, confirmed reports of nuclear detonations in New York and Pennsylvania.”

“Oh my gosh.” Nate exhaled.

“This is not happening.” Naomi whimpered. Was this real? She hoped and prayed that it was just a nightmare. That she'd wake up and carry on with her day, taking the trip to the park to watch the stars Nate had proposed..

But the newscaster put his face in his hands and the TV suddenly cut to static. “We need to get the Vault. Now!” Nate placed his hand on Naomi’s lower back and ushered her out of the house. They ran past their neighbors, whom they have only exchanged pleasantries with. She wondered how many of them were allowed in the Vault with them, she hoped it was all of them. They hurried up the hill, ignoring their burning calves, and saw just how many people were standing on their side of the gates. Were they letting anyone in? “We need to get in! We’re on the list!” Their family was quickly confirmed and were led to a large gear shaped door on the ground.

Naomi took a second to calm down. They had made it. They were the last one’s to be let in before they decided to send it down. “Do you think there will be enough time for them to get another group of people?”

“I hope so.” Nate sighed and put a hand on her shoulder. “We made it. We’re going to be okay. I love you. Both of you.”

“We love you too.” Then there was a flash of blinding light, followed by a near-deafening boom. Everyone turned to see a larger than life mushroom cloud erupting high into the sky.

“SEND IT DOWN, NOW!” An officer bellowed. Time slowed for Naomi. She looked to her husband and her infant son. Would they make it down in time? Was this the last she would ever see of them? She launched herself forward and embraced the two of them, her face already streaked with tears. A gust of hot air from the explosion hit them full force and they braced themselves for the worst as the world went black.

“We made it…” Nate finally spoke as light broke into the elevator.

A man, whose title was the Overseer, gave them an empathetic but hopeful smile. “No need to worry, folks! We’ll get everyone situated in your new home. Vault 111! A better future. Underground!” “What kind of life can we live underground?” Someone asked.

“It’s better than the alternative.” Nate said.

“What about the others?” Naomi wiped her wet face and tried to take a clarifying breath.

“Please, make your way upstairs!” A Vault-Tec security man shouted.

The people seemed to walk around numbly, unwilling to accept that this was their life now, living underground like moles. They accepted their Vault suits and walked down a long metal hallway. “Everything feels so… Sterile.” Naomi shivered. “Clinical. Is the rest of the Vault more… Inviting?” She asked one of the doctors.

He dodged the question. He motions to a pod large enough for an adult. “Just step in here and put your Vault suit on.” Naomi hesitated but once she saw Nate putting his on, she followed. “The pod will decontaminate and depressurize you before we head deeper in the Vault. Just relax.” The pod closed around her and hissed, she suddenly felt claustrophobic. The air started to feel chilly which she thought was part of the process. But then the window started to ice over, and before she could react, her heart slowed and she fell asleep.

Naomi woke up coughing, she heard a loud voice that sounded like someone was yelling in her ear. Her vision was blurred and her appendages were numb as hell. “All Vault residents must vacate immediately.” The voice said. Naomi banged on the pod door and it slid open causing her to stumble out onto the ground. She groaned and flexed her fingers until she was able to push herself up. She looked up and saw Nate’s pod was still closed. She crawled to the control panel and pushed every single button. Why hadn’t his opened yet? Why hadn’t anyone else’s? “Malfunction in Cryo Pod manual release overdrive.” She pulled herself up and looked into his pod. The sight sent her back to her knees. It hadn’t been a dream…

“I’M NOT GIVING YOU SHAUN!” Nate screamed as a masked figure tried to yank the infant out of his arms.

BANG.

Naomi’s heart sunk to her feet. A man walked up to her pod and looked at her with satisfaction. “At least we still have the backup.”

He was dead… He was actually dead… And Shaun was gone. The two most important people in her life were just… Gone. What was she supposed to do now? She wanted to give up. She curled up on the floor and sobbed until no more tears came.

Nate and Naomi met back before he served in the war. Naomi was going to college and Nate was touring her college with the other hopeful applicants. She had volunteered to be one of the guides for the high school seniors, and Nate was in her group. She told them all of the boring academic stuff, but once all of that was out of the way, she gave them the real ins and outs of the campus: where to get the best burger, where the best place to study was, and which sorority threw the best parties. At the end of the day, Nate was so smitten with her. Naomi… Not so much. He was still a high schooler, she thought it was weird. The following school year, they ran into each other in one of their classes. He seemed different to her, more mature somehow even though it was only half a year since she saw him last.

Nate had been taken by surprise when Naomi was the one who made the first move, but he was the one who planned the first date. He had read an article once about people’s ideal dates and he was desperate to try one. He took her to a cliff that overlooked the ocean right before sunset and brought a picnic. They watched the sun go down and paint the sky, then they laid down on a blanket and gazed at the stars. Nate couldn’t tell which stars were brighter, the ones in the sky or the ones in Naomi’s eyes.

Now he was gone. They both were. After she calmed her breath, she opened her eyes with determination. She stood up and took Nate’s ring off of his finger. “I’ll find out who did this and I’ll get Shaun back. I promise.”

When Naomi finally made it out of the Vault, and the light of the sun had burned her eyes, she was rendered speechless. Her home- everything- destroyed. Nothing looked the same. But she only had one thought in mind: where was Shaun? She clenched her fists and growled. “I will not rest until I find you, Shaun. Even if it kills me.” Naomi unequipped the 10mm she found in the Vault and headed on the path where her and Nate had run for their lives before… She saw multiple skeletons and she thought of reasons why they died. Maybe they didn’t make it to the Vault in time. Maybe they weren’t allowed in at all. And whose decision was it to determine who were and were not allowed in the Vault? Her blood boiled while her heart ached for those who died. She knew she shouldn’t have trusted that Vault-Tec rep.

“As I live and breathe…” A familiar voice rang. Naomi looked in front of her old house and saw Codsworth hanging around, a little worse for wear but still in functioning condition. “It’s… It’s really YOU!”

“Codsworth! You’re still here!”

“Of course I’m still here!”

“Is anyone else here?” Naomi desperately looked around for any sort of life form, hopefully not one of those giant cockroaches again.

“Oh mum, it’s been just horrible! Two centuries with no one to talk to, with no one to serve!”

“Two… centuries?” Had she heard that right?

“I spent the first ten years trying to keep the floors waxed, but nothing gets out nuclear fallout from vinyl wood! Nothing!”

“Codsworth?”

“And don’t get me started about the futility of dusting a collapsed house.”

“Hey.”

“And the car! The car! How do you polish rust?”

“CODSWORTH!” The robot finally stopped babbling and looked at Naomi. “What do you mean ‘two centuries’? Was I really… Gone that long?”

“Everyone’s been gone that long, mum. Where’s sir and the lad? I assume they are with you.”

Naomi couldn’t stop herself from welling up. “They’re gone, Codsworth…” She took a deep breath and let the tears fall freely. “Shaun was kidnapped and Nate was… He was shot. They killed him. I want to find Shaun but I don’t know where to start. God only knows where he could be right now.”

“What about the city? Concord is nearby.”

“It’s as good a start as any. Assuming that you’ve checked around here recently?”

“Believe me, mum, if they were here I would know.”

“Yeah… Thanks for keeping down the fort, Codsworth.”

“Stay safe, mum.”

Naomi remembered when she and Nate got Codsworth. Naomi insisted that they didn’t need a Mr. Handy, that they could take care of the house by themselves. But they just learned that Naomi was pregnant, so Nate would not give up until she agreed an extra hand - or many appendages - would be nice around the house once the baby came. He always told Naomi that since they had someone else to take care of the chores around the house, it gave him the opportunity to make her his top priority. And now… He was gone. She took one last look at her old house, and made her way to Concord.

Naomi wiped the blood off of her face. The world after the bombs really was different. First, it was giant bugs. Next, it was giant lizards? Did she go back in time to the dinosaurs? Naomi climbed out of the power armor and tried to catch her breath. If she hadn’t been wearing the armor, she would have been squished like one of those big bugs. The stray dog that she came across at the gas station near her old house trotted up to her and nudged her arm. “How are you, boy?” She lifted her arm to pet him but searing pain came from her shoulder. “Don’t happen to have a stimpack, do you boy?” He ran over to one of the raider’s bodies and sniffed around their waist. He quickly came back with a stimpack in his mouth. “Well, aren’t you smart?” She shoved the needle into her body and waited as the pain melted away, then she gave the dog a proper pet. “Good boy.” She glanced up at the old Museum of Freedom. “Guess I should go back in to see Preston?” The dog’s tail wagged furiously and he sprinted towards the doors. Naomi made her way through the destroyed museum until she got to the room where Preston and what he called ‘The Minutemen’ were holed up in. “How is everyone?” She asked.

Preston gave her a brilliant smile. “Great, thanks to you! That was quite a display.”

“It was… Definitely the most interesting thing I’ve ever done in my life. Though, I’m not sure that’s going to be the only time I’ll be saying that nowadays. Hell, I’m still getting used to people saying pre-war.”

“You said you were frozen in the Vault?” Preston asked.

“That’s right. Over two hundred years ago, apparently. My Mr. Handy told me earlier today.”

“Can’t believe they would do that. Wasn’t Vault-Tec supposed to be the good guys?”

“That’s what we thought… Now my husband’s dead and my son is missing.”

“I’m so sorry…” Preston nervously adjusted his hat.

“You’re a woman out of time.” The old woman named Mama Murphy said. “Out of hope. But all’s not lost. I can feel your son’s energy. He’s alive.”

“Where is my son?” Naomi’s gun fell out of her hand and she dropped in front of Mama Murphy. “Where is Shaun??”

“Oh… I wish I knew, kid. But he’s out there, and I don’t need the Sight to tell me where you should start looking. The great, green jewel of the Commonwealth. Diamond City. The biggest settlement around.”

“Diamond City?” Naomi’s eyebrows furrowed. “Fenway Park? The baseball stadium?”

“That’s the one. If you’d like, I can accompany you there, show you the way.”

“I knew this city like the back of my hand back in the day.” She got to her feet and picked up her gun. “And if I can fight one of those…” She gestured largely. “Huge lizards.”

“Deathclaws.”

“Deathclaws, right. Then I can face whatever might be in the city, right? Besides, your people need you right now.”

“If anyone can do it, it would be you. I would suggest wearing the power armor until you get more settled.” Preston gave her a package of minigun ammo. “And watch out for super mutants. Giant, green, ugly creatures. They’re dangerous. But Diamond City Security should have everything under control.” He smiled warmly. “Make sure to come and see us at Sanctuary Hills. The Minutemen could use someone like you.”

Naomi chuckled. “I’ll think about it.” She adjusted the armor she took from the raiders and made her way out, and Dogmeat never left her side.

Nate held up a onesie with little green dinosaurs on it. “Come on, love, wouldn’t this be perfect for his first outfit?”

Naomi shifted uncomfortably on their bed, caressing her swollen belly. “Honey, I know you’re trying to lighten the mood, but I have never been more uncomfortable in my life.”

He walked over to her, kneeled down, and took her hands in his. “I know, but soon it’ll all be over, and our little boy will be here with us.” He kissed her hands. “I can’t imagine how you’re feeling, but I want to do anything I can to help you through this. You’re strong, you’ve got this.”

Naomi smiled and took the dinosaur onesie in her hands. “This one’s perfect.”

The sun slowly started to set as she made the long trek to Diamond City, and seeing her city in the state it was… It broke her heart. She and Dogmeat came across a couple of bugs eating a dead cow with two heads. So strange. The real fear set in when she got into the city. Those dead people could be around any corner, too many places to hide. She clutched her gun and kept it close to her body. She was close to the river now, and she hoped that at least one bridge was still intact.

The Pip-Boy on her wrist crackled to life, a frequency started cutting in and out. “Nine. Five… sustained casualties… running low on supplies… requesting supplies… Cambridge Police Station…”

Every fiber in her being told her to ignore it, to stay focused on Diamond City. But the police station was more or less on her way. “I hope I don’t regret this.” Naomi thought. She picked up the pace and followed the roads to the station as she ignored her racing heart. If she hadn’t known her way there, the amount of gunshots that ricocheted through the alleys would have led her there. The old police station was boarded up and crawling with the dead.

“Check your fire, we’ve got hostiles!” A man’s voice rang. Naomi burst into a run and reloaded her gun, readying for whatever laid ahead. She shot several of the dead before she made it into the guarded area of the station. A man in power armor saw her and shouted. “Civilian in the perimeter! Check your fire!” But Naomi was handling her own. She took out the dead as if she had been doing this for months. It helped that they were incredibly predictable; they charge, then they fall. But she got overwhelmed. As soon as she took one out, she was tackled by two. Dogmeat ran to her aid and started tearing at one of their legs while Naomi shoved the barrel of her gun into the open mouth of the one on top of her and pulled the trigger. Soon, the area was quiet. And God, it smelled. She got on her hands and knees and retched at the smell. And the fact that she was covered in blood and brains. “We appreciate the assistance, civilian.” She looked up and found the man in power armor in front of her. “But what’s your business here?”

Naomi felt both intimidated and comforted by the man’s appearance. “I, uh…” She slowly stood up and brushed herself off. “I heard your distress signal on the radio. I figured I could come and help.”

“Are you from a local settlement?”

She looked down and studied what she was wearing: the stolen raider armor and her bright blue vault suit. No point in lying. “I came from Vault 111.”

“You’re a Vault Dweller?” He studied her before he continued. “Most people wouldn’t admit that.” “Why not?”

“If you want to continue pitching in, we could use an extra gun on our side.” He said, ignoring her question.

“I don’t know… I was heading towards Diamond City. I’m looking for a missing person.”

“I wish you luck, then.” The man curtly turned around and headed inside.

“I’m sorry about him.” A woman said. “Things have been tough on us. We’ve lost a man and our supplies are low, though I assume you gathered that from the radio signal.” She quickly glanced at the wounded man on the ground before she continued. “I’m Scribe Haylen. That’s Knight Rhys over there, and the man in the power armor is Paladin Danse. We’re with the Brotherhood of Steel.”

“Brotherhood of Steel?”

“Ah, right. I overheard you telling Paladin Danse you were a Vault Dweller. Long story short, we’re like the military.” She rummaged through one of the pouches on her harness. “It’s not much, but here.” She placed a small pouch in Naomi’s hand.

She opened the pack, curious as to the light clinking noise it made. “Bottle caps?”

“It’s the currency nowadays. That pre-war paper money is useless now.” The woman patted Naomi on the arm. “Well, good luck. Diamond City isn’t much farther.”

The door to the detective agency closed loudly behind Naomi and she groaned loudly. She made it all the way to Diamond City, and when she felt like she was put on the right track, that she found someone who could actually help her find Shaun, the detective himself was missing. She knew finding her son would be hard, but she underestimated just how hard it would be in this new world. "You okay, Blue?"

Naomi turned around and saw Piper making her way down the alley. "Blue?"

"You know, blue Vault Suit?" Piper chuckled lightly. "Seriously, are you okay?"

"Nick Valentine is missing and it seems almost impossible to find my son… I'm not even sure he's alive. Or how old he is…" Naomi leaned on the wall and sighed. "Am I in over my head, Piper?"

"Look, I know I don't know you at all, but I see a fire in you. You're passionate. I can tell you're a damn good mother and you will not stop until you find your son." Naomi smiled, feeling a little more confident. "It's going to be hard, but I believe in you. And if you need help, don't be afraid to ask. Hell, I could help now if you want. Who knows what's waiting in the Vault."

"You don't even know me and you're willing to risk your life to come with me?"

"You might have gathered now, but the Institute is the Commonwealth's biggest boogeyman. People have gone missing, replaced by synths, and now a child is involved. I'm sick and tired of seeing people afraid and paranoid that their family might be synths. I'm sick of not getting answers. I feel like if I help you find your son, maybe I can get some answers."

"Well, having some extra fire support wouldn't hurt."

"Awesome. Mind if we head to my office first? I wanna tell my sister I'll be gone." They walked to Publick Occurrences and Naomi was shocked by how similar Piper and Nat seemed.

Nate wanted several kids. He wanted a full family. Naomi was not as eager. She was excited to have a child in her life but it never even crossed her mind to have more than one. She figured she would have one kid and spoil them rotten. When Naomi was pregnant, Nate hadn't really bothered her about having more kids, he was just excited to have one on the way. Once Shaun was born, he was absolutely obsessed. The woman he loved created something so perfect, how could he not want more? Naomi said they were both biased. Nate was an only child, whereas Naomi had an older sister that relentlessly teased and messed with her when they were growing up. "What if he gets lonely?" Nate asked.

Naomi shifted Shaun as he fed. "Love, he has both of us, and no doubt he'll make many friends when he's older. I don't think he'll get lonely."

"At least think about it? I would love it if Shaun had a sibling."

"I'll think about it, but no promises."

Nat and Piper had the same attitude as each other. Despite seeing some irritation from Nat's end, they seemed to have a shared love and a deep connection. When they left the office and were out of Diamond City, Naomi made a quizzical noise. "Are you close with your sister?"

"She's all I have left. If I lost her, I don't know what I would do."

"I'm not sure I would want to bring a child into this world." Naomi turned her gaze to the ground.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Knowing that my child is out there in this world? It's terrifying. If I'm having trouble adjusting, I can't imagine what he's going through. I couldn't even begin to imagine how I would feel if Nate and I had two children lost in this world."

"Nate is the dad?"

"Nate is… Was… My husband."

"What happened to him?"

"They killed him."

"The Institute?"

Naomi kicked a rock out of frustration. "I don't know. Whoever it was had the ability to override the controls in the Vault to open the pods we were in, which makes me think it was Vault-Tec."

"We'll find out, and we'll find your son."

"First, we have to find Nick."

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