#GREG SWEEP!!!!!!! FUCK IT UP

[gregoftom]

MAYBE I GOT MINE  BUT YOU’LL [ALL] GET YOURS

#GREG SWEEP!!!!!!! FUCK IT UP #i LOVE this framing of the episode sfm. #at the beginning tom tells him; you save information. you gather it up. and then you USE IT LATER when it will do the most damage #greg asked tom's permission first to damage sh*v and he got it. he acknowledged it and remembered it. #he saw how much tom was hurting and tired and stressed and fucked up. he witnessed sh*v take tom aside while all 3 siblings #were BATTERING tom and stressing him to shit. he SAW that afterwards tom was emotionally exhausted #he had enough of tom being fucked around so he was like do you want to fry her ass up? shall we tell them? shall we let the siblings know? #do you want me to do it? do you want me to be your attack dog? do you want me to bite for you? and tom said; wait #heel. so greg did. #and then RIGHT when it was needed the most. when sh*v came close. greg ATTACKED. gregweiler unleashed. #tom should come with a sign; CAUTION! GUARD DOG ON PREMESIS. #tomgreg #and greg has been threatened and given shit SO MANY TIMES and never used the information he's sponged. #he never used stuff he knows about ken even though ken threatened to burn him even after ken said he wouldn't. #it was for tom.

[tomwambsgans]

interesting that speaking overtly about gay people in succession is reserved entirely for homophobia. even the one gay couple that we see is never explicitly referred to by anyone as such, unless you count logan calling vaulter a "gay little website." even roman calls himself and yee as a pair "metrosexual" despite it most likely being public knowledge that yee is partnered with a man (i mean, considering that he would bring that partner to dinner with the son of logan roy).

however, ostensibly homosexual acts are sometimes alluded to metaphorically in positive ways... namely by kendall and tom. "yeah i'll throw in a blowjob, i'll even cup his balls" and "i'm in logan's g-spot, i can finger-bang him all night long". meanwhile notions of homosexual acts in a clearly derogatory context are hurled most often against those very same characters. did you bend for him. tom will suck the biggest dick in the room. and so on. contrast with roman and greg, who iirc allude to gay sex only in the context of one's own hypothetical sexual assault.

circling back to the homophobia of it all, looking back i'm noticing something especially interesting: most of the derogatory mentions of men having sex with each other come, after logan, from shiv. roman makes general sweeping comments about "liberal butt-love" and will mime sucking a dick when someone kisses logan's ass, but that's a pretty standard metaphor, on par with how all of the roys have been taught to use sexual phrases as threats, to just say "fuck" to mean "fuck over," etc. meanwhile we've got shiv directly, specifically bringing up some politician's gay scandal, as well as accusing tom of having threesomes with greg and wanting to suck lukas's dick. it's not THAT much, like definitely not even half as bad as what logan says, but it is the second most overt. interesting way to take after dad, i guess.

#also when we hear the waystar training video say that they don't discriminate against sexuality. and we hear this bc greg is listening to it #idk that might be a reach but it's interesting. only other thing i can think of is 'you kiss guys on molly' #succession #shiv roy #tom wambsgans #tomgreg #kinda #kendall roy #meta #mine

[ezlebe]

prompt: either of them mistakenly & flippantly says “love u bye” out of habit b4 hanging up the phone (i’ve done this b4 when talking to a random old lady) & chaos ensues

“– and the time slot cannot be changed, but you can give her the contact to Ubon to buy another one,” Tom says, emphasizing the last words, making it easy to tell he’s probably gesturing in that little pinch. “You get all that?”

“Yeah, I… yeah, I can do it,” Greg says, flipping through the day planner with a peek at the corners. He pauses at the sight of a fluorescent orange sticky with a relieved sigh.

“Seriously, do I hear the paper planner?” Tom says, voice pitching bright with mocking amusement. “How old are you – seventy-five?”

“I got it, Tom,” Greg says, again, fully flipping open the planner.

“Good,” Tom says, voice fading on the other end of the line. “Shit. Kerry. I got to go. Bye-bye!”

Greg nods absently, tugging the note out of the edge of the planner, so it peeks through the pages. “Ye-yeah, bye. Love you.”

Tom sputters across the line. “What?”

“What?” Greg echoes, then his own words catch up, and he hurriedly hangs up the phone with a slip of his thumb across the screen. He stares at it in his hand, as his heart thuds, face flashing cold, then hot, as a tingle rushes in a wave across his skin down to his fingertips. He stiffly loosens his grip on the planner to cover his face, bending across his knees.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck, fuck.

Greg is at least is relieved to be out on assignment, as it were; he can’t get cornered in his office with heckles when he’s out here in California. He could, in theory, not even go back… but Tom would come looking, if it came to that, probably? It’s not a real option, either way. He might, at most, push it back a day or two.

It’s especially fucked because Greg has been like so fucking careful, too. He doesn’t touch too much, he’s pretty sure, and he hardly starts up anything himself. He’s been like a total… bro, or whatever, since stumbling into finding out Tom is less conflicted on the rules of it’s-not-gay-if-it’s-a-devil’s-three-way than anything else they could do. He’s like pretty sure, though, Tom has some idea that Greg… prefers him to be there for like completion’s sake? But also that he thinks Greg just gets nervous.

Tom’s always telling him not to get too nervous…

Fuck. Greg is thinking about that now, somehow even less appropriate for his upcoming meeting. It’s a thought that does calm him down in a way, Tom's low voice in his ear, which is nice... though, when taken apart and isolated, it’s just as much of a problem.

Greg looks up with a start at a bell at the opposite end of the hall, straightening his back, as a woman in a bright white power suit exits the nearby elevator. He stands when she closes in on the seating area, and knows he has to bury all this for the next hour, at least, because this is the hard ass ad exec who Tom has had him doing background on the last two days.

“Mr Hirsch?” She says, pasting in on bright, toothy smile while sticking out her hand. “I’m Crista Ball. Welcome to NoHo.”

“Nice to meet you,” Greg says, then clears his throat, forcibly brightening his voice while reaching out to take Crista’s hand. “Call me Greg.”

~

“Hey,” Tom says, looking up, as Greg enters his office. “Good flight?”

“Um… cramped,” Greg says, as he looks toward the window and the grey sky framing the skyscrapers, and realizes he’s having a little trouble remembering the actual flight. It must have been boring. “Not that, like… eventful, I guess, which makes it good?”

“No news is good news,” Tom says, standing up from his desk with an exaggerated oof. He walks around it, the fingers of one hand lingering on the desk, while the other sweeps out in a gesture toward the floor outside the hall with an upturned palm. “Unless you work here, obviously.”

Greg huffs with an assenting lift of his shoulder. He shifts his bag behind him, when Tom gets close, opening his arms to reciprocate Tom folding him into a loose hug.

“But hey,” Tom says, quietly, turning his head to the side with a press of lips under Greg’s ear. “Welcome back, baby.”

Greg tightens his fingers in Tom’s shirt, trying to pull him closer, but the shirt slips from his grasp. He looks down, furrowing his brow as he realizes Tom’s actually only in a white tee, worn thin and loose around the collarbones. He exhales a low mumble of confusion, looking at Tom, “Did you wear this to the office?”

Tom raises an eyebrow, from where he stands in the middle of his penthouse bedroom. “The office?”

Greg looks over his shoulder at the door, a dark, narrow hall beyond it. “I – I mean –?”

Tom leans in Greg’s face with a smirk and a with a pair of tuts, hands settling wide along Greg’s pelvis. “We couldn’t do this at the office.”

Greg shakes his head to agree, but he’s… He’s still having trouble really holding on. It’s like the fabric and Tom are no more solid than sand.

“Got you all to myself,” Tom continues, wagging his brows, having no trouble on his part for tugging at Greg’s belt. “No one else in the way. Just like I like it.”

“Yo-you do?” Greg asks, hearing his voice lift in a fluster.

Tom laughs under his breath, leaning in, sliding both hands up Greg’s torso, his chest, then curving across his lower jaw. He stares for a few beats, then his mouth curves into an ugly sneer. “No.”

“Shit,” Greg croaks, blinking at the creased pillow under his head. He’s not in New York, at all; he never even got on the plane. He maybe on purpose let his meeting run long, asked the car to take a detour for dinner, and then had them take him back to the hotel once it was solidly two hours after the flight.

He turns over into the pillow with a groan, entertaining the idea of suffocating himself against the cotton and fiber. He slowly continues to roll entirely to the opposite side that he woke up on, grimacing at the way his feet miss against the edge of the mattress, and determinedly counts various light across the city while trying to forget the dream. He feels winded, and too hot, like he’s been out in a run, or something, though the only thing racing is his mind.

It was just a dream. Greg like really doesn’t even… care, because it – It would be sort of a pointless, painful waste of energy. The way it is just is how it is, and he has known that for months.

He’s known since he awkwardly tried to remind Tom he had a lot of life ahead of him, only to get too tipsy, go a little too far, and be drawn into some loosely-labeled fun. It had actually only been a little awkward, at first, until it got very awkward when Tom admitted that he’d partly done it because of Shiv, as he was apparently carrying some kind of bizarre spite that he hadn’t really explained. He then joked it made him disgusting, because he was still married to her, but it felt heavily implied that also was because Greg was Greg, and they were disgusting together.

It gets harder to remember why that’s really so bad every time the situation repeats itself. It doesn’t recur exactly like the first time, but they’ll get just as drunk, and Tom will become especially evocative, settling on a wall or a lounger like it’s a throne, and throw an arm around Greg, squeezing his hip, his ribs, his thighs, and tugging his clothes, while he tells him in sly detail how they might sweet talk someone that Greg’s really only been looking at just to keep from looking at Tom. And then never, ever talk about it. It’s like they both become different people, entirely separate from who they are when they’re sober in daylight.

Greg thinks that he might actually hate drunk-Greg, who is so desperate, though not as much as he hates drunk-Tom, who treats Greg with the possessiveness and condescension of an especially posable doll. Truthfully, though, nothing can really top the hate for how much he still keeps going along knowing it leads exactly nowhere. It leads nowhere, except here, laying in the dark and wishing he had never told Tom that a woman at the bar was looking at them those months ago. He’s a bigger liar than he’s ever been, and the real truth is that he’s always been too good at faking it. His parents must be so proud, all considered.

The train of thought is jarringly interrupted by a sharp thwack hitting the door. Then another. And Greg reaches out to tap the lamp, squinting towards it, and then back to the door. He stumbles up, once he fully grasps it’s knocking, and that it’s getting louder by the second.

“Just a – One, uh – one moment, please,” he says, clearing his throat, and he nearly falls across the table alongside the suite sofa. He fumbles at the door, thankful that it makes the knocking stop, and slowly peeks out a narrow crack.

He quickly opens the door wider, squinting blearily down at Tom, who’s standing in the harsh light of the hotel hallway. He’s in shirtsleeves with a wrinkled jacket over his arm, has sunglasses on his head, and he… He didn’t even wait a day to fly out. He didn’t even wait half a day – is he tracking Greg, in a very literal sense?

“You skipped out on your flight,” Tom says, rather than any sort of greeting. He shoves past Greg, though the door and scratching at his brow while moving across the suite. “Very mature.”

“It was a-a meeting conflict issue, I didn’t – ” Greg shakes his head once with a hard swallow. “It like wasn’t a deliberate skipping.”

“Uh-huh,” Tom says, now scrubbing a hand entirely across his face. He settles in front of the window, chin resting on a fist. “Whatever you say.”

Greg lifts his hands slowly across his elbows, squeezing into the joints.

“Look, bud, it was just a little faux pas, you –”

“Can we not – ” Greg inhales tight, as the words rasp from his throat, “Not talk about it?”

Tom peeks over his shoulder, mouth flattening, as his eyes gradually narrow over a count of seconds. He clicks his tongue, as he looks back toward the city outside the window.

Greg has gone through a lot of… phases when it comes to Tom, all shifting blends of attracted, and agitated, and attached, and ambivalent, and altogether it’s the most keyed-up he’s felt about anyone. He doesn’t like getting forced into thinking directly about it, and he especially doesn’t want Tom thinking about it.

Mostly.

A tiny, impetuous part of Greg wishes that he would just say something.

Tom turns around entirely, dropping his hands with a shake that goes through to his fingertips. He steps in closer, making some face that’s probably condescending, but too shadowed against the dim bedside lamp to really tell. “Your call.”

Greg agrees with a hard swallow and a jerky drop of his chin.

Tom stands silently for another beat, then abruptly leans up to slip a hand around Greg, tugging him into one-armed slap on the back. “Hey, buck up.”

Greg suddenly can't help the way his shoulders immediately roll forward and hunch, his hands pushing weakly at the loose wrinkles of Tom’s shirt. It feels too much like the dream, of something under his hands and with soft whispered affection, only now it’s solid, and he literally chokes at the thought, breath trapped at the back of his throat.

Tom goes markedly still for a pair of tense beats, then exhales lengthy and low between them. “Okay,” he murmurs, palm settling warm and heavy across the back of Greg’s head. “Okay.”

Greg gradually presses his face entirely across Tom’s shoulder. “I’m like…” He says, voice barely above a murmur. “Tired, Tom.”

Tom is quiet for a few long seconds, then gives a jerky nod against the side of Greg’s head. “It’s… It is the ass of dawn.”

“Yeah, um – wh-why are you here?” Greg asks, and maybe that’s not what he meant, but it is a little more crazy. He’s aware enough that, between the traffic and the air time, Tom must have gotten a flight at like the minute Greg didn’t step off his own, so it’s almost 7AM for both of them, only Tom probably hasn’t had any sleep. “I was like scheduled for tomorrow?”

“Doesn’t really matter,” Tom says, rubbing his thumb hard and distracting into the curve of Greg’s scalp.

“It does, though,” Greg insists, grudgingly pulling back, forcing himself to release Tom’s shirt from his stiff grip. He looks down into what he can see of Tom’s face, but it’s just the slope of his nose and the upturn of his lashes, too shadowed to read. “You have like stuff to do.”

“I was… concerned,” Tom says, briefly wringing his hands, then again dropping them to his sides in loose fists. “That you may have overcorrected in some way.”

Greg shakes his head, as he rubs deep into one of his eyes with the heel of a hand. He can’t really guess what that could mean, and decides not to try – he overcorrected? He didn’t take a six hour red-eye.

“Can I, like… just go back to bed?” he mutters, into the curve of his own palm, attempting not to look directly at Tom while his stomach threatens to tighten in upset. “If we apparently don’t have anything to talk about?”

Tom exhales a harsh, predictably irked breath that’s close to a scoff.

“I know you… uh, you have trouble sleeping a lot, anyway?” Greg says, carefully, as he manages to pull away entirely from Tom to take a few steps toward the bed on what feel like lead feet. He had piled the more… decorative pillows on the side he wasn’t using, but now he starts to move them toward the sofa. “But you need like a couple hours, Tom.”

Tom makes a soft, pitchy noise, entirely unfamiliar, so somewhat worrying.

Greg looks back, and it’s easier to see Tom’s face from this angle of the lamp; he’s got his sunglasses in his hands, flipping at the arms, and is staring at the pillows like he’s never seen one. Greg realizes with a discomforting yank under his sternum that he’s assuming way too much, Tom probably wants and should get his own room, and that’s even in some way why they’re both even standing here, as he squeezes at the last pillow he’s got in his hand.

Tom drops the sunglasses with a clack to the coffee table. “You know… how much I hate to admit when you’ve got a point.”

Greg manages a nod, as he swallows thickly, throwing that last pillow to the pile. He wets his lips, as he turns his head back down at the bed, anxiously listening to Tom undress behind him. He hears the clatter of a belt joining the sunglasses, then a thunk that’s probably a watch, while heat flares unbidden across his nape and the backs of his ears.

He tries to seem unbothered, as he tucks himself away best he can back under the too-thin blanket while keeping his breath in even, conscious counts. He stays stiffly on his side, listening to a pad of footsteps around the bed, then feels Tom slip in beside with a barely there displacement of the mattress and the bedclothes. He does peek open his eyes for a split second, catching that Tom is entirely down to his boxers, and his undershirt nowhere to be seen.

Tom unceremoniously leans over Greg, across the mattress, and it takes both forever and a split second to realize he’s tapping the light. It goes brighter, then brighter, prompting grumbles, until finally the room is dark. He doesn’t actually move away, once he’s finished, but stays pressed close to Greg on his side, too, settling his reaching arm lightly across Greg’s shoulder with an unintelligible murmur under his breath.

Greg carefully rests his nose into the hollow of Tom’s shoulder, warm and solid, inhaling against the bare skin. He tries but can’t think of a time they’ve just laid together. He’s then struck unwelcomingly with the memory of the Tom in the dream, pretending at being fond, before sharply becoming mocking; it makes Greg turn his head away, trying to pretend he didn’t do anything at all, even though he knows the dream was less real than anything else – particularly, how Tom is in bed with him, and just him, even if it’s only because he’s such a… a control freak that he’ll take a whole cross-country flight.

They lay there for a long while, until the principal concern keeping Greg awake is the low buzz of the fridge in the kitchenette. He’s less hyper aware of Tom, mostly comfortable, exhaustion bringing him near to dozing across the arm under his chin.

Tom abruptly exhales a loud, shuddering breath, breaking the quiet, as his chest deflates against Greg. “You, too.”

Greg peeks open his eyes, glancing up the bed, then hurriedly squeezes them shut.

“That’s what I should’ve said,” Tom continues, in a voice barely above a murmur.

#tomgreg #sort of a S4E1 speculation so there's not any actual solid spoilers but there is talk of encounters with nameless women #nameless because none actually appear not because greg never remembers their names to be clear #could in a super loose sense count toward another prompt i have with jealous greg but this is more melancholic than active jealous so

[hadassah4ever]

late night cuddles with Greg

warnings: it’s basically total fluff, minus greg being rlly insecure (insecure greg truthers rise up), basically all comfort barely any hurt

author’s note: did i plan on writing this? no. did i listen to too much los campesinos and write it anyways? yes.

song inspiration: To Tundra — Los Campesinos

word count: 500

———

Quiet nights with Greg were a must have. Gentle and intimate silence was like a second language to both of you, not even having to be asleep to enjoy the stillness and warmth of it all.

You knew you loved Greg from the time you first kissed, and even though neither of you verbalised it, you sensed it. It was like a prayer running wild throughout each other's brains like wind sweeping over a grassy field. Deep down, Greg didn’t believe how he got someone like you to love him. So he believed all of the soft “i love you”s he repeated in his mind were unreciprocated.

Something changed one night, though. Laying on your own respective sides of the bed, facing each other, your eyes grazed every centimetre of his face, you could’ve drawn him from memory. Greg’s eyes did everything to avoid yours, but how could he resist you? When eye contact was made, you almost spoke on autopilot.

“You’re very handsome, you know.”

He didn’t know, he didn’t believe. Instead of embarrassing himself by going the cocky route, or by sounding like an insecure 15 year old, he just didn’t speak. You moved closer to him, head resting on the first few inches of his pillow, close, but not uncomfortably so. “Seriously. Your nose, your doe eyes, your lips, and your dimples, dear god, I love your dimples. So wonderfully handsome.” You chuckled tiredly, his eyes gained happiness, but with a slight twinge of disbelief and his lips pressed together in a tight smile that looked like you were holding him for ransom.

You moved your head and pushed your lips against his, hand gently resting on a spot somewhere in between his jawline and neck. You pulled apart and didn’t even hesitate to say “I love you.” Greg’s face gained a slightly more genuine light, but a lack of blush, displaying the fact that your love for him was never an unknown thing, just one that wasn’t believed. Possibly, instead of doubting what you say, he could bask in the glory of having the most divine person he’s ever seen, and believed could ever exist.

“I love you too.” He spoke, it rolled off his tongue so easily, considering the phrase was nesting in the back of his throat, waiting to be set free. “I know you don’t believe me, but you’re one of the most fucking beautiful men I’ve ever seen.” It almost made your chest ache saying that. Inevitably, there was nothing you could do to make him believe that, and the knowledge of it pained you.

“I don’t.” He simply responded after a decent bit of hesitation. “I wish you could.” You added, a complete sense of truth behind your voice. “I know.” He tiredly replied.

As you laid on his bare chest, there was a set of glassy eyes watching the top of your head, your lack of movement aside from your rising and falling chest as you slept soothing him.

Maybe he’d start to believe you, at least he’d try.

#greg hirsch x reader #succession x reader #greg hirsch x you #cousin greg x reader #greg hirsch x y/n #Spotify

[hearts4juzi]

TELL ME SHIT ABOUT VANESSA IN TRIO AU I NEED TO HEAR ABOUT HER!!!!

VANESSA!!!!!!

Vanessa's life goes pretty much the same as canon as far as childhood goes except! Gregory is her biological brother. Originally they were seperated in the divorce but when her mom died he had to come live with them and vanessa HATED THAT. she really didnt want greg here with her dad it made her SOOO UPSET and then her dad was an asshole so she. uhm.

Stabbed him. to death.

Will, who was around to see it (totally not having just killed someone himself, the irony) is like "wow. i should call teh cops on u for killing that guy." and vanessa BEGS HIM NOT TO and ehs like "mmmmmmmmmmokay but u can actually help me since you're already a criminal haha" and basically makes her clean up HIS murder while he helps sweep hers under the rug.

And tghen he keeps it going because she doesnt wanna go to jail or die or anything rn and hes holding that blackmail over her (plus if she gets him in trouble that only reflects badly on her bc she helped clean it up)

but when she decides that she deserves prison anyways, wills like "cool but my sons called the cops on me before and i came out innocent so theres a good chance I wont get caught" and he threatens to use gregory next/hurt gregory or smth like that so vanessa is forced to stay

she hates being called vanny because thats the nickname will coined for her

Luis is here too hai!!! he is constantly trying to cheer her up with like. the most surface level bullshit and at first william finds it amusing so he pairs them up a TON even when luis starts flirting with her because william thinks its the funniest shit but of course luis starts digging too deep and him and vanessa become chill (ish) with each other because she basically tells him to fuck off. with that same energy he PISSES HER OFFFF but he eventually does but hes still suuuper ignorant and pretty selfish and he keeps digging and snooping around but doesnt wanna tell ppl bc hes scared it'll hurt their relationship. vanessa wants to shake him by his shoulders and tell him to get her someone who will help her but william has caught on to luis by now and keeps an eye on them when theyre together (or gets henry to do it, either one) and eventually luis catches them killing someone and william kills him. oops!

vanessa is a bit uneasy about that because a) luis was ehr only hope of getting away from william atm and b) lots of people knew luis and theyd notice he was gone

but williams a smart guy and manages to shove that under the rug lol

Vanessa HAAATES henry btw. she thinks hes crazy and annoyign and he's constantly getting into fights with william. she also hates him bc he built the mimic which escaped and is now causing chaos and ruining their plans.

also she LOVES williams kids and she brings gregory over a lto to hand out with evan and theyre buddies but she is so worried about them because the way william treats them sometimes reminds her of her own dad and she doesnt want them to end up like herrr

THATS ALL I CAN THINK OF OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD

#tzu rambles #employee trio au #tzu asks

[gemsofthegalaxy]

Actually sometimes if I think about it I am a little mad that Greg's blatant experience of Tom's homophobic powerplays and abuse is treated as almost nothing in the Family Abuse Through Capitalism show. it's, like, intentionally played for laughs most times.

At the same time, I love the two of them and find them compelling and interesting because I love jealously, possession, and devotion and I ship as many straight ships as I do gay ones. As much as I do want wholesome gay rep I also want hand-in-unlovable-hand, nobody-can-love-you-like-I-do stories too. I'm not mad at my fellow fans for just sort of sweeping it away because the show also does, I think? Perhaps there is an angle I am missing but-

Shiv gets to experience the whole gambit of being a scummy person and a woman and using her position to fuck over other women, but still having harrowing experiences of misogyny when she's utterly surrounded by men. It's heart- and gut-wrenching to watch. Layered and interesting. People have differing opinions, still, but it's in the text and it always has been.

Greg, meanwhile, is ambiguously straight. There are queer readings we can have- going from completely disinterested in sex/women to loudly and obnoxiously flirting with them publically as he gains an increasingly important position and plays the expected part he has to play. Not to mention, his pointedly absent father is gay, more than enough reason for him to not come out.

But we never get a confirmation and... I don't know if I would say there's been anything of Greg grappling with the specifically homoerotic way that Tom has tormented him. Greg seems to be mildly weirded out and then rolls with it- does he not recognize the game Tom is playing? is that a commentary on how victims may not recognize the abuse? If Greg was scared of Tom hurting him, why fuck him over on multiple separate occasions and even right after experiencing physical assault. I'm not asking what Greg's point is, but what is deal is, instead. Cause I can't figure out what they're saying with him when it comes to Tom's emotional abuse specifically.

In my opinion, we still don't have a confirmation on whether Greg really cares about Tom in return (as Tom had tried to make Greg emotionally reliant on himself but ended up emotionally reliant on Greg). Based on last night I think he does, honestly, at least like Tom's company and want to stick with him. Whether he does stay with Tom or not still remains to be seen and I think he's been vague enough they could go any way they want with him.

Greg is not only not a serious person, he's not a serious character, I think. And to me that's a wee bit of a shame. Yes, we also get ambiguous sexuality and issues with Roman but we've also had a deal of exploration of that- I would like more, but, it's been covered. It's been at least addressed, in some way.

Lastly, I will acknowledge that I don't even know what it is I'm asking for, here. I just feel the storytellers are maybe treating the queerness with a bit much levity for the world they've created. And I think the exploration of varying forms of discrimination as they layer on top of the Capitalism-Abuse has left something to be desired, perhaps, and all feel underexplored to me.

#succession #succession spoilers #greg hirsch #greg danced with an old man was super funny but its like #why him. and an older man specifically. hm? #its only funny due to his implicit ambiguous queerness. and it is... funny. obviously. #long post #sorry sorry #i hope nobody gets maaaaad #tomgreg #it is. technically about them

[harmcityherald]

my good friend ralph. he loves fishing above all other things. The guys would always ride him, on the job sites because its a build and escape mission from the bowels of the pentagon and ralphie would whip out his glasses and scrutinize the prints and the company's instructions, which no one ever reads, and say hey guys we are building it wrong we gotta start over. It made him the unpopular old guy with 30 years in. one day they send him up to our main office downtown to change the light bulbs. so he parked the van right in front on Charles street and, as we are all aware at 3pm they come with tow trucks and sweep the street. the rush hour charles street grab. they do it every day like clockwork. van gets towed away. our ceo, looks at ralph, who has slaved for the company for 25 years, in his eye and fires him on the spot. By the end of the day we all had heard. asshole brother number one fired ralphie. asshole.

next day, buttcrack of dawn, I arrive at the timeclock and there is ralphie. full uniform. so I go over and ask the obvious question, I heard about asshole, what happened? I thought you got fired? and ralphie looks at me almost tears in his eyes, I didnt know what else to do. Which, you all know immediately sent me to another planet. I said stay right there. I march off to the warehouse office and tell brother number 3 that ralph is outside and that guy has 25 years in your fucking company and you, little red headed step child brother, are going to send him out and grow a pair and tell your brother he is a dick. your sending him out with me or I fucking quit right here. my exact words. he sent him with me, I was number one east coast repair guy, would never accept a partner or helper. That day I did. he went with me that day and every day after. We met some cool people. my favorite client of all time was john astin. he was teaching an acting class at john hopkins. Ralph broke his grandaughters little clay paperweight. I said dude what the fuck I can't take you nowhere. mr. astin laughed at us and then called our boss, praised us and told them don't send anyone else. only greg n ralph. van number one. he was my favorite client, no ego in that man. the realest celebrity I ever met. Im getting my fishing license this week and giving ralphie a call.

#work stories #life from a box truck #this will grow as I smeagel with myself

[merskrat]

An Ode to my Husband’s Favorite Cup

Out of fairness to everyone in my family, I’m including a poem I wrote about my husband to continue on with the theme of poetry about my family.

My husband smash

Cup on the ground

Chaos ensues

When he’s around

I meet the eye

Of clumsy guy

His hand don’t work

We wonder why

He is good boy

And sweeps it up

The shards of his

Favorite cup

He wonders what

He will do now

But sulking here

Is not allowed

I go online

Look for new cup

And tell greg to

Shut the fuck up

#poetry #black mug supremacy #poem #silly poem

[mintawasalreadytaken]

chapter 8 of 'bad times'

found most of this languishing in my drafts and thought "you know what the world needs today? drarry whump." here it is! happy weekend to you!

--- THIS IS WHUMP. IT'S A BAD TIME. A VERY BAD TIME. LOOK AWAY UNLESS YOU WANT TO JOIN IN THE BAD TIMES, TOO. ---

"But what do you see in him?"

Hermione's being rude, and Harry can't blame her. He knows what it looks like. What he looks like. He fiddles with the white chip in his jeans pocket, the urge to blur out this conversation with something strong enough to strip paint a physical pressure between his ears.

"The sex is good," Harry says.

Hermione's eyes flutter, her version of rolling them.

It's not a lie, but it's not the truth, either. 

"Do you really want me to explain?"

"How the sex is good?" She looks out the window. "No, I don't."

She shuts the screen door behind her when she leaves, maintaining eye contact with him through it like she dares him to step foot outside his flat too. He goes for the toilet immediately instead and discovers she's emptied the bottles under the bathroom sink, and the anger and shame over that gives him heartburn and burps like eggs. He dowses that fire with vodka in orange juice, then a little orange juice in what’s left of the vodka, until his teeth find the wiggly tooth and play with it, and that’s unsettling and he wonders for a moment if he’s dying, if his teeth are falling out because he’s dying and he’s back in the gymnasium storage closet with Cedric’s dead weight dragging him down, it’s a split second memory but once it’s there it takes sitting in the pub counting to one thousand tearing a cardboard mat to shreds sipping warm lager until it’s two and he’s pissed and he can’t feel his teeth anymore more and Ben the bartender buys a half and does a line with him in the cooler and all of a sudden it’s any other day and Harry’s fine. He pops home, he grabs his stuff and responds to the regulars first, and then he's off to work, sniffing a little more because his car is in the shop so he's on a bicycle tonight, the breeze he creates by whipping down hills slapping singlet against his chest and combing tracks through his greasy hair. 

The licks of time between this feeling of flying, he feels too much. Those are the snippets when he knows how it looks, putting Draco up at his place. Knows how he looks, the puffiness bloating the tissues of his face when the rest of him screams malnourishment. The slivers of time spent sober-ish for Hermione’s benefit, those precipitate the thinking and that brings the smell of rubber, of footie and jerseys and the butcher shop tang of the morgue, and the next thing Harry knows it’s late and he’s on his last call, back at the pub and the sign on the door says CLOSED but the bar manager ripped the Arctic Monkeys EP to CD and they keep playing So I Bet That You Look Good On The Dance Floor on repeat and Ben’s hitting on Davis and Martina and Greg and the waitress Harry can never remember are playing the worst game of pool he’s ever seen, and Draco’s there. Someone called him. He follows the conversation with his eyes and props open the exit to smoke through the crack in the door and he only talks to Harry to ask if he will sell to his friends, and Harry says he’s done for the night but has more at home, if Draco wants it, and Draco shrugs and says he’ll see. 

They party until the group peels into smaller groups and it’s just them and six lines. Ben breaks a pint glass while filling in the dishwasher, and he leaves to the back, swerving around a corner, cursing whoever the fuck moved the bucket they use for shards. 

Draco rests his chin in his hand, and looks directly at Harry. 

“I’d better be getting home,” Harry says. He passes a rolled note to Draco. Draco inserts its damp tip into a nostril and finishes the last two lines on the countertop, then sweeps the crumbs onto the floor. He pockets the bill and sniffles.

"Looks like we're done here," says Draco. He rubs one palm from Harry's knee up his thigh, then disengages, off to steal a turn at the pool table. He hasn't paid for a thing all night and he brushes Harry's coke to the ground like it's nothing. He soaks up everything in his path like it's owed to him. Wipes the ground with Harry most of all. 

They say nothing else to one another in the ensuing minutes, the comedown, while everyone's too pissed and high and exhausted to admit that after this is nothing, is home and the blue light of morning and more of the same tomorrow. Draco trails Harry out the door to the sounds of pans crashing in the kitchen, and Ben colourfully cursing to hell and back. 

Draco is the last man standing, which makes him the most frequent guest in Harry’s bed. That’s it. That’s the part Harry can’t explain to Hermione: that he's not fussed who it is so much as that they’re there, someone, anyone, a real corporeal haunting he can punch and lick and hold onto. Draco's something of a spectre of all Harry's bad decisions rolled into a single weeping lump, stuffed into a skeleton. He hates Harry with every cell and he's there, moth to flame, incapable of going two weeks, then days, then hours without sipping from Harry in some way. Draco tinges Harry's thoughts: his lies sting, his distrust singes. Draco hordes secrets and chastises Harry for being a jealous lover, a little boy, an idiot, a lowlife thug, for daring to seek out the shape of the pile. Draco's presence in a sore in Harry's mouth he can't stop prodding. 

He is a nightmare to be around. He disappears: Harry's eyes won't stop searching ditches. He storms out, taking Harry's wallet with him. He steals his glasses. 

Harry finds him. In new neighbourhoods, all over the City. Harry finds him. 

In a trap houses and plur parties thrown in mansions, Harry finds him one of two ways: the first, in glossy shoes, his hair longer. Washed. This Draco returns with ointment at his elbows, a greasy layer between his wounds and the world. He has walking around money, and clothes that are new to Harry, even though the cashmere is already pilled at the hems, and the leather broken in, smelling of Galloises. His teeth are shiny clean and his eyes are clear and he's thirsty, and Harry finds him and they drink their way to the bottom of a well. Draco returns from these spates cold, and hungry. His physical wounds are bandaged but his mental state is a wreck. He corrects Harry's grammar and dumps the coffee on the floor and slams Harry's fingers in the door over whether it's the oven or the stove. 

Draco doesn't apologize. He storms out, leaving, always leaving Harry, who sleeps curled into a ball the size of a seed. Hermione visits and he jams little bottles of vodka from hotel parties into the centre of the kitchen roll so he can sip while she checks under the kitchen sink. She leaves biscuits and a stern lecture, opens his windows to let some air in, and Harry empties the butts from the flowerpots and dusts the house in baking soda and hoovers it all up, he does the wash, he paints the bathroom and patches the holes his fists have left and doesn't see Draco for a week, and when Draco returns, it's the second kind. 

The second kind of return is blurrier. Draco comes back to Harry colourless, tacky with unwashed sweat. He looks punched out, bags under his eyes protruding, purple. He uses cards to pay for everything, orders flats of mineral water to the house. He survives on cigarettes and whatever Harry gives him, whatever he wants. He fucks Harry like a god. His cock is an icepick and he breaks Harry with it. He films them fucking on his phone, sends it around, invites others over to made up addresses. He makes Harry wear a balaclava, and Harry sucks him while he's off his head, and Draco shows him the footage later and forces him to admit how good he looks when he comes like that. He gets Harry hard while wearing his wedding ring: it appears, disappears. There are rare, sunny days, sunny because of his mood, because something has changed. The hunch in his back and the pinch between his brows disappears, and they eat steak with runny eggs, and Draco climbs on top of Harry and pulls the blanket over them so it's just them in this cave, and he'll ride Harry and gasp out his name. On these special days, Draco rolls the joints himself and beacons Harry close with a fingertip brushing the underside of his jaw. They share breath, and spit, and Harry drinks Draco in (spit, come, lube, blood) and Draco inhales Harry (musk, sweet, fetid) and they're like a closed loop. 

Harry thought this is what living with Sirius would be, and the thought doesn't confuse him at all. He basks in it. He dozes on high, on a cloud, Draco's fingers in him and his voice in his ear and even though Harry doesn't want to do that thing, whatever it is he'll do it in that moment, for Draco. Harry pays. Harry slices into packages he shouldn't and drips droplets into Draco's naked eyes if he asks.

Draco asks Harry if he wants to be a good little hole for him. His breath is sour and Harry knows because Draco, in this state, nips at his lips sometimes. He disappears in the guest bath for hours at a time, and sometimes he calls Harry to flats he's never seen before, and holds a hot water bottle to his stomach, and squeezes Harry's fingers tight while daytime soap operas blare at them from the flat screen TV. Draco's hair goes lank, and his clothing stale, then rank. He accrues sores, and bruises, and chips his teeth. He grinds them. He sucks ice lolly's till his mouth is a bright blue hole, and Harry coaxes him back, home, until he says the wrong thing. Until he finds Draco at midnight, dribbling the last of the peach yogurt into his mouth, backlit by the refrigerator glow, and Harry stumbles over his words as he tips orange juice into his tumbler. Harry's mouth runs circles around his thoughts, it outpaces them, which are miles ahead of whatever dark hole in his stomach his feelings are relegated to.

Harry, blind drunk, always comes around to mention the ring. His thoughts circle the topic like carrion birds above a carcass. What his wife must think, Draco gone weeks at a time. What she wonders. Why he wears it, if he doesn't care. 

Draco leaves, and he takes Harry's wallet. Takes the keys to the car. Keys the car, sloshes the tin of leftover paint on the stoop. Draco comes back, and Harry quiets the part of himself that wonders, that scratches the same itch till it bleeds: 

Why her? 

Where do you go, and why there? 

Why not me? Why not, just once, choose me?

---

read all of 'bad times' over on AO3

#whump #drarry #tw drugs #tw domestic violence

[ezlebe]

If you're still doing prompts - the roys and greg are all vampires but tom is not

“Are you nervous?” Greg asks, turning over the black and gold half mask in his hands, as he paces down the length of the room. “Like. You’re prepared, you know. You shouldn’t be nervous.”

Tom rolls his head back and forth, not quite looking back, and definitely not responding to the question. He threads a cuff link through his shirt, a flash of gold between his fingers, then reaches for the next.

“I mean, it’s…” Greg swallows, thickly, lifting and spinning a hand with a weak lift of his shoulder. “It’ll be easy?”

“What makes you say that?“ Tom asks, in a bright, biting chirp, as he reaches now for the cravat pooled on the vanity. “You didn’t have to go through the wringer, proving to every fang for seventeen generations that you’re worthy of low blood pressure, solar allergies, and eternal hunger – you just hatched.”

Greg grunts low under his breath. “Sort of? But they still tried to drown me when I was born.”

Tom looks up with a blink through his lashes. “What?”

“Because my mom like did it in secret, I guess?” Greg says, looking down while digging his fingernail into the leather edge of his mask. “So you know, I technically did have to pass a test. By like not dying from that.”

“What the fuck – ? No, I did not know that,” Tom says, voice pitching, as he wraps the silk around his neck with a derisive grimace. “I thought that… Jesus, Roman’s said as much, but I thought it was a fucking turn of phrase.”

“Oh,” Greg intones, briefly letting his eyes sweep the ground in discomfort. “Yeah, I mean – No? Obviously, it turned out okay. I don’t remember it?”

“And neither the fuck will I. You’re really not making me feel like I’m standing on any more solid ground,” Tom says, as he looks up, then he sighs, offering a jerk of his chin to gesture for Greg to step close. “Come here. The little chain is all looped across – ” He lifts his hands, gently tugging at the collar chain Greg is using in place of a tie. “There. Now you’re respectable.”

Greg peeks down at the edges of the antlers framing his throat. “It doesn’t look lame?”

“You’re insulting me, Greg,” Tom says, fussily straightening the rest of Greg’s shirt, down his lapels, then flicking at a closure on the vest. “I might not remember you, in an hour, but I think some part of me will just know I’m the reason you don’t look like a schlub.”

“That would be weird,” Greg says, though he’s got his own hopes about cracks in the spell.

“The whole ritual is weird,” Tom says, pulling away with a wide eye roll. He looks in the mirror to straighten his own outfit; it’s an antique silver one, so the space is empty next to him, proving it as little more than a costume piece for anyone else in the manor. “Forget your partner just to choose them, again? In masks? It’s a rigged carnival game – one of truest bullshit, considering the 100% divorce rate in the Roy cauldron.”

Greg feels a tight pull at the corner of his mouth, somewhat ducking his head with a weak lift of a shoulder. “Okay, so you – you’re ready, right? You, um – ”

Tom loudly sucks at his teeth, looking away from the mirror while stuffing his silk cravat into his vest. He stares for a few long, heavy seconds at Greg, then straightens, as he clears his throat. “If you ask if I’m ready one more time, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

“I-I only want you to pass,” Greg mutters, somewhat irked, and he feels like somewhere over the last couple weeks, as the final test snuck up, he started being the only one to care if Tom went through with it. He shouldn’t even be the one here with Tom getting ready. “Do you want me to go see what Shiv is wearing?”

“It doesn’t matter, bud. But hey, corner me about the rules, after they’ve lobotomized me, will you?” Tom says, rather than answering the question. “I don’t feel like getting sabotaged by the old ghouls on a technicality.”

Greg tips his head back and forth, imagining how it might go meeting Tom a second time; it’ll be different, at least, since he won’t know Greg’s a vampire, so he can’t – probably won’t make a joke about asking for a bite. “Will you… be nice?”

“I cannot possibly promise that, buddy,” Tom says, picking up the last of his outfit for the masque, a gold phantom mask, from the settee with a crooked smirk. He reaches out and claps Greg atop the shoulder. “You’ll just have to get over it.”

~

It turns out that Greg doesn’t have to explain it at all, because the basis is given to an enthralled Tom and another dozen mortal hopefuls at the masque. They don’t get the truth, since no one is told they’ve been put under a forgetfulness spell, only simply that they’re there part of a singles event and everyone is to exchange a token with their choice of partner at the end of the night. The tokens that Tom and Shiv share are a pair of fine bracelets donated by Caroline, which had been something of a contention, since Tom repeatedly emphasized a desire for a favor more like a silk ribbon.

Or Tom had said as much to Greg, anyway, who admittedly isn’t sure he told this to Shiv, or anyone else.

The whole pronouncement of the ritual by Ewan at the start makes Greg somewhat inexplicably queasy, a feeling that just worsens when Tom and the others are announced and file in at the entrance, so he’s relieved not to have to actually talk to Tom after he begins mingling among the party. He chooses, at first, just to watch Tom from some distance away, but then it starts to sting not to have Tom look back at him, so he begins looking for places that Tom wouldn’t be able to see him from to pretend that it’s just a coincidental sort of disregarding, not that Tom has no clue that Greg is his friend.

He does start to worry, almost an hour into the masque, when he catches on that it seems like Shiv is also in places that Tom won’t happen to see her. It actually seems as if she is outright avoiding him, and Greg grudgingly works himself up to asking about it, after catching her slipping away a second time from a room that Tom happens to step into in an evident wander.

Shiv is easy to catch when she doesn’t know she needs to be watching, though it does mean blood wine nearly ends up down Greg’s black and gold vest. She lifts her unoccupied hand, palm up, in exasperation. “What the fuck, Greg?”

“What are you doing?” Greg says, then winces, as the question emerges a little more sharp than he intends, if not particularly as harshly as he means it. “You’re, like – you’re setting him up to fail.”

Shiv stares back for a pair of tense beats. “I am not,” she says, primly lying, as she takes a quick sip of her wine. “The point is for him to find me.”

“The point is for him to fall in l-love with you, again,” Greg says, clearing his throat, as his voice threatens to break around the reminder. “But he can’t like do that, if you’re totally avoiding him. The whole mask and spell apparatus is the finding part, not like, uh, like a really mean hide-and-seek.”

“He’ll find me if he’s meant to,” Shiv says, a marked tic in her jaw, as her eyes dart away and then back up. “Maybe he’s not meant to.”

Greg feels something lurch behind his sternum. It’s not a fresh memory, exactly, but Tom had made some roundabout… metaphor in a stressful moment that seemed like he was perhaps out of love with Shiv, but that’s not particularly the point at hand. “Do you seriously want him to die?” He asks, because it only really matters that Tom qualifies to be turned before it’s too late. “For Tom to get old, or just sick, and… he’ll just to be gone?”

“No, you dick, but – ” Shiv exhales a harsh breath and glances down with a quick sweep of her eyes on the other side of her mask. “I don’t need you to understand. Fuck off, Cousin Lurch.”

Greg crosses his arms, scratching at his elbows while he shakes his head. “I want to, actually, be-because I suspect that – ” He clears his throat, “I think you don’t even love him, do you?”

“Fuck you,” Shiv snarls, fangs briefly emerging from her gums in furor. “It’s not about love. You don’t fucking get it, do you? How when you turn someone you’re fucking conjoined to them; you’ve got this pulling thing hooked into your fucking soul like a leech.”

“It’s only until they’re… better, or whatever,” Greg says, hunching into his shoulders, as he looks around toward the rest of the party, though no one seems to be paying them much attention. “It never sounded that bad to me?”

“So do it yourself, then,” Shiv snaps, offering a goading jut of her chin. “Shocked that wasn’t your first instinct.”

“I can’t!” Greg says, hearing his voice pitch, tightening his hands around his elbows while feeling his own fangs threaten to rush his gums. “You know you’reTom’s only – ”

A familiar tut sets lifts hair at the back of Greg’s neck. “I hate to interrupt.”

Greg peeks over with a wince to find his mom loitering under a nearby painting.

“Were neither of you listening to my dad?” Marianne asks, typically sarcastic, scratching at the scarf she has tied around her neck in a gaudy crimson. “Or is it just totally wrong impression?”

Shiv rolls her lips tight together, turning them exceptionally pale. “This isn’t your business, Marianne.”

“He said…” Marianne continues, then trails off, as her eyes roll and she tuts, “Not to quote, because I wasn’t listening that close, but I know it was something like ‘should Thomas Wambsgans court an attendant of the masquerade, they may take him as mate’, right?”

Shiv shifts her jaw, then sends a sharp glance up at Greg, as if he’s got any control over his mom. “So?”

“So, Siobhan,” Marianne says, using her wine glass to gesture in a condescending circle between the three of them. “He didn’t say: ‘should Thomas Wambsgans court Siobhan Roy’ did he?”

Greg focuses briefly on Shiv, wetting his lips before looking back to Marianne.

“Hell, our Tommy could court…” Marianne pauses, again, eyes lifting with some too-obvious weight on Greg, then hums a pair of notes, lifting her thumb over her shoulder to wag at the milling party. “Any dolled-up fang, and they would be able turn him tomorrow morning under the decree.” She takes a sip, sucking at her teeth, unashamed about showing her fangs. “You two are still young, but the whole point of these stupid parties was to be a meat market that trapped members of royal families in mildly compatible matches and add their blood to the mix.”

Greg furrows his brow, then rolls his eyes over his mom’s head.

“And Dad would just love to piss off duplicitous Uncle Logan with a technicality,” Marianne says, then gestures with the glass at Shiv with a slight dip of her shoulder. “No offense, hun.”

Shiv sneers while she takes a sip from her own glass.

Greg weakly cocks his head, because… that’s true, except Grandpa Ewan is also steadfast when it comes to digging in his heels to disappoint everyone. He chews at his lower lip, not particularly comforted, but that is fairly typical for getting advice from his mom.

“Now don’t get me wrong,” Marianne says, as her eyes settle and narrow toward Shiv. “I don’t think anyone will especially approve that you brought a potential this far into the fold only to turn chicken.”

“It’s not like I just – ” Shiv all but growls, then visibly swallows, jaw tightening beneath her mask. “That isn’t what happened.”

“Uh-huh. The whole kit and kaboodle isn’t for everyone, obviously,” Marianne says, gesturing at herself while rolling her head back and forth, then exhaling an ugly snort with a short lean forward. “Hell, I’ve heard a lot of stories out of the last year – very surprised m’ athair got the invitation to this masque.”

Greg feels a tightening in his shoulders. “Mom, shut up.”

“I’m just saying that a lot of trying got us to this point, so clearly there’s some forces here that want Tom in the cauldron, alright?” Marianne says, as she takes a step out of their small circle. She gestures away, down the hall beyond the milling guests. “Now, I’m off to go eat my ego and try to convince daddy dearest that changing some parameters here is his idea. You better thank me,little cousin.”

Shiv peeks up at Greg, then focuses hard on Marianne, defiantly cocking her chin. “I will when it happens.”

“Oh, ever the doubter,” Marianne says, as she turns away with a lofty scoff. “Tata.”

Shiv throws back the rest of her wine, then looks up at Greg. “Now you just need to find him someone he could want,” she says, tone rolling in a mocking lilt around the words. “How very convenient for you.”

“Me?” Greg says, hearing temper flare in his voice, ugly from the back of his throat.

Shiv narrows her eyes, staring back for a solid beat, then seems to literally swallow her words, as she shifts a long look to Greg’s right arm. She eventually exhales a sigh, as her shoulders roll back to square. “Yeah, Greg. You.” She throws her hair across her shoulder with a low, embittered laugh. “You’re the one… who cares so much.”

“But I can’t – ” Greg shakes his head, lifting a hand, and nearly knocks his mask off when he unthinkingly attempts to run his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to set him up with anyone else.”

“Other than me?” Shiv says, flatly, while her mouth lifts in a crooked sneer. “Right?”

Greg wets his lips, feeling his gut clench. “Yeah, uh -yeah, obviously, I meant you.”

Shiv is predictably the first between them to lose her patience. “Are we seriously going to fucking do this, Greg?”

“I guess?” Greg stiffly resettles his mask against his nose with a shrug. “I can’t like imagine to what it is you’re addressing.”

“Oh, you can’t?” Shiv sneers, voice lifting mockingly, as she leans forward on the balls of her feet. “That’s a load of bull. Look at what you’re wearing, Greg.”

“Okay, maybe, but not like…” Greg clears his throat, lifting his nose a little while chewing at the inside of his lip. “You know, like you brought a concubine to your commitment ceremony, anyway, making you seem like not particularly committed.”

“A concubine?” Shiv repeats, while fangs frame a sharp upturn of a hostile smile. “You’re barely three hundred, you don’t know what the fuck a concubine is.”

Greg drops his chin. “I obviously do, because – ”

A throat clears. “Excuse me, gentleman and lady?”

Greg stumbles forward and nearly straight into Shiv, who offers a small, shocked yelp, hands lifting up in his direction with a wide, startled expression flashing across her face. He makes sure his mask is straight, as he looks back, seeing Tom looking bemused between them.

“Are you two in the middle of – ?”

“Cousins!” Greg interrupts, tightly, shaking his head and briefly catching an aghast grimace beside him. “We’re just cousins. The, uh – the totally non-kissing kind.”

Shiv exhales an exaggerated gag. “What the fuck, Greg.”

“Glad to hear it,” Tom says, brightly and bewilderingly, then thrusts out a hand, first to Greg, then to Shiv, nodding between them with a friendly, polite sort of smile. It is odd to be on the other side of it, since this isn’t really an expression Greg gets very often, or ever, and a glance over confirms that Shiv is just as discomforted by it. “Nice to meet you. I’m Tom Wa – Or, just Tom, right? No surnames.”

Greg nods with a weak hum to echo the sentiment. He is very quickly confirming that he doesn’t particularly like Tom not recognizing him; it’s been two blatant missed opportunities for heckling, and the air feels a little empty for it.

“I just have been seeing you around, actually, and I want – ” Tom pauses, oddly shaking his head. “I wanted to – ” He abruptly inhales a sharp breath, interrupting himself while lifting a hand to his forehead in evident pain. “Fuck.”

“Tom?” Greg says, feeling his voice pitch tight against the back of his throat. He can’t remember Grandpa Ewan mentioning any side effects, but no one really tends to pay attention to how magic affects mortals.

“Is your head okay?” Shiv demands, her voice rising urgently between them.

“Sorry, hah,” Tom says, voice tight, as he stiffly attempts to dismiss the question. “I’ve had this little ache starting up since I got here, but it’s nothing.”

“Does it feel like you’re having a stroke?” Shiv asks, tensely, as she lifts her empty wine glass and curls close to her chest. “Or is it more like a migraine?”

“O-or an aneurysm?” Greg says, flapping his hands up near his own head with a high lift of his arms crooked at the elbow. “Like, your head is actively exploding?”

Tom glances between blinks to Greg and Shiv, slowly pulling his hand from his brow. He offers a crooked, bemused smirk. “I really think it’s just that purple liquor, but I’m… flattered at the concern.”

“Sure,” Shiv says, reaching up and scratching at her brow. She looks at Tom for a beat longer, then back to Greg, expression tightening and conflicted, then it smooths out. “Fuck, Greg, I – ” She shakes her head, as she takes a step away, plainly again hesitating on her heel, but eventually does take a full stride away.

Greg slowly, carefully looks back at Tom, only to see he’s staring at him, rather than at Shiv’s retreating back. He blinks and feels his face color, scratching at the base of his jaw. “I’m, uh – I’m sorry? Did you… were you trying to ask to dance with her?”

“Not quite…” Tom winces, making a toothy, near-parody of a grimace, before he peeks back up as his lips shift into grin. “Actually, I was talking to you.”

Greg stares back for a pair of beats, feeling heat prickle more sharply under the mask. “You were?”

“Is that okay?” Tom asks, raising the brow not behind his mask, seeming more wry than particularly concerned.

“Yeah? Y-Yes,” Greg says, exhaling a brief stutter. “Of course, that’s – ” He should like probably chase Shiv back down, but… Tom is looking at him. Just him. “Yeah. It’s totally fine.”

Tom stares for a markedly charged beat, then his head tilts, as he wets his lips. “You still haven’t told me your name?”

“Oh, sorry,” Greg says, sweeping his hair awkwardly across his ear. “Greg?”

“Greg,” Tom repeats, in a fond, familiar sort of lilt – and a bit of a shock, since he’s not supposed to remember him. “As in Gregory, then? Suits you.”

“Does it?” Greg says, lifting his brows, as he looks away with a jerk of a nod. “I-I mean, thanks.”

The main ballroom swells with music, as they approach, and is filled with dancers of varying talent; slow and clumsy, to quick and spinning. It’s a comfort not to feel pressure to perform well, since Greg isn’t a hugely talented dancer, despite the cauldron’s best efforts through exposure, and Tom can’t remember that means he has had centuries to fail to practice.

“Would you like to – ?” Tom gestures his hands in a position further up than expected.

“No, no… Um, you can lead,” Greg says, hesitantly reaching out to wrap his hand at Tom’s shoulder.

“I thought so,” Tom says, breezy yet pointed, while he tips his head with a marked smirk. His hand settles solid and wide against Greg’s ribs, holding there in a way far different from the usual poke and prods he affords in general. “You look like you prefer to ask where to point.”

“Hah,” Greg mutters, rolling his lips together with a jerky nod. He feels something unspool beneath his ribs, as he realizes it’s definitely Tom underneath all the polite action. He is, briefly, a bit irked that he’s never really experienced polite Tom before; he definitely should have been given the opportunity the first time, but it… is what it is, and sometimes the deep end is the best place to fall.

“The costume really flatters you, Greg,” Tom says, voice low, in plainly some, fairly successful, attempt to flatter, as they begin to move with the music. It’s as close as they’ve ever been without some pretense, so distracting and unexpected, and the degree of their touch almost, somehow makes Tom hard to hear. “I don’t mean the mask. The brocade here… it was a superb choice – it’s like we came all ready to match.”

“Oh yeah, I know,” Greg says, absently, as they glide and step around other dancers, only to quickly find himself stiffening under a dubious stare. “I – I mean, thanks, but I didn’t actually pick it out? I’m mostly ever worried stuff won’t fit.”

Tom narrows an eye. “Your date?”

“No,” Greg says, shaking his head, feeling a harsh croak at the edge of his voice. “No date.”

“Just making sure,” Tom says, quirking a brow, then he tips his head, as he glances around them at the rest of the dance floor. “You’ve been talking to a lot of pretty masks tonight.”

Greg feels his face color, again, and worries he’s going to have to find somewhere to feed at the waste of energy. “I guess… you know, it’s important to blend in.”

“It’s definitely a formal fucking event, like playacting one of the paintings in this badly decorated museum,” Tom muses, as the music slows, prompting them to move slower and somehow closer, as piano gradually swells around them. “But you agreed to a dance with me, didn’t you?”

Greg offers a small lift of his shoulder. “You’re pretty, too,” he mumbles, then immediately wants to swallow his tongue. “I-I mean… You’re handsome? From, uh – from what I can see.”

“I’ll take either,” Tom says, smirking, as he offers a cocky tilt of his head.

The song blurs into another, and they keep going, easing Greg into some space where he can pretend the masque is going well, rather than having totally fallen apart. He catches Roman and Connor at the edge of the floor, but ignores them, turning his head while instead concentrating on counting the warm puffs of breath across his neck. He can imagine that it’s actually going to work out, standing so close, hands clasped together, like it was supposed to turn out this way.

The tactic doesn’t quite work for long, as his thoughts regroup to form another attack. What if Tom gets pissed? It would be okay, maybe, if he wasn’t going to remember tomorrow. It’s not a lot of time to come up with an excuse for what’s happening that doesn’t just make it more obvious that Greg leapt at the chance to essentially ruin Tom’s chances at becoming part of the cauldron.

“Hey,” Tom says, as his hand lifts across the back of Greg’s shoulder with a squeeze. The music around them is fading quickly, and his voice is consequently barely a mutter, as he lifts his chin to speak in Greg’s ear. “You need a breather, there?”

Greg feels a bit like that’s giving up, but he manages a jerking nod. He looks down, when Tom tugs him by the hands they had been holding to dance, and sees Tom’s is squarer than his, but just as large, and realizes with a hard swallow that he’s got a lot of thoughts racing that he’s been trying to avoid.

It turns out that Tom had actually meant air, not simply stopping their dance, as he leads Greg out onto a stone patio. He even takes a deep breath of the cool air, remarkably literal, as he lets go of Greg to lean on a stone half wall.

Greg stares at Tom’s back, rubbing absently at the lingering warmth in his hand. He lets his eyes trace across Tom’s broad shoulders, then down the seam of the jacket to his waist. It feels a little more lecherous than it normally might, more one-sided, since Tom would usually look back, then they’d both look away and pretend they hadn’t shared a thing.

“This is going to make me sound like some hopped up stalker,” Tom says, after a few moments of staring out across the green; he doesn’t see it though, it’s just dark for him, and now always will be, which feels like another point of failure. “Or a fucking moron addled by romance novels, but I… I’ve been drawn to you all night. Like a super powered magnet.”

Greg feels his jaw actually drop somewhat open. “You have?”

Tom hums a low confirmation, then he turns around to face Greg with an exaggerated, puffing sigh. “But maybe you’re just that tall.”

“Hah,” Greg mutters, dropping his head with a weak tilt of his chin. “Maybe.”

“Honestly, though,” Tom says, stepping closer, pushing away from the wall with a frustrated gesture of both his hands. “It was like my eyes went right to you whenever we were in the same room.”

“Oh, I – ” Greg shakes his head, but he really can’t remember Tom looking back at him. “I didn’t notice?”

“I hoped you wouldn’t,” Tom says, mouth flattening, as he offers a dismissive, flapping gesture. “It was…” He laughs, low, “It made my head hurt just a little. Literally.”

“I thought it – ” Greg takes a frustrated breath, as he shakes his head. “You said that was the, like – the plum wine?”

“I haven’t had that much,” Tom says, really seeming not to care enough, though he might if he knew about the spell. “But I really don’t think it’s a fucking aneurysm. I just keep… thinking about Romans, for some reason, as in the emperors.”

Greg briefly forgets about his own concern, as a croak of a laugh escapes him. “Really?”

Tom hums a confirmation. “Did you know the emperor Nero had a legion of men over 6 foot?”

“No,” Greg says, shaking his head while biting at his lower lip. He wonders if Tom had been saving that up and has accidentally just ruined it for himself. “I thought Romans were… sort of short?”

“They were a bit prejudiced when they were writing about Gauls, yes,” Tom muses, rolling his head back and forth, as a familiar condescending sort of smirk curves his mouth. “But Nero is a hundred years after Caesar kicked them hard.”

“Right,” Greg says, nodding with a weak lift of a shoulder. “I, uh… I really only know the history I live through.”

“That’s a pretty narrow window, bud,” Tom says, raising a brow, as he offers a plainly judgmental tilt of his chin.

Greg feels a wry smirk pull at the edge of his mouth. “…Sort of, yeah. But it’s getting wider.”

Tom holds his dubious expression for a beat, then breaks into a laugh with a shake of his head.

Greg can’t help when the smile grows wide and unwieldy across his lips.

“Look,” Tom says, taking a step back, then forward, lifting a hand oddly across his chest with a short lean into it. “You can take it or leave it, but I feel like I’ve got…” He exhales a weak puff, dragging his teeth hard across his lip. “I have to ask if you’ll take the stupid thing I’m supposed to give to someone I like, as if this is some rose exchange in middle school.”

Greg feels his expression collapse with surprise, hurriedly closing his mouth before his instinctually erupting fangs are visible along his smallteeth. He can’t help but think that it’s only been a dance and a conversation to Tom, and barely that, yet he already wants to exchange tokens? Greg isn’t sure if that … Is that normal? It can’t be.

“I know, I know, it sounds like I’m taking the cart here, and the rules said at midnight, yadda yadda,” Tom says, pacing a few steps one way down the patio, then turning and walking back, his hands spinning between them in a fussy gesture. “But I already know you’re the only could-be I’ve met tonight that I want to see again.”

Greg wets his lower lip, offering a weak turn of his head. “Are you sure?”

“I am,” Tom says, a sincere, tight sort of smile pinching at his mouth. “I really am, but… My ego can take it, if you want to do a little more looking.”

“I don’t, really,” Greg admits, scratching hard, then yanking into the small hairs on the back of his neck. “An-and I do feel the same, really, about like knowing you and looking at you, but… It’s just, uh… It’s complicated?” He shakes his head, slumping down onto a stone bench that the night makes cold through his thin trousers. “I didn’t even… I didn’t think I’d meet anyone.”

“Look, how about – ” Tom kneels down, which is absolutely awful, and then he makes it worse by pulling the actual tokenout of his inner jacket pocket. “We just do it, then figure it out later?”

“I – I don’t have a – ” Greg gestures, at a loss, as he stares at the bracelet with a tightness growing at the back of his throat.

Tom spins the bracelet around his fingers. “You really didn’t expect to meet anyone tonight? You’re hardly ugly, Greg. I can’t see enough of your face, but I think you’re probably put together just perfect.”

Greg bobs his head while he exhales a weak croak to clear his voice. “Okay, uh-uhm – ?” He lifts a hand, clumsily tugging at the pins holding the chain across his shirt collar. He looks down at the antlers, then up, offering them. “Is this okay?”

“Only if you’re willing to part with it,” Tom says, quiet and sincere, then he breaks the tension with a small snort. “Those’re definitely more your style.”

Greg answers with a weak huff. He only has them because of Tom, who he had been shopping with when he had seen a similar set in a display apart from the other jewelry. He had been interested, but concerned they were silver, so waved off the offer to pull them from the case; he’d gotten a surprise weeks later, when Tom presented him a near identical set cast in platinum.

He weaves the antlers between the chain and leaves them bound at Tom’s wrist. The points dig into his skin, leaving little rosy scratches of pressure, but Tom doesn’t seem to notice. “You can give them back.”

“Sure, I can,” Tom says, then he wets his lips, as he seems to hesitate with the token in his hand. He narrows his eyes at it, then throws it onto the bench. “You know what? I hate that.”

“Um?” Greg says, staring at the bracelet on the bench.

“If we’re using whatever, you can take this,” Tom says, as he begins to pull at his cravat, yanking it from his throat and leaving it somewhat indecently exposed for company. Of Greg. “A traditional sort of thing, like a knightly favor. I can’t even remember why I have that… bracelet.”

“Oh,” Greg intones, nodding in a jerky drop of his chin.

“No, no – Up,” Tom says, as he shakes out the cravat, only to just as quickly twist it back up. “You’re looking naked now.”

Greg slowly tilts his head back, anxiously wondering if he can have a heart attack, because it feels like it’s making a go for crawling up his throat. The feeling becomes especially bad when Tom straightens his shirt, as he ties the silk around it, because it feels… just like it had earlier in the night when he straightened the antlers.

“That’s funny,” Tom says, quietly, as he finishes tying the knot.

Greg hums a confused note.

“I thought it was just your hands, but you run pretty cold,” Tom says, as his knuckles gently press against Greg’s jaw, swiping up to the point of his chin. “Are you chilly?”

Greg feels his eyes widen. “Uh – ?” He slowly drops his head, wincing while he looks into Tom’s openly curious face, as he fails to come up with an excuse. He finds himself swallowing hard, thud getting worse, then he leans in and clumsily presses his mouth to Tom’s before he can think any more about it.

Tom inhales deep, pushing back with a rock forward on the balls of his feet. He seems to nearly lose his balance, as well, hand flattening on the bench beside Greg, while the other that had previously been across Greg’s jaw settles heavily onto his neck. He turns his head, seeming to try to deepen the kiss, mouth opening in a gasp between them, only for their masks to clatter together with dull thunks of leather and metal.

Greg pulls away with a small duck of his head, a flush in his face that’s probably the worst he’s ever had it.

“God, these things really get in the way, don’t they?” Tom says, reaching up and knocking a pair of knuckles against the cheek of his own. He stands from the ground, shaking out his hands with a shuttering sort of a laugh. “I’m glad to have met you and all, Greg, but I must have been real lonely and schnookered to sign up for this costume party.”

~

Tom jolts awake to a sharp series of honk from a car outside the window and covers his face with a groan, only to feel a dragging weight across his wrist. He peeks open his eyes, staring blearily at a pair of familiar platinum antlers locked across their chain. “Oh,” he chokes, shoving himself up on the mattress in a fumbling hurry. “Shit. Shit.”

The hazy memory filters in and what happened, how it happened, is all good, in a way – maybe even edging into great – but it’s so totally fucked. He let his heart get in the way of a plan he’s suffered and bled over for half a decade; how goddamn romantic.

He slumps back, playing with the chain, and manages somehow not to immediately reach for his phone. It eventually rings, anyway, as he’s spiraling with his eyes following the spinning ceiling fan, and it nearly startles him into the other side of the bed.

“Thomas,” greets an aged voice, once the line connects, tinged with ever-present gripe.

“Sir,” Tom says, closing his eyes for a few beats; evidently, his failure is worthy of a personal boast from the great hermit himself. “Good morning.”

Ewan grumbles out a rasping sigh. “Congratulations. I have been…” He pauses, exhaling another lengthy breath. “Convinced that you’ve passed.”

Tom peeks up at the shifting shadows of the curtains and the fanblades. …He what? Wait, does that mean he’s –

“I do not envy your position,” Ewan continues, “Gregory is not particularly… accountable, so you will likely have to be very explicit with him during the acclimation period if you want your needs met.”

Tom covers his face with a hand, breathing hard into his palm, then cracks his fingers open across his mouth. He’s pretty sure his smile would put the Joker to shame. “Shouldn’t be any trouble.”

“I’ve been convinced of that, as well,” Ewan says, in a way that might be wry, if it contained any particular humor.

Tom taps his fingers heavily against the side of his cheek. “Could I risk it all by asking why the special case?”

“No special cases,” Ewan says, sternly, setting hair up on the back of Tom’s neck from miles away. “The masque was used this way for centuries, not wasted on a single potential.” His voice resettles into an apathetic note. “And Marianne is to be head of the family, eventually, she’ll need backing unrelated to my brother, when the time comes.”

Tom raises brows with a bitten back choke of laughter. He thinks Logan must love that succession plan, after spending centuries grooming his own spawn. “I can… understand that position.”

“Good,” Ewan says, decisive, “She will also schedule and handle your conversion.”

Tom thinks he hears a protest in the background, just before the line goes dead, which explains a lot – he’s a test in responsibility, how fun. He’ll be shocked if the upcoming most-painful-experience-of-his-life-bordering-on-actual-death is any more formal than her showing up at the door with Greg at some random time between today and two months from now.

He rolls the phone in his hand, then tosses it up, grabbing it, and switching between apps until he finds the right name to tap. The phone rings in his ear far longer than usual, and that’s to be expected, but it finally connects on what must be the final ring.

“Gregory, hello there,” Tom says, raising his voice over a familiar mumble attempting to greet him down the line. “Tell me, did I suffer a wet dream, or did you really kiss me like a damsel under the moonlight?”

“Um, I…” Greg sighs, and it’s too easy to imagine his conflicted expression while he weighs his options. “It was a new moon?”

Tom exhales a quiet laugh through his nose.

Greg continues to hem and haw, to some concerning degree. “Sorry.”

“Are you?” Tom asks, pitching his voice in a taunt, trying to cover the small lurch in his gut.

“Yeah? I… I want you to be one of us, too, but I –” Greg exhales, rasping and harsh, down the line. “I didn’t try hard enough to…” He pauses, again, then clears his throat. “To shift your, uh – your amorous attention.”

Tom shoulders the phone, looking down and toying with the chain at his wrist. “Have you talked to your esteemed head of bloodsucking bastards?”

Greg is quiet for a beat. “Like, ever?”

“Like today,” Tom says, rubbing hard between his brows.

“Oh,” Greg intones, then clears his throat, preemptively weedy in the act. “No. My mom said she would. I-I don’t think he’s… he’ll really care about what I have to say? I can try, though – I should try, I mean. Yeah.”

Tom can hear the same note that Greg had in his voice last night, as he’d put the chain around his wrist. “I’m getting offended by how much you sound like the world is ending, bud,” he says, quirking a brow with a short click of his tongue. He knows Greg kissed first last night, which is doing a lot to bolster. “Was it that bad last night?”

“No, Tom, but if you’d… You know, pursued Shiv, then it wouldn’t matter, because after the setting period, we’d – ” Greg stutters into a pause, somewhat hissing into the receiver. “We could’ve probably worked it out sometime in… you know, essentially forever, but you didn’t, an-and now…”

Tom scrubs his face and is astonished how Greg can be both naïve and an absolute viper at the same time.

“Shiv was… really lame, too,” Greg continues, low and as derisive as he ever gets, being an enormous, centuries-old killing machine ever concerned someone might overhear him being unkind. “She likes you, she said, but she couldn’t do it. She said it would be – be like, a suckling on her soul, or something, like she was scared of having a mate like that. She didn’t even want to give you a chance.”

Tom drags his lip harsh against his teeth, a bit stung, a bit annoyed, too, but not exactly surprised. “Would you?”

Greg is quiet a few beats, then exhales a sullen, offended grumble. “I gave you a token.”

“And…” Tom says, slowly, dropping his voice into what he likes to think is a fairly friendly sort of patronizing developed just for Greg. “I didn’t give Shiv a second glance when you were standing next to her.”

Greg is quiet for a few seconds. “I guess.”

“Honestly, I…” Tom shakes the chain back around his wrist with a tut. “I think Shiv and I might like each other about the same.” He rolls his eyes across the room to the door, then over toward the window, exhaling a humorless laugh. “We don’t even sleep in the same room, anymore. It was iffy that we even applied for the masque.”

Greg mutters something tiny and unintelligible down the line, but it sounds a little derisive.

“But I’m ecstatic to hear you’re not wary of having a suckling babe on your soul,” Tom says, spinning the antlers around his wrist, delicately trying to unwrap them without further turning his skin patchwork or bending a delicate chainlink. “Because I have spoken the grand poobah treant – I passed.”

“Y-You did?” Greg says, voice pitching through the speaker, plainly blindsided by the news.

“He also implied it was mostly so I could white knight your mother, but that’s…” Tom feels a wide grimace pull at his mouth. “Pretty far out, one can hope.”

“No, but he – ” Greg exhales a breathy, hitched laugh. “Like, with me?”

“Yes, Gregory,” Tom says, leaning his head up and wedging his forearm against the pillow beneath it.

“I, like – I’ve never totally drained anyone,” Greg says, in a quiet, thoughtful mutter. His voice pitches, “What if I can’t stop… What if I like kill you?”

Tom rolls his eyes, as a bark of laughter edges around his voice. “Could we have a single good thought this morning?”

“…Sorry.”

#tomgreg #i stole the memory loss premise from a reaper76 fic so credit to that #this is so random but ive been working on it a while so now you all suffer

[justkeepdancing-nemo]

Day 27 – 9 to 5: What does your character’s work/school day look like?

24/7: A day in Nemo’s life, after his injury

tw: eating disorder (eating anxiety) 

7am: Alarm. Hit snooze once. Don’t move for as long as you can. 

7:15am: Alarm. Hit snooze a second time. 

7:20am: Alarm. Turn it off. It’s time to sit up. Breathe deeply, it’ll hurt. Brace yourself, bite your tongue, go slow. You’re up. Breathe again. In and out. Wipe the sleep, and the tears, from your eyes. 

7:30am: Stretching. It’ll hurt. It’ll hurt worse if you don’t though, so coax all your muscles back to life, gently and kindly as you can. 

7:55am: Shower. Stand perfectly still under the hot water. Close your eyes and look up, let the water trickle over your eyes and nose and into your mouth.

8:45am: You’re late. You were in the shower too long. Grab the same sweats you’ve worn for a week since you’ve not done laundry, but nothing else is comfortable enough. Where’s a clean shirt? Shit, where’s a clean shirt? Would your roommate realize you’ve nicked one? 

9:10am: Skip breakfast. Get to class, late. Sorry, sorry, take your seat. Books out. 

9:20am: Your back’s hurting.

9:30am: Your back’s hurting 

9:40am: Your back is really really hurting. You can’t sit anymore. Stand up. Pretend you’ve got to use the bathroom. Sorry, sorry, you’ll be right back. So so sorry.

9:42am: The bathroom tiles are hard and cold as ice but at least you’re lying down.

10:05am: Stay behind to talk to the professor. Where’s your paper? Great question. Sending it tonight. Promise. Swear. Smile. Sorry, sorry.

10:15am: Class again. Not late!  Hungry though. 

10:25am: Back’s hurting.

10:39am: Back’s hurting

10:55am: Back’s burning, fuck, why does sitting hurt so much?. You can make it though. Five minutes. So hungry. 

11:20am: Swing by the hall for lunch– grab a banana, an apple, a blueberry muffin. Put the blueberry muffin back. Pick up the blueberry muffin. Put the blueberry muffin back. Fuck it, take the muffin.

11:30am: Back in your room. Lay down, finally finally. Read, eat, rest, all at the same time. Don’t fall asleep again. Don’t fall asleep! 

11:55am: Shit, dozed off. 

12:30pm: Almost time for dance. Stretch again, lightly. Wake up. Be a person. You can do it! 

1pm: Ballet. Go to the barre and get into position. Ignore the way your back twinges. You can’t dance, but you can do this. First position, second position, third position, fourth position, fifth position. Your back twinges, but your body knows. You won’t lose everything you’ve worked for. Again, and again. When your back twinges, just hold onto the barre tighter. 

2pm: Contemporary. Sit and watch, until your back hurts. Then, lay down. Listen to the soft landings, the toes scuffing against the hardwood. Every little bounce into the air. Count the rhythm of the music. Try not to cry. You should be dancing. You want to be dancing. 

3pm: Back to the dorm. Change again. Sweats. Sweater. Grab your coat, time to head out. 

3:30pm: Work! Say hullo to the dogs. Give them scratches and let them lick your face. You miss them, miss playing with them, but you can’t get down on the floor the way you used to. Not yet! Soon, you promise them. 

3:33pm: Desk Duty. Say hullo to Greg. Smile. Small talk about class. Yeah, it’s all fine. Yeah, you’re feeling better, a little, day by day! 

3:45pm: Back’s hurting

3:58pm: Get up. Rearrange the new toys. Switch around some of the cat food. Don’t look like you’re in pain. You need to work. You can’t have Greg thinking you can’t work 

4:10pm: Phone rings! Grab it. Sit down. Make the appointment. Take a book out. Read for class. 

4:15pm: Back’s hurting.

4:31pm: Back’s hurting. Keep reading. 

5:15pm: Time to close up shoppe! Okay, it’s too soon. Get up anyway though. Sweep. Tidy. Sweep a second time, then get ready to bring the animals in 

5:40pm: Feed the animals. Fresh kibble. New cans of delicious, wet tuna. New bowls of water. Going back and forth to fill the sink hurts your back. Everything hurts you back. Gently pet the head of the old beagle who is gray all around the eyes, whose breath is sour with age. “My back hurts,” you confess, because she gets it. She kisses you. Oh, that’s the bell. Someone’s here.

5:55pm: Help check out all the dogs going home. Bye! Have a good night! 

6:05pm: Time to close up, for real. Say goodbye to Greg. Shit, don’t forget your book, you need that. 

6:40pm: Work, but this time, for school. Go to the library. You’ll fall asleep in your room. All the way up at the top floor, it’s quiet, and no one will be around in case you have to lay down on the carpet. Go to the back, back, back corner anyway, just in case. Right, you’ve got a paper to finish. You got this. You can get it done.

6:50pm: Back’s hurting.

7:08pm: Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe you should have finished in your room. 

7:15pm: Maybe the quiet is too much. That’s the problem. You need more noise. It’s so quiet you can’t concentrate on anything but your back, hurting.

7:29pm: Set up again on the second floor of the library. Okay, paper, take two!

7:41pm: Hungry now. But you ate earlier. Can’t eat again, you’re barely exercising these days. You’ll get fat. Concentrate. Focus. Stop making excuses. 

8:05pm: Maybe a snack would help? 

8:28pm: Okay, quick snack, then you’re going to go right back to the library and finish your paper. You’re almost done (you haven’t started). Rice, beans, vegetables! 

8:45pm: Your boyfriend’s calling! Right, hi! Yeah, everything’s good. How’s work? What’s up with you? Tell me everything! 

10:09pm: It’s so late. You shouldn’t have talked that long. You shouldn’t have eaten so much. You need to go back to the library. You can’t get yourself to go to the library. Maybe what you need to do is sleep and wake up early, and then, then, you can write your paper. Your back will feel better tomorrow anyway. Yeah, maybe you should go to bed. 

10:30pm: Back at the dorms. Hi Jeremy. What’s up? Yeah, I’m fine. How are you?

11:59pm: It’s so late.. Lights out. Good night.

12:48am: Back’s hurting. 

7am: Alarm. Hit snooze once. Don’t move for as long as you can. 

#swynwrimolaur #we love a little second person moment #story #eating disorder tw

[aalt-ctrl-del]

if you think about it, and it’s not a big brain think, the whole “good guys with guns will stop bad guys with guns” is the absolute weakest argument. The algorithmic probability that the gun men will spawn in the same location as a ‘good guy’ with a gun is in the randomized factor.

“But a good guy with a gun has always shot the mass shooter in the school”

sure. But you still have casualties you stupid, gas huffing, son of a boggart. One dead child, one injured teacher, one shot by a death machine, is far too many. One is far too many. One casualty should not exist.

And then we have to factor that the police showed up in cosplay to “FOLLOW ORDERS”. What a fuking cop-out. What a drowned and soggy excuse. Waited around for orders, because some disinterested bastard with his head in the clouds, dismissed the man in a school with an assault rifle as a NONTHREAT.

A fucking joke. A laughing stock. Said that on national television. The damn super visor, the forsaken manager of texas guns and more Kmart, dismissed an armed gunman as a NONTHREAT. DISMISSED HIM AND TOLD HIS HOME BOYS TO WAIT FOR BACKUP.

What sort of backup? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST? NOAH. CAIN? GOD HIMSELF TO DESCEND AND SAY, “THOU SHAL NOT KILL.” 

Blatant proof that texas has propped up the most irrelevant, shallow, pointless slabs of soured meat as their decision makers. The citizens are barely allowed the right to vote, let alone autonomy over their own bodies. For zero fuks sake.

The police know the laws, THESE SLAUGHTER EVENTS ARE NOT BRAND FUKING NEW. WHAT DID HE HONEST TO FUCK THINK A MAN WITH AN ASSUALT RIFLE WAS DOING IN A SCHOOL FULL OF CHILDREN?! CONDUCTING A REASLISTIC DRILL?! They fucking thought there would be negotiations, demands? That he was there to make a scene, SHOOT SOME KIDS, and then after killing some babies and teachers he would SURRENDER? IS THAT WHAT THEY WERE WAITING ON? THE GUNMAN TO SURRENDER?

Typically, that is where the massacre ends. A surrender, and then arrest. Local El Paso man is still in El Paso after he blew apart a Walmart.

There are no “Good guys” with guns here to save the day. There will never be “good guys” with guns, because the fact of the matter is, the “Good guy” with a gun only exist to maybe preserve their own life from getting shot to bits during a slaughter event. But that factor is astronomically low, because a mass shooter with an assault rifle does not need to be accurate or trained to blow people to pieces. He just needs to pull the trigger, and by the time the bullet spray has finished shredding flesh, the “good guy” with a gun might already be dead or bleeding out.

And by the time the execution has ended, casualties are piled and accounted for. One person cut down is one too many. The states allowing people to own an assault rifle is permission for some hateful bastard to purchase that weapon, and cull out a grocery store or a school. There is nothing else to it. The republicans validate these people by providing them with weapons. You’re not going to argue, “for collectors” or “a citizens rights”. The only rights they preserve and protect are those to anyone with the urge to take a gun and cull a school. That is the bottom line. 

No one turned into a Rambo and rushed the school. The parents were tazed or peppered sprayed by wannabe cops. Some of those ‘brave’ law enforcement were even allowed to breach the school to get THEIR OWN CHILDREN OUT, because they KNEW. THEY KNEW WHERE THE GUNMAN WAS. They left him trapped in a room with children. They condemned the children for a goddamn janitors key hidden in a Resident Evil style puzzle errand.

greg abbott victim to the trees was correct. It could have been much worse. The gunmen could have been a mobile shooter, doing a Terminator sweep of the school, going classroom to classroom. But he didn’t. He got locked in with a classroom of children. The children called 911 begging for help while the killer squatted with them and their dead peers, and the police hung around outside in full cosplay trying to figure out school locks.

But somehow, knowing the gunmen was dismissed as a nonthreat and was in a classroom of still living children, while they called for help, aches some painful injustice and nefarious botched situation planning. The gunmen wasn’t neutralized, he was decided to be a nonthreat, while children begged 911 to send the police. They were scared. They were unarmed. They were better trained, more courageous, than those shit stain grownass adults who live in one of the most pro-gun states in the entire universe. Its like the police force woke up and realized, “assault rifle exists?”

How fucking stupid. How embarrassing. How inconceivably horrendous to condemn those children because cops in cosplay couldn’t figure out a door.

#texas #uvalde #greg abbott #ted cruze #ted botched #steroids cruze #i honest to fucking piss ants want to deck the next beaver that says (good guys) with guns #the capacity to get your shit together in the presence of an unstable and active shooter is such a low integer #a nonthreat I cant get over that #WHAT OTHER REASON DOES THE GUY WITH THE ASSAULT RIFLE HAVE TO ENTER A SCHOOL BUT TO SLAUGHER CHILDREN? #WHERE THE FUK WERE YOU RAISSED MARS? #YOU KNOW THE ABSOLUTE SHITS THAT LIVE IN YOUR PROGUN STATE #THE ABSOLUTE BRAIN DEAD IDIOCY TO DISMISS CHILDREN TELLING YOU TO SEND IN THE POLICE HES NOT GOING TO KILL LESS #and what is worse is this will happen again and progun fanatics will blame everything #but the fact the shooter was able to get a gun in a vending machine

[alecsalamander]

The kitchen smells like fresh bread when he gets home; it’s a strange Pavlovian reaction of his adult life that has him instantly reaching for his hip, remembering only last second that he doesn’t carry a weapon home anymore. When he was a child, his mother used to bake bread every three days. He would come home from school and the whole house would smell warm and yeasty and safe, and on the weekend his mother would pull the chairs out from the table and over to the counter and stand them all up there, helping her measure and mix. When he was overseas, sometimes he would walk through a market and catch a whiff of something doughy and hot and it was like he was back there – safe.

It’s the opposite now.

The house will frequently smell like the cookies or brownies or whatever sweet treat CJ bakes to buy himself an hour or so of free time from an excited child, but never like bread. He tells Lacey, when she asks, that it’s the one thing his mother never taught him to make; he tells Wendy, when he doesn’t, that it’s because cookies and brownies and cakes are what you make for your coworkers, but bread is what you make for your family.

The kitchen smells like fresh bread but not like his mother’s safety, and every cell in his body is on alert. He sweeps the entry and the dining room and considers calling for backup – Greg and Ronnie were still around when he left, probably only ten minutes away – and then he finds CJ in the living room.

“Hey Wes,” his voice is calm, but his eyes are wild. He looks more like a bad idea than he ever has before, and even though there’s no way someone like him could ever be a threat, not to someone like Wendy, for the first time he looks like he thinks he could be. “How was work?”

The warning instincts that kept him alive through wars and after prickle the hair on his arms, and instead of reaching for a holster he reaches for the only weapon he has: his phone. There’s a panic button built onto the left-hand side. The house is too quiet to have a second-grader in it, and it smells like an illusion of home. “Where’s Lacey?”

CJ laughs, wild and dangerous. “Is there a secret door behind the rose cooler?” It’s the moment of inevitability between hearing the shot and feeling the bullet, the way everything suddenly goes very quiet and very still; CJ isn’t laughing anymore, or smiling. The words hang between them with the finality they declare, pause like the nails of a coffin, and suddenly Wendy knows. “You know, for Thorn?”

It takes all of three seconds for his heart to remember to keep beating. Another three seconds to remember that CJ is not his enemy even at his worst – that he is, in fact, aside from the last week or so of snarling insanity, his best friend. And then, from there, another three seconds to make up his mind. Nine seconds as a barrier between what he knows will forever mark a distinction in their lives: Before, and After. “So you know about Thorn,” he is surprised, but not suspicious. He and CJ have lived increasingly out of each other’s pockets over the last few years, enough that he’s met the other man’s father a few times. He’s a detective, or used to be, and there’s a sort that end up in their line of work. It’s a strange brotherhood, but it’s also a small one. “But...” The words catch on his tongue in hesitation, stumbling to a stop at the edge of the cliff of being spoken aloud, in a moment of fear. Gravity is stronger, and they fall. “What do you know about magic?”

CJ freezes like a deer in the road. Like a rabbit in a snare. Like something that has stopped running only because it knows it has already lost. And then, eyes hard and voice sharp, he laughs. “Fuck you.”

A few of them had reacted the same, back when this all began. It’s easy to feel like the wrong end of a joke when they come in asking about magic. It’s been years and sometimes he still has moments of disbelieving it himself; he has lived with the knowledge for a decade now, and harbored it in his home for more than half of that, but there are still moments when he pauses and thinks honestly to himself that all of it, every last moment, has been a very strange dream. “I’m serious,” he says, and faced with his own lack of humor CJ’s slowly falls. “I know it sounds crazy, and I need—” It’s almost too much, what he asks of him sometimes. “I need you to trust me.”

“I don’t,” CJ says firmly. He used to. Last week, he did.

“It’s real,” his house is a poor facsimile of comfort and theirs is a poor facsimile of friendship, and CJ is asking about Thorn, and Lacey is not at the table with her homework. He feels like he’s going to war. “Magic, it’s real and they will tell you that it’s evil, but it’s—” Magic is only as evil as those who wield it, as is anything that can be considered a weapon; Wendy is just as dangerous, as lethal. “They’re lying.”

“Are you?”

Wendy doesn’t know which he’s asking, whether Wendy is evil or whether he’s lying – the answer is the same either way. Yes, mostly, but not right now. Not about this. “Where’s Lacey?” he asks instead of answering, because there’s a tower of cards here, each lie carefully built against the other, and he can feel it beginning to fall.

CJ sneers, the expression cold and unfamiliar. “Your team took her,” he lashes out like an animal, snapping and snarling, and Wendy’s heart stops. His web of lies snaps, thread by thread, and he feels himself falling; it’s only to the couch as his knees give out. There’s a noise in his ears like a bomb has gone off, a hollow ringing, and he goes to breathe to find a similar post-explosion pressure in his chest. When his vision tunnels down to a single focal point he finds CJ by habit alone – the man seems immune to his distress. There’s something comforting in the way he’s driven to cruelness at what’s happened, at the way that despite everything, he still loves her. “And I know what they think about it.” It’s partially a threat, partially a taunt; mostly, it sounds like CJ is down to his bones terrified. His eyes are the same hollow sort of grey that Wendy thinks his skin must be, brittle and washed-out, and his lips have thinned to razor edges. “So let me ask you,” and he leans forward like a striking snake, sparks of electricity crackling from his eyes and his teeth and his hands and— “What do you know about magic?”

#my writing #universe: witchhunters #wednesday bishop #catalin shea

[cephalofrog]

succession s4 ep7. oh god oh fuck

- connor sweep! (oh god please no not really)

- damn tom is really going in on the chance he thinks he has here

- callback to s1 when tom said he was bad at gifts (he was telling the truth)

- stop sexting on the job. jesus

- imagine getting fired by greg. awful

- mini borger + fries

- “we’re coming to give your guns hormone therapy, all of your guns are gonna be ladies” yeah

- Major Leadership Changes. uh oh tom

- shiv is girlbossing it up. respectable

- “on a human level” uh huh

- I do feel bad for ebba though

- he’s not even a real coder...

- greg actually got confronted about not being a good person

- what do I even want to happen at this point? idk. all of these people suck. I just wanna see it shake out I guess

- roman harasses a woman continually and then gets surprised when she gets sick of his shit

- ken and mattson handling things like professional businessmen

- lgbt ally kendall roy

- honestly tom and shiv shouting things out is probably what’s best for them

- “you’re a masochist and you can’t even take it” is a great line

- waystar acquires gojo? oooooooh

#succession #succession spoilers #liveblog