#i want to put this man in a petri dish and study him under a microscope

[lu-is-not-ok]

This fucking guy.

Anyway have some of my incoherent ramblings about this man under the read more because I have a lot to say about him.

Alright, let me split this into three sections because otherwise this ramble will be even more of a mess than it already is.

I'm gonna discuss Yi Sang in the mirror, or Sang Yi, under a couple of different lights.

One, how he relates to the concept of being the opposite reflection to Yi Sang. Two, how he ties back to Yi Sang's wife from "The Wings". And three, some of my thoughts about how he might fit into the wider scope of the plot and world of Limbus Company.

Strap in lads.

Sang Yi as a "left-handed" reflection

Something that becomes increasingly clear as we're shown interactions between Yi Sang and Sang Yi, and what is directly spelled out by the latter at the end of Canto IV's dungeon, is that Sang Yi is effectively the antithesis of much that makes Yi Sang, well... Yi Sang.

Yi Sang, at the core of everything, is a very sentimental and kind man. He cares a lot about the people around him, even if he doesn't always show it outwardly, and struggles to move on from whatever losses he experiences. Though he may claim otherwise, he's also constantly thinking about everything he's going through, which is what eventually leads him to the Mirror as a form of escapism from his curel reality.

Sang Yi on the other hand... is none of that.

Most of the 'comforting' words or advice Sang Yi offers to Yi Sang can be boiled down to "Stop caring or thinking about every little thing.", a sentiment that's directly in opposition of who Yi Sang is as a person.

Sang Yi finds the idea of feeling joy or despair over the past pointless. He thinks Yi Sang shouldn't feel guilty about his technology being used to exploit others because he already knew what he was getting himself into. He doesn't understand why Yi Sang would have trouble moving on if he were to lose Sang Yi.

Whereas Yi Sang is caring and emotionally-driven, Sang Yi is... I don't want to say uncaring, since he does seem to care about Yi Sang to some degree, but at the very least he is rather distant and logically-driven.

I think the moment that exemplifies that the most is when Yi Sang tells him Gubo doesn't care about him beyond using him as an accessory to prop himself up in the limelight, to which Sang Yi responds that it doesn't matter, that Yi Sang should use this as an opportunity to be in that limelight as well.

And, actually, speaking about that. Sang Yi doesn't really seem to think things through nearly as much as Yi Sang does. Or, at the very least, he doesn't care to look deeper than the surface level.

Sang Yi sees Gubo's attempts at connecting with Yi Sang as genuinely caring about him, whereas Yi Sang is able to see through them and realize Gubo is being entirely selfish here. Sang Yi sees the new League of Nine as something worth joining, while Yi Sang notices that it is nothing but a mockery of the old League. When Sang Yi learns of the new League's plan to destroy mirror worlds, his only reaction is that of mild curiosity without even a sign of concern.

All that being said, the biggest example of this might just be the fact that Sang Yi did not even realize just how badly Yi Sang was feeling until Yi Sang straight up told him there was nothing left for him in this world outside of Sang Yi.

Though we can't know for sure what exactly Sang Yi was feeling at the time, as all that we know about him is colored by Yi Sang's own bias towards him, I think it's fair to say that was the moment where it finally hit Sang Yi just how badly he fucked up by keeping Yi Sang stuck there all to himself.

Which, now that I think about it, transitions nicely to the other angle I want to look at.

Sang Yi as Yeongsim / Yi Sang's wife

First of all, just to lay it out there in the open, as fucking hilarious out of context as it sounds to say Yi Sang was his own wife all along, it's... actually not all that far off.

Beyond the fact that the Mirror is directly named after his wife in "The Wings", there's some other obvious signs that point to it. If you were to take the letters Yi Sang was writing to Sang Yi out of context, you could absolutely mistake them for something one would write to a lover too far away to be easily reachable. Plus, the way Yi Sang's first reaction to seeing Sang Yi is to call him "beautiful" in his mind?

Yeah, there's something to that.

And, of course, there's something to be said about the similarities between Sang Yi's role in Yi Sang's life, and the role Yi Sang's wife played in "The Wings".

That being the way both of them end up isolating Yi Sang, how both of them actively withhold information from him, and how Yi Sang sees them as perfect and without a fault even as they're hurting him.

I don't feel like talking about "The Wings" in depth right now as it's almost 5 am and I want to actually finish writing this fucking post at some point, but if you want to know what I'm comparing Sang Yi to, it's a short read that's easy to find a free pdf online for.

The fact that Sang Yi was trying to keep Yi Sang inside is probably the most spelled out one out of everything I'm talking about in this post. Not only does Sang Yi directly tell Yi Sang to stay with him (mind you he doesn't even ask), but Ishmael, as an outside observer, notes how Sang Yi was trying to keep Yi Sang in the room by making him afraid of the outside.

Actually, looking at when he finally offers Yi Sang the choice to leave, it's in a... very interesting way, shall we say?

Not only does Sang Yi try to make the option of staying sound as appealing as possible by bringing up that Yi Sang will be able to continue doing what he loves (or at least what Sang Yi believes Yi Sang loves), like continue working on the Mirror and keep talking to him.

On the other hand, Sang Yi is reluctant to even bring up the option that Yi Sang can leave, and when Yi Sang shows interest (note that Yi Sang's immediate reaction isn't a "I don't want to leave", it's a "I don't think I can leave"), he continues to make the option sound as unappealing as possible, while still making it clear that it is possible.

How Yi Sang doesn't need to be able to fly to leave, but he will struggle endlessly if he does. How Yi Sang can eventually find somewhere to call his home, but he will have to walk until his feet hurt and will have to settle for wherever or whatever he ends up resting at.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't seem like the kind of encouragement or advice someone who had a person's best interest in mind would make.

Now, let's make some other facts clear while we're at it.

Sang Yi knew that Yi Sang had wings as well, after all, he calls that fact 'obvious' when he finally mentions it. However, he never directly told him he does, even as Yi Sang lamented to him about how (in his eyes) he himself had no wings. He only brings it up when Yi Sang is truly at his lowest.

Sang Yi knew what the effects of supplements Yi Sang was taking were, as he can tell exactly what will happen if Yi Sang stops taking them, or takes several at once. However, he never directly told him this until he gives Yi Sang a choice, even though he was clearly aware they were not beneficial.

Sang Yi knew that Yi Sang's room was always open, as he was confident that Yi Sang would be able to just leave on his own once the effects of the supplements cleared away. However, he never tells Yi Sang that, even when Yi Sang is making it clear he doesn't think he even can leave. It's actually one of the thing Yi Sang ends up finding out by himself.

Despite all of this... Yi Sang never stops to consider that Sang Yi might not have his best interests in mind. Sang Yi is his everything. He's perfect, flawless, the ideal self. He's the only thing Yi Sang has left.

Call me cynical, but it paints the ending of the Canto in a somewhat bittersweet light to me. After all, Sang Yi never has to apologize or even admit to anything, and Yi Sang still views him as positively as he always has.

I guess at the very least it's accurate to the book. After all, Yi Sang in "The Wings" ends up holding on to that perfect image of his wife to the very end.

Sang Yi as an entity

Okay I have no clever transition here like I did last time, but this is probably the thing about Sang Yi that's been bugging me the most.

Have you guys noticed just how much Sang Yi seems to know about Yi Sangs from different worlds? Those sweeping general statements about "All versions of Yi Sang" or "All Yi Sangs" that he makes with full confidence.

When Yi Sang assumes that Sang Yi can "be anywhere he wants" thanks to his wings, just how correct is he?

With the way Sang Yi talks about other Yi Sangs, it gives the impression that he's met a lot of them in the past. In fact, if that's true, it would recolor the meaning of Sang Yi's comment about his meeting with his particular Yi Sang "peculiar".

What's so peculiar about our Yi Sang specifically, if Sang Yi has met so many of them? Is it the method, the fact that it's through the mirror? Is it that Sang Yi finally found a Yi Sang that also had wings? Is it because our Yi Sang is the first one to contact him rather than the other way around?

And while we're on that topic, isn't the way Sang Yi talks about Yi Sangs kind of odd? It's always "All Yi Sangs" or "All versions of Yi Sang", as if he's not part of those Yi Sangs himself. It's like he's putting himself in the role of an outside observer, seperate from the concept of being a 'Yi Sang'.

Just what is Sang Yi, really? He implies he's the version of our Yi Sang that's inside the mirror, the one that "needs to be opposite, yet is quite alike" to the one outside, to explain why our Yi Sang would have wings if he saw them on Sang Yi, but like... He never directly says that's the case.

In fact, when Yi Sang asks Sang Yi about what the outside is like, Sang Yi weirdly dodges the question, saying it's all "the same tiring stuff". Another example of him withholding information aside, this all makes him seem rather fucking suspicious to me.

Just. What is he really?

God I hope we get to see him again, cause I really want to know what the fuck his actual deal is.

#limbus company #limbus company project moon #lcb spoilers #lcb canto iv #lcb season 2 #lcb analysis #sang yi #sang yi lcb #mirror yi sang #eye strain #my art #lu speaketh #i want to put this man in a petri dish and study him under a microscope

[kiawren]

You said you wanted people to gush about their f/os in a rb

I just really like my husbanf… he so cool and deranged very me coded… he’s my third f/o with a gambling addiction… he’s so pathetic, freaking loser, he is such a loser, I love him so much, he’s my little ray of sunshine, he’s so cool and sweet, he smells like pineapple (canon btw), he has green hair and pronons❤️❤️❤️ he is a duck robot cog (you wouldn’t get it if you didn’t play Toontown corporate clash….. 💔💔💔………..) he so odd, he needs to be studied under a microscope even though he’s taller than me, he has sharp teeth and a lisp……… he’s so cooolio…. I can’t believe he’s actually my husbanf❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ I’m so lucky……. Waow…. Buck is so coolio……..I need to kiss his beak….. mwah meah…… I’m gonna tell him I love him sooooo much ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ bye bye

Hey anon...I so get it.. enjoyed reading this immensely you literally get him so well you guys are Soulmates for real that's what it looks like to me.. All those traits are so silly if I were him I'd be so lucky to have a partner whos so attentive like that..?! Smelling like pineapple is so. That's actually so cute Idek what to say that's adorable. I don't know this source but your description is very endearing im genuinely interested.. Sharp teeth and a lisp! Man that is so cute what! You have thecoolest husband ever man wtf. YES GO AND KISS HIS BEAK NOW! HURRY! You guys can be so crazy and cool together Yes put him under a microscope tuck him into a petri dish all cozy like.. Then when you examine his cells you'll be surprised to find his brain has many micro thoughts and pictures of you..🤯🤔

#This was sosooooo cute WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR WHILE YOURE READING THIS YOU COUKD HAVE BEEN KISSING HIM? #🫵🫵🫵‼️‼️

[nazumichi]

1. would you study me under a microscope if given the opportunity and 2. would you share your thoughts on marie's parents/childhood and/or how shirou and her could show affection to one another besides them pretending not to see when she is running a scam if i asked extra nicely??

1/ putting you in here 🔬 and also 🧫 and here also 🧪 !!! studying you rn, look at this sick petri dish 🧫🧫

2/ omg hiii soooo i’ve got notes on this, i’ve studied this, i’m extremely knowledgable in the marie-backstoryverse (because i made it up in my brain).

i think she came from a family outside the city as tricky as she is, that’s what makes the most sense to me. picking up habits and their ways, climbing to the top as she does in the city. one for one, out for herself.

i like to think there was another, there was a sibling in her life, a little brother. she takes responsibility for this kid, parallel to how she’s over michiru’s shoulder, correcting and teaching her toughly. who else will, in the case of that sibling? parents too fixated with their own survival, with pursuing their own wealth and riches and power.

parents more caught up in their own survival, she sought a new life for herself and herself only, just reaching adulthood. screw the kid, reluctantly perhaps, the self is priority of course. (enter the can of worms that is, while thinking of her as a burden, her parents might not want her gone. maybe they need her there for their own selfish needs, for her talent, for quite literally, a stepping stone).

then enter anima city, safe haven for beasts all over, place where you can rest your head and take a deep breath for once, according to what she’s seen. she’s smart, she picks up the inherent flaws, picks this place as less of “i can find a new calmer life for ME” and more of “if everyone there was gullible enough to fall for that, then i can thrive off them.”

she does get schooled. that’s important, she gets flung ten feet. she’ll get to some better place eventually, she’s just got to find her footing first, find work (which she does, a sequence of betrayal and boredom from the grand grandma and rabbit town -> flip and the family -> the mayor and shirou). of course there’s the everyday civilians she gives information/technology to, but you could divide her life in the city into those three eras more neatly.

back to the matter at hand, parents, no matter how far away she is from/uncertain of their fates, still cause her some uuuhh strife. it’s not about guilt, it’s not about a moral code, it’s about a nagging and unshakable “what if they come for me one day?” sort of feeling. ok that’s all my word vomit on that, now

3/ hi. hi and hello.

i think it’s pretty safe to say that marie is canonically something of an enjoyer of physical affection or really touch in general. we can see this in how she interacts with michiru (putting her hands on her shoulders, arm around her, holding her up in the manga).

i don’t think it’s an impossible stretch to say she treats shirou in the same way. sure, he could snap her in two like a glowstick, sure, he’s something of a downer a loner etc and etc, but i think the way they’re comfortable with each other is uuuuuuuhhh.

certainly interesting (goes down the rabbit hole that is why does he tolerate her as he does, why does he trust her, why is she so comfortable making jabs at him, talking as if they know each other well enough to point out behaviors of the other as unusual, common, etc etc e)

i like to think she’s very physically affectionate, linking arms, taking hands, putting a head on his shoulder. both out of “i feel comfortable with this man, he knows me so well, he’s the only person who does, we both need this” and also “it’s fun to watch them squirm.”

and he is….. a protector. he’s caring, he’s a little bumbling, but he’s caring before it all. he’s the sole person out here even vaguely worried about her, the only one who willingly seeks her out (oh miss lonely aren’t you so lonely you piece of shit) he would give her the coat from his back and his protection if she asked. which is what i believe anyway.

they’re both a little awkward with it. they’re very awkward with it actually. they’ve got weird and bumbling and awkward feelings that don’t entirely match the “and what if i am sitting in your lap while you talk with the council and your boss about horrible murder?? i have a right to be here” and the “i would kill for you if only you asked” actions.

they hold hands sometimes is what i’m saying, impulsive things. lean against each other. link arms, put heads on chests. pick each other up. lay in a place away from what everyone sees them as, they’ll have to get up and become those people again in a few hours, but now, they can think of simpler things and quite simply. each other.

number one victory roya

#ask #ollie tag #hi. hi. hi. you know. how i am. about. ayyyuuhghhhhhhhhhhgggggghhhhhhashhhhhgrrrrr

[goose-books]

darklingverse & magic

as promised! a look at the magical system in my speculative fiction loose-retelling-of-king-lear WIP, which you can find out more about here and here! this is a terribly, terribly long post, so i’m sticking most of it under a cut, but i can guarantee there are at least a few fun diagrams in there. (all character images used are from this picrew by cinnasmores!)

shoutout to waya @harehearts​ for helping me work out some of the kinks in this by asking incredibly helpful questions... waya i will untag you if you want i just wanted to appreciate your contribution. also going to tag @suits-of-woe​ because you mentioned wanting to see this!

Jasper’s dad talks about it like oil. Petroleum has to be refined before you can put it in your car. Unrefined, it’ll just as soon kill you as anything else. The natural clock ticks. A mage hits twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen. And then it’s roaring under their skin, like an electric volt, like a fever, burning in them, fighting tooth and nail to get out.

It always gets out. You pick the route. Or you don’t.

The first thing Vee ever learned was duplication. Small objects only. Jasper was crawling through stacks of post-it notes for weeks. It was like an illness: Vee would get too itchy, his magic nipping at his neck, and he’d clench his fists and then they’d have another goddamn stack of stickies. “He has to get it out somehow,” Dad had admonished Jasper, when he’d complained. “Otherwise it’ll hurt him. I do it, too. The difference is I’m useful.” And he had demonstrated by snapping his fingers and cleaning all the house’s dishes at once.

Jasper is loath to give his father props for anything. But he was, on that particular occasion, right. Within a year Vee could flick his hands and shut windows, heat leftovers, unlock doors, send laundry skittering across the floor into the hamper.

It makes sense; Vee’s an infuriatingly quick study, magically and academically. And he inherited their dad’s style of magic. Easygoing. Quiet. Unobtrusive. Less explosive, more creative. Nowadays the worst that happens when he gets hot under the collar is that he spawns another houseplant and Jasper has to brush the leaves off the kitchen table.

Because Vee followed Dad’s instructions. He annotated all of his textbooks. He mastered it early, by seventeen, because of-fucking-course he did, but he was already in control by fifteen. Everyone learns to control their magic eventually.

Most people do eventually.

— darkling, segment iv: control

okay so let’s get into this!!!

isn’t darkling a modern king lear retelling? what do you mean, “the magic system?”

great question! darkling is, in fact, a modern king lear retelling (well, very loosely; it’s my city now and i reserve the right to do what i want). it takes place entirely in and around a city called dovermorry, an extremely isolated place secluded in the mountains, surrounded by wilderness for hundreds of miles, and only reachable via a single train through the mountains. dovermorry is loosely in the american northwest, sort of, i guess. by which i mean that’s kind of where i’m picturing it, but also it’s incredibly vague and honestly i don’t really know. dovermorry is, like, you know… [gesturing] it’s around. [kicking any kind of definable map under the rug]

the plot is set in the modern day with modern technology. the magic that exists is woven into daily life alongside said modern technology, which is the primary reason i’m calling darkling speculative fiction. most people in darklingverse aren’t actually heavily affected by magic (for reasons i’ll get into but which basically boil down to “they don’t have much”); however, dovermorry as a city is mostly known for being The Place Where Mages Go. most of the families in the city have been there for a long time; they’re old money families with powerful magic who use their inheritances to study increasingly esoteric forms of magic that aren’t very helpful in praxis. this is because dovermorry is home to the large and powerful Mage’s Guild, which is in charge of setting the laws around what kind of magic can be practiced in the city and by who. if you want to study magic at a scholarly level, you’d better pay your dues to the guild, otherwise you’re gonna get the boot.

every large city has a guild, but dovermorry’s in specific is Really Big and, unusually, has more political power than the actual mayor / government of the city. partially because leovald stayer, the guild’s president, is just… ughghhebwfbefbdsbfbdsfsd. That Way. in dovermorry if you’re not getting the boot you’re licking it

“wait, slow down. what is a mage anyway?”

well, technically, anyone! everyone in darklingverse has at least a little bit of natural magic (though it might be very little) that develops during puberty/adolescence! so by its literal definition, A Person Who Does Magic, everyone is a mage. that said, in colloquial terms, the word mage has taken on a connotation that basically means… exactly the kind of people who live in dovermorry. like i just said: scholarly, probably rich, probably a little elitist. so your average working-class person is TECHNICALLY a mage, but if you asked they’d say something like, “oh, mages are those hoity-toity folks who join guilds and stuff, WE’RE just regular folks over here.”

“you keep saying magic. what are you talking about. magic is a word that means so many things”

don’t worry, in darkling it just means [gestures vaguely]. re: everyone has magic, it develops in puberty, and there aren’t really specifications - it isn’t like some folks get fire magic and others get shapeshifting magic or etc. it’s more like everyone has a certain amount of raw energy inside them that can be drawn out and funneled into different tasks/spells. some ground rules:

1. you can’t change the amount of magic you have. your magic develops naturally, and maybe you get a lot of raw energy, or maybe you only get a little, but that’s what you’re stuck with and no amount of practicing is gonna give you more.

2. that said, magic is hard to control when it first develops - and practicing WILL help you get better at controlling it. so while you’ll always have the same base amount, you’ll get faster and more efficient about concentrating it into tasks.

3. re: amount of raw energy: that shit isn’t limitless. whether you have a lot or a little, it will eventually run out and you’ll have to wait for your juice to recharge. like a battery. you are a battery. how long this recharge period takes depends on how much magic you have, how fast you used it all up (if you push your limits to do something Really Big, you’re gonna be wiped), and also just how you’re doing physically in general? if you use up all of your magic in one go and you haven’t slept in a while, you might want to, like, sit down. drink a juice box. take a nap

4. while magic isn’t limitless, you can’t just NOT use it, either. when you aren’t using your magic, that raw magical energy builds up in you. and builds up. and builds up. and it does not particularly want to be in you. it wants to be out in the world, actually, and by god your fragile human meatsack is not going to stop it. so if you don’t choose a task to funnel your magical energy into (eg, i use my built-up energy to send my socks scuttling across the floor of their own accord to get into the laundry basket), that energy will eventually decide to just come out on its own. more on this later.

5. like i said, the mage’s guild of any particular city sets the rules, but there’s generally one core rule and that’s “don’t do necromancy.” like, obviously you’re not allowed to kill someone magically, but you’re also not allowed to kill someone NONMAGICALLY, so that’s kind of a given? but necromancy is something only a few very powerful mages can do and it is a BIG no-no. don’t fuck around with death, man. people don’t come back right, but also, just, like, let them rest, all right? let the dead rest.

[image description: the “society if X” meme, showing a futuristic “ideal” society full of green landscapes, smooth silver buildings, and flying cars. the text on the top reads “society if no one did necromancy.” the text on the bottom reads “this post made by the official mage’s guild don’t do necromancy you freaks bottom text.” in the corner you can see the imgflip.com watermark that i could have erased were i less lazy.]

“so what CAN you do with magic?”

the average joe? not much. again, there aren’t specific categories of magic; there aren’t any ATLA-style bending divisions. if you and i have the same raw amount of energy, there’s no reason we can’t both learn the same spells.

that said, the average person doesn’t have a lot of magic! it is much less dramatic than i’ve made it sound. there are not big magical firefights happening marvel-movie-style on every city street. if you want to talk to your friend, you use your iphone, not some kind of distance-speaking spell (which would be hard to maintain anyway and oh my god the phone lines are right there). the average person, on a daily basis, will use their small amounts of magic to heat their coffee up, or to wipe up a mess or spill, or to clean their floor re: the socks i mentioned earlier. (while writing this post, i had to begrudgingly admit that the socks were not going to scuttle anywhere, and i was forced to pick them up with my hands, manually. tragic, i know.)

again. dovermorry is the exception to this rule. most of the people in dovermorry have a little too much money and a little too much magic and not nearly enough chill. but dovermorry has also been festering like a petri dish alone up in the mountains for decades so what can you do.

“hold on, are you telling me that people in darklingverse didn’t immediately start wielding innate magic quantities as a tool of classism? sounds fake”

regretfully i cannot retcon classism out of darklingverse as it is relevant to the plot. this is because the plot is “Incredible: This Rich White Guy Has Never Been Told No And Doesn’t Know How To Handle It Without Crytyping!”

[image description: a picrew of leovald stayer, a pale-skinned man with short blond hair and an angry-looking frown, plus tears that i drew onto him with the paint tool in paint.net. beside his head is red crytyping text reading “ii’mm sso; so..rryy i didn’t[ mme  a nit wwhy . are yu,,o suiiicdee .bai,,it,ing MMe gr;;acen im yuour da[d,,,”]

the general implicit belief across the country, but especially in highly stratified cities like dovermorry, is that upper-class people from distinguished noble families are just naturally born with more magic, and lower-class people are born with progressively less as we trip down the social ladder. is this kind of true, demographically? yeah but everyone’s got their cause-and-effect turned around. class doesn’t dictate natural magic so much as natural magic dictates class. the people on top like to be on top. and having jacked-up magic is a nice way to stay on top. so rip to the rich kids born with piddly little amounts of raw magic, because your family probably is not going to help you get places. and rip to everyone else born with piddly little amounts of magic, too, because unless you’re REALLY good at something nonmagical, you probably are not going to Strike It Big because those in power are gonna keep you down. and if you DO make it to the top you’ll be viewed as an exception that proves the rule.

there is some magic that is genuinely naturally harder to work with. the upper classes are personally really invested in making sure that kind of magic is painted as rough and lower-class. this is because it is threatening to them! and they do not want to be threatened. unless, of course, it’s them with the hard-to-handle magic. and then they’re fine with it.

“but didn’t you say everyone’s magic is basically the same?”

everyone’s magic can be wielded to do basically the same things. you can’t control how much flows through you. you CAN control where/how it gets out. and everyone’s pathways for how to let it out are basically the same (see the examples i mentioned above!). but some magic is a lot easier to control than other magic.

you can’t just not use magic, because if you don’t use it, it will use itself. it will Do Shit On Its Own. and that’s where this gets sticky.

so let’s get into that.

active vs. passive magic

now with fun diagrams!

[image description: a rainbow spectrum stretching from blue to red. the leftmost end (blue) is labeled “’passive’ magic” and “way down here you can mostly do fun party tricks.” the rightmost end (red) is labeled “’active’ magic” and “way down here you’re officially a ‘witch’ lol.”]

when i say active vs. passive magic, i should specify that this is not a strict binary! i’m about to use the terms in a sort of binary way to simplify this post down, but magic exists on a spectrum.* generally the less raw magic energy you have, the more “passive” your magic will be, but that’s not a hard and fast rule! characters vee and rory, for example, both have comparatively passive magic; however, rory’s is smaller and generally good for party tricks, illusions, and sleight of hand, while vee has more magic that he finds is really good for things like Growing Plants Really Fast and Making The Plants Do What You Want.

*i know this looks like some kind of metaphor for gender but i swear it’s not. you can trans your gender no matter WHAT your magic looks like i promise <3

i mentioned that if it builds up for too long unused, magic will Do Shit On Its Own. with passive magic, the Shit It Does is, like, accidentally growing a plant where plants shouldn’t grow, or changing your hair color when you aren’t looking. slow seeping magic that just kind of oozes out of you until you notice, “wait, shit, my hair didn’t used to be blue.” with active magic, if you don’t control it, it will Break Shit and it will not be nice about it.

active magic is - if we simplify both the magic binary and human genetics until they’re really really blurry - the dominant trait. if you made a middle school biology punnet square, active magic would be the dominant allele and passive the recessive allele. (i haven’t taken a bio class in two years no one get my ass for this analogy.) the child’s magic will take after whichever parent has more active magic. so, to illustrate that, let’s look at a normal family with a normal non-scandalous family tree. by which of course i mean the greenwoods. [canned laugh track playing in the studio]

here are ara, griffin, and medea (parents) charted by how active their magic is:

[image description: the same spectrum, now featuring three picrews of characters. ara, a dark-skinned woman with wavy black hair, freckles, and glasses, is placed leftmost, closest to the blue/passive end. griffin, a dark-skinned man with short black hair and glasses, is placed near the middle of the spectrum, slightly to the left. medea, a pale-skinned woman with spiky white hair, freckles, and gold hoop earrings, is placed rightmost, at the very edge of the red/active end.]

...and here’s how that went for them, progeny-wise:

[image description: a little family tree. ara and griffin’s child, vee, a dark-skinned person with wavy black hair, a worried look, and band-aids on his face, is labeled “quiet unobtrusive plant-based magic” in green text. medea and griffin’s child, jasper, a lighter-skinned person with spiky brown hair and freckles, is labeled “once accidentally shattered 50 champagne glasses at his dad’s birthday party” in red text.]

(yes, i know i said there aren’t any ATLA-esque magical divisions; that’s still true; vee just happens to get on really, really well with plants. much like jasper gets on really really well with entropy and causing problems on purpose.)

so the thing about “active” magic is that it’s usually more powerful, but if it’s too powerful it gets incredibly destructive. like i said earlier - if you’re part of the upper class, it shakes out fine; otherwise not so much. your choices with this kind of dangerous magic are to either fight it and keep it tamped down, or to lean completely into it and embrace your massive amounts of dangerous power. if you are rich, you can do that second thing! that’s what leovald stayer does, and he’s the president of the mage’s guild! good for him! [i say, through gritted teeth.] but if you aren’t rich, you had better try to keep that shit on lockdown, unless you want to be branded a reckless uncultured social deviant and - in most cases - a witch.

mages vs. witches

everyone with magic is a mage. only a few mages are witches. it’s like squares and rectangles, you know? you can hear gracen talk about that here in nice prose (plus baby cressida!), but the bottom line is that “witch” is shorthand for “woman* who has magic so powerful it’s unsafe, who uses it to break shit and be reckless,” and anyone with the “wrong” type of magic who doesn’t have a trust fund to back them up is getting tarred with that brush. they’re nothing like those elegant learned mages casting down benevolent laws from their ivory towers, you see.

*this isn’t a gender specific thing but usually women are the ones who get called witches because Women Should Know How To Control Themselves But Men Are Just Like That. god we love misogyny <3

tl;dr: misogyny and classism real. if you have hard-to-control magic that breaks shit then you’re destined to be a pariah UNLESS of course you’re rich and powerful and then it’s COOL that if you got too out-of-control you could collapse a building or cause a monumental storm or something. you know. cool.

[image description: the same magic spectrum. medea is still there, placed exactly where she was before. leovald’s face is also there, right above hers; in terms of magic, they are equally placed on the spectrum. leovald is labeled “runs the whole city” and medea is labeled “lives in a cave in the woods,” both in white text. there are three thinking emojis at the very top of the image.]

funny how these things work out.

in conclusion

in conclusion, if you’ve read all of this, you’re braver than the marines and have my undying love. if you’re down here for a tl;dr: magic is a natural force everyone is born with; some magic is comparatively harder to control; classism & other social structures affect the way a person’s magic is viewed (there are a lot of double standards); i really enjoy making little oc diagrams.

if you have questions, comments, etc, about this post or darkling in general, my ask box is always open! thank you for reading! [blowing you a kiss]

#i dream of hitting leovald stayer with rocks <3 #anyway this is terribly long but i had a friend scan through it and they said it was comprehensive and helpful so! #oh also i hope the image descriptions work i should start doing those... if anyone has concrit on that come shout into my inbox #this post could also be called 'reasons why jasper acts like a neurotic prey animal all the time' #though i did try not to delve into specific characters unless i was using them as examples. this here crash course doesn't need 2 get longer #max.txt #darkling tag #leovald stayer #ara greenwood #griffin greenwood #medea the witch #vee greenwood #jasper greenwood

[ikenugs]

I saw you were taking asks! I was wondering if you could do like Beach Headcannons for the After L!Fe Reapers? Since 20 is a lot, I'll just name 5 characters for now. Cyrille, Aitachi, Kirr, Verine, and Nine. Love youu~~~💕💕🥰🥰

Of course, but I want to do all 20 of them, just I'll do it in parts so I can have a break in between them. Also love you too @yourfriendlyneighborhoodninja8 🥰🥰🥰

Beach Fun times w/ The Reapers Part 1.

Verine

So this sickly little bean is quite weak, especially to the sunlight and heat, so he just lays on a towel under an umbrella quite a ways away from the water

Cause if he went in the water, being like a fragile feather, he would probably float lol. Definitely be swept away by the current

Though he would probably benefit from the vitamin D lmao

He kinda just relaxes with Sian (secretly composing music), who hums a rhythm that softly lulls him to sleep

Let's be honest here, even after spending hours out on the beach, despite laying under an umbrella, there's no way he would get tan. He just always has this pale greenish tint that even the sun itself can't fix

Quincy kept pestering him about sunscreen, they bicker quite a lot but Verine is just the kind of person even a devil couldn't help but feel sympathy for. Despite Quincy claiming that, "I am not worried, I just simply don't want to stare at whatever monstrosity red and green combination his face would turn from a sunburn, when I wake tomorrow morning, " We all know he's just a worried sweetie and does care

Nine could catch the wistful stares of Verine as he gazed at everyone, it was impossible to ease the longing in his heart. I mean, how could he not wish to be like everyone else? To be able to do the things they all took for granted....

Ghilley with his silent footsteps scared the poor babies out of their wits

Aitachi

You see, the thing about Aitachi, is that he explicitly states that he fears water, swimming, and seafood, so this boi is gonna have a difficult time

He automatically just REFUSED to go near the sea, it scared the poor child so bad he stayed WAY far back from the shoreline.

One thing he did enjoy doing was building various different sand castles, which he did with his buddy Kirr. They had kinda formed a kinship because of their similar backgrounds. They had fun building fortresses with the sand and even brought a lobster over to defend his masterpiece

A little way through he felt that he was keeping Kirr from playing in the water and as a sorry brought him over to a small patch of grass and flowers. He taught him how to make a bead/plant weaved decoration that was a traditional piece his tribe made for hair, to put in Kirr's braid.

Kirr totally had an uwu moment for the precious child Ghilley sat watching everything behind the scenes with his familiar smile "so cute,"

Kirr

Built mini empires in the sand with Aitachi, and really had no intention of getting in the water anyways.

As, as a huntsman he never really learned to enjoy the water. Since he lived in the freezing snowy mountains, he avoided water as much as possible as that meant a guaranteed death, by hypothermia.

Ok, ok, hear me out. So, Kirr rounding up all of the crabs, clams, and lobsters to protect them from the others that wanted to eat them (others = Ethan) for dinner, to capture them. So, he just owns his own colony of marine life.

He WILL fight you you if you even try to come near his sweet animals with I'll intent, he'll straight SLAY you

HIS OWN CRAB CULT, TELL ME THAT'S SOMETHING HE WOULDN'T DO

Btw he really hates seafood (not as much as Aitachi though, that boi straight slaps seafood out of your hands if you eat it around him, Verine learned that the hard way ;;) but his kind innocent heart makes him wanna protecc them.

They're friends not food, he's just a pure and soft baby

HIS OWN SEAFOOD COLONY I CAN'T JSJSN

He wore the beads Aitachi made him WITH PRIDE, he didn't take it off until he HAD to, and that was when he took a shower. He still keeps it in his wardrobe.

Nine

This mans has a loner soul, so he would take a peaceful stroll along the shoreline, basking in his own solitude

He really enjoyed the breath taking views the beach portrayed, the way the baby blue of the sky merged with the dark ocean waves.

Along his walk he stopped to collect the crystalline sea shells on the sand, he would keep a few for memories sake, but give the majority of them to the Manager as a gift.

Another one of his favorite things to do is people watch, he observed the others playfully enjoying their time. He noticed that the activities they chose to spend their time doing reflected their personalities

Whenever anyone complained about over heating, Nine would just mysteriously appear armed and ready with his fan what a queen he's just straight up a portable ac

Also partook in the meditation session held by the farmer boi Jamie, probably one of his favorite parts

Warning: You might ACTUALLY learn things from Cyrille's hahah, feel free to skip his. But tbh I learned more researching for this headcannon then I learned in all my years of science class lol.

Cyrille

Cyrille wandered off shortly after they arrived, he noticed a form of algae growing on the waters surface, and "captured it" in one of the petri dishes he always has on hand.

He observed it closely to find the similarities between the algae and bacteria, his specialty.

Let's check in to see a sample of what he's mumbling to himself!

"Frankly speaking, they both appear in water, though algae appears exclusively in marine environments, whilst bacteria can grow in just about anywhere" (Bacteria he's talking about is oxygenic photosynthetic bacteria :)))

"Both do go through the process of photosynthesis, despite that neither are truly plants, as bacteria and algae are both only one-celled prokaryotic organisms, meaning the unicellular beings don't contain the necessary organelle to completely function as a.... --"

We don't know what he's studying either 😅😅 We need it in stupid terms lol. Maybe now he's stopped.......??

"Another key difference is that algae is the base of a food chain, while bacteria completes a food chain (decomposing) --"

Never mind......let's just leave his intelligent studies to himself. He finds these studies much more fun than swimming anyways.

I realize now that maybe I should have done the reapers in their teams, but it's too late now. But Aitachi and Kirr make such a good pair.

#afterl!fe #afterl!fe nine #afterl!fe verine #afterl!fe aitachi #afterl!fe kirr #afterl!fe cyrille #afterl!fe headcannon #i loved this idea #i wrote pages and pages about this idea in my notebook #im in for a long time lol #im pretty happy with it #im pretty excited!!!

[ellaoftarth]

Ch. 1; the anatomy of an introduction

here’s the first chapter of the science-centric Modern AU Braime. I’m not sure what to call it and whether or not to post it on either fanfiction.net or ao3. Let me know if it’s worth continuing?

Brienne walked into the lab, her earbuds already in, wanting to get some work done before her new coworker arrived. When Dr. Baratheon, the head of the Microbiology Department, had first mentioned the new project to Brienne, she was weary. Not because of the person she would be working with, she hadn’t known of him at that point, but because someone else would be intruding in her lab space, her space.

Earlier in the week, she had emailed her new coworker, Jaime Lannister. He was an animal behaviorist and pathologist who worked in another department. She read back over the email exchange at the computer once more, confirming the time he was supposed to be arriving this morning:

Dr. Lannister,

My name is Dr. Brienne Tarth, and I wanted to connect with you before we began our project together this coming Thursday. Dr. Baratheon said that you have been having issues with the death rates of brown bears on the wildlife reserve and wanted to consult the microbiology department to determine if there is a molecular cause. If you can, please bring a sample with you from one of the bear’s digestive tracts; I’d like to see if this is perhaps diet related. Dr. Baratheon mentioned that you have been doing autopsies for the last few months. I’d be very interested in reading those over as well, if you wouldn’t mind bringing them along. I look forward to meeting you on Thursday, the 7th at 9 am.

Best,

Dr. Brienne Tarth

Microbiologist at the Westeros Institute.

To her dismay, the reply she received was outrageously informal and unhelpful;

Sounds good, will do.  

-Jaime

Brienne rolled her eyes, uneasy with anticipation at meeting Dr. Lannister. To keep busy, she set to cleaning her workspace. Her lab was neat, as she always kept it, though there were always things that needed done; dishes to be washed and autoclaved, samples to be checked. Putting on a new playlist, she set about to cleaning the empty erlenmeyer flasks in the sink.

Once they were on the drying rack, she decided to make a basic media, in the case that Dr. Lannister brought the samples she asked him to and they were able to culture them. While she prepared it, she hummed along to the music. Between that and making the media, she was so  focused that she hadn’t realized someone else was in the room until she felt the tap on her shoulder.

Brienne instantly removed her earbuds and turned around to see a man laughing lightly at her. She couldn’t help but note how attractive his smile was, though she disdained him for catching her off guard.

“May I help you?” She asked. It was only 8:30 and she hoped that this didn’t turn out to be Dr. Lannister.

“Can you find your supervisor? I’m supposed to be meeting Brienne Tarth here.” He looked at the pile of petri dishes in front of her and smirked, “she keeps her lab assistants pretty busy, huh?”

Before Brienne could even answer, Dr. Baratheon walked into the lab.

“Ah, Jaime! I thought I saw you walk by. I see you two are getting to know each other.” He said, smiling warmly.

Jaime’s eyes widened and it was Brienne’s turn to smirk at him. “My apologies, Brienne,” Jaime started, having the decency to look slightly embarrassed, though laughter still remained in his eyes, “I didn’t realize that that was you. Usually my lab assistants are the ones cleaning the lab and getting it prepped for experiments.”

“How kind of them,” Brienne said flatly. She turned away from Lannister, “Dr. Baratheon, will you be joining us this morning?”

“No,” he said, looking between the two as if sensing the hostility between them, “I just wanted to make sure you were introduced.” He cleared his throat in the awkward silence that answered, “I guess I’ll leave you to it.”

As he walked out, Jaime asked curiously, “You call him Dr. Baratheon?”

“Yes, why does that matter?” Brienne was already growing irritated.

“Just, if you are in fact a doctor, then you are colleagues, are you not? Why don’t you call him Renly?”

“If I am a doctor? Just what are you implying?” Brienne asked harshly.

Jaime could tell he was getting under her skin and Brienne could tell he was enjoying it. He leaned on the desk between them. She could see the missing button on the collar of his shirt that peaked out from under his sweater.

Jaime shrugged, “You just seem a bit young. That’s why I thought you were a lab assistant.”

Brienne didn’t care to explain herself to him, but she was insulted. “This may be my first year here as a doctor of microbiology but I assure you I am fully qualified. As qualified as you are in your specialty, Dr. Lannister.” She continued, “And I’ll have you know that I address Dr. Baratheon as such because he was my mentor here before I earned my degree and I prefer to continue to address him with the respect he deserves.”

Jaime was quiet for a moment, nodding. But the smirk broke out on his face again, “And you address me as Dr. Lannister. Should I be grateful that you think I deserve such a respect?”

Brienne’s eyes narrowed, “It’s more that I’d rather keep things professional between us, Dr. Lannister. I don’t see us becoming acquaintances in the near future.” Brienne walked around the lab table to discard the gloves she was still wearing, but Jaime stepped in front of her, stopping her mere inches in front of him.

“What a shame, because I thought we were getting along so well,” Jaime’s voice was thick with sarcasm. But it wasn’t malicious. In fact, it seemed to break the tension that had been building between them. Jaime laughed, lightly this time, and stepped aside so that Brienne could get through.

She sighed in relief. As she threw away her gloves and replaced them with new ones, she took a moment to compose herself. Then, she turned around and met Jaime’s eyes. “Alright, would you like to tell me what we’re working with?”

Jaime pulled the backpack off of his back and took out the small, tightly sealed box from an ice bag. “Here are the samples you requested. It seems that whatever disease or pathogen the bear came into contact with spread quite quickly; it was healthy one day and dead the next. There doesn’t seem to be anything suspicious from the autopsy. I can’t find any preliminary cause, but it has to be something external; bears don’t just drop dead. I don’t think you’ll find anything, though, since no one else has been able to. I didn’t really want to waste your time or mine, but, you know, protocol.”

“I do appreciate the insinuation that I’ll be a complete waste of time,” Brienne countered bitterly, inspecting the samples, “But, perhaps let me do my job before making such judgements?”

Jaime put his hands up, as if to show his concession to let her work.

“Thank you,” she said tersely, and began to spread the samples out onto the plates she had prepared. She explained to him, “I’m just going to grow these overnight. Hopefully we’ll see some growth of the microflora from the bear’s gut and we’ll be able to sequence the microbiome from there to determine if there is anything suspicious.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jaime said, unenthused.

“You sound so concerned. Don’t animal behaviorists usually care about the animals they’re studying?”

“Usually,” Jaime agreed. “I didn’t really want this project, to be honest. My specialty is mountain lions, but because this issue is becoming more pronounced, they reassigned me for the time being.”

“I see,” Brienne said. “Well, at least we both don’t want to be here.” At his laugh, her lips twitched upwards in a smile.

While she plated the samples, Jaime watched her hands. While they were rather large and strong, they moved with such fluidity, streaking the plates, spreading the sample. When he noticed himself staring, he shook his head, and forced himself to make small talk. “So, how long has Renly been your mentor?”

“About 4 years, though I’ve known him since I got my Bachelor’s degree. I began working here, as a lab assistant, mind you,” he could almost hear her roll her eyes, “and he went out of his way to teach me as much as he could. No one saw potential in me the way he did. When I started working towards my PhD, he continued formally as my mentor.”

“You sound quite fond of him,” Jaime remarked, “Perhaps respect isn’t the only reason you call him Dr. Baratheon; perhaps you need the reminder, to bury any… improper feelings?”

Brienne’s voice was cutting, “Oh, yes, you’ve figured me out, haven’t you! I can’t bear to see Dr. Baratheon happy with his husband instead of me and I just-“ Brienne turned around to see Jaime quietly laughing. He was only joking, just riling her up again.

“You really are quite easy to read and provoke, you know? Almost easier to pick apart than that bear was.”

“Lovely of you to compare me to the bear you just dissected,” Brienne snapped back. She couldn’t decide if he was intending to be irritating or playful with his banter. She didn’t necessarily want to find out.

She plated the last sample and looked at Jaime, “Well, that’s that. I don’t suppose you have any interest in me looking over anything else?” She looked at hime, expecting him to be eager to leave her and her department.

“Here,” he said, handing over a binder. “It’s my report so far, as well as other similar cases in the past month. Look it over and let me know if you have any input. While I don’t exactly understand why you would choose to look at this from a perspective you can’t even see with the naked eye, I suppose there’s a reason a microbiological analysis is part of the protocol. Let me know if you have any input?”

Brienne nodded, surprised. “If you’d like to come back tomorrow and look over the cultures with me, we can maybe determine if there’s anything worth sequencing.”

“Sure,” Jaime grinned, “I’ll be back tomorrow, then, Brienne,” he emphasized her first name, as he turned to leave.

She smirked, “See you around, lion boy,” she laughed as he did a double take, looking shocked. “Informal enough for you?” While she was loathe to admit it, she could imagine that working with Jaime Lannister could be quite fun. Well, irritating, but fun.

#braime #modern day au

[snickerl]

The Birds and the Bees Through the Years

Alternative X-Files universe where Scully is allowed to raise both of her children, telling them how babies are made at different stages in their lives.

tagging @today-in-fic

CHAPTER 3/? - GLASS BOWL

"What's up, Will? Did you have a good day at school?"

It's always the same question he gets asked when he returns home. Either by his mom or by his dad, depending on who sees him first. Sometimes his parents are both away on a case and his grandma takes care of him. She doesn't ask him this annoying question he doesn't want to answer. He doesn't want to talk about school as soon as he leaves the building. His grandma understands, his parents always want to know. William thinks that might be the difference between parents and grandparents, the former want to educate and raise you and make you a better person, the latter just want to spoil and love you. His parents love him too, William knows. Still, his only answer to his mother's question is a non-committal, "hmpf."

"What's that supposed to mean? Mind talking to your mother in whole sentences?" She isn't letting him off the hook, and actually today there is something the boy would like to share.

"Jimmy is such a liar, mom!"

Jimmy is his friend since kindergarten, but from time to time they argue about something and today is one of those days. William's still confused about what came up in school today.

"He said his parents made him in a glass bowl and that's why he's so bright and gets A's in maths all the time."

Scully looks up from the kitchen sink where she's been doing the dishes. "Oh? You've gotten your maths results today?"

"Yup."

"And what have you got?"

"B+," the boy huffs, signaling he's not happy about it.

"That's perfectly fine, Will. Congratulation."

Scully hates it when her son is never satisfied with his accolades. Ambition is a good thing, so is stamina and will-power, but he's also just a kid who should enjoy life. Scully remembers her own ride through school all the way until graduating from medical school. She spent too much time with her nose in her books and too little out with her friends. It had earned her the best grades but her social life had fallen a bit by the wayside. It had become a recurring pattern in her life. For a long time, her job had played the most important part she sacrificed family dinners and free weekends for. Even a date once in a while. Her priorities hadn't shifted until she became a mother. First, of a three-year-old girl she adopted and then, three years later, of a baby boy who turned eight last month and is upset about something she hasn't got a clue of yet.

"But Jimmy got an A."

"I don't care what your friends get and neither should you. You've had problems with that particular topic." Text problems, of all kind. The child that was able to read at the age of four had difficulties solving maths text problems. Scully believed it had something to do with compartmentalizing. For William, reading didn't have anything to do with maths. He read the text but just didn't see the maths behind it. It had taken quite a few private lessons until he understood how to approach the task. "But that didn't keep you from making an effort. You studied hard and you are redeemed with a very good grade. You don't have to be perfect, honey, or the best of your class. We love you no matter what grade you're bringing home. And I bet Jimmy's parents tell him just the same."

"But he still is a liar."

"In what sense a liar?"

"Because he brags about being made in a laboratory. He says he's some kind of superhuman because a scientist created him in a glass bowl. But babies are made in the bedroom by their moms and dads when they like each other very much, right?"

Scully clears her throat before she answers. She feels they are approaching difficult territory. "You're right, William, most babies are made when their parents make love to each other in bed, but not all of them. Jimmy might have told you the truth, it's possible he was conceived by artificial insemination."

"Artificial what?"

"Insemination. It means the mother's egg and father's sperm are brought together outside the woman's body."

"In a glass bowl?"

"Well, it's called a petri dish, but yes, it's more or less a glass bowl, rather a small, shallow saucer. The procedure is also called in-vitro fertilization. In vitro is Latin and means within a glass, observable in a test tube or any kind of artificial environment."

"And it's done to make smarter babies?"

"No, it's done when a couple wants to have children but can't the natural way. In the bedroom." She clears her throat again. Talking to her children about the birds and the bees has never been easy for her. Making it sound like a lesson in biology class is her MO most of the time.

"Oh."

"It's a demanding procedure. It puts the future parents under a lot of stress, especially the mothers, but also the fathers. It's not much fun. And it costs quite a bit of money. Only couples that have tried for a baby without success for a long time would try in-vitro."

"Hmmm."

William lets the information sink in. His mother is always good at explaining those things to him. It's so much easier to ask her than to look it up in a book. She seems to be a resource for any kind of topic. "How come you know so much about everything, mom? Even about this in-vitro stuff," he marvels.

"I'm a medical doctor, remember?"

"But you examine corpses to find out why they died, you don't create babies."

He has a point, Scully has to admit. She works on the opposite side of the spectrum. She doesn't deal with the creation of life but with its termination. Some of her classmates at medical school chose to specialize in gynecology exactly for that reason, to be working in a medical field that entailed joy and health and not mainly sorrow and illness. She deals not only with illness but with murder, crime, and death. She's being called when the worst things have happened and nothing she can do will help the victims, their families, and friends. All she can do is help find the offenders and bring them to justice.

Scully struggles a bit with what she should reply, then decides her son is old enough to understand. "I have first-hand experience, Will."

"What? I'm also a test tube baby?"

"No," she hurries to erase that thought from his mind, "no, you're not."

"Emily?"

"Daddy and I adopted Emily, remember? You know she came to live with us when she was three years old." It's only half the truth, but Emily hasn't been told the story of her genesis yet, and she can't learn from her little brother. Mulder and Scully have been procrastinating the conversation with their daughter so far, waiting for the right moment. The moment just never seems right.

"Ah, right. So where does your first-hand experience come from then, mom?"

Eagerness for knowledge. It characterizes every child, but William in particular. He drinks in information like a sponge. Scully sighs barely audible. Now that she has started, she has to finish.

"I was once told that I couldn't have children. Doctors call it barren or infertile. I suffered from a condition that prevented for me to conceive a baby naturally."

"In the bedroom. With daddy."

"Um...yes."

"What condition?"

Tenacity, thy name is William. Scully puts her thoughts into an order for a moment, tries to think of the right words to explain it to an eight-year-old.

"A woman's body usually contains enough eggs to provide one every month to get inseminated by a man's sperm. If this happens, the egg starts dividing and settles down in the uterus. The woman is pregnant. The baby grows and nine months later it's born. My condition was called Premature Ovarian Failure which means that there were no eggs in my ovaries, and without an egg, there couldn't be a baby."

Thank God for science. As long as Scully can quote from one of her textbooks, even if it's one explaining the wonder of propagation to children, she's on a secure footing. She once read in a guidebook for parents that it's important to respect the child's natural curiosity without being judgmental, that if she avoids these talks, her children won't learn her values about sex, but will develop their own from what they hear from friends and the media. And she doesn't want that to happen. From a psychology professor, she heard that the most important thing is for a parent to explain the difficult topic without seeming anxious, that the child picks up the melody line, not the exact words. Both children have come to her in mysterious, inexplicable ways but she doesn't want either of them to believe they were an anomaly or some kind of freak.

"But mom, where is the baby daddy and you made in this...uh, what is the bowl called again?"

Answer the questions as they come, that's what the guidebook also said. Don't overload a child with information but don't try to steer the conversation elsewhere either. Scully wants to be an 'ask-able' parent, doesn't want her children to think the topic is a taboo in their family.

"Petri dish. There is no guarantee the procedure works, actually it fails more often than it is successful. We tried twice but it didn't take it. We don't have any other children besides Emily and you."

"Okay, but how come I exist then? If dad and you couldn't make babies in the bedroom neither in a petri dish?"

Once again, William's quick thinking mind, his wit and ability to always see the bigger picture surprises Scully, in a pleasant way.

"You, my son, are a miracle," she whispers in an uneven voice, stroking his hair lovingly.

To this day, Scully is still clueless how it had been possible for her to become pregnant. The only logical explanation would be that they hadn't been thorough enough when they took the ova from her. Somewhere in her ovarian tubes there had to be an egg hiding from the insidious harvesters, waiting for the right moment to make its voyage one fine day to join up with a sperm, Mulder's sperm. When she calculates back from the day William was born, she must have conceived him during one of their first times in bed. What a lucky stroke of fate. It seems that at least once in their lives the stars had aligned and fate had been on their side.

A pair of cerulean blue eyes just like her own stare at her, spanned by the cutest wrinkled forehead Scully has ever seen, for the boy tries hard to throw his mother an appraising look. The only thing missing is that he quirks his left eyebrow, and when he does, Scully almost laughs at the smaller version of herself. Are gestures and facial expressions hereditary or has she looked at him like this so often that he imitates her subconsciously?

Don't overload your child with information, rings in the back of Scully's head, another advice from one of the brochures she'd been reading about parenting when she became a mother. Going into detail about how science failed to provide an explanation for a natural conception would overwhelm the boy for sure.

"You are a miracle because you came to us at a moment of our lives we'd almost lost hope that something really good would ever happen to us. We had already accepted that Em would never get a little brother or sister, and suddenly, totally unexpected, you announced yourself. It was so out of the question that I could be expecting a baby that your father and I misinterpreted the first signs as symptoms of a serious illness. I didn't believe the doctor when he congratulated me on being pregnant. I truly thought he was making a joke."

"That would have been very mean of the doctor. I bet you were sad that you couldn't have children and playing a prank would've have been really nasty."

William is not only smart but also remarkably sensitive for a boy his age. In such moments, Scully sees the young Mulder in him, Mulder at a time he was still called Fox. An attentive, empathic, and caring boy and protective older brother to his sister Samantha.

"Yes, definitely. But he wasn't mean, he was being very nice actually."

"So, I'm not a test tube baby. I'm a completely normal child."

"Yes, you are."

"Normal is okay."

"More than okay."

"Even if I don't get A's?"

"Your school grades have nothing to do with what you're worth as a person, Will. I want you to remember that well. What really defines a person is their compassion, their ability to truly love another human being, to give instead of taking. When you think about yourself, I want you to pay attention to how you interact with others, with your friends, with your family, and most certainly not to a grade you got in maths."

"Hmmm," the boy lets his mother's words sink it. They seem heavy and significant, but there's something else bothering him.

"So, you chose Em as your child but you had to take what you got in me."

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Will." Her son's trains of thought take unpredictable turns sometimes.

"You saw her and liked her and then you decided to adopt her, but when I was born you had no choice, you had to keep me. Would you have adopted me too? I mean, if you had been given a chance to decide? If you had found me somewhere, in an orphanage or some other place, would you have chosen me or would you have looked for another kid? Someone you liked better?"

It takes Scully a moment to fully grasp the idea behind William's question. Usually, the adopted child in a family questions if they're being loved as much as the biological child. They are usually the ones who are unsure about their position in the family, not the biological one. Her son surprises her once again with the way he looks at things, with how he sees the world around him. She feels the urge to pull him close and shower him with kisses but she doubts he would appreciate this kind of answer. He needs a reasonable explanation he can verify.

"There is no difference between Emily and you as our children, William. I can speak for your father as much as I'm speaking for myself. We were blessed with two little individuals enriching our lives and it doesn't matter how we became a family, the only thing that matters is that we did. We're linked together by our love for each other, not by how we joined this family."

"Is that why grandma calls dad her son once in a while? Because he isn't her son, right? Uncle Bill and uncle Charlie are."

"Daddy is grandma's son-in-law. That is what he's called officially because he's married to me, her daughter. But she loves him just like she loves uncle Bill and uncle Charlie. Even before we were married, she loved him and treated him like family. See, love has nothing to do with how the other person came into your life. You either do love someone, or you don't."

"Complicated."

"Well, actually, it's quite simple. You'll understand better once you're older, sweetie."

"Ugh, mom, don't call me that! I'm not a baby anymore!"

"No, you're not," Scully admits, hiding her melancholy at how fast he has grown. "I'm sorry. William."

"Will is okay, but not sweetie or jellybean or pumkin or-"

"I got it, sugarplum." She grins and hurries to add, "just teasing."

"Good." The boy is really serious about this. "I'm going to also tell dad. I hate it when he calls me fuzzybear. Only because his parents chose to call him Fox doesn't give him the right to annoy his own children likewise. I wonder why Em still lets him call her kitten. I mean, seriously, she's all grown up."

She's fourteen, Scully thinks, and still their baby. They will always remain their babies, their sweetpeas, their angels, and it strikes her as funny that when it comes to naming their children, Mulder is even more prone than she to this syrupy tawdriness. The man who demands to be called by his last name picks of an embarrassment of riches coming up with pet names for his offspring. Maybe it's because he missed this kind of fluffiness as a kid, the sugary sweetness with which parents coat their children.

"What's for dinner?" William asks all of a sudden, letting go of the topic of his conception abruptly which, the guidebooks say, is typical for children his age.

"Chicken curry with rice," Scully answers somewhat relieved the conversation is over. It won't be the last time she will be bombarded with questions, either from him or Emily. She will be open and willing to answer each and every one of them.

"Oh, yum! I'm in my room, call me when it's done." He's already halfway up the stairs.

"I'll call you when the table needs to be set."

"Just as well," the boy shouts down from the landing, ten seconds later Scully hears his door slide shut.

She turns to the stove where the chicken curry has been simmering for almost an hour now, lifts the lid off the pot and stirs absentmindedly. She marvels at how mundane her life is at times. Preparing food, waiting for her husband to come and her family to gather at the dinner table. She worries more often about school, the grocery list and how fast her kids grow out of their shoes nowadays than liver-eating psychopaths, men regrowing body parts and immortal photographers, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Not at all.

Who would have thought life had this in store for her when young, green, ambitious Special Agent Dana Scully took her first ride down to the basement to meet her new partner?

She loves it, and she knows Mulder loves it as much.

#Dana Scully #William Mulder #glass bowl or petri dish? #animalistic pet names #fluff again

[annathewitch]

Falling, Ch 1: Physician’s Advice

Summary: Bones x Reader. Bones has been unbearably moody for a couple of days and you are sent to try and find out why.

Word Count: 2500

Warnings: Swearing, mild parental angst

A/N: This started as a ‘five times…’ idea for a Bones and Reader developing relationship, but got a bit longer than I intended. So this is part 1 of 6. I have not written for a long time, and this is my first reader insert. Be gentle!

“That man is impossible!” Christine Chapel declared as she stalked out of the CMO’s office and the door swooshed shut behind her. “Stubborn as a damned mule and twice as ornery! I swear I am this close to inflicting some kind of untraceable bodily harm on him!” Christine leaned in towards you gesturing with her thumb and forefinger a mere half inch apart. “Untraceable except for the fact that you just told the whole medbay. I think, technically, that counts as pre-meditation.” You pulled a chair out at the nurse’s station and encouraged Christine to sit down. “What did he do now?” “There’s a whole damn list, but the cherry on the fucking top was him telling Nurse Edouwu he is, and I quote, ‘a damned incompetent jackass who couldn’t tell a protoplaser from a petri dish’ and then yelling at me to ‘get my goddamn nurses under proper supervision before they fucking kill someone!’ I am the best damned nurse in the Fleet, and I did not sign up to put up with his shit.” The Head Nurse slammed her padd down on the desk with enough force to make you wince. Doctor McCoy had a reputation for being a hard taskmaster, and for general grumpiness, but his behaviour over the last couple of days had been out of character even for him. His usual serious demeanour was now downright murderous. Nothing was done fast enough, or to his impossibly high standards. Nurse Edouwu was not the first of the medbay staff to feel his wrath, and everyone had been treading on eggshells waiting for the next explosion. If any further proof of how bad things were was needed, it was sitting slumped over the station in front of you. Christine Chapel, normally a beacon of competence and serenity, bringing order to chaos, and hitherto a McCoy-wrangler extraordinaire had used the f-word. Twice. You perched on the desk next to her, eyeing her with concern.

“This is way beyond the boss’s usual grousing,” you observed. “The crew know it too. Ensign Matthews, you know, the big guy from security, practically begged me to fix him up without calling the doctor. He single-handedly took down four Sindarian rebels on that away mission last month, and he was terrified of McCoy. Did you ask what’s got his tricorder in a tangle?” Christine snorted. “Didn’t exactly get the chance. He was too busy tearing me a new one.” This was bad. Chapel and McCoy were usually a well oiled machine. The nurse looked up at you speculatively, “You know, maybe you should try talking to him.” “I value my current state of existence too much,” you laughed. “I’m not joking Y/N,” Chapel sighed running her hands through her usually immaculate blonde bob. “I’m at the end of my tether - contemplating criminal actions, remember? The Captain’s not back for another two days or I’d be begging him instead. You seem to have a way of getting patients to open up to you, and so far you’re practically the only nurse to have avoided being in the eye of the shitstorm. You must be doing something right.” “I have an uncanny ability to know when to duck and cover,” you deadpanned. “Yeah. Well think about it, please! I’m going on my break, can you at least hold the fort here? Maybe the urge to stab his annoying ass with a hypo of sonambutril will have dissipated by the time I get back.”

“Sure thing Chris.” Chapel hauled herself out of her chair and beat a hasty retreat, leaving you alone at the nurse’s station. The rest of Alpha shift seemed sensibly to have found things to occupy themselves in the lab or the stores. Getting up from your perch you crossed medbay to listen at McCoy’s office door. There was no discernible sound from within the lair of the dragon; perhaps having dispatched his most recent prey his anger was sated for the time being. Christine was right though, the current situation was untenable and something needed to be said. As one of the newest medical staff you weren’t quite sure you merited her confidence, McCoy had hardly discussed anything other than work with you barring the most fleeting mentions of family or shipwide gossip. He didn’t give much away. But you knew you were good at your job and he would have no reason to find fault with you for talking to him. Except for calling out your superior officer for being an asshole. You tried to tune out the annoying voice in your head, there was nothing wrong with offering a sympathetic ear. Nobody was going to be calling anyone out, despite the level of assholery reaching Defcon 1. In the spirit of peace and reconciliation, you decided that a gesture of goodwill was probably necessary and replicated up the biggest strongest black coffee possible in McCoy’s favourite ‘My Daddy is the best space doctor’ mug. It had clearly been personalised by a much younger Joanna, who had painted a little stick man with a blue shirt, a shock of brown hair and a disproportionately large stethoscope, and signed it with a handprint. It had always amused you that the stick McCoy wasn’t wearing any pants. Summoning up your courage you knocked on the doctor’s office door and waited to be admitted to the belly of the beast. Something was barked from within and you took it as a sign to enter. McCoy was sat behind his desk, elbows resting on the glass top and head in his hands. He was surrounded by piles of padds, interspersed with empty coffee mugs. A plate with a half eaten and unidentifiable sandwich teetered precariously on the edge of the surface. He appeared to be studying one padd in front of him with particular intensity. “Dammit Chapel what do you want now? I said my decision was final, and what part of do not interrupt me do you not understand?” the doctor snapped without looking up. “Um, sorry sir but Chapel went on her break after your…er…meeting. It’s nearly the start of Beta shift and I thought maybe you could use a coffee?” You hung back in the open doorway so as not to appear threatening, and offered the mug out to McCoy. At the sound of your unexpected voice, he looked up. He had clearly been brooding about something. Frown lines seemed etched across his forehead and his normally precisely parted hair was sticking up in all directions. He looked surprisingly like stick McCoy. Except with pants. He regarded you suspiciously for a moment. You were glad he couldn’t tell you were thinking about him sitting behind his desk with no pants on. “Either come in or go away Y/L/N. Stop loitering in the door,” he bit out. “Did Chapel send you in as her damn spy?” You fought the urge to turn around and leave him to stew. “No. I was trying to be nice. It’s a somewhat underrated quality.” You arched your eyebrow at McCoy, approaching his desk to set the mug down. He sniffed at it and grunted something that you chose to interpret as thanks. “Besides, I think Christine is way beyond spying. You would do better to ask if she’d poisoned your coffee.” He scowled, jabbing a finger in your direction. “I don’t need niceness, I’m too damn busy doing my job to worry about treading on a few toes. And I don’t need to be lectured by one of my junior nursing staff. I simply expect all of you to do your damned jobs too. If anyone has difficulty with that concept, they can get the hell out of my medbay! Is that a problem Nurse Y/L/N?”

McCoy sat back in his chair and watched you as you digested his words, an unreadable expression on your face. Was being left the hell alone to contemplate his own inadequacies too much to ask? To his surprise you pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down with a sigh. “Well, if you don’t need niceness, I won’t sugar coat this Doctor McCoy. No, I don’t have a problem with doing my job or being expected to do it to a high standard, that’s only fair. And, even if you have a questionable bedside manner and are terrible at being diplomatic, you’re a good doctor and usually fair. But, scaring patients, expecting the impossible from staff and making them cry when they don’t achieve it, bellowing unreasonable orders? Whatever is going on with you, frankly, right now you’re just behaving like an ass. Sir,” you added as an afterthought. So much for not calling him out. You might as well have lobbed a pulse grenade into his office. McCoy was staring, speechless, eyebrows raised at an impossible angle. Hell, he’d been surprised anyone had the nerve to interrupt him for anything less than a breakout of Teenaxian plague. But for you, the newest member of his staff, to swan in with your coffee and your sass and coolly point out the deficiencies in his conduct like he was some misbehaving toddler, well, he just couldn’t find the words. Any words. Finding himself in this unfamiliar position he emitted an indecipherable growling sound and picked up the cup of coffee. Taking a long sip, he tried to buy some time to formulate a response. He should write you up for insubordination. But dammit if his conscience wasn't sitting pretty as you please in a pristine nurse’s uniform just over the desk. One corner of his mouth twitched in a fleeting half smile at the absurdity of it. You had a point. It was not that McCoy was completely oblivious to the effects of his black mood, but he was worried and distracted and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to care. Now he felt like twice the failure. The thick silence between you drew on and you fidgeted uneasily in your chair. As he scrutinised you McCoy’s expression had shifted from shock, through something you couldn’t place and finally settled into a frown. He glared at the mug in his hands. “Have you ever had your heart broken Y/L/N?” Well that was not the response you had expected. “Uh… I guess so. I mean yeah?” Shit. Had he been dumped? How the hell were you supposed to counsel your superior officer about his love life? “Is that what all this is about…sir?” Your voice squeaked a little and you felt your cheeks heat. The Doctor’s eyes flicked up and met yours in confusion. “What?” His face flamed as he realised the conclusion you had drawn, “Hell, no! I’m not mooning over some damn woman!” You should have realised that. From what you had seen, McCoy never seemed to be away from the medbay for long enough to pursue any kind of romantic attachment, and on the occasions you had crossed paths in the rec rooms he was invariably with the Captain and Commander Spock. McCoy regarded you, trying to decide whether to continue with this mortifying conversation. Eventually he sighed, shutting himself in his office hadn’t helped. He indicated to the padd in front of him, pushing it in your direction. “It’s Joanna. She sent me a message two days ago to tell me she broke up with her first boyfriend. I’ve spent the last two days trying to work out what the hell to write back to make it better. My baby girl is hurting and I’m halfway across the damn galaxy. I can’t do a damn thing. I’m goddamn useless Y/F/N.” You glanced over the comm from Joanna. The poor kid was heartbroken. It appeared that the boy in question had moved on to one of the popular girls at school and had told Joanna she was too weird for being obsessed with science. The boy was clearly an immature little jerk, but his actions had obviously knocked her confidence. McCoy had picked up the mug and was staring at it again.

“Jo made me this the first Christmas after the divorce. She was so excited to see me and so proud of her present.” He placed his hand over the much smaller painted handprint. “Now it seems like five minutes have passed, she’s all grown up and I missed it Y/F/N, I missed everything important and now I don’t know what she needs. Her mother is right, I’m a damn pathetic excuse for a father.” His voice was gruff with emotion. Running his hands through his hair and grasping the back of his neck, McCoy slumped back in his chair. Embarrassed, he avoided your gaze, his tired hazel eyes steadfastly regarding his lap. For some reason he didn’t want to see the look of disappointment as you realised he was an abject failure. “Doctor…” He braced himself for another dose of your honesty. “I… I’m not a parent, so maybe I’m not the best person to give you advice… but I just think maybe Joanna just needs to know that you think she is perfect the way she is. If I could, I’d tell her it really sucks right now, and it’s going to take a little patience, but there’s someone out there who thinks that female scientists rock.” “If I was dirtside, this would be simple. I’d kick his ass into next Sunday,” McCoy grumbled. “What, you mean you’d be the scary, overprotective father? No way, I’d never have guessed,” you laughed. “I guess it doesn’t hurt to tell her you think the kid is a dumbass too.” “Think she’ll believe me if I tell her all boys are dumbasses and she should ignore them until she’s twenty five?” He pulled the padd back towards him, “But seriously, You really think that’s all she needs?” “Its a start.” You shrugged. “You know, I wish someone had told me that I was perfect when I was her age. It took me a long time to understand that I didn’t have to be anyone but myself, and that if someone really loved me they would accept me and all my many faults.” You smiled wryly at McCoy and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly in return. “I guess I have a message to write then.” “I’ll leave you to it.” You got to your feet and started picking up the dirty crockery from the desk. McCoy reached out and stopped your hand with his. He looked up at you seriously.

“I really fucked up the past couple of days, didn’t I?” “Yup.” He winced. While you understood now why he had been unbearable, it still didn’t make it right. “Chapel is never going to forgive me, is she?” “Im not going to lie, sir, it’s pretty bad. She said fuck. Twice.” McCoy groaned. “I don’t think it’s irretrievable, but it’s going to take some grovelling. You could start by doing all the overdue paperwork.” You gestured to the piles of padds. “It seems I haven’t been doing either the CMO thing or the parenting thing very well lately,” he said regretfully. You squeezed his hand. “If it helps, I don’t know many teenage girls who would want to talk to their daddy about this kind of stuff. It must be hard, being so far away, but I reckon you must be doing something right. And the other stuff… Your team respect you, usually. We’d cut you some slack if you’d let us.” McCoy nodded, unable for the second time that day to speak. And if you noticed that his eyes were a little teary, well he was exhausted dammit. He watched you pick up the last of the mugs, and wondered just how you had managed to make him forget his insecurities. Even if it was just for a little while, he felt lighter, as though he was capable of dealing with whatever the universe threw at him next. You moved to open the door. “I’ll see you’re not disturbed unless there’s an outbreak of Teenaxian plague, Doctor.” Backlit by the harsh light of medbay, it appeared to McCoy that you gave out an aura of light. Somehow the illusion made him feel like he was really seeing you for the first time and he found himself holding a breath. Beautiful. “Y/F/N?” You looked back at him from the doorway, a small smile playing on your lips. Something swooped in his stomach. “Darlin’ any guy who didn’t tell you you were perfect the way you are, he's a dumbass.”

#leonard mccoy #bones mccoy #star trek reader insert #leonard mccoy x reader #bones x reader

[justjessame]

Early Warning Chapter 5

Riley spent the next morning keeping Ben company while Reed studied Sue and Johnny. First, she put on some music to help her think. Her playlists included things for cleaning (solid AC/DC and metal, cleaning sucked, right?), cooking (always a pleasure so Imagine Dragons and Hozier), and writing (depended on the topic). She clicked up the cooking playlist and began.

First on the agenda was finding a better way for Ben to eat. Already half of Reed’s silverware was mangled. Sadly his massive hands and newly acquired strength weren’t made for regular utensils. She was ignoring the amount of shattered drinkware.

As she cooked him a full breakfast complete with fresh squeezed orange juice, she contemplated the dilemma. Searching the drawers in Reed’s kitchen, she shocked Ben with a happy squeal. She held up a large cooking spoon, a meat fork, and a butcher knife and did a happy dance as Ben chuckled.

“Nearly as ingenious as your brother, lil sis.” His gravelly voice offered as he took his new set of flatware. He smiled as he used them for the first time on her well prepared breakfast. She followed up the first discovery by giving him a plastic pitcher full of orange juice.

Riley felt accomplished and extremely proud. One issue down. Around 1,000 more to go.

They sat and joked about past visits, killing time until Reed’s attention would focus on Ben’s turn in the petri dish. They were leaning over the photo album Riley carried with her everywhere and reminiscing about the past. It was filled with photos of her and Reed throughout the years. Their parents and Ben were also featured prominently. So engrossed with laughter at some of the passing years’ memories brought to the forefront by the pictures, they didn’t notice when the others joined them.

“What are you two so fascinated over?” Reed asked, taking a look over Riley’s shoulder. “Dear God, put that away.” His voice was heavy with embarrassment.

“Come on, Reed,” Ben chuckled, his mood vastly improved by the morning with his adopted little sister’s company. “Not ALL the pictures are embarrassing. The one at Riley’s graduation is pretty decent.”

“It’s at the very end of the book.” Reed protested. Sue and Johnny were looking far too interested for his sanity.

Riley giggled, “Look, big brother, no one picked out those clothes for you.” She rolled her eyes at his silent pleading. “I’ll put it away.” She stashed it in a nearby drawer. “How was whatever it was that you were doing?”

Reed launched into an explanation that she had no hope of understanding. In fact, aside from Sue, she doubted anyone else present in the kitchen could hope to keep up with her brother’s scientific mumbo jumbo. While he kept blathering on, she set about making the others breakfast. Frying eggs, sausage, bacon, toasting bread and squeezing oranges for more fresh juice. She hip checked Ben to reach for the butter. She didn’t realize that she had a captive audience. Johnny watched while Riley flitted around the kitchen, smiling as she practically danced while keeping the breakfast cooking. Her brother kept talking about his findings, but like him, she showed little interest. When she bumped her hip against Ben’s, he wished she was touching him.

Putting plates, glasses, and non-destroyed silverware in front of the three of them, she filled their plates and poured juice. Reed stopped talking when he noticed his full plate. While losing himself in the excitement of his research, he hadn’t noticed his sister fixing breakfast.

“Looks wonderful, Riley.” He offered, taking up his silverware. The first bite made him make an almost inhuman moan. “I forgot how good your cooking is, good God.”

Smirking she leaned against the counter. “Now that he’s quiet,” she glanced at the others. “Dig in!” They did and she felt that at least she’d kept them fed.

Johnny took a bite and had to hold back his own moan. Damn, how did she make regular breakfast food taste so amazing? He wondered what other talents she had and flashed to the night before-the bathroom, her wet- He felt a sharp poke in his side. Sue had pulled him out of his thoughts.

“What?” He glared at his sister. She pointed at his hand, it was steaming, as was the rest of him. “Shit.” He dropped the fork before he could melt it.

“Having some steam thoughts, flame boy?” Ben gave a gravely chuckle.

Riley bit her lip, fairly certain where Johnny’s train of thought had led, but sobered when she reconsidered. She was most definitely NOT the only naked woman he’d ever seen. Hell, she couldn’t be sure she was the only naked woman he’d seen this week. Sighing she sat another, cool fork down in front of him.

“Once you cool off, try this one.” She offered, starting for her rooms on the other side of the building. “I cooked, clean up is up to you!” And she was gone.

Johnny felt confused. He was sure that she knew what caused the embarrassing display. He’d seen her bite her totally kissable lip, saw the look in her eyes, and then it was gone. And so was she. He wanted to rush through the amazing breakfast she’d made and rush after her, but he couldn’t, at least not yet.

On the other side of the building, Riley sat at the desk in her room and faced her computer. She needed to spend at least some time writing, she told herself. Refusing to admit that she just ran away from the kitchen and one of the literally hottest men she’d ever met.

Opening up her saved document, she reread the story so far, it had been awhile since she’d sat down and gave it a go. The story came back to her as she scanned it, fixing the few errors she noticed on this read. Rolling her shoulders and moving her neck so it could release some built up tension, she reached for her phone to put on her writing playlist. Thank God for Pandora, she thought, bringing up the best playlist/channel to go with her current story. Settling in to the music, who could write with regular classical music she wondered as she listened to Ed Sheeran begin the song “Happier”.

At the end of the document she found it easy to keep the flow of the story going as she lost herself in the music and the tempo that she was building. She didn’t notice him watching from the doorway. Didn’t see him smile as he watched her fingers move across the keyboard of her laptop like she was in a trance. She did everything with such passion that he couldn’t help but admire her. And music, he noted played a large part in her life. Here, in the bathroom, in the kitchen. He listened to the music and found it nice and sad. He wondered what she was writing that this was the inspiration?

“Are you going to stand there staring or are you going to come in and say something?” She asked, never taking her eyes off her screen. She’d felt his presence as he listened to the next song on her playlist. She didn’t look at him, deciding that he could have his say while she worked. Multitasking was a skill she was proficient at and she was choosing to utilize it now.

He gave a small sigh and walked in. Standing awkwardly he tried to think of what to say and if he should sit. She looked busy. Finally deciding to sit on the bed, he watched her for a second and then blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Why’d you run out of the kitchen so fast, Riley?”

It was her turn to sigh. Tact, she thought, was clearly not Johnny Storm’s strong suit. Then she considered the little bit she knew about him and wondered why she was surprised. He was open and honest, something she could admire and enjoy. Unfortunately, it made for uncomfortable situations like this one. “I didn’t run. I have work to do.” She lied.

He grunted, not convinced. “Work came up when I nearly set fire to the kitchen?” He asked, his eyebrow arched, even if she couldn’t see him.

She bit her lip, damn him and his observational skills. “Well, you seemed to get it under control, and I haven’t worked on my story for awhile, so-”

“So you ran like I lit your hair on fire.” He said, groaning and lying back on the bed crosswise. “I don’t buy it.” “I don’t really care what you buy, Johnny.” She said, turning her chair to face him. “Not everything is about you.”

He raised up, using his elbows to elevate him to meet her eyes. “Bullshit.” His eyes looked slightly hooded and framed with the longest lashes she’d ever seen on a man. And damn, they were so blue she had to bite her lip again. “I don’t mean that everything is about me, Riley, but you ran like a rabbit when I started to steam. I know you know exactly why I was steaming too. So why’d you run?”

Her eyes dilated. So it was about her. “I wasn’t sure.” She started, realizing that writing words for others to say in a situation like this was much easier than saying them herself. She rolled her eyes and looked back at him laying so sinfully on her bed.

“About?” He asked, sitting up and letting her thoughts calm a little.

“What made you steam.” She answered, staring him dead in the eye. “I mean, since I’ve known you, there’ve been a bevy of women, and it’s been two weeks, maybe.”

He blushed, realizing she was right. He was a playboy, for fuck’s sake it was a running joke with everyone from his family to Ben. Of course she wasn’t sure. He was such an ass, and a dick. Shit.

He reached out and took one of her hands. “Riley, it was you. That’s what I was thinking about. You, in the bathroom, in that bathtub, and the bubbles almost gone. My God, do you have any idea how hot you are?” His skin started to steam again, and she pulled him off the bed.

“Calm down,” she whispered, smiling. “You’re going to make my bed catch flames, and I can’t be sure that anything in this room is flame retardant.”

Her touch and voice did it. He didn’t want to accidently set fire to her, or her bed. Sighing he cupped her cheek with a still very warm hand. “This is so hard.” He almost whined. “I didn’t have any issues with control-before.”

She understood. He meant with the nurses, or the other women he’d entertained since coming back from space. With her, however, it seemed to be flare up, no pun intended, without his even noticing. “You didn’t hurt anything, Johnny. It’s fine.”

“Is it?” He asked, pulling his hand away when he noticed her skin getting a little clammy with sweat. “Your skin is sweating because I touched you, Riley. If I can’t even cup your cheek, how can I-”

“Johnny,” he brought his eyes back to hers. “Your control is going to come back.” He snorted with doubt. “Hey, didn’t I figure out Ben’s utensil and drinking issues? My brother might be the scientific genius in the family, but I figure out how to fix things.”

He stared at her, wondering why he felt so strongly for a woman he’d barely kissed. No one had ever held his interest for any longer than it took them to have sex. Then he’d be right on to the next one. Maybe that’s what the steam was, he wanted her and once he had her he’d be back to normal. The thought wasn’t a pleasant one and he was shocked. It’s almost like he wanted to keep her.

“Riley,” he whispered, wondering if he could manage to kiss her again without making the walls burst into flames. As he dipped his head toward hers, he realized the song playing was “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran, and thought it was exactly how he felt. Their lips met, her hands came to wrap around his neck and he felt amazing. She was perfect, the way their lips fit, the way her hands felt on his skin. As the kiss deepened, he wondered how he could keep her.

#Johnny Storm XOFC #Fantastic Four #slow burn #alternative universe

[tumblrwrites]

The Crack in the Ceiling

Sylvia Sickle knew everything about everything. She knew how to catch and pin a butterfly for the collection in her father’s study. She knew how to calculate the square root of 793, the answer to which is obviously 28.1602557. She even knew that the Hundred Years War was actually 116 years long. In fact, there was nothing of a scientific, historic or mathematical nature that she didn’t know, or couldn’t calculate the answer to.

One day that while she was doing a field study on the combustibility of mushrooms, she came upon something wholly extraordinary, though at the time it may not have seemed so to her. In fact, it was merely a man. A rather small man, it must be admitted, but, quite simply, a man nonetheless.

Sylvia held the magnifying glass up to the miniature person to get a better look. He was lying asleep, head bent, against the stem of a fern. His legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankles and a hat rested comfortably down to his nose, blocking the sun from his eyes. His clothes were old and worn but there was a smile on his face as he slept.

Sylvia picked him up between her forefinger and thumb and threw him into her specimen sack. The little man must have woken when she put him in there; he began to push the bag here and then there in an attempt to find a way out. Finally he made his way to the top and pushed at the heavy leather flap until it flopped up in one corner.

Sylvia quickly flicked him back inside with her index finger and then closed the flap again, this time tying it shut. She hurried home to begin a detailed analysis and dissection of the new specimen.

When she pulled him out at home, with tongs, ready to place him in a Petri dish, she was surprised to find him complacently hanging with his arms crossed, winking up at her. After she dropped him down, he put his hands up to his mouth and called, “You’re a rather stupid little girl, aren’t you?”

Sylvia was taken aback more by what he said than by the fact that he said it. “I am not stupid! I’ll have you know I can count in prime numbers all the way up to 56989 and I can list all the battles in the French and Indian War and I can recite Shakespeare’s sonnets and–”

The man interrupted, raising one finger as he leaned against the edge of the Petri dish. “Ah! You can recite them, but do you know what they mean?”

Sylvia frowned. “Of course I know what they mean. They’re only words.”

“Words are the voice of dreams, my dear girl.” The little man, wide-eyed, nodded his head as he spoke and Sylvia couldn’t help but think of those bobble-toys that all of the other children at school liked so much. Sylvia couldn’t think why they would want them; it was just a spring inside the neck, after all.

“You’re not making sense.” she said.

“Everything begins as a dream or a wish. No dream or wish ever felt half so tangible as when a person says it out loud for the first time.”

“You’re wrong. Just because I say, ‘I wish for the sky to be green!’ won’t make it actually green.” This creature clearly was not a creature of logic.

“Ah, but it has to be something you actually want; that’s the trick of it. Believing in it, that makes a thing real.” He paused, thinking, with his finger to his chin. “Here, I’ll show you. I wish I could have a horse my size.” He stuck his hand straight out in front of him and began stroking the air. “Stupid Little Girl, meet George. George, Stupid Little Girl.” He gestured from Sylvia to the empty air in front of him and back again.

Sylvia knitted her eyebrows together and squinted, wrinkling her nose. “My name is Sylvia, not Stupid Little Girl, and I don’t see anything.”

The little man shrugged his shoulders and walked to the other side of the dish. “Well, you wouldn’t now would you? You didn’t wish for a horse, I did and now that’s what I have, a horse. His name is George.” He crossed his arms and turned his back to her, looking out the window across the desk. “You know? I bet you don’t even know how to wish.”

Sylvia stood up straight. For a while, she’d been bent low over the little man trying to intimidate him with her enormity and thinking very seriously of poking him with a tongue depressor to see what would happen. “What do you mean? I can do anything! I am so smart! I could wish if I wanted to.”

The little man quickly ran across the dish and sprung up on the edge of it with one light jump. He stuck his tongue out at her and made a whining noise. “Then do it.” he said. “Let’s see you make a wish, little miss know-it-all!”

Sylvia had decided she did not very much like this specimen. She would prove to him that she could do anything and then she would make a good study of him and pin him up with her father’s butterflies when she was all done.

“Okay, I will.” Sylvia thought hard for a moment. It had to be a really good wish and then maybe he would be quiet. “I wish dinner would be ready in an hour!”

She was triumphant! The beastly little thing was silent for a moment. There was no wish to better hers, no counterattack to be had. She smiled smugly and turned her back to him with her arms crossed.

Then she heard a choppy, high-pitched little sound and turned to see that gross creature, that foul little man, howling with laughter, rolling around on his back. He slapped the surface of the dish with the palm of his hand as if he were calling “uncle!”

Sylvia raised the flat of her hand to squash him, but thought better of it. His internal organs would have been flattened and she hadn’t much use for flat organs. Instead, she clenched her hand in a tight fist and bit the inside of her lip. “Well, what do you know about it?” she asked, tapping her finger on her arm.

The little man leaned back after his fit of laughter, taking in a deep sigh and sitting back on his heals. He wiped a tear from his eye and let out a last little chuckle. “I know that that’s not wishing. Not really.” A little titter broke from between his lips. “You can’t ask for something ordinary or something you’ve had a million times before.”

Sylvia tapped her foot. Her eyes darted over to her microscope. She wondered for a moment what made him so small. Then it occurred to her that some people are just genetically predisposed to being smaller than others. He must have had very small parents. “Well, what should I wish for, then?”

The little man shrugged. “Anything you like.” He winked again.

Sylvia rolled her eyes. “I would like dinner in an hour.”

The little man waved his hands wildly in the air. “No, no, no, no! Something you can’t have everyday. Something you like, but you can’t explain why you like it. I wish I could fly! I wish I could be invisible! I wish I could breathe under water. I wish I wish I wish! Try again.”

Sylvia thought for a moment. Her eyes wandered up to her ceiling. There was a crack there that she’d always wondered about. Her mother had explained to her that it was just the drywall getting old and breaking down in composition, but Sylvia couldn’t help wanting to see inside it. She knew there were boards and plaster and probably some nails and screws, too, and maybe a few decomposing termites or rats, but she wanted to see it. Keeping her eyes fixed above her, she whispered quietly, “I wish I could see into that old crack.”

It was a funny feeling that she’d never had before, after she said it out loud. All at once, she felt a shiver run up and down her spine and across the hairs on her arms. She looked at her window, but it was closed and she couldn’t think how to explain away the chills.

She looked back up to the ceiling and suddenly the crack seemed much larger than it had before, and much closer. It seemed as if it was going to suck her right into it and it seemed to be getting closer. She shielded her face with her arms and hunched down to the ground.

’ When she peeked out through a crack between her arms, she found she could see nothing. She lifted her head and could still see no better. She could feel the soft sprinkling of wood dust over her head and the scurrying of something at her feet. There were no microscopes or Petri dishes anywhere. Her stomach felt empty and there was something stuck at the back of her throat. Her voice maybe?

She could feel the grittiness all around her as a light draft blew dust across her fingertips. She knew, instinctively, that she was now inside the crack. She also knew, through all her studies, that this was physically impossible.

Something furry brushed up against her knee and she jumped, letting a tiny squeal sneak past her lips. She couldn’t see anything. A creature that could brush her knee might be the size of a dog or what she felt might only be an arm or a leg of a much larger creature. It could be a raccoon that might reasonably have made a home in the attic, but she couldn’t keep the idea of a giant rat out of her mind. For the first time in her life, she was frightened, and she almost enjoyed it.

Something brushed against her again, this time, something that felt much larger. She jumped and squeaked again and all the thrill of a new experience faded and fear was all that was left.

Then, near where she assumed her foot to be, she heard the little man calling up to her. “Now what do you wish for?”

Terrified of this new dark, she answered, “I wish I was back in my room!”

And without moving, light began to sneak in and Sylvia found herself in her room again, with the microscope on the table behind her, the Petri dish and the little man on the desk in front of her.

The little man stood up straight, took a bow and then began applauding Sylvia and Sylvia, for the first time in her life, felt the satisfaction of a job well done without even having picked up a scalpel. “Is that how it always is?” she asked, taking a breath.

“Sometimes.” The little man answered. “Sometimes it’s better.”

Sylvia looked over to the microscope once more and then back at the little man. There would be time for any number of experiments later. She rubbed her hand across her arm. “What should I wish for next?”

“Might I recommend something a little less frightening?” He pulled his hat back, revealing bright orange hair, and scratched his head a little.

Sylvia cast her eyes about her room and found it more boring than she remembered it. There were posters labeling the different parts of ants and volcanoes. There were shelves of books with numbers written on the sides of them. Her bedspread was plain gray with an itchy wool blanket underneath. Everything in her room was off white or gray; she’d never had much use for color. She knew it was just the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. But now, without understanding why, she wanted more of it. And then she saw the butterfly she’d been studying earlier that day.

It was a Monarch butterfly, bright orange with black lines and white dots. It was beautiful. And she felt a little sad when she saw how the butterfly lay, pasted against glass plates, no longer moving. She had done that. She had been planning to pin it up on the wall in her father’s study with all the others.

“I wish the butterfly was free.” She didn’t feel a shiver with this wish, as she had with the other one. Instead, she felt her heart stop as she watched a tiny twitch in the antennae. “I wish all the butterflies were free!”

The butterfly began flapping its winds, shaking the dried glue off, and soon it raised itself into the air. It fluttered around the room, passing close to Sylvia’s eyelash once. It flew up and then down, over and under, around and through her room. “The window! The window!” cried the little man and Sylvia ran to it and threw it open. A warm breeze flowed into the room and the butterfly caught the current. Sylvia watched as it disappeared into the day, that bright orange butterfly.

She turned around, letting out a long, satisfied breath, and leaned against her desk, next to the little man standing on it. They looked at each other and smiled and then were suddenly engulfed in the flutter of a hundred rainbow colored wings. Butterflies poured through Sylvia’s bedroom door, escaping from the study. One still had a pin in its wing and the little man leapt up and tugged at it until it came free.

It was a scattering of blues and greens and oranges and yellows and purples and reds all around them. The wings made soft thwap thwap sounds and Sylvia watched as they circled around her and the little man before they flew through the window, following that first butterfly.

Sylvia leaned her elbows on her desk and kept her eyes on the very last of the butterflies until she couldn’t see them anymore. She was silent for a while, with her eyes fixed on the outside world.

“That was a good wish.” The little man said, after a bit.

Sylvia turned to him. “Is it magic?”

“A kind of magic.” He pulled himself back onto the rim of the Petri dish and sat with his little legs dangling, as he looked up at her.

She kicked her shoes off and pulled herself up onto the desk next to him. She wiggled her toes, trying to shake the lint out. “Where does it come from?”

There was a sharp knock in the hallway, just outside her door. “Sylvia?” Her mother was calling for her. She jumped down and told the little man she’d be right back.

As it happened, her first wish, the one about dinner being in an hour, came true as well and so Sylvia sat, fidgeting in her seat, playing with her food, wanting nothing more than to get back to her room and her new friend. Indeed, he was certainly her friend now; all thoughts of dissection and analysis had vanished from her mind. Instead, she was wondering what wind might feel like against her fingertips as she flew and whether or not the little man might know. Of course, she didn’t tell her parents this, nor did she tell her father where all his butterflies had suddenly gone or her mother that there were real monsters in the crack in her ceiling.

When she had grudgingly finished her lima beans and spinach, foods she had previously worshiped for all their nutrients, she ran back to her room. The dusk had cast itself around her room and she found it a little difficult to see, so she did the only logical thing she could think of. She turned on a light.

The Petri dish was empty, except for a very small horse named George. She reached out and stroked him gently with her index finger and then began to look about the room. “Little man! Little man, where are you?” But there was no answer. She glanced at her desk again and noticed something she hadn’t seen before.

There was a tiny slip of paper tucked under the dish with writing on it. Sylvia moved closer. She picked it up and read the tiny scribbles. “It comes from inside you.”

#footstepsontheair  #OatmealandHoney

#Literature #Submission #Writing #submission

[plastercasterdemo]

the fox character map

ok. i know i havent gotten ‘round to publishing paul OR genes origin story, but i really wanted to do everyones favorite boy eric in my au!! you can read spaceman here and catman here! (read catman to get a sense of this story :p)

origin story:

after his creation of the catman, cancer researcher emelio santiago has fled new york city, leaving his wife, kids, and family without a trace. it is three years later in his own scientific lab in a small farmhouse in ohio. still curious about his creation of the catman, he is dedicating his new “experiment” to also attempt to make a human/animal hybrid.

trigger warning: includes mentions of harming animals (injecting them) and violence! please proceed with caution!

santiagos pov

This past winter was cold and brutal. The wind blew so harshly on my windows, I am suprised my panes did not splinter and fall apart. The house had no insulation, causing me to keep a fire lit every hour of the day. I stay in the basement, the coldest part of the house, preparing for my next experiment.

The refrigerator in my basement was full of HeLa. I spent hours a day curing the cells, moving them from petrie dish to petrie dish so they can continue to grow. By March, I had a large collection of over 300 dishes full of the cancerous cells.

The basement was almost always damp, causing me to walk around with, at the cery least, my slippers on at all times. The only light that was wired up was a small, dangling bulb coming from the joists that held up the main floor of the house. Damp, watery dirt was seeping through the cinder blocks in almost every two feet of space. Though not as clean as the lab I had previously worked in, my personal basement lab was a very well hidden away room, one in which I could store things no man should keep in his house.

When the ground started to thaw, I put on my boots with the good traction and set out the cages to catch the next animal for my experument. As I was living in a large field surrounded by trees, foxes often roamed across my yard, searching for food.

When I caught one in my trap, still alive, I grabbed the cage and took it inside and down into my basement. It whined a little as I opened the hatch to my lab, the room as dark as night.

“Quiet,” I found myself speaking to it as it whimpered with every step I took. We went down the stairs and I went to the center of the room, turned on the bulb and watched as light flooded the area within five feet of the light.

I set the fox down.

Silently, I wheeled the small table under the light and set the cage on top of that, studying the fox for the first time. It was a large male, with matted fur around his mouth. His paws were dirty, and his tail gritty. He whined once more as I stuck my face next to his, clearly scared of our interaction.

Grabbing a flashlight, I make my way to the fridge and grab a dish of cancer cells. The fox watches me as I do so. I apply gloves to my hands and grab my tools to preform the test.

I stick the needle full of cells into the fox, and it yelps as I start to work. Its breaths slow down, its chest heaving up and down before I realize I must act quickly.

Once I gather the cells from the fox (a mix of HeLa and its own cells), I put them in the fridge to grow. I remove the fox’s body from my lab so to not attract flies, throwing it outside my door for other animals to enjoy.

I wait a few weeks before conducting my experiment, gathering the courage to become Dr. Frankenstein once more. The Catman was an accidental creation, but now, I am attempting to do the same on purpose.

In my basement is a deep freezer. To my best ability, I have preserved the body of an Eric C. using ice and keeping him wet. His skin has turned a yellowish color, but other than that, there was no sign of decay. His fingernails were still intact, his curly black hair was still attached to his skull.

He was a handsome man, aged about 30. I had found him on the side of the road, inside a vehicle that had been burnt. Miraculously, his body had not been scorched, only his clothing had been touched. I knew the minute I saw him there, half dangling out of his car, that this miracle will bring good fortune to my experiment.

I drag him out of my freezer and place him on the same table I had operated on the fox. His lifeless body was ice cold to the touch. The light hit his features, revealing his face to me for the first time since I had retrieved his body.

I collect my journal from the shelf and date the page, titling it Eric. Car Accident + Fox and HeLa. I walk over to the table and get ready to preform.

With shaky hands, I begin to put those fox cells into him. I wait a moment before doing it again. And again. And thrice more.

I scoff, aggravated at myself. What am I not doing correctly now? I start up the stairs to retrieve my old notes when the steel table creeks from behind me.

“Eric?” I call, not facing him and a playful tome to my voice.

“I am here.”

His voice is deep, yet bubbly at the same time. I turn around and face him. He is sitting atop the table, looking at his bare body. The light bounces off his black curls and chest hairs. He looks at me, his Creator, his Father, and his eyes light up.

“I am here,” he repeats, with excitement in his voice. “I was just at the gates of Heaven, soeaking to our great Lord! I have seen him! Our Master is real!”

“Now, this is not the Great Awakening, my dear child,” I say, approaching him. “Don’t speak such nonsense to I, your new Master. I shall believe it when I meet Him myself.”

I take my notebook in my hand and begin to quiz Eric. He behaves much like the Catman had when he first awoke. He remembers his early parts of his life, his deeds; however, does recognize he had died. Unlike the Catman, a man who I assume had lacked religion in his day to day life, was able to recite descriptions of Heaven. He was able to tell me about his death in great detail— he was on his way to visit his girlfriend in Corton, Ohio, when his engine caught fire. He describes to me in depth what the feeling of death was like.

“Thank you, Mr. Eric,” I say, closing my notebook. “You’ve been very helpful in my study.”

“Thank you, sir,” he says, pushing himself off the table.

“Ah,” I say, putting a hand on his chest. “You cannot leave, however. You see, in about two weeks time, you will turn part animal, as my previous creation had. You will turn raging and sick, attempting to kill whoever you see. We don’t want you going out and about like this, now, do we?”

He wraps his hand around my arm, pulling it away from him. His face turns to one of an angry countenance, snarking at me.

“You cannot keep me here!”

“You, are my son,” I say kindly, looming into his eyes. “My second son whom I intend to keep a thoughtful eye upon. You wouldn’t want to make your father upset now, would you?”

“My father?” he says, backing away from me. “You aren’t my father. My only Father is the one who lives in Heaven, who gave me a second life, a second Chance! You cannot be my father!”

“Eric, I say calmly. “What did I say about speaking nonesense? God is dead. I am your God.”

His fists ball up at his sides, his face heated with anger. As he lunged at me, I revealed what I had behind my back: a needle with liquid gold within it. He jumps at me, and I stab him in the chest, filling his heart with the injection.

He falls calmly to the ground, still breathing, but slowly. His arms sprawl across the floor, his chest moving up and down slowly, like the fox had done in its last moments.

“If I am to have a son, a second son whom I can keep and study, then my son will not be blood hungry. My son will have a heart of gold.”

#eric carr

[bibliosexxual]

a fluffy thing I was thinking about tonight.

...that morphed into a fic.

(now also on ao3)

They meet in Biology 101. Stiles is a freshman, and he's in this class mostly because Scott is pre-vet and Stiles signed up for all the same classes because he has no earthly idea what he wants to do, career-wise. Derek is a junior Spanish lit major taking this because he needs the gen. ed., and he's terrible. He's the only person in the class who's not a freshman. He's always a few minutes late—that's how he ended up sitting at the table by the door with Stiles and Scott the first day—and he's so gloomy, and he always lugs around this backpack full of Pablo Neruda books because he has a Spanish poetry class right before this one, and he takes the neatest, most meticulous class notes Stiles has ever seen. (Stiles, meanwhile, doesn't take any notes. He takes photos of every slide with his phone as the professor talks and then spends the rest of the time goofing off quietly, doodling dumb stuff on Scott's arm and working on five different assignments at once on his laptop.)

The class meets one hour three times a week for lecture sessions and once a week, practically all afternoon, for lab. It's basic stuff, learning things like lab safety and how to use pipettes, and then they're divided up for their semester-long partner projects, growing and monitoring various strains of bacteria in petri dishes. Stiles tries to get Scott as a partner, of course, but their professor separates them, probably because she's seen how they act in class and suspects (correctly) that they'll be a hazard to themselves and others if left together in a lab.

She matches Stiles with Derek instead. It's not so bad. One day they have to put on gloves and rubber boots and wade into the creek behind the science center to gather samples, and Stiles nearly falls on his ass before Derek catches him with a surprisingly strong hand around his waist. Stiles hadn't really noticed before just how built Derek was under all the cardigans. He's like Superman, hiding out in plain sight behind old-man sweaters and nerd glasses.

Sometimes they study together before a big test, all three of them, until Scott inevitably bows out early. Scott's a natural at science; he barely needs to study to make A's. Also, he’s sussed out just how much Stiles likes being left alone with Derek. He keeps sending Stiles pep talks about it over text.

Derek is brilliant, sure, but not in any way that helps him with this class, where he doesn't have to spout off any Spanish or write any literary analyses. He's frankly terrible at Biology. Stiles can see why he put off taking the class for so much of his college career. Stiles doesn't mind helping him, though. Working through it all with Derek helps him remember it all better for the test.

Not to mention, he just plain likes Derek. He looks so somber all the time that when he says a joke or snarks about something, Stiles is always pleasantly surprised. He can tell Derek is lonely; he comes from a big family, he tells Stiles, and he's used to having lots of people around him, in his life, nosing in his business and dragging him to social events. But here he doesn't know anyone except Stiles and Scott, really, since he just transferred here from another college. (He hasn't said why, except that a girl was involved. It didn't end well, apparently. Stiles doesn't press.)

Stiles doesn't hang out with Derek out of pity, though, and he tries to make that clear. He likes Derek's company and finding out about little pieces of Derek's life, music he likes and what other classes he's taking and all the little minutiae of his day. He likes hearing Derek's opinions and making fun of him a little and getting made fun of right back.

One Friday night Stiles texts him something silly from the book he's reading. It's like 3 a.m., and he's surprised when Derek texts back only a minute later.

Stiles calls him. "What are you still doing up, man?"

Turns out Derek can't sleep; he got sexiled from his room. Erica, he says euphemistically, "is having a really nice night." (Stiles snorts.) The library is closed. All the academic buildings are locked. The common area on his hall is still trashed from a party last weekend that no one has cleaned up yet. Derek has taken refuge out by the little student garden at the bottom of the hill near his building; there's a pond there with some benches. Stiles has nothing better to do, and it's not like he's going to sleep any time soon—he'd loaded up on caffeine while writing a paper, then finished it a ton sooner than he'd expected in a whirlwind mix of brilliance and bullshitting. Now he's wired.

So he pulls on a hoodie and shoves his feet in the nearest pair of sneakers and jogs down the stairs and outside, where it's cool but not freezing out, a nice night really. He finds Derek and they just sit there together on the edge of the pond and talk. It's almost five a.m. before the conversation fades out to a comfortable silence and Stiles starts to feel his caffeine buzz wearing off. Derek stifles a huge yawn in his sleeve; it's pretty adorable.

"Hey," Stiles says on impulse, "if you want, you can totally come back to my room."

Derek's eyes widen, and Stiles realizes what it sounds like he's said.

"Whoa, not what I meant. Not that I wouldn't— I mean, no lie, you're really attractive," Derek looks down at his feet at that, like no one's ever told him he's hot before, "but I just meant to sleep. Scott's staying over at his girlfriend Kira's apartment, so you could crash on his bed. He wouldn't mind as long as I changed the sheets before he got back."

So Derek agrees, and together they gather up the books he'd spread out to study before Stiles showed up. Stiles carries an armload for him since Derek looks dead on his feet. It's weird how intimate it feels, just walking together, not saying anything, Stiles carrying Derek's stuff for him.

Stiles and Scott's dorm is tiny and windowless, practically a closet, with barely any room to walk around the furniture, the one rickety desk and the little bookcase and the bunk bed in the corner. Stiles can tell Derek's surprised. Being an upperclassman and all, he probably has a room about three times this size. Still, he doesn't say anything except to compliment Stiles' The Force Awakens poster on the closet door as he tiredly kicks off his shoes.

Stiles goes down the hall to the bathroom to brush his teeth and take out his contacts. When he gets back he remembers to ask, "Hey, dude, do you need to borrow anything?"

When there's no response, he belatedly glances over at Scott's bottom bunk. Derek is lying on his stomach on top of the comforter, one foot sticking out from the bed, so deeply asleep he's practically unconscious. Stiles stares down at him for longer than is probably appropriate, feeling something warm and affectionate swelling just under his breastbone. Then he pulls down the extra blanket from the closet, covers Derek as best he can, and climbs up to his own bunk in the darkness. He falls asleep listening to the soft sound of Derek breathing.

He doesn't wake up until almost noon. Back home, he never needed an alarm clock, always just woke up gradually as the sun lit up his room. Here, though, without a window in the room, it always feels like the middle of the night, no source of light but the weak 60-watt bulb of Scott's desk lamp.

He's halfway through checking all the notifications on his phone when he remembers he didn't come home alone last night. He raises his head to look over the railing of his bed. Derek is awake and apparently has been for some time now, camped out at Stiles' desk with a brick-sized tome of what looks like poetry.

"When did you get up?" Stiles groans blearily.

"Eight a.m.," Derek answers, and god, Stiles knew Derek was a morning person but he didn't realize it was that bad. "I'll probably take a nap later," he adds, seeing Stiles' expression.

Stiles laughs. "Me too, but not because I need the sleep. Just because it's Saturday and I like naps. Naps are the best."

He has just enough sense not to suggest they take a nap together, but he does add that to his mental list of things to daydream about extensively later, right alongside inventing a cure for cancer and finding out what Derek's tattoo looks like. Derek let it slip once that he had one, right between his shoulderblades. It's been one of the great obsessions of Stiles' life ever since.

They eventually wander over to the dining hall together. They've finished their food (Derek eats almost as much as Stiles, which is truly impressive) and they're in the middle of a pretty in-depth conversation about Don Quixote, based on the fact that Derek is thinking of doing his senior thesis on it and Stiles read it once in high school, when Erica wanders over.

"Looks like I wasn't the only one getting lucky last night." She winks.

Stiles splutters and Derek sinks down in his seat like he wants to disappear.

Erica bursts out laughing. "Oh my god, your faces. I was just kidding. I know Derek's too lame to have any fun on a Friday night. Anyway," she says, "if it's okay with you, I was wondering if I could have the room today, too? I'm not quite done having my wicked way with Boyd. We've got some pretty extensive plans involving fruit and—"

"Please god, stop talking," Derek says. "You can have the room."

So that's how Stiles ends up inviting Derek back to his dorm again for the afternoon. They’ve hung out a lot over the last few months, but never for this long before. He kind of expects Derek to say no now that the library's open, but instead he says sure.

So they go back to Stiles' dorm after Derek ducks by his room first for a change of clothes and some books he needs. As Stiles is fumbling to unlock his door, Greenberg from across the hall wolf-whistles at them obnoxiously on his way past to the bathroom. Stiles flips him off. Derek looks awkward.

"Do you usually, um… Did he think..." Derek starts when they're in the room. He looks away. "Never mind."

"Nah, it's fine. Greenberg is always hooking up with people, so I guess he assumes everyone else must be, too, but I'm not. I mean, I'm not really a casual kind of guy."

Actually, he might be down for casual stuff, theoretically—in fact, he kind of expected he would be, and he'd even started down that path by making out with a random girl during orientation and then a different random girl later that same night at the freshman bonfire—except that then he walked into Biology on the first day of classes and there was Derek, and suddenly no one else looked half as interesting.

"Anyway," he adds, obviously not wanting to get into all of that, "I've never had a hook-up, if that's what you're asking."

Derek volunteers, "Me neither. I'm way too possessive."

Stiles imagines, fleetingly, what it would be like to have Derek be possessive over him. It would be nice, he thinks. No one's ever really gotten possessive over him before; no one's ever really wanted to keep him. Fool around with him, sure, but not keep him. He doesn't say anything.

Derek sits at Stiles' desk again after Stiles assures him he doesn't mind, and Stiles spreads out his biology notes on Scott's bed because he doesn't feel like making his own bed. Derek has to sit sideways in the chair because Scott's using the space under the desk for storing everything that couldn't fit under the bed or in the closet, and the desk is so close to the bed that Stiles' knees keep knocking Derek's.

The fifth time their knees bump and Derek apologizes again, Stiles flippantly says, "If you'd rather, I could just sit in your lap. Problem solved."

He's used to saying that kind of thing around Scott because they have this habit of aimlessly flirting with each other as a joke. Stiles doesn't think anything of it now, doesn't even look up; he's in the middle of highlighting a passage about cell division. He's halfway through the paragraph before he realizes Derek has gone weirdly quiet. He looks up. Derek is staring at him like Stiles just said he had herpes or something. He's got a smudge of ink on his chin and he's taken off his glasses; he doesn't need them to read, and Stiles can't for the life of him remember where he learned this about Derek.

Stiles actually has to think for a few seconds to remember what he even said and connect that to the way Derek's shoulders have gone so tense under his cardigan. "Oh," he says when he realizes. "I was just kidding, you know."

"So you don't like me like that," Derek says, not a question.

Stiles slowly puts down his highlighter. "I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I'm not going to ambush-straddle you in your chair."

"But do you..." Derek shakes his head. "Never mind."

"Wait." Stiles blinks, sits up a little straighter. "Do you like me like that?"

Instead of answering, Derek bites his lip and looks cornered, which is answer enough.

Stiles feels suddenly giddy. "Hey, can I kiss you?"

Derek's hands spasm where he's clutching his knees. "You want to kiss me?"

"No, I just asked you that hypothetically." Stiles rolls his eyes. "Duh, I wanna kiss you."

Derek looks endearingly flustered. He tries to push his glasses up his nose like he always does when he's nervous before he seems to remember he's taken them off. "Um. If you want. Okay."

Stiles scoots forward eagerly on the bed and hits his forehead on the edge of the top bunk. "Ow. Sorry, that was supposed to be a lot more suave."

"Nothing about you is suave," Derek says, and it should be insulting but it's really, really not.

Stiles ducks forward, avoiding hitting his head this time, and Derek leans down a little, and Stiles gets the impression Derek doesn't do this kind of thing very often because he just pauses there, uncertain, waiting, not touching Stiles at all. Stiles grins and guides him down by the ears into a soft kiss, like a hello.

Derek is actually really, really good at kissing. Stiles cups Derek's face in his hands, just to feel the way his jaw moves as he deepens the kiss, and moans.

"Wait, um," Derek pants, and Stiles reluctantly pulls back. "Is this just because I'm convenient?"

"No. If I wanted convenient I could've been hooking up with fucking Greenberg from across the hall all semester." Stiles shudders a little at the thought. "Is this just because you're lonely and I was nice to you?"

"No."

"Oh, good. Then... carry on?"

"Yeah," Derek nods, and sets about biting a mark into Stiles' neck.

*

Scott comes back from Kira's right about the time Stiles is saying rather loudly, "Shit, where are my pants," from the top bunk. Beside him, Derek's eyes widen, and he hastily ducks down behind Stiles' naked torso.

Scott turns around and walks right back out again.

There's a moment of silence.

"Oops," Stiles laughs. Then he sees how hard Derek is blushing and he laughs even harder, until Derek reluctantly starts to smile, too.

When he finally gets control of himself, he wiggles around to straddle Derek and says, with as much seriousness as he can muster, "I really like you, you know. Like, really really."

"I know," Derek says, settling his hands warm and possessive on Stiles' bare hips. "Me too."

"We should date."

"Yeah," Derek agrees. "Okay."

#eternalsterek #my fic #a college au because i haven't done one in a while! #this is basically just a drabble i sat down and wrote tonight while listening to copious amounts of cello music #i don't even know

[nazumichi]

raspberry + lilac + harlequin + apricot + steel + sapphire + carmine

Raspberry- i need your help to kill god: we’re not stopping at the queen, were going straight to the big man himself.

Lilac- you make my dash better and I cherish you: ohhohoho you don’t say!! obviously enough to warrant you hitting me with a pink hammer, only reasonable response <33

Harlequin- to remind me that there are still people more insane than I am on this website: YOU are the one encouraging my insanity. baby, i’ve invented a whole new tag, i’m saying so many words, more by the day. we are insane TOGETHER.

Apricot- I'm slowly poisoning you a little bit every day: yes, i’m familiar with your divorced zukka agenda <3 very fun however, don’t mind the poisoning part of the process TOO much.

Steel- you post the most beautiful art/fics/edits: oughooughuoughuygh 🥺🥺🥺💕💕 thank yuuuuuuuu augh. augh. I’m in the process of doing a thang for you….. it’s of…. your sillies…

Sapphire- I want to put you under a microscope and study you: girlies will see their bfs and say “i want to put him under a microscope and in a Petri dish and experiment scientifically on him.”

Carmine- I'm on one knee proposing <3: acceptas!! the queen has collapsed.

ask game!!

#ask #vee tag #beloved moment

[mama-orion]

Sacre Coeur, chapter 5

_____

Chapter one + chapter two + chapter three + chapter four

The flat is quiet. The paramedics have gone, the armed guards have become invisible somewhere on Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson has finally stopped fussing and retreated to her flat. Sherlock smells cinnamon and knows she is relieving her anxiety with her customary ritualistic baking. Molly fusses with the makeshift lab in the kitchen.

“You sure you don’t want me to stay? I could assist, let you focus on John, be on hand.”

“Thank you, Molly, no, I’ve already monopolized too much of your time. I’m sure the stiffs are backing up in the morgue.”

“Well, alright. But you text me if anything changes.” While Sherlock stares out the window, she sterilizes one more set of glassware, wraps back up in her coat and scarf, and gives his shoulder a squeeze as she passes. He catches her hand.

“Molly, truly, thank you. Without your help and clarity these last few days, I think I would have lost my mind.”

Molly grimaces a smile. “Take care of yourself, too. At least, try to.” She pads away quietly across the carpet, picks up Mycroft’s umbrella, and hurries down the stairs.

Sherlock stands in the sudden silence. He wrinkles his nose – the usual smells of the flat are swirled with the slightly medical pong of hospital antiseptic. He peeks in again on John, stationed in his room, looking more comfortable in the old pajamas Sherlock took from his house that morning. Detached from all the wires and monitors, he looks as if he’s just nodded off in Sherlock’s bed. Molly thought the sensation of it would be helpful, make him feel at home, no matter how many times Sherlock insisted nothing ever happened and what’s more, 221B hasn’t been home to John Watson for almost 3 years.

“Won’t matter,” she’d said with a wise smirk. “It’ll still feel like home to him.”

Sherlock snaps up his bow and rosins it while he paces the bedroom. “Well then, welcome home, John.” He pockets the rosin and picks up the violin, settles his chin, and begins to play.

…

Late afternoon light is pooling in the room when Sherlock finally puts the violin down on the bedside table. He stares at his immobile friend for a while, watches the steady rise and fall of his chest, his relaxed face, then sighs. “Take a rest, John, I’ll just be in the kitchen.”

He’s halfway through the first experiment Molly had dictated when he gets up to check on John. Nothing has changed. He returns to the kitchen, moves a few petri dishes around. Checks on John again. After twenty minutes of this, he roughly pushes the kitchen table down the hall and through the bedroom door, clinking and rattling with the apparatus, and slides it under the window.

“Sorry, couldn’t be free of me for long.”

An hour later he’s got John propped up on pillows, a towel draped over his chest, experimenting with the best ways to spoon in bone broth so it doesn’t dribble down John’s chin. The first time he reflexively swallows, Sherlock feels triumphant. But when John erupts into a fit of coughing, he nearly falls over with the shock, thinking he’s killed him for sure. It passes. Sherlock’s shaking. “Sorry about that, John, I’m afraid you’ll be getting the worst of all my on-the-job training today.”

After clearing away “lunch,” he pulls a worn paperback from the duffel he’d brought from John’s house. Perching gingerly at the foot of the bed, he begins to read aloud the first chapter of The Two Towers. It had been on John’s night table. After a few paragraphs, Molly’s voice rings in his head. Patients in coma have, on occasion, responded positively to familiar stimuli, reassuring touch and voice. Human contact, Sherlock. His brain patterns indicate he is mentally active. He’s reachable. Help him know he’s not alone in there. Sherlock looks up from the book, taps his lip as he considers, then slides to sit next to John in the bed. Leaving a few inches between them, he continues to read.

Two chapters in, the words begin to blur and he recalls that he never did sleep last night. He lets the book drop to the blanket, head falling back against the propped-up pillows with an extravagant sigh. He watches John for a long while. He should go back to the experiment, he thinks. He should text Molly to bring over spirulina powder. Maybe he should play again, Bach this time.

Instead, he lifts a tentative hand and, heart racing, places it lightly on John’s shoulder. He almost expects John to flinch at the touch, but he sleeps on. Would John mind? Sherlock slips into his mind palace, heads directly to John’s wing, and opens the sturdy steamer trunk where he’s stored all of the confusing deductions he’s made of John over the years, the collection growing larger of late. Certain looks, sentiments expressed, an unexpected touch. It had all been so mixed up with John’s justified anger at the false suicide, the ridiculous wedding planning, and the constant threat of Mary that Sherlock silently struggled to disarm, always playing John’s amiable best man. To be anything other than that would have meant immediate threat to John’s life. Mrs. Watson was very clear about that.

In the perfect, quiet safety of his mind palace, Sherlock briefly rests his forehead against the edge of the chest, letting a bitter relief flood through him. He’s been holding it back for days. It wasn’t right to feel it when he should have been using is brain to save John. He can feel it now, for a moment. Yes, things are still dire, it’s been fucking terrifying for months – years, really – he was so rarely in control. But now, at least, Mary is no longer the cuckoo in the nest with her fingers around John’s throat, playing Sherlock like a puppet. The cuckoo flown is something to chase, to trap. And he will find her. He has absolutely no doubt.

Rubbing his hands roughly over his face to focus his attention, he pulls out weathered maps and navigation charts from the chest, each one a key to some moment he saw something in John’s behavior and wondered, Does he? He studies the touches John had offered, freely, though always with qualifiers. In particular, the dancing lessons at the flat (educational purposes); the hand on his knee during stag night (inebriated), the hug during his best man’s speech (high emotion). None had made John perceptibly uncomfortable. He decides it’s at least appropriate for him to proceed with light touch.

But there is the… other evidence. Sherlock pauses, then reaches to the bottom of the steamer trunk, unlocks a hidden compartment in the false wooden floor, and takes out a small round object swaddled in soft velvet that’s the precise blue of John’s irises. Protected inside the folds is a smooth glass egg, shot through with wisps of silver-gold, the color of John’s hair in afternoon light. If he didn’t have the artifact, he wouldn’t believe it had happened at all.

Snapping open the egg on a hidden hinge, he unlocks the memory of John at his bedside when it was he lying in hospital, unreachable.

…

The memory of the shooting was fresh, hours old. Had John’s memory begun to degrade by then? It had been too difficult to observe, thanks to the anesthesia... And John had been in a state he’d not witnessed before that made it…difficult to read him.

John had been shattered that night. Sherlock had expected the grief. He had anticipated anger, it was an unavoidable necessity. But the sudden horror of the lie he’d been living coupled with the imminent death of his best friend...who had kept it all from him… Well, it was almost a relief when John had forgotten it all in the morning.

Sherlock had known it was going to be a bad night. That was rather the point. But he wasn’t supposed to get shot. He was supposed to be helping John through the pain, explaining everything, doing better this time, including him so they could finally face it together. He’d wanted to reach out so badly, hold his hand, hold him.

But Sherlock could not even push his eyes open. By some trick of his astounding, ridiculous brain, he could hear everything, watched as the scene was painstakingly recreated in his mind’s eye: John sitting by his head leaning close to him – his voice near, the scent of him strong, still in the same plaid shirt, rumpled now, sweaty, the jumper removed­ – perhaps from exposure to blood. He perceived John’s face to be slick with tears – frequent sniffling and choked breathing – and often buried in his hands, his halting voice muffled. He would have looked exhausted and worn, the anger and worry creasing his face into an older version of himself.

As if afraid to touch him, John had only once lightly brushed his fingertips down the side of Sherlock’s arm where it had rested on the sheet. It had tickled, but he couldn’t even flinch. And his words... Despite the absolute shit-show the night had become, he is grateful to have been left with the artifact of his words. He will cherish them in the years of solitude that undoubtedly lie ahead.

“Was on my way to say something to you today... Wish like hell I had. Might have prevented... this. Somehow. (a long silence) You should know, Sherlock. When I met you, I was given something amazing. Something precious. Saved my life. But I fled from it. I wanted it so badly, but I was terrified. Jesus, what did it say about me?

And you, one moment you were a heartless sociopathic prick and the next some brilliant, benevolent creature who could read my mind with a look. I knew I had been given something… but I had no idea what to do with it. I figured I could live that way, long as you were nearby, didn’t matter what it was. “And then I lost you. I knew then that I’d wasted it. Utterly. I was broken. Worse than before I met you, because then I knew what I was missing. Tried moving on. God, what a bloody mess…couldn’t even do that properly. I thought she was (his voice cracks and the words are choked, almost silent) …thought she was safe.

“And when you returned, Sherlock, what that did to me… You watch what you wish for, you just might get it. So yea, I got you back. But too late. All wrong. I should never have gone on with the wedding, but I was angry, so terribly angry... How could I ever forgive you for putting me through those two years? I made myself believe it was better this way.

“It wasn’t. Even if this whole nightmare was what I’d actually thought it was. Marrying a nice woman, starting a family. I’d botched it. Knew it on my wedding day, bloody hell the things you said, your face...

“When you were away… I should have been helping you, should have been with you, Sherlock. (A long pause. He wipes his face, takes deep breaths as he’s been taught in therapy, and when he speaks again there is iron in his voice.) “Because it’s not the damn danger, Sherlock. It’s not, though we both know we love it. We’re more than that, always have been. We’re like some equation that doesn’t make any sense in its parts, then you put it together and it’s… it’s right. (Deep intake of breath) I realized, of course, much too late. It’s always been you, Sherlock. Only you. God, I love you.”

There had been noticeable changes on the monitors, but John had been too focused on his thoughts, too exhausted, too certain of Sherlock’s unconsciousness to notice.

“There. Said it. Case you hadn’t deduced it already. So. Please, will you do this for me? Another miracle. Wake up. Be okay. For me. So I can try to get the courage to say this to your face one day. I can’t make this mistake again, Sherlock. Christ, if you’ll even have me…”

Lestrade had come round the next morning for John’s statement and found him asleep in a chair by Sherlock’s bedside. John had woken confused, the details of the shooting blurring, jumbled, no memory of how he’d gotten to the hospital or what had occurred after. The nurse attending to Sherlock took pity on him and filled him in on Sherlock’s condition. Lestrade attributed it to shock. Sherlock knew better.

John had called Mary from Sherlock’s room, bewildered, apologizing profusely for not coming home - god, she must have been so worried - gushing his relief to her that Sherlock had lived through the night, had become stable. When he rang off, he’d said, ‘Love you, too.’

 …

Sherlock snaps the egg closed, carefully rewrapping the velvet and sealing it deep inside the chest. Then he slams the lid down hard.

Slipping out of his mind palace, he very carefully shifts across the bed, closing the gap between them, and eases himself against John’s side. He stays like that a moment, stiff and terrified. Gradually, the sound of John’s steady breathing lulls him, the warmth of him soothing. He drops his head to John’s chest and listens to his heartbeat. He is asleep in moments.

…

Sherlock wakes with a jolt. The room is dark. Sitting up carefully, he realizes he’s been asleep with his head on John for hours, drooled on his shirtfront a bit. He can tell from the pitch and frequency of the traffic on Baker Street that it’s about 2am.

“John,” his voice is gravelly from sleep, “I’ll trust you didn’t mind too much that I kipped on you instead of a pillow.” He scrubs the cobwebs from his eyes, pushes up from the bed and shuffles to the door. While he has woken marginally refreshed, the human contact does not appear to have changed John in the slightest.

Outside the bedroom door, he finds a tray on the floor holding a cold pot of tea and a covered dish that smells of curried chicken. He gives it a small smile. Though his stomach growls traitorously, he steps past it, returning minutes later from the bathroom with a basin of soapy warm water, a soft sponge, a clean towel, and a change of absorbent pants for John. He settles his nursing gear by the bed and considers John for several moments, fingers nervously tapping his thighs. This is clinical. “As I’ve had to use the loo, I’ll trust you’re in need of some… refreshment.” This is nursing. He pulls on fresh latex gloves and sighs. “I’m sorry, John, but you will need to suffer more of my trainee fumbling.”

…

221B, 3 days later

Sherlock is hunched over his microscope in the bedroom. He’s surrounded by petri dishes and slides, beakers of solutions, scraps of paper covered in his spidery writing and formulae, Mrs. Hudson’s empty dishes. He’s wearing his blue dressing gown tied over his oldest, softest pajamas, hair sticking out at odd angles from frequent tugging.

Suddenly he pushes back from the microscope and slams his fists on the table, the glass apparatus clinking in protest. Dressing gown swirling, he spins out of the chair, knocking it over with a clatter, and strides to the door. Just as he’s about to storm out, he notices John from the corner of his eye, lying ever-motionless in his bed. He freezes, hands pulling at his hair, and stares at him, trying to bring his breathing under control.

His mobile pings a pre-set alarm, jolting him out of his thoughts. Running his hands over his face, he scrubs at his eyes and sniffs loudly. It’s time to take care of John.

“Sorry, that one didn’t work, either. Time for a break, hm? I’ll get your lunch.” He ducks into a small, portable refrigerator that’s been moved next to his dresser, reaches past a rack with several stoppered vials of blood, and removes two jars. One is a container of the bone broth Mrs. Hudson simmered up for him, and another holds a thin, chlorophyll-green slurry he’d made of spirulina and pureed vegetables.

With the deft actions of an experienced care provider, he plucks up a short pipette from the lab table (the spoon was inefficient), balances all of his containers in the crook of his left arm, and scoops up the fallen chair as he walks past, settling it with a bang (no response). Sherlock deposits his jars on the bedside table, which also hold his violin and bow, and The Return of the King, which he began reading aloud that morning. Bending over, he gently slides his arm under John’s back and shifts him up onto several pillows, then scoots next to him on the bed, sitting closely so he can support John’s head. With several small feedings each day, he’s gotten quite good at this.

Though he has taken immaculate care of John, Sherlock hasn’t changed his own clothing, hasn’t slept since the first nap, hasn’t shaved, has hardly left this room and not once left the flat. Mrs. Hudson has been leaving baked goods and pots of tea outside his bedroom door. Despite his original plan to only eat what John is eating to better monitor his needs, he had noted the increasing protests of his transport, his caloric need obviously more demanding than one who is sleeping soundly all day. He takes a blueberry muffin from his dressing gown pocket and eats it in three bites.

Propping the broth between his knees, Sherlock leans toward John and says firmly, “Alright John. It’s time to eat.” Delicately, he pipettes cool broth through John’s lips, waiting for the reflexive swallow before adding more. When he’s painstakingly fed him a half-pint of the broth, he moves to his green drink. John grimaces in his sleep at the taste, which Sherlock finds incredibly endearing. “There now, see it as motivation. Wake up from this and I’ll order you tamarind duck as a reward.” He absently wipes John’s chin.

He wonders, for perhaps the thousandth time, at this utterly vulnerable version of John before him who would loathe to be the subject of such care, could barely stand it when Sherlock brought him mint tea for his colds. John would just as soon solve this problem with a hare-brained sprint across London, gun tucked out of sight. While Sherlock misses that, pines for that, the deep aches in his own recovering chest tell him how unlikely that’s going to be for the foreseeable future. If John wakes, when he wakes, he corrects himself, will he ever forgive Sherlock for seeing him so weak? Will he drift away if their days of danger together are subdued to accommodate an invalid? Doesn’t much matter. Once he understands everything, he won’t be staying.

He pushes the thoughts into a shadowy corner of his mind palace, stashes the jars back in the tiny fridge and pulls out a black vinyl case holding rudimentary physician’s tools. He takes John’s temperature, checks his blood pressure and pulse, studies his fluttering eyelids – evidence of REM sleep, interesting – taps reflexes, and notes everything in a small blue book. Then he rolls John onto his side to take the pressure off of his back and surreptitiously reaches for the IV. He hasn’t attempted it since the first day, tests the sensitivity of the bruise on his chin where John had lashed out. But signs of dehydration are becoming evident, even with the liquidy feedings. He has to risk another try.

“John, you’re a doctor, you know how important it is that I keep you hydrated. So just put up with this for a bag’s worth and I’ll take it away. Can you do that for me? Please?” 

Snapping on pale blue latex gloves and dabbing at John’s wrist with an alcohol swab, he deftly inserts the IV and efficiently tapes it onto John’s skin. John frowns in his sleep and begins to roll roughly. Sherlock tenses. “Alright, let’s not have a repeat of last time, John, I don’t need you to wake up to me with a broken nose.”

John continues to struggle, as if wrestling something in a nightmare. Sherlock watches him, biting his lip, deliberating. With a quick nod, he quickly tosses the gloves onto the floor and slides onto the bed behind John, wrapping his arms around his chest and holding him tightly, speaking soothingly into his ear. John fights for only a moment more. As soon as Sherlock has pressed close to him, John gives a deep shudder and calms.

Heart racing, Sherlock marvels at this immediate change, marvels that he is holding John. Though he was motivated by purely medical need, the warm contact sends bolts of electricity through his chest and his breath comes fast and shallow. Would he object? Be angry?

Show him he’s not alone.

It’s always been you, Sherlock. Only you. God, I love you.

Sherlock thinks of those lazy afternoons they used to loll around the flat, reading through the papers over a long breakfast and mugs of tea, just saying whatever came to mind or nothing at all. He misses those days with a painful longing. He thinks John does, too. As the bag of saline empties into John’s body, Sherlock starts to talk. He tells him about old cases, about the 200 different kinds of ash and ways to discern them from one another, just to annoy him. He rambles about his childhood, his time at the university, a trip he took to the Alps, a dog he once loved.

The IV bag is empty. He hesitantly gets up, considers taking the opportunity to change it. John stirs and frowns in his sleep and Sherlock absently squeezes his shoulder as he stands. “It’s okay, John. I’m coming back.” He replaces the bag quickly – John is already starting to stir again – and curls back up with him on the warm spot on the blankets, this time less anxiously. Waiting for the second IV bag to empty, Sherlock settles his chin above John’s head. He dozes off.

Sherlock wakes with a startle to find the second bag empty and John still perfectly calm. Lifting himself heavily out of the bed, he pulls on new gloves and removes the IV, rubs the skin with an alcohol swab, and covers the wound with a small plaster. John does not stir. Well, we cracked that one just in the nick of time.

Pushing the IV stand off to the side, Sherlock’s mobile pings an alarm again. He sighs. “John, as ever, I humbly ask your forgiveness for this encroachment of your personal space, but needs must.” Peeling back the covers, Sherlock finds the absorbent pants need changing and handles the cleaning and new application with minimal fumbling and only a few muttered curses at the adhesive tape. The first time, in his terror and haste, he’d put it on backwards and gotten a sodden mess of sheets for his trouble. He thinks gratefully of John’s Iranian nurse who did this so effortlessly. Perhaps the children were good training.

Sherlock’s hands freeze in mid-action as a memory bursts through his thoughts. The baby. What will become of it? Will Mary terminate the pregnancy? There’s still time. Or will she keep it as the spoils of her conquest? Retain it for future blackmail? He fumbles with the tapes, frowns. He can postulate all he likes about the child’s position in his game of chess with Mary, but the simple realization sits firmly in his mind, shocking him. I must find that child. For its sake. For John.

When everything seems to be correctly attached, he gently tugs a fresh pair of his own ancient pajamas onto John. They’re too big for him, but soft. This clinical familiarity with John’s skin feels natural now, though certain thoughts betray his professional demeanor. John’s skin is softer than it has any right being.

He should probably run another test on the blood samples, but exhaustion is prickling at the edges of his eyes and dulling his thoughts. It’s the middle of the afternoon on the third day. If John doesn’t wake, they’ll relocate him at midnight to the secure facility Mycroft has selected. At his own insistence, Sherlock will not be permitted to know its whereabouts until they apprehend Mary and determine the extent of her network, in case he is found and used again as a pressure point. He has no idea how long that could take and it galls him, how she can push them apart even after she’s fled.

He turns away from John, arms crossed tightly, hands white-knuckled. Failure. Idiot. You couldn’t do it. Couldn’t find the pattern. What an absolute fool he’d been to believe that some pretty violin music and unrequested snuggling would bring him back. They’re smarter than you. Just accept that you’ve been well and truly beaten this time.

“I’m so sorry, John. I tried to keep you safe.” He can’t keep it at bay anymore. “I failed you.” The grief washes into his mind palace in a flood of thick black water.

Sherlock lets the tears fall, lets his chest shake with sobs. Serves me right, my turn to know what it’s like being left behind.

Gradually, the wave of crying subsides. He rubs his face on the sleeve of his dressing gown, and even though there is no IV-related distress to justify it, he slides next to John on the bed again. Might be the last time. It still worries his heart to be holding John without his permission, but he can’t stop himself. He is home. The smell of him, the firm curves of his chest and arms, the scratch of his cheek stubble against his own. If this is wrong of me, John, I’m so terribly sorry. But if I must send you off, let me do it this way.

John, as ever, has no reaction, though Sherlock imagines that if he were to try anything like this with a lucid John Watson, he’d likely flinch away and reaffirm his not-gayness while magnetically pulling toward him with his eyes. “Oh John, why don’t you just wake up so we can be idiots together and flounder through this mess.” Burrowing his head next to John’s on the pillow, he holds him tightly.

Though he’s bone-weary, sleep won’t come. “John, do you remember when we used to play Rock Paper Scissor? We would always tie, the variables were too simple for me not to anticipate. So I added ridiculous items like dynamite and earthquake. To make you laugh. I miss your laugh. My eldest brother… he was a chemist, too, I’ve never told you. Saw the aptitude in me before the others… he added Catalysts to the game, two-handed combinations…” he rambles on.

“Please,” he whispers into John’s ear, holding him tightly. “Fight this. Wake up. Come back to me.” His tears fall onto John’s skin as he plummets headlong into dark, overpowering sleep.

…

221B, the present

Sherlock finally stops talking. He’s been far away, living the memory again as he’s shared it with John, every bit of it, and comes back to himself now with a startle and a sharp breath. He ducks his head, afraid of what he will see when he deduces John’s expression.

But before he can even turn, John’s fingertips are at his stubbled chin, gently pivoting Sherlock’s face toward his own. Confused, Sherlock lets him, locking onto his eyes, ocean-blue irises eclipsed by wide pupils.

John has a pained expression, his eyes darting back and forth between Sherlock’s, reading… what? Is he about to tell him how Sherlock selfishly jeopardized his well-being? That he overstepped every boundary? That he has no memory of his confession? Sherlock can feel his heart beating in his throat, sees John’s pulse in his neck. Is this a new side-effect of the drug? Should he take his blood pressure?

Leaning toward him, cupping his jaw, John says very quietly,

“I remember everything.”

Sherlock freezes. All mental functions come to a crashing halt. He can feel a strong exhale across his cheek just before the stubble of their thin beards rasp together. And then John’s lips are on his own. Moth-wing soft.

Vesuvius erupts in Sherlock’s mind, sending molten lava cascading through his chest and into his limbs.

...Oh.

 _____

Thanks so much to those of you who are following along! <3 Always happy to add tags. Message/comment if you’d like to be added.

@pinkrose423 @brilliantorinsane @ineedhugz

This is on AO3!

#fanfic #fixitfic #johnlock #firstkiss #evilmary #sacrecoeurfic

[gibsongirlselections]

Will New Yorkers Get Desperate Enough To Vote for Trump?

With elderly Caucasian Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, November 3 will be less about the rise of progressive politics than the noise of the last four years would have you believe. But while the shine of AOC and her ilk winds down, progressive thought will find at least a petri dish to fester in during a Biden administration, and perhaps even a second media wind if Trump wins.

Since it’s not going away, seeing what would happen if progressives escape the lab and go viral is important. For that case study, we’ll look to COVID-laced New York.

COVID is supposed to be, finally, Trump’s white whale, the thing that will bring him down after he wriggled out from under the Russians and the Ukrainians and Stormy Daniels. Not enough ventilators! Not enough tests! Mass graves in Central Park! And it is all Trump’s fault. (See the headline: “Donald Trump is the Most Successful Bio-Terrorist in Human History.”) That set the stage for Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio to craft a response far more political than medical. New York today is a laboratory for what happens when progressive ideology displaces reality.

But first a quick reality check: For every death in this global epidemic, it is critical to remember the virus did not strike masses down in the streets like the Black Plague, and did not create hideous sores like the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s that tore through this city. It is unlikely to infect a third of the world’s population like the Spanish Flu. An overwhelming number of those infected today never even know they have COVID, surprised by an antibody test months later. Most infected people do not pass on the virus. On July 12, New York had zero virus deaths for the first time since the pandemic started. But keeping the emphasis on “cases” and not conclusions keeps the fear alive.

But enough of reality; we’re talking progressivism here. Lockdown has left New York economically devastated, mired in “the worst economic calamity since the 1970s, when it nearly went bankrupt,” according to the New York Times. The unemployment rate nears 20 percent, a figure not seen since the Great Depression (during the 2008 recession it was about 10 percent). The newly unemployed strain food banks and soup kitchens. Policy described as a “pause” in March morphed into a semi-permanent state to keep things bad ahead of the election. While de Blasio authorized nail salons to reopen, he’s kept the city’s core sectors, the stuff that symbolizes New York—Broadway, tourism, conventions, restaurants, hotels, and museums—shut, sacrifices to The Cause. Look what Trump wrought!

So people are leaving. More than 10,000 Manhattan apartments were listed for rent in June, an 85 percent increase over last year. The super wealthy neighborhoods have seen 40 percent migration out, the biggest outward migration from the once economically strongest neighborhoods in midtown and the Upper East Side. Enough rich New Yorkers have left that it is affecting the census. The situation mirrors the outflow of the 1970s which decimated the tax base and led to landlords torching buildings to collect the insurance because they could not collect rent.

So it matters that 25 percent of New York tenants have not paid their rent since March. Those overdue payments left 39 percent of landlords unable to pay property taxes. A new NY law prohibiting landlords from evicting tenants facing pandemic-related financial hardships may help on the micro level while contributing to the destruction of the greater economy, which of course will eventually devastate everyone. Progressive zeal created an economic tide to sink all boats.

The mayor who threw his city out of work also banned large gatherings through September. He did however say Black Lives Matter protests would be allowed, claiming “the demonstrators’ calls for social justice were too important to stop.” The mayor himself, maskless, took time off to help paint “Black Lives Matter” on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower. The central thoroughfare in Manhattan was then closed to traffic to let the paint dry. Some are more equal than others; the mayor criticized Trump for putting politics first in his coronavirus response.

De Blasio is also allowing an “occupation” to continue at City Hall, where a mix of activists and homeless (attracted by donated food) live in makeshift tents. It stinks, a throbbing health-hazard island of human feces and drugs and food scraps even before you get to the COVID part. The city allows them even as, until recently, it sent goons to chase unwoke citizens in twos and threes from playgrounds. A woman at the occupation asked my preferred pronouns while behind her a half-naked homeless man screamed. A few cops stood in front of a graffitied courthouse and laughed. Maybe they just like graffiti; it too is back across New York.

So what else are the cops up to? A former police commissioner criticized city and state leaders for abandoning the police (de Blasio pushed through a $1.5 billion cut to the NYPD on BLM demand) and for helping create a “crime virus” to go along with the coronavirus. Amid defunding elite NYPD units in spite of a 205 percent rise in shootings this year (one of the most recent shootings was a one-year-old caught in gang crossfire), so many NYPD officers are seeking retirement the department has been forced to slow-walk applications to get out. The state legislature meanwhile is proposing a new law to hold cops (not the city, as it is now) personally liable for events on duty even as New York City made the use of certain restraints by cops a criminal act.

De Blasio and Cuomo found ways to put more criminals on the streets. New York state recently eliminated bail for many crimes, claiming alongside BLM it was unfair to POC without resources to pay. Adding to the criminal population, Mayor de Blasio supported the release of some 2,500 prisoners due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus. At least 250 of those released have been re-arrested 450 times, meaning some have been re-arrested more than once. Since they cannot be held for bail, most are returned to the street under Governor Cuomo’s fairness policy.

The next battleground will be the schools. With only weeks to go in summer, the mayor announced the nation’s largest public school system will reopen with an unspecified mix of in-person and online classes. Teachers say crucial questions about how schools will stay clean, keep students healthy, and run active shooter drills while maintaining social distancing have not been answered. There have been no directives on how to handle online classes, no published best practices, not much of anything. Quality of education, like quality of life, is not on the agenda.

One certainty is New York’s students will have fewer options—26 Catholic schools will not reopen due to low enrollment and financial issues. That affects more than religion. Many of those schools represent the only neighborhood alternative to the failing public system. Closures will drive middle class flight.

And there’s always something more. With indoor restaurant dining prohibited, many places are setting up sidewalk tents. In addition to adding to the Hooverville atmosphere, all that food has brought out the rats, who are attacking patrons.

There is no sense we will ever end this. It’s easy to criticize places that have moved too fast, but they had the right underlying idea: we can’t live like this forever. People need to work, not just for money (though they need the money) but to have purpose. So much of what has been done in the name of justice feels more like punishment—suck on this bigots—racial score-settling under the guise of progressive social justice.

A lot of us are just sitting around like the Joad family, waiting for something to happen. The thing is, we’re not sure what we are waiting for. The lockdown was, we were told, to flatten the virus curve. We did that. COVID hospitalizations and actual deaths in NYC are at their lowest levels since March. But the lockdown is still here and nobody seems to know when to declare victory—is the end point zero new cases before we can re-open Broadway? A vaccine? We just wait, the days violent, hot, and liquid. De Blasio and Cuomo are waiting, too, but for November 3 to free us. No need for a continuing crisis after Biden wins.

But maybe the New York case study will serve as a different turning point in the election. Imagine enough purple voters who look at New York and become frightened of what the Left will do with power in Washington. They want to work. They want their kids in school. They might just vote for Trump.

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.

The post Will New Yorkers Get Desperate Enough To Vote for Trump? appeared first on The American Conservative.

[bookquotes17]

The Sun is Also A Star

<p>1. does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little about it.—Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan Do I dareDisturb the universe?In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.—The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot</p>

<p>2. CARL SAGAN SAID that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. When he says “from scratch,” he means from nothing. He means from a time before the world even existed. If you want to make an apple pie from nothing at all, you have to start with the Big Bang and expanding universes, neutrons, ions, atoms, black holes, suns, moons, ocean tides, the Milky Way, Earth, evolution, dinosaurs, extinction-level events, platypuses, Homo erectus, Cro-Magnon man, etc. You have to start at the beginning. You must invent fire. You need water and fertile soil and seeds. You need cows and people to milk them and more people to churn that milk into butter. You need wheat and sugar cane and apple trees You need chemistry and biology. For a really good apple pie, you need the arts. For an apple pie that can last for generations, you need the printing press and the Industrial Revolution and maybe even a poem. To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world</p>

<p>3. DANIEL IS RIGHT ABOUT CHARLES. He’s an asshole through and through. Some people grow out of their lesser natures, but Charles will not. He will settle into it, the skin that was always going to be his<br>

(I like the writing style. It’s easy and simple and gripping)</p>

<p>4. She had this feeling that in America names didn’t mean anything, not like they did in Korea. In Korea, the family name came first and told the entire history of your ancestry. In America, the family name is called the last name. Dae Hyun said it showed that Americans think the individual is more important than the family</p>

<p>5. Names are powerful things. They act as an identity marker and a kind of map, locating you in time and geography. More than that, they can be a compass. In the end, Min Soo compromised. She gave her son an American name followed by a Korean personal name followed by the family name. She named him Charles Jae Won Bae. She named her second son Daniel Jae Ho Bae. In the end, she chose both. Korean and American. American and Korean. So they would know where they were from. So they would know where they were going<br>

(Beautiful)</p>

<p>6. Sometimes if you look a word up in the dictionary, you’ll see some definitions marked as obsolete. Natasha often wonders about this, how language can be slippery. A word can start off meaning one thing and end up meaning another. Is it from<br>

overuse and oversimplification, like the way irie is taught to tourists at Jamaican resorts? Is it from misuse, like the way Natasha’s father’s been using it lately? Before the deportation notice, he refused to speak with a Jamaican accent or use Jamaican slang. Now that they are being forced to go back, he’s been using new vocabulary, like a tourist studying foreign phrases for a trip abroad. Everything irie, man, he says to cashiers in grocery stores who ask the standard retail How are you? He says irie to the postman dropping off mail who asks the same thing. His smile is too big. He pushes his hands into his pockets and throws his shoulders back and acts like the world has showered him with more gifts than he can reasonably accept. His whole act is so obviously fake that Natasha’s sure everyone will see through him, but then they don’t. He makes them feel good momentarily, like some of his obvious good fortune will rub off on them. Words, Natasha thinks, should behave more like units of measure. A meter is a meter is a meter. Words shouldn’t be allowed to change meanings. Who decides that the meaning has changed, and when? Is there an in-between time when the word means both things? Or a time when the word doesn’t mean anything at all?</p>

<p>7. EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. This is a thing people say. My mom says it a lot. “Things happen for a reason, Tasha.” Usually people say it when something goes wrong, but not too wrong. A nonfatal car accident. A sprained ankle instead of a broken one. Tellingly, my mom has not said it in reference to our deportation. What reason could there be for this awful thing happening? My dad, whose fault this whole thing is, says, “You can’t always see God’s plan.” I want to tell him that maybe he shouldn’t leave everything up to God and that hoping against hope is not a life strategy</p>

<p>8. She didn’t know then what it meant to be an undocumented immigrant. How it meant that you could never go home again. How your home wouldn’t even feel like home anymore, just another foreign place to read about</p>

<p>9. And rejection was not an easy thing. To be an actor you’re supposed to have thick skin, but Samuel’s skin was never thick enough. Rejection was like sandpaper. His skin sloughed away under its constant onslaught. After a while, Samuel wasn’t sure which would last longer: himself or his dreams</p>

<p>10. Times Square is a kind of hell (a fiery pit of flickering neon signs advertising all seven deadly sins).</p>

<p>11. Donald is not sure what the universe was trying to tell him by taking away his only daughter, but here is what he learned: no one can put a price on losing everything. And another thing: all your future histories can be destroyed in a single momen</p>

<p>12. It seems like such a long time ago when I thought the world of him. He was some exotic planet and I was his favorite satellite. But he’s no planet, just the final fading light of an already dead star. And I’m not a satellite. I’m space junk, hurtling as far as I can away from him</p>

<p>13. She looks up from her broken headphones. As our eyes meet, I get a kind of déjà vu, but instead of feeling like I’m repeating something in the past, it feels like I’m experiencing something that will happen in my future. I see us in old age. I can’t see our faces; I don’t know where or even when we are. But I have a strange and happy feeling that I can’t quite describe. It’s like knowing all the words to a song but still finding them beautiful and surprising<br>

(Beautiful)</p>

<p>14. His shoulders shrug, but his eyes don’t. “Why not? Besides, I’m pretty sure you owe me your life since I just saved it.” “Believe me,” I tell him, “you don’t want my life<br>

(Aww)</p>

<p>15. We sit in a not-at-all-comfortable silence for thirty-three seconds. I fall into that super-self-conscious state you get into when you’re with someone new and you really want them to like you. I see all my movements through her eyes. Does this hand gesture make me seem like a jerk? Are my eyebrows crawling off my face? Is this a sexy half smile or do I look like I’m having a stroke? I’m nervous, so I exaggerate all my movements. I BLOW on my coffee, SIP it, STIR it, playing the part of an actual human teenage boy having an actual beverage called coffee.   I blow too hard on my drink and a little foam flies up. I could not be any cooler. I would totally date me (not really). It’s hard to say, but she may have smiled ever so slightly at the foam flight.<br>

(Hahaha)</p>

<p>16. According to the article, the result of the experiment was that the two test subjects did indeed fall in love and get married. I don’t know if they stayed married. (I kinda don’t want to know, because if they did stay married, then love is less mysterious than I think and can be grown in a petri dish. If they didn’t stay married, then love is as fleeting as Natasha says it is.<br>

(Wow. Yes. True)</p>

<p>17. It’s just hair, I tell myself. Its function is to keep the head warm and protect it against ultraviolet radiation. There’s nothing inherently sexy about it<br>

(What are you, a robot? -.-)</p>

<p>18. We end up with ten questions, because Natasha thinks that for number twenty-four we should talk about our relationship with both our mother and father. “How come mothers are always the ones most blamed for screwing up children? Fathers screw kids up perfectly well.” She says it like someone with firsthand experience<br>

(That was my point too. Although, in a positive manner)</p>