#anyway we NEED to get rid of the juries

[wowbright]

Fic: Flash Fire

Klaine Spring Fling: skin

Words: ~775 words

Rating: Teen and up

Summary: Kurt makes a decision.

This is part of my Mormon!Klaine universe. It takes place at the end of Your Heart’s Been Aching and is an expansion of the last, teeny-tiny scene.

My Mormon!Klaine Masterpost. (More recent posts are in bold.)

———

“Do you think she’s for real?” Kurt asked as they left Holly’s house.

Elder Anderson seemed to consider. “Yeah, I think she is.”

“Me too.” Kurt still couldn't get rid of the nagging feeling that Holly was a punishment for his sins, though. Not that he should think of people as punishments, but her behavior—she was like a court jester in Shakespeare, funny but also making everyone uncomfortable, speaking too much truth. “A little eccentric, though.”

“True. But I think the church needs a little more eccentricity, don’t you?”

Kurt believed such things at his best times. But this was not one of his best times. He was confused and full of shame. Still, he was glad his companion thought so. He smiled at Elder Anderson, and then felt guilty for smiling. “I suppose.”

The rest of the afternoon was blessedly dull. Kurt needed that, to recover from Holly. God was still watching out for him. They knocked on doors and got very few answers. They visited the technical school campus, but no one was around. “Are they having spring break still?” Elder Anderson asked.

“I don't know. Maybe the semester is over,” Kurt said. “We’ll have to ask the girls the next time they come to English group. Though, I suppose ithe school is closed, they might not be around to show up.”

They sat on a stoop to rest their feet. Kurt needed to text the sisters, anyway, to check in with them about whether the pair was still having dinner with Emma that evening, and if they’d made any headway with Karl, her fiancé. He shot off a quick message to them. Elder Anderson scooched close to him, the fabric of their sleeves touching.

The emotions Kurt had felt in the shower last night ignited his body. And not just the emotions, but the sensations, too. He was on fire. The touch kindled the memory of other, imagined touches—the press of a lover’s warm buttocks against his groin, of lips against his lips. Flames skittered up and down his skin, spreading like a lightning strike through a parched prairie.

“Are you OK?” Elder Anderson asked. “You look kind of …”

“I'm fine,” Kurt said. “Today has been exhausting.”

“Holly Holliday really drained your battery, didn't she?”

Kurt shrugged. "I think I started the day that way.”

Elder Anderson didn't say anything to that. He looked over at a tree covered in spring blossoms. Small birds were darting in and out of the branches. Kurt wondered if they were Zaunkönige like the one they had seen at the Schönfelds. Their song sounded familiar. But they were too far off for him to see clearly, and he didn’t trust himself to tell one pretty birdsong from another.

Kurt closed his eyes and listened to the notes. The conflagration that had overtaken his body began to die down. It had been a flash fire, consuming its fuel too quickly. Now all that was left were the ghosts of embers on Kurt’s skin, a smoldering longing in his heart.

He was sure it could ignite again if he let it. But he wouldn't. He had learned his lesson. God might have been OK with Kurt imagining the things he had imagined last night—the jury was still out on that. But Kurt wasn't OK with it. It was too much. It made him feel too vividly what he was lacking.

He decided not to allow his imagination to go there again.

Kurt's phone buzzed.

“Is it the sisters?” Elder Anderson asked.

Kurt looked at his phone. “Yeah.”

“What did they say?”

“They say Emma wants to know if we can come too. Her fiancé will be there.”

“The dentist?”

Kurt sighed. “Yes.”

“Isn't that a good thing? He needs to be reactivated.”

“Yeah, I just—” Kurt had never told Elder Anderson about his conversation with Brother Högel during splits. His hostility toward the priesthood and the patriarchal order. Kurt had a feeling that Brother Högel wanted to be there not to support Emma in her journey, but to stop the journey in its tracks. “He's complicated. He must feel some kind of connection to the church, otherwise I don't know why he would be doing our dental work for practically free. And he's still technically a member. But— We didn't talk about it a lot. He was at work. But he's definitely struggling.”

“Well, that's what we're here for, right?” said Elder Anderson. “To help people who are struggling?” His eyes shone with optimism. Kurt’s heart stumbled toward him.

“I suppose,” Kurt said. And then, seeing the hope in Elder Anderson’s eyes grow even more, he said, “Yes.”

#mormon!klaine #wowbright writes fic #klaine spring fling #Spring fling 2: Electric Boogaloo #klaine fanfic #my klaine spring fling

[liesyousoldme]

fuck it friday

i was tagged by @messyhairdiaz for fuck it friday, and we are going full fuck it bc i am literally just going to talk about an idea i have but will never write <3

over the pandemic we all had that one show that we binged right? ok. i watched all 40something seasons of survivor for the first time. and yes the early ones were ridiculously problematic but i looked past it for the sake of the drama ANYWAY i was NOT immune to the romance of rob and amber. i ate that shit up. i rooted for them the whole damn season. i did not know any spoilers. he PROPOSED AT THE REUNION i physically gasped out loud. and obviously there will never be another rob and amber bc now everyone knows to split the couples up right away so anyway in this universe rob and amber do not exist (sorry guys) and somehow the show has gone up into 30 something seasons without any couple pulling an amber and rob. and then buck and eddie show up in whatever year s2 was set in. eddie’s from el paso. he’s got a kid and he’s working three jobs and his wife left him but he’s got military background, he can win the fuck out of challenges, his emotional intelligence is through the damn roof, and he needs a million dollars. evan buckley landed in LA and is barely into his first year of being a firefighter and on a call he happens to meet a former contestant who makes the suggestion to him so he’s like what the hell. he’s never watched the show so he binges it and decides i can do that. and they both show up to whatever beautiful beach they’re on that season and buck and eddie end up on the same team and they fucking crush challenges together. at first there’s a little rivalry, they’re both the strong hot guy, they’re dreading the merge from day one bc they both are afraid they’ll be targets, but eventually after a tough challenge eddie compliments buck and from then on they’re always together. buck is the social butterfly and eddie is the strategist. they’re attracted to each other and they both know it but they try to hide it from everyone else. they’re Just Bros. they’re in an alliance with some others on their team but they both know they’re only loyal to each other at the end of the day. they get separated during a team switch up and eddie makes a promise to somebody that if he makes sure buck (loving trusting buck) doesn’t go home he’ll help him out later and this guy makes sure of it, actually convinces others not to vote buck out bc they were thinking about it (they know the merge is coming soon and don’t want buck around for that bc he kills at challenges). it’s not til eddie turns on the guy that saved buck that everyone realizes Oh They’re A Couple They Are Working Together. (obviously there’s been loads of sexual tension up to this point). and now they’re like fuck it everybody knows! they go into the merge as the dudes everyone wants to get rid of quick so they up their social game and wiggle into an alliance and they win challenges left and right (and i think it’s buck that wins the challenge that gets him a new car and when he gets to pick a guest for his reward and he picks eddie, surprise eddie gets a truck! here’s date night! and of course they absolutely make use of date night separated from everyone else). anyway eddie, who desperately needs that million dollars, makes all the dirty moves so buck can still charm everyone bc they realize nobody on the jury’s gonna vote for eddie. but if they don’t realize eddie’s pulling the strings they might just vote for buck (loving trusting charming buck). and yay buck wins! eddie literally packs up as soon as he gets home and moves himself and chris to LA and joins the fire academy. then you know like 9 months later boom proposal at the reunion show! anyway. i’m too stupid to write all the strategy of it and it would be so long and i could never write it but. yeah essentially a survivor rob and amber au is my dream au that i will never write. thank u for your time <3

#if no one who reads this has any idea who these people are then you never saw this i never said anything #fuck it friday #this is much longer than i expected that’s my bad lmao #buddie #911 #i’m not tagging anyone i don’t have an excuse why i’m just not but feel free to say i tagged you!!! #or in the spirit of fuck it friday just post and say nobody tagged me but fuck it anyway #ok i’m done now bye #buddie survivor au #i’ll never use that tag again. sigh

[whatsbehindthefacade]

Ok, so I wanted to make a somewhat generic post about Caius to give my own personal interpretation and breakdown of him, because a lot of the way I see him portrayed/referred to doesn’t match up with how I think of him and it kind of bugs me when he just gets pushed to the side or discredited in favour of Aro and Marcus, so here we go.

First of all, I think we need to consider the three Volturi leaders in general and what information we actually have on them. We know they’re over three thousand years old, with Caius reportedly being born around 1300BC and around a century before Aro and presumably Marcus. Interestingly enough, I distinctly remember the wiki used to state that they were all born in what we today know as Italy, but I notice it’s now changed to Greece. Handy, because I’ve always personally hc’ed Caius to be from Greece (at least what we know as Greece, and I’m just going to refer to it as such going forward). Additionally, because I want to, I’ve made him older still. My Caius was born in 1644BC, placing him at over 3500 years old by the events of the books, in the city of Knossos on the island of Crete. There he was the youngest child and second son of a reputed goldsmith to the King. Is this partially to fuel the love I’ve had for Crete ever since I visited there as a child? Maybe.

Anyway, this aside, we know he’s older than Aro and Marcus, and I go with the movie canon of him being changed at a younger age, so despite physically appearing the youngest, he is  actually the eldest of the three. He’s also the only one of the three to not have any unique ‘ability’ which is an interesting factor and I’ve seen a lot of people push him aside over. But it does, of course, beg the question as to why he’s kept around. We’ve seen that Aro has no issue with getting rid of his own sister for wanting to leave with Marcus, so realistically it seems unlikely that he would have any qualms about getting rid of Caius if he was solely the annoyance that people make him out to be. Yes, it’s implied that Aro was impressed by Caius’ ambition and ability to hate, that ambition isn’t really of much use to Aro when they’re already at the top. Which further drives home the idea that there is more to Caius than might be expected. So what can Caius bring to the coven that Aro can’t either do without, or replace?

Age and experience seem a logical suggestion (though arguably when it comes to vampires I would imagine there’s a certain age point at which that kinda becomes moot). I would say there is likely also an appeal in a display of three leaders (even with their own internal hierarchy). The appearance of only one feels too dictatorial, the appearance of two runs the risk that if disagreement occurs, there is no way to break a tie (even though, certainly by the time period of Twilight canon, Marcus is very checked out and seems to provide very little in way of decision making) whereas three comes across as a more balanced number. Additionally, while doing a little bit of research, I stumbled across a description of an ideal leadership trio. You have the passionate visionary, the driving force of ideas and power (Aro), you have the responsible, more practical member (arguably Marcus, although we don’t know what he was like before Didyme’s death), and then you have the operator, the one who get’s their hands dirty, which arguably is Caius.  To relate them to a more common trio, Aro is judge, Marcus is jury, Caius is executioner.

And we know that this is pretty accurate. Caius is implied to be the one to take care of the dirty work when it comes to the leaders. He’s ruthless, vicious, and shows little in the way of mercy, and is very effective at what he does. We know he made the children of the moon more or less extinct across two continents 2000 years prior. He’s like an attack dog and could arguably be considered to hold a similar theoretical position to Jane in the sense of rendering enemies incapacitated, albeit obviously in a different way.

Therefore I feel it’s not a stretch to suggest that Caius is an exceptionally skilled fighter, and I would liken him a little to Jasper in that regard. This is a vampire who has fought an incredibly large number of battles, who knows how to handle them, how to approach them, how to manoeuvre his way around an enemy, and isn’t in the least bit afraid to be brutal when it comes to it. Of course, being sadistic as he is, he likes to draw things out if he can, but he’s also capable of being incredibly quick and efficient. Personally, I don’t believe you could survive over three thousand years, particularly in a position of power where people may attempt to rebel (bear in mind too that the Volturi did not have Alec and Jane until three hundred years after they seized power from the Romanian coven) without having substantial ability to fight and defend yourself. Granted, I do believe that Aro and Marcus are also very capable fighters, but I believe that Caius has the edge on them if it came to it.

This is partially why the vision scene that was added to BD frustrated me a little. While I understand the purpose of it for cinema, I do not believe that Caius would go down so easily. Yes, Kate and Tanya are two very capable vampires who are approximately a millennia old (going from the wiki). It is logical that they know how to fight and of course Kate has the benefit of her gift. But I feel it’s also not unfair to say that they likely haven’t been involved in the same amount of, nor the same scale of battles as Caius has, and he would certainly put up a lot more of a fight than was presented, if not decimate them. (With this in mind, given his sadistic tendencies, I honestly wouldn’t put it past Caius to encourage Jane to practice her gift on him in an attempt to build up a sort of tolerance to it. How successful that might be is up to interpretation of course, but it’s a thought.)

So to kind of sum it up, basically I personally believe that one of the reasons Caius still stands as a leader of the Volturi despite possessing no gift to draw Aro to him is that he is quite possibly one of the most exemplar and experienced fighters in the vampire world. If anything’s going to come to a fight, you want Caius on your side and not fighting against you, and he’s certainly a force to be reckoned with.

#meta #headcanon #headcanon: caius #muse: caius #rambles...

[extremelyblackandwhite]

innocence - 38

  PAIRING: bodyguard!bucky barnes x innocent actress!reader

WARNINGS: angst, smut (18+), oral (male receiving), handjob, slight innocence kink 

A/N: not me still not fully recovered from the “you wanna see what i can do with leverage” moment. oof, still gets me heated up. anyway, this smut was mostly inspired by my pinterest board showing me this and this which i feel would be something y/n would wear for bucky. enjoy xx 

NEXT CHAPTER

She didn’t know she was running, but she was. She ran off that room before he could catch up to her but through the middle of her thoughts she could hear him yell out for her and run after her. Maybe it was an adrenaline rush, the thought of getting severely hurt or any other thing but she had managed to outrun him, running into the main corridor where everyone was awaiting for the judge to announce the results. As Mr. Hawthorn screaming her name registered in her brain, she rushed to Bucky, taking him by surprise. Out of instinct he wrapped his arms around her, looking down to see her hiding her face in his chest. 

As Bucky started to wonder why she had suddenly appeared and even why she had left in the first place, Mr. Hawthorne made his way down the hall yelling out her name made it all the much clearer. Bucky held her slightly behind his back, hand tightly holding hers as the man made his way to them. Bucky held out his metal arm in front of him, stopping Hawthorne from getting any closer to her. 

     - Give me that phone, Y/N. Now. - he wasn’t yelling, his tone was constant as he starred both Bucky and Y/N down. She moved her phone behind her back, typing while maintaining eye contact with the agency director. - I said ...

      - Back off, man. - Bucky tried to remain calm, he knew having a major fight or even yelling at the man in front of him wouldn’t put him in a good spot. However, he’d be caught dead if he allowed that man to even dare to touch his wife.

      - C’mon, Y/N. You wanna play with leverage? At least step away from your guard dog and confront me or are you already too comfortable with being a housewife? 

      - You wanna see what I can do with leverage? - Bucky pushed him slightly backwards but Y/N stopped him before he could do anything else, squeezing his hand and handing out the man in front of the two of them her phone. Before Bucky could even complain about getting her phone back, Mr. Hawthorne left the two of them in a fast pace. - What the fuck was that? What did he do? Why did you give him your phone? 

      - Trust me, okay? - she cupped his face, leaning her forehead against his when she wasn’t even sure if what she did was going to work. Her eyes darted slightly across the hall, seeing Chuck with the lawyer but quickly returned to Bucky. - I love you. 

      - What’s wrong, princess?  Hm? What did he do to you?

      - I love you too would’ve been nice, Buck. - she teased.

      - You know I love you too that’s not the point. You’re trying to distract me. Don’t shut me out. 

      - I am not shutting you out, Bucky. Nothing happened, it’s fine ... he’s just ... upset at me. 

      - Why is he upset at you? 

      - I ...

      - Mr. Barnes. - the lawyer approached the two of them, interrupting her just  as she was about to start her sentence. - The judge has called everyone in, let’s go. 

      - Has the jury made a decision? - Y/N’s grip on Bucky’s hand tightened and she was almost frozen on the spot as he started to walk to back to the court room, but she didn’t move. 

      - Hey, it’s just us, princess. Just us. - Bucky smiled at her, kissing the top of her head but she could barely register things.

She couldn’t hear anything as the two of them walked to the court room’s door where they were separated again with Sharon, Steve, Sam and Chuck accompanying her to the bench while Bucky took off with the lawyer. She sat down on the harsh, cold wood, her heart beating fast as she tried to read Chuck’s face yet she couldn’t. The jury and judge arrived, and suddenly everyone was on their feet, waiting for whatever decision the jury had taken; however, the jury looked confused, almost puzzled by the fact they were back into the court room. 

      - It has come to my attention that further evidence as been found. As such, bailiff, take the witness Mr. Hawthorne into custody where he will be charged for the harassment and stalking of Y/N Barnes as well as obscuring justice. In the matter of The People vs James Buchanan Barnes, this case is dismissed. Mr. Barnes, you are free to go. 

A few oh my gods erupted into the court room which went into complete frenzy as the bailiff took Mr. Hawthorne into custody who merely stared her down and shouted out in disbelief. She turned over to Chuck who took his phone off his pocket and played the exact same audio which she had played to Hawthorne just a few minutes ago.

     - I could kiss you. - she hugged her friend, a big smile on her face.

     - Please, don’t. I am still largely afraid of your husband, he would crush me like a soda can. Do you want me to die such a painful death? After I had to somehow understand your typo filled text with the worse recorded audio I have heard. Sincerely, Y/N, Bucky would’ve done a better job and he is what? As old as dinosaurs?

     - You’re the best. - she kissed her friends cheek before going over to Bucky who was being swarmed by both his friends that had come to congratulate him, his lawyer and some reporters.

She smiled at him, standing in the back of the crowd and catching his eye despite everyone surrounding him. Bucky couldn’t care less about those people surrounding him, congratulating him and even some complaining that he once again had avoided paying for his mistakes. All she cared was catching her eye in the middle of the crowd, as if a spotlight shone onto her. 

     - I hope you enjoy being being out of a job for 10 years. - Mrs. Olson said as she passed by to probably be with Hawthorne but Y/N didn’t say anything. 

She knew what was on the line but she would throw it away for Bucky. If it came between Bucky being free or her career, she would always pick the first option. However, it didn’t sting any less.  Yet, this was not about her, not today. Today was Bucky’s day. The day where he got rid of the problem that she had brought upon the two of them and while it was now gone, it still occupied a tiny spot of her mind which screamed at her about her own guilt in this whole situation. The flashes were bright and she kept being pulled to the back as more journalists and reporters tried to get some time with the former Winter Soldier but he avoided them, breaking through the crowd to be with the only person he actually wanted to celebrate this with. 

    - What did you do, princess? - he wrapped his arms around her, turning to exit the court room and leave all this experience behind. - And don’t say it wasn’t you, the lawyer told me it was you.

    - He could be lying. 

    - You could’ve gotten hurt. Why didn’t you tell me? 

    - It was just a guess ... I didn’t want to raise your hopes over a guess. I’m sorry. - she leaned her head against his covered arm. - It’s my fault this whole thing happened and I thought if I fixed it, I’d feel better.

    - It’s not your fault this happened. You could’ve gotten hurt, he could’ve hurt you and then what?

   - He was not going to hurt me. - she scratched her neck. She knew it was a lie, everyone is capable of everything in her business. - I had to do something for you. I am ... I am so tired of being weak. 

    - You’re not weak, what are you talking about?

    - Weren’t you in this trial? They talked about you as if you were some cold blooded murderer and me as if I were the weakest person ever. As if I wasn’t standing in that room and hearing to it. If I could defend myself, if I had put my foot down none of this would’ve happened. 

Bucky’s heart broke as he heard her talk, tears pooling in her eyes as what she had been feeling for the past weeks of meeting, court days and witness speeches seemed to finally explode, breaking free from the pressure she had been putting on it so it didn’t show, so she didn’t feel weak. He had never felt weak before, helpless maybe but never weak. Even as the Winter Soldier he could easily overpower his handlers if he wanted to, he could overpower new recruits and pretty much everyone who he was presented with. He’d never felt weak, he’d never know what it was like to feel weak and he had never even considered she felt weak because he just did not see her as weak. She was soft but not weak, she had strength in her softness, in her kindness. She’d done things he couldn’t see himself doing in his mid twenties. 

     - Hey ... - he flushed her close to him, drawing invisible circles on her back and kissing her temple. - Do you wanna get cheesy chips?

     - I need to go say goodbye ...

     - It’s fine. - he combed her hair away from her face to kiss her forehead. - I don’t want you to get caught up in a mess with photographers. 

     - I’m ridiculous. - she cuddled against his side as he led her out the back of the court where he had parked his car. - I should be comforting you, not the other way around.

     - You’re not ridiculous. This was as bad for me as it was for you. - he opened the car door for her. - Besides, I love comforting you. 

     - Really? Because from what I know, you were the one in danger of being in prison for at least 5 years. The only danger for me was trying to get naked during spousal visits. 

     - Aw, princess. You were willing to get naked in prison, for me?

     - You’re ridiculous, Barnes. 

     - So are you, Mrs. Barnes. - he smirked. - You are not weak and you are not ridiculous. Are we clear? 

     - Don’t use your sergeant voice on me.

Bucky chuckled, putting the key onto the engine and turning it on as the car started to roar up. She leaned her head against his shoulder, mindlessly listening to the song on the radio, probably one of Bucky’s favourites. On that moment, she didn’t care her career was on hold for the next 10 years because he was here and he was free like he deserved. As he pulled in front of the chippy shop nearby his flat, she perked her head up to kiss the corner of his mouth. 

    - Can we do takeaway? I wanna go home. - she cuddled against his shoulder once more. 

    - Sure, princess. Stay in the car and I’ll be right back, yeah?

    - Yeah. 

He left the car, loosening his tie as he entered the shop, leaving Y/N in the car. She rose her hand up, looking at the wedding band on her finger. It had barely registered in her that she was married, she of all people. She knew she wasn’t attention’s sweet centre and she knew she definitely did not deserve a guy like Bucky. God, in her wildest dreams she’d never thought she’d even end up with a man as caring and thoughtful as he is. It was almost surreal she’d even gotten married without having to fight her agency, at least too much. Her lips stretched in a smile as her husband came out of the shop, a toothy, childish grin on his lip as he waved the brown paper bag on his way to the car door.

He drove the two of them back to the flat and once they were inside, her shoes were thrown to one side as well as his tie and jacket and the couple made themselves comfortable on the couch. Y/N sat on Bucky’s lap, takeaway on her lap while he held his on his hand with the other searched for something to watch on TV, eventually landing on The Honeymooners.

    - I need to take you on a honeymoon. 

    - I don’t need a honeymoon. 

    - Bullshit. - he held her close by, hearing her giggle through the small digs onto the plastic container. - Where do you wanna go? C’mon, entertain me. 

    - Hm ... - she looked up, nose slightly scrunched. - Italy. 

    - I was stationed in Italy for a while. Nice place, great food. Where about?

    - There’s this movie called Letters to Juliet, it’s in Verona, and I always thought it looked so romantic. 

    - Okay, princess. Whenever you want, I’ll take you to Verona and we will have a nice month long honeymoon. 

    - Month long? 

    - Yeah. If we go any less, we won’t have time to do any sight seeing. 

    - Why is that?

    - Because I do intend to have sex with you in every part of the hotel we stay in. - he kissed the crook of her neck, taking the takeaway container away from her and placing it on the coffee table. - Maybe even try it in those tiny Italian balconies.

    - You just escaped five years of prison and you’re thinking of vouyerism already?

    - You shouldn’t look so pretty, then. - he hooked his finger under her chin and turned her face towards him, giving her a long drawn out kiss. His hand climbed up from her thigh up to her dress, pushing the sleeve down to expose her shoulder. His stubble rubbed against her soft kiss as he laid a kiss on the subtle skin of her shoulder.

   - Mhm, Buck ... - her hand pushed his shoulder back and he immediately pouted. - I have to shower. I smell like the dusty, mouldy court room and I’d like that smell off me. 

    - Mind if I join? - he pulled the sleeve off her other shoulder but she held her dress against her chest before it could fall down. - I can give you a massage.

   - If I allow you with me in the shower, there will be no showering. - she got off his lap, pushing her dress up. - I’ll be back. Try to keep the pouting to the minimum until I’m back. 

   - Just so you know, you’ll need another shower after you’re back. 

Y/N rolled her eyes, before padding into the bathroom, leaving Bucky on his own in the living room shuffling through various channels. The shower on the background was running until it was running for too long, Bucky turned his head around, looking at the door that led to the bathroom.

    - Princess, everything ok? - he prepared to get up and check on her but was. interrupted by her opening the door.

She stood against the door wedge with her typical shyness which made her so endearing to anyone who met her, yet, this time, it was something other than endearment that Bucky was feeling when looking at her. She was dressed in a white corset and knickers with a small floral print and small pink ruffles at the edge of her underwear. The corset was also adorned with a blue ribbon and small blue bow, everything covered in with one of her many short satin robes that she normally used over her pyjamas or over one of Bucky’s shirt which always looked like a dress on her. 

    - Were you wearing that ... - he cleared his throat, trying not to stare at her perky chest. - Were you wearing that today? 

    - No, I bought this one in case you won. - she closed the door of the bathroom behind her, padding barefoot over to the couch, standing in front of him, her robe slightly slipping of her shoulder. - Do you like it? 

    - Fucking hell, princess. - he leaned forward, hands wrapping around her waist to pull her close to him. 

    - It looks silly, doesn’t it? I don’t know, I just thought I’d wear something nice and do so ... - Bucky interrupted her rambling by kissing her, his hands pushing the robe fully off her and throwing it somewhere in the living room. His hands massaged her thighs and upper body until they were cupping her face, kissing her as if he hadn’t seen in her in ages. 

Her hands rest upon his shoulder, lips melded against his in a long, drawn out kiss. She whined as Bucky moved his lips from hers to her jaw and slightly under it, sucking the subtle and sensitive skin he found there. She allowed herself to get lost in the feeling of his slight stubble against her sensitive skin, drawing kisses and leaving hickeys with slightly rough lips. His hands scouted her corset for the square brackets, loosening the garment and pulling it over her head before leaning to kiss her again. She smiled against the kiss, breaking it to look at him which greatly annoyed Bucky, who tried to kiss her again. 

    - No... - she pushed him back against the couch as he tried to kiss her collarbones. Her hands toyed with the fabric of his shirt, fingers trailing up and down his chest. - Let me do something for you.

    - Princess ... - she ignored his pleas and attempts to pull her in and distribute more kisses all over her body.

Instead she climbed off his lap, standing on her knees in front of him, eyes looking up to him with a devious like innocence which was intoxicating to him. Her hands ran up his thighs, nails racking over the fabric of his trousers until they reached his belt. She bite her lip, unbuckling the accessory and tossing it aside before pushing his trousers down along with his underwear. She gripped his cock in her hand, her finger swiping the pre-cum off his tip before he started to move her hand slowly up and down.

    - Oh fuck ... - Bucky groaned, throwing his head back with his eyes shut. She smirked at this reaction, continuing to move her hand up and down in a painfully slow motion. 

Bucky groaned and moaned, head pressed against the headrest of the couch, eyes closed and lips opened. Her confidence grew at the sight of her completely blissed out husband and she stopped her motions. Before Bucky could whine about it, she kitten licked his tip before licking a broad stripe up his cock eliciting a low grumble from him. He looked down at his wife through half closed eyes, locking eye contact with her. Y/N gave him an innocent smile with innocent eyes before taking him in her mouth. Bucky breathed out, high gasp as his hand gripped onto the couch cushions. He moved his hips forward unconsciously, his cock hitting the back of her throat. She breathe through her nose as she bobbed her head up and down his cock slowly, cheeks hollowed out as she made it upon the spot. 

   - Fuck, princess. Fuck, you’re so good, fucking hell. - Bucky breath harshly as she picked up the pace, her movements almost matching up with his breathing tempo until she started to vigorously suck his tip, getting him almost shaking before returning to take him inside her mouth once more. - Fuck, stop. Stop. 

  - Did I do something wrong? - she pushed her hair behind her ears.

  - Come here. - Bucky helped her up and on top of his lap, pushing her underwear down her legs before he did so. She held herself up by holding onto his shoulders, staying slightly taller than him as he holstered her up. 

She looked down as he looked up, his eyes gazing onto hers as he lowered her down onto his hard cock, silencing her whimpers with a consuming kiss. Her skin seemed to flush hot and cold at the same time as he filled her to a halt. Bucky let her accommodate to his size, kissing down from her lips to her collarbones.

    - Fuck, you’re pretty. - he panted, moving to kiss her neck while his hands held her still. - So fucking pretty, princess.

    - Bucky, please ... move. - she hide her head in the space between his shoulder and neck, a hot flush settling in her cheeks. 

    - I’m not gonna ... fuck ... I’m not gonna move if you hide, princess. - he spoke through moans, voice strained due to the grip of her walls around him, pulsating. - Look at me, look at me when I’m fucking you. Let me see your pretty face. 

Y/N whined, moving to look at him as he flushed her chest against his. She probably looked a mess yet had no time to worry about that once he started to push her hips up and down on him, eventually leading her into riding him. Her hand slide from his shoulder to his chest as she bounced on top of him, the sound of skin slapping against each other along with the moans and groans of both of them as they chased their high. She felt her own walls pulsating with each thrust, her lower belly coiling up as she continued to move up and down his cock as if she were going to die if she stopped. She gasped and whined, continuing with her movements as the coil continued to tighten up and her movements sped up. 

   - That’s it, princess. Such a good girl. - he moaned against her ear, silencing some of her moans with messy, wet kisses. - You wanna cum on my cock, hm? I know you want to.

   - Buck ... - her gasp was high as her walls spasmed and her body tensed. The grip on his dick led him over the edge just a few seconds later and he pulled her completely flush against him, feeling him cum fill her up and leak onto both hers and his thighs. She hide her head on the crook of his neck, mewling while she regained her breathe. 

Bucky chuckled through his breathlessness before slipping out of her which caused her to let out a small whine before he laid her down on the couch, arms wrapped around her. 

   - Make that a 3 month long honeymoon. - he cuddled her against his chest. 

   - How much of that will be sex? - she looked up, completely blissed out.

   - You’ll get a week of sightseeing if you keep pulling this on me.  

   - Right. - she rolled her eyes. - I forget that you are old and cannot take this much excitement. 

   - Are you teasing me, Mrs. Barnes?

   - Maybe. - there it was, the little playful smirk he loved so much. 

   - Oh, princess ... - he lifted her up as he got up from the couch, walking towards their bedroom. - You’re gonna regret that. 

taglist: @disasterbi @lookiamtrying @buckysteveloki-me @americasass81 @jamesbarnesappreciationclub @lostinthebeans @mariahthelioness29 @oh-nohoney @peaches-roses-sins @theadorasabditory @sipsteacasually @saiyanprincessswanie @booktease21 @noiralei @learisa @everythingisoverratedbutgreat @uglipotata72829 @naturalthrone22 @husherstan @mandiiblanche @vicmc624 @itsallyscorner @chipilerendi @emzd34 @writerwrites @bluevxnus @that-girl-named-alex @captnrogers @nsfwsebbie @sarge-barnes-sir @niki-is-a-thing @cynic-spirit @tenaciousperfectionunknown​ @buckyswillow​

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan/reader #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan/you #sebastian stan x you #sebastian stan x y/n #sebastian stan/y/n #sebastian stan fanfic #sebastian stan smut #sebastian stan imagine #bucky #bucky barnes #bucky x you #bucky/you #bucky x reader #bucky/reader #bucky x y/n #bucky/y/n #bucky imagine #bucky drabble #bodyguard bucky #bodyguard!bucky #bodyguard bucky barnes #bodyguard bucky au #bodyguard au

[the-last-rat-standing]

So beyond the Gibbs exit, let’s go over the plot that led us up to this momentous occasion. (Please correct me if I’m wrong, because admittedly, my attention sort of wandered off at times. And this will be long, so I’ve put it under a cut.)

Sonia and her partner hired Paul Lemere to kill a handful of people who were going to, in their own individual way, put an end to the mine.

Paul Lemere killed a bunch of people in between, to cover the connection between the real intended targets.

Marcie’s friend was one of those ‘covers’. Someone went to prison for that murder, but Marcie was certain the man was innocent.

She and Gibbs somehow got close to finding the identity of the killer who then decides he needs to get rid of Gibbs.

Killer is caught, then torments Gibbs with clues and insight into Gibbs’ life. Tricks Gibbs into taking him to his (the killer’s) wife’s old place. Wife’s dead. Now the killer is, too.

But before he dies, he tells Gibbs of a lake in Alaska. That’s where Gibbs’ll find the answer to who hired the killer.

Gibbs and McGee go to Alaska, they discover the truth about the mine. She tries to get away, but Parker stops her and arrests her. But only after she attempts to call her partner, thus revealing who he is.

Marcie just so happens to be talking to the partner, who is actually the husband of one of the real victims. Torres busts in, case solved.

Is that about right? Okay, so I have questions.

First and foremost, did we need 8 episodes to get us to Alaska??

Were we ever told the connection between the killer and Sonia? Or the killer and Sonia’s partner? Because I’m confused as to how you find a guy to kill a bunch of people.

You know, the FBI has a branch called ViCap, which is a database that connects crimes that have similar characteristics. But no one at the FBI seemed to pick up on half a dozen murders all involving red duct tape?

Did the guy who was in jail for Hanna’s murder get released?

Why didn’t the killer kill Marcie? If he tried to kill Gibbs because he was worried he was getting close, why did he only ransack Marcie’s office?

How exactly did the killer plant the bomb on Gibbs’ boat? Couldn’t have been in the basement, because who in their right mind would see a boat in the basement and even consider the possibility of it getting out? 

Speaking of the boat, here’s a timeline that occurred to me the more I thought about it. Gibbs takes out the boat, leaving a hole in his wall. Like, he doesn’t park the boat for a day so he can rebrick the wall?? Takes the boat to the lake, hole still in the wall. Boat gets blown up, hole still in the wall. Gets rescued by Barn Couple, hole still in the wall. Turns their barn into an office, hole still in the wall. Finds the killer, hole still in the wall. Are we to assume this was all in ONE DAY? That Gibbs came back that night for his things before jaunting off to Alaska, hole still in the wall? That he left Ducky standing in the middle of the living room, hole still in the wall? Jumped into the vehicle with Torres to get to the airport, knowing there was a hole still in the wall?? Like, what the actual fuck??

How did the killer know all about Gibbs’ life?

Are we now to believe Gibbs killed the Russian guy responsible for running down Torres?? Because, holy hell, that’s murder. Killing Hernandez was always a grey morale area, but as Allison Hart said, “I think we could beat it.” No jury in the world would’ve convicted a man who killed the person responsible for the death of his wife and 8 year old daughter. But this Russian dude? Jesus, Gibbs.

What did they find in Alaska that couldn’t have been discovered through a phone call? All the science happened in D.C anyway. And man, FedEx can get shit delivered in a heartbeat if they want! (The watch? In a day? Wow.)

So it was all about the money for the husband? Enough to have his wife killed. Wow.

Other questions involving Gibbs’ decision:

Well, they’re all the same I asked about Jack’s exit. 

Is he selling the house? His truck? HIS CHALLENGER? (Thanks, @justagibbsgirl for that reminder!) What is he doing with all the Shannon/Kelly mementos in the attic? Did he take everything from the office? Is he just going to leave Kelly’s memory box buried in the backyard? He’s now living in a fly-in area. As someone who worked in one for a summer, let me tell you, it’s gonna be a bitch starting from scratch. Is the Native guy gonna find him a place to live or is Gibbs gonna build a cabin? (Better start cutting that wood, because you’re going to wait forever to get it flown in.) Does he plan to never talk to friends ever again, or does he have all the contacts that were in his phone in his head? Who gets to tell Phineas he’ll probably never see Gibbs again?  Who gets to handle all of Gibbs’ paperwork (retirement, taxes, bills, financial responsibilities)?  Who gets to handle transporting Gibbs’ body when he dies, since he’s got a plot beside Shannon and Kelly?

I mean, I get it- it’s fiction. It’s not real life, and a suspension of disbelief is required. But GOOD fiction marries suspension with gravity. This was not good. No, wait. What I should say is, the ending was great. In isolation, it was fitting for the character and gave all the feels it should. But in the context of the arc we had to travel to get there? In the context of ‘what happens next’? This was not good.

#ncis #leroy jethro gibbs #episode criticisms #and rantings #and bitchings #these damn writers

[shintorikhazumi]

(Diakko Week) There’s no way she- (2): “There’s no way she did that.”

@dianakko-week

A/N: BOY, OH BOY. I DIDN’T THINK THIS STORY WAS GONNA GO THIS WAY, BUT HERE WE ARE, I GUESS? Please do enjoy, I’m not sure about the quality of this chap, but I personally am enjoying this story so far an I hope you all do too!

Again, Enjoy?

~Shintori Khazumi

Day 2: Trust

“There’s no way she did that.”

Diana was seething at her desk, Hannah and Barbara desperately trying to calm down their long-time friend with a cup of tea and some rationality.

She wasn’t having it however. Not even the tea.

“There’s no way. There is just no. Possible. Way. That Akko would so such a thing!” Diana growled, head whipping in the direction of her poor friends-slash-secretaries-and-attendants. “Right?!”

Barbara nodded wordlessly, clearly unnerved by Diana’s foul mood while Hannah sighed, moving the teacup away from the clearly miffed Diana before any mishaps could occur.

“Yes, Diana. We think so too.”

Diana released a heated sigh, nostrils flaring as she slumped against her leather chair. Today just wasn’t her day.

Never mind it being only her second week of being chosen for the grand magical council and being harassed with much work simply because she was the youngest to enter at the tender age of twenty-three. That same council of old pricks were now interfering with her personal life by giving her a case that made her burn deep with rage.

They dared accuse Diana’s girlfriend of magical misconduct when Diana-for a fact- knew that Akko read the terms and conditions of being a traveling magician- yes, ALL the terms and conditions- back-to-back. Back-to-back to back-to-back. Diana had found it both unnecessary and incredibly endearing, and sweet Akko- oh, bless her sweet soul- had wanted nothing more than to be able to share the magic of dreaming to all sorts of people, gain experience as she traveled; and hoped to overall just help people along the way on her cross-country journey.

Sure, she had left her incredibly stable position as one of the council’s security personnel, and the job paid extremely well- especially for people who were relatively fresh from school. It really did. However, Diana knew Akko was far from happy with that job. In a somewhat similar position to Diana, she had been made a lackey by her seniors and superiors, and though she loved helping people through her job, it just wasn’t worth staying. She couldn’t even be assigned to Diana! Thus, Akko had resolved to go independent, under strict supervision and conditions.

That had been five months ago.

Sure, Diana had missed the other woman dearly and hadn’t seen her for all that time, but Diana knew this was what the other woman wanted to do- to make people smile. She loved making smiles blossom from one person to the other. Diana wanted to support her in her endeavor. She believed in Akko and in what she wanted to accomplish.

And anyway, Akko had always made it a habit to send one of her familiars to bring Diana little souvenirs of her travels, accompanied by the sweetest words on paper, reassuring her girlfriend that she was well and good, and living life to the fullest, and that she’d surely be back in a year.

She was coming back sooner than they’d both expected, and for reasons neither had desired.

Diana ran her fingers through her hair in frustration, massaging her scalp to nurse the quickly growing headache.

She hoped Akko would come home safe at the very least.

//

“Miss Diana Cavendish. Could you repeat those words to me one more time? I might have misheard.”

“I said. I refuse to vote against Atsuko Kagari’s innocence. I know her, and I know her well. She would never ever do such horrid things.”

Diana watched the council secretary bristle, eyes burning at her response.

“You can never know someone too well. You don’t know what people are capable of. They can cha-”

“And I trust that Akko only ever changes for the better.” Diana cut off, casting her own glare over the two high council members who held the papers and a sum of money in front of her. “I know nothing of what the inner circle of the council has been up to, but I can’t believe they would try something so terribly scandalous such as bribery and false report! Dare I assume you are hiding something worse-”

“One more word from you, and you will suffer the consequences. Not that you already haven’t.”

Diana would have lashed out had she not needed to remain calm for Akko’s sake as well.

“This is our final offer, Miss Cavendish. Push for her guiltiness, or lose your seat in the council.”

Diana’s eyes widened, fists clenching. These people-

“You have no authority over this matter!”

She shivered in repulsion at the grins that grew on their hideous faces.

“Oh, but we do.”

//

Kagari Atsuko, twenty-three years of age, stood at the podium in the courts of magic with steely eyes and a rigid frame. She dared not glare at the jury nor the judge, but she would like to at least show them her determination in proving her own innocence.

Chancing a glance at Diana who was sending her worried looks from the jury stands, Akko reassured her with a gesture that all was and would continue to be alright. Returning her attention to the presider of the meeting, Akko readied her words, carefully crafted by herself and her lawyer who ironically just so happened to be Amanda O’Neill. Akko tried her best to keep a grin from forming at the hilarity of that fact. She was, after all, still on trial. She had to keep things professional.

“Kagari Atsuko. What do you have to say for yourself?” The judge questioned after all her supposed ‘charges’ had been read out.

‘Magical misuse, abuse of title as a former council official, trafficking endangered species across borders, and exploiting my audience, huh... Honestly, what a bunch of-’

“Bullshit.”

Akko’s eyes widened, and so did everyone else’ at the accidental slip-up.

“I-I mean... I apologize, your honor. I didn’t mean to say that. Ehem. I’d like to plead not guilty of these accusations.”

With brows raised, the judge continued on with the ruling, the tension in the room not once lowering. Akko just hoped this would end smoothly, and end soon.

She didn’t know what the council got out of this, to be honest. To go so far as to forge evidence against her, what had she done against them? Honestly, this new council, with almost all-new members weren’t doing a good job in succeeding their predecessors.

If the whole jury hadn’t been bought out at this point, she really could only hope for the best.

//

“Thanks for driving me home, Amanda.” Akko bowed to her friend, clutching her suitcase.

“Hey, hey! None of that. C’mere.” Amanda pulled her shorter friend into a tight hug, patting her back firmly. “I’m just glad it all worked out in the end.” She sighed, running a hand through her hair after they pulled apart.

“No kidding.” Akko chuckled. “You’re the best, bud. Totally fit for this job.” She giggled, as Amanda rolled her eyes with a shrug.

“I know, right? Obviously knew this is what I wanted to do for a living all along.”

They shared a laugh before Amanda had to leave, having work to do the next day. Waving at the car until it had disappeared far beyond what her eyes could perceive, Akko turned to the porch, taking careful steps to the front of the door.

Facing that familiar wooden barrier, she took a deep breath before allowing her knuckles to meet with the hard material.

No sounds, no response. Not even the slightest shuffling could be heard from within. Akko’s brows furrowed, teeth biting her lower lip nervously. This was their house... This was the Cavendish manor... right? Amanda was above pranks as evil as this, especially after what had just happened, so there was no way that-

“Mrrmmhpphhggh! Mmrhg!”

Akko struggled against the hand covering her mouth, desperately trying to reach for her wand, however her assailant had already figured her out, catching her hand and holding it against her back...

-before releasing her completely.

“A-Akko?! I! I’m sor- wait, no time to explain, come.”

And Akko was dragged into the house by Diana herself who rushed her up the stairs and into their bedroom.

“Akko, do you have all your essentials in that suitcase you hold at the moment?”

“Huh? Diana, what is... why are you home already? Don’t you have a council meeting running until late-”

“Grab anything you’d like to bring with you. Hurry!”

“But Diana!”

Akko felt a duffle bag hit the back of her head, and she whipped her head around only to find her prepared glare fading at the sight of a scowling Hannah.

“Do what she says, idiot. And make it quick.”

Diana seemed as caught off-guard by the presence of Hannah and Barbara as much as Akko was.

“You two! I... You can’t be here. Go back to your home, and from this point forward, don’t come back to the manor. I’m relieving you of your duties as my-”

If Akko and Diana’s eyes could widen any more, they’d surely be the size of Diana’s large serving plates. Hannah had clapped her hands against both sides of Diana’s face, shaking her lightly.

“Are you truly going to just leave us?!” She hissed.

“Diana... we know we were wrong to snoop around, but... couldn’t you confide in us for something this important?” Barbara said, teary-eyed. “I know we can’t ever replace what Anna was to you, and when she... when she left, we didn’t know how else to help you after losing your only family. But we still wanted to be by your side.” She smiled, placing her hands on Hannah’s shoulders to rub them, getting her partner to calm down.

“Did you really think...” Hannah sniffed, wiping her tears off her sleeve. “That we wouldn’t make you take us with you?” She finished with a grin. “You are never getting rid of us, honestly.”

Barbara nodded, reaching forward to ruffle Diana’s hair before she was met with a deep frown because of the gesture.

“Sorry, always wanted to try that.” She said, not sorry at all. “To sum all this up, Diana. You are taking us. There will be no further argument.”

Diana couldn’t help the relieved smile breaking across her face, her two longest companions also sporting their own. Tears slipped from her eyes as she pulled them into a long embrace.

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” She sobbed quietly, feeling arms rubbing her back from each side. “Thank you.”

“You better be thankful. We’ll never forgive you if we’re not the maids of honor at the wedding.” Hannah declared, half-joking.

“Wedding?” Diana parroted, pulling away as she wiped her remaining tears away. “Whose?”

Both girls simply rolled their eyes as Hannah walked over to Akko who felt seriously out of the loop. Barbara patted Diana’s shoulder, shaking her head, amused.

“Hannah? Barbara?”

She was promptly ignored from that point onward.

“Come on, idiot. Get packing. I’ll even graciously offer you my superb assistance.” Hannah said with a smirk, opening the closet she knew was designated for Akko’s belongings. “We don’t have all night.”

“I still... I still don’t understand what’s going on.” Akko stated, but began to do as she was instructed anyway. “What are we doing? Where are we going?”

“What part of ‘no time to explain’ don’t you understand?” Barbara quipped, before going over to assist the brunette pair. “I could’ve sworn we informed Amanda about this.”

“Even O’Neill knows?!” Diana continued to be ignored. “Okay, great. So who doesn’t know about this getaway?”

“Calm yourself, Diana. We only told our little circle of friends.” Barbara spoke over her shoulder as they finished closing Akko’s suitcases with a click. “Amanda and Constanze prepared as a cloaked little vehicle until we leave the country. You should be grateful.”

“Jasminka should be here to pick us up any minute now.” Hannah commented.

Diana remained slack-jawed, amazed at the follow-up her attendants had done.

“You didn’t think we’d just let you fly off on a broom in the middle of the night again, did you? Really Diana, we’ve been with you so long, your smarts should have rubbed off on us even the slightest bit.” She grinned. “The magical council really aren’t all that smart, huh? Look at their dullness contaminating our brilliant, Diana.” She shook her head in dismay.

“A shame indeed.” Barbara agreed as they began carrying their luggage out.

“No one’s still told me anything!” Akko announced, scratching the back of her head with her free hand as she followed Hannah and Barbara out with her own possessions.

She turned to Diana at the sound of a lock clicking in place, the former heiress running her hands over the grooves of the wood and the carvings.

Placing her things down momentarily, Akko walked over to wrap Diana in a hug from behind. “I hope we can come back one day. To the place where you began.” She whispered, placing loving kisses against Diana’s shoulders. “I’ll make sure we can.”

Akko’s heart cracked as Diana began to tremble in her arms, a hand going up to cover the sobs that were escaping her lips. All the memories of her family, her mother- they were probably much too painful for Diana to leave behind, but she had to. They had to.

Akko walked the mansion halls one last time with Diana as they locked each door one at a time, Diana embedding every room, every window, every banister into memory.

They finally came to the front door where Hannah and Barbara had awaited patiently, bags already loaded into their vehicle.

“No longer asking where we’re going, love?” Diana questioned Akko who had seemed to accept whatever was happening already.

“Do you trust me, love?” Akko responded with a question of her own, earning her Diana’s smile accompanied with raised brows.

“More than anyone and anything in the world.” Diana replied.

Akko gave her a chaste kiss as they all boarded the vehicle, watching the mansion disappear with an area cloaking spell that would hopefully keep it safe for as long as they were gone.

Squeezing Diana’s hand, Akko spoke. “Then know that I think the same. No matter where we go, how far away we are from here, and what we end up doing, just know... Just like those two dorks there,”

Akko laughed as the two snorted from the seats in front of them, knowing they were rolling their eyes at her.

God, she was thankful for them. For all her friends. For Diana.

Taking Diana’s hand in hers and entwining their fingers together, she placed a soft kiss on the back of her hand, laying all her worries to rest. They would figure things out. They all would- together.

“I trust you with all of my believing heart.”

A/N: WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN NOW, WHERE ARE OUR BABIES GOING? OOOHHH. SEE YOU ON DAY 3!

~Shintori Khazumi

#dianakko week 2021 #happy dianakko week 2021? #diakko #fanfic #hanbara #diana cavendish #atsuko kagari #hannah england #barbara parker #amanda o'neill

[lichfucker]

i would love to hear about why all of the ted lasso characters would fail survivor but especially rebecca

hhh ALL of them... okay the vast majority of the players can be explained away with just "physical prowess enough to make them a threat in individual challenges but dumb as bricks and would not be able to strategize themselves out of a bad spot"

this is abt to get long lmao so I'm putting individual ppl under the cut

nate is the most obvious first boot I honestly feel bad about it. bumbling, socially awkward, has NO idea how to assert himself without being an asshole about it (in the rare instances when he does assert himself at all), and even if he's smart enough to be a great strategist (which he absolutely IS), he can't convey it well enough to convince his tribe to overlook his (probable) lack of challenge ability. most of the time, people don't want to draw harsh lines in the sand on the very first vote so they can pretend everyone's getting along and still friends, so nate would be a sort of freebie vote that it'd be easy to agree on.

beard is too much of a follower. what ted says to dr sharon abt him is, "that man has had many lives, many masters." he's very comfortable being led by people with stronger personalities, and even when he disagrees with their calls he will still execute them like a perfect little lackey. the thing about beard is that I think he'd go VERY far in a season of survivor! I think he could EASILY make it all the way to the end! but I just don't think he can WIN. he's genius-level intelligent and SO strategically savvy, but more than that he is fiercely loyal. he'll attach himself to the right person (or the wrong person, as it were), and even if he is whispering in that person's ear all the way through, he would be TOO content to let them take all the credit, he wouldn't push back against them if they disagree with his plans and make a lesser move instead (the whole beginning of 'beard after hours' is him berating himself for not standing up and making the hard calls even when he knew they'd be better), he wouldn't turn around and slit that person's throat at the end to further his own game, and he would make himself socially impenetrable to everyone else. nobody could get close to him, nobody could like or understand him, he'd probably be seen as good collateral if the opposition couldn't strike directly at whomever beard works with, and if he DOES make it to final tribal, I think he'd have a very difficult time convincing the jury that he deserves the credit and the limelight. he wants to win, I just don't think he believes he deserves to.

ted and roy actually would have the exact same problem, which is "physically and strategically competent, but so FUCKING ANNOYING to live with that they get booted for the sake of tribal quality of life." roy would isolate himself socially with his aggression, and ted...

ted is the antithesis of what a "good survivor player" ought to be, which I actually think could work to his advantage in a number of ways? like I think more typical players would find him incredibly unpredictable because he's sharp enough to see what the best moves are, but generous and self-sacrificing enough not to make them. like, there's a reason he's a coach and not a player. there's a reason he says that he doesn't measure success in wins and losses. if he could survive the first few votes, his social game would be AMAZING-- the entire first season of the show is about him wearing rebecca down through the sheer magnitude of his friendship! lesser survivor players would be so endeared to him that they couldn't fathom voting him off, but they're the ones who are getting picked off in his stead. moderately savvy survivor players would not trust a single word out of ted lasso's mouth; there's no fucking way a man can be this kind and this sincere, not on survivor, it's just not possible, he must be plotting something MASSIVE, we have to strike first before he gets his chance. and the truly brilliant survivor players would realize that he IS genuine, he IS sincere, he IS loyal and giving to his core, and that's DANGEROUS. you can't let someone like that make it to the end or they'll take your million dollars. best to shut it down at the jump.

and above all that, I just think that ted... ted would thrive in the pre-merge, in the tribal portion of the game, he's SO team-oriented, but post-merge, in the individual game... perhaps if he had a solid alliance he could also feel that way about, then it might suit his temperament, but ultimately I think he just. wouldn't want it badly enough. I just think the significant majority of people would be vastly more self-interested than ted would be, so they'd take the shot first.

higgins is an interesting midpoint between all three of nate, beard, and ted, in that he's a henchman through and through even when he disagrees with his boss, he's a pushover who'd be seen as a liability in physical challenges in the early game, and he's off-puttingly friendly and polite to the point that nobody would trust that he's being sincere even though he absolutely is. early boot, maybe second or third.

maybe it's just because I've got cook islands on the brain, but jamie (esp season 1 jamie but like. season 2 as well lmao) would play A LOT like early ozzy. an arrogant wonder-boy who's good at everything (did you know there's literally a survivor casting archetype called the "amazing ace"?), with a heart-wrenching underdog story (playing for richmond, that is), an absolute beast in challenges, a huge threat but always immune, he'd win his way to the end but ultimately be beaten out in final tribal by someone smart enough to have dragged him along as their meat shield the whole game.

and as for rebecca... g-d. this one I think hurts me the most because she has everything going for her, she doesn't have a single one of the problems I've listed for anyone else, but I do genuinely believe that rebecca still loses. she's strong and she's smart and she's assertive and she's ruthless and she's sociable and she's a great liar and she's ambitious and she's ADAPTIBLE (she immediately bounces back after not getting the sun to run the photo of ted and keeley and comes up with an alternate plan that will still serve her own endgame, and by g-d being able to roll with the punches and change course is the single most important thing a survivor player can do), but rebecca still loses.

even if we set aside the fact that survivor on the whole is not particularly kind to women over 40... season 1 rebecca, especially early season 1 rebecca, is spite-motivated to the point of self-destruction. she will set her sights on one target and she will be relentless in her effort to get that person out and it'll make her so myopic that she won't see her own end coming immediately afterwards. nobody on that tribe wants to be her next victim-- better get rid of her once she's proven what she's capable of.

she's also dreadfully insecure in the wake of her divorce and when her polished veneer cracks enough to let it show (how many days of being rained on do we think it'll take for her to slip? my guess is five), some people will see it as the vulnerability that finally allows them to connect with her on a human level, while others will see it as a threatening endgame storyline and an exploitable weakness.

there are some juries, particularly old-school juries, that wouldn't vote for her in the end purely based on the fact that a million dollars is just a drop in the bucket to a woman like rebecca mannion welton. that would be a real shame, and a disservice to the game she would have had to play just to make it that far.

what's more likely than that, though, in my opinion, is that rebecca... loses the drive to win. I think that somewhere along the way survivor stops being a game that she is playing, stops being a competition, and instead becomes a journey of personal growth through adversity. I think she, like ted, stops measuring her success in wins and losses. I think she proves herself more capable and resilient than she ever thought she could be, and that is worth more to her than the money or the title of sole survivor, and she stops fighting for it. and maybe the jury admires that, and gives it to her anyway, rewards her transformation. or maybe they don't. maybe they view it as a concession, a forfeit. but I'm not certain that that moment of revelation happens at the final tribal council. I think it happens just before. I think it happens after the final immunity challenge, and she tearfully and valiantly allows herself to be voted out just inches from the finish line. I think rebecca is the fallen angel of the season, and she goes off to the jury with her head held high, which is nice, and so very noble of her, and the fans would be DYING to have her play again but she wouldn't, because she'll have gotten everything she could have wanted out of her survivor experience, and she doesn't need the crown on top of it.

I think rebecca COULD win. she just WON'T.

#jockjamsandjellies #thanks jack #bluh bluh #honestly I'm a little tipsy and this hurt me to write #rebecca's arc in the show of her becoming a better person is literally an arc of her becoming a worse survivor player #and that's not to say that it's impossible for someone who's kind and honest and open-hearted to win survivor!! #bc plenty of those people have! #it's just that... I think she'd end up pulling a rafe in guatemala and valiantly falling on the sword right at the end for NO REASON #when victory was otherwise all but guaranteed! #also I didn't mention ted's panic attacks at all because I do not believe they would matter lmao I've seen multiple seasons #where people had panic attacks during challenges that they weren't even participating in #and then those people made it all the way to final tribal and one of them even won #survivor #ted lasso

[laurore-stormwitch]

Just one last night - AO3

Since the "holding hands in the quiet of his bedchamber" snippet came out I'm depicting a thousand different way for that scene to play out. This is just one of them! Hope you all enjoy it and feedback are always sooo appreciated! ______________________________________________________________

“I will leave the vials here as a precaution. I know you’re comfortable enough and I trust you to have the demon at bay, but we can’t ever be too careful.”

Zoya looked outside the window, mustering the courage to say the next words. As everyone said their goodnights, she had lingered in his sitting room, following him to his bedchambers and making small talk to fill the space between them. There wasn’t a real reason why she was there with him, except the pathetic excuse she was ashamed to have come up with. To be frank, anyone could have delivered the vials to him, it didn’t have to be her. Zoya just wanted it to be her, just for tonight. And she didn’t miss the knowing look on Tamar face when she agreed to let her handle it; yet she ignored it anyway, turning on her heels. She absentmindedly touched her neck while she put them on his nightstand; it felt bare at the absence of the heavy key she used to lock him in every night before the Fold. Her mind escaped her; at times she felt as if her and Nikolai were like distant planets, bound to orbit for their eternity around a bright sun without ever getting to touch it and be embraced by its warmth. They would circle each other, and when they came too close the flames of the sun scorched them. So they continued their march, growing distant again. But the orbit was set; they couldn’t steer away from it, it kept them in place, preventing them to drift too far from one another. Zoya let out a tired breath, watching the vials. You’re losing your cynicism to Nikolai’s sentimental nonsense. What’s gotten into your head? Now everything seemed to be going on smoothly, with Nikolai having regained control; the only precaution was for him to keep taking a mild sleeping draught just in case the demon came knocking in his mind. Her help or her presence weren’t needed anymore; even this small moment alone felt like a theft. She inhaled, steadying her voice to sound sharp, emotionless.

“Tamar and Tolya have more of this if it’s needed. Even the stronger one we used.” She closed her eyes under the dim light of the night, savouring the feeling of being in this room before dragging the dagger in. “It’s best if I don’t come here again. You can’t afford any more whispers now that you’re engaged. Especially since your wife to be isn’t exactly enthusiastic.”

A deeply buried part of her wanted Nikolai to protest, to find a way to still have her with him every evening. Her pragmatic side, on the contrary, reminded her that driving a wedge between them was the wise choice to make. She heard him sit on the bed with a sigh and turned to see his shoulders dropping; a defeated Nikolai was a hard sight to take.

“I suppose you’re right. Although I was almost getting used to it. I’ll miss your goodnight spite.”

“I’ll let you have enough of that at any other hour of day.”

“Make sure there’s no shortage of it. I don’t know how I’ll survive without hearing you delightfully insulting me every two sentences.”

He grinned. Leave it to Nikolai to find the strength to make everything seem easier. Zoya scoffed, taking a few steps until she stood in front of him.

“You look awful.” She stated, eyeing his strained face.

“See? How can I go to sleep without this?”

“You’ll sleep just fine. You just need to survive until the marriage.”

He groaned, casting a glare at her. She could see how much he hated this, how much he hated every time she was the one to mention it. It was hard not to comfort him, but it wasn’t her role to play.

“Come on, Nikolai. You only have to stand on an altar being handsome and say yes.”

“Ah, but saying yes to people is not an easy task, Zoya. I like to be a contrarian.”

“Believe me, I know”, she huffed, “It’s going to be quick and painless.” He considered her thoughtfully for a while, leaning back a little and resting his hands on the mattress, tilting his head in her direction. Her brow shot up with a questioning look.

“You might be eager to get rid of me, but you don’t seem excited for this either, you know.”

Nikolai pointed out, carefully pondering every word, an expectant look on his face as he studied her. Oh, bold of him, Zoya thought, caught off guard by his direct remark. She faltered for a moment, thinking he didn’t really know how right he was. He could never know. She dismissed him with a shrug of her shoulders, trying to look unfazed.

“We’re marrying you off to someone who tried to kill you, it’s not a choice I’d define perfect. And I don’t like weddings as a general rule.”

Half-truths were better than nothing. I especially don’t like yours. She put her best annoyance in the words, pursing her lips and sitting gracefully beside him on his bed, pulled here by the string that tied her to him. Zoya purposely ignored how dangerous this action was. A small part of her still wanted to savour these moments until she could. He scoffed, amused, shuffling more near to her, poking her playfully with his shoulder.

“Why would that be? You’re such the romantic type.”

Zoya glared at him, tossing her mane of black hair over her shoulder.

“What would you know about that?”

“Nothing, really.” She told herself she imagined the displeased tone he had while admitting this. “Are you?”

She pondered his question for a moment. No, she was most definitely not the romantic type. Nothing about her previous conquests had been romantic. Since she was little, she had know romance was not waiting in her life.

“I don’t think so. Not that I had the chance to find out. I stopped believing in these charades at a very young age.”

“Why is that?”

That’s a complex answer, Nikolai. One made of many stories, one that started soon in her life. She remembered showing him the scars on her back. This was no different, just another one of the wounds she had tried to heal. Why was it so natural to reveal her most guarded secrets to him? When had he began to unravel her like that? The words rolled out of her mouth before she could really think on them.

“At nine years old they tried to march me to my own wedding. Maybe that’s why I never grew fond of them.”

Zoya let her hands rest on the bed too, next to his, straightening her spine and keeping her posture up. Her chin was held high as she spoke. She didn’t want to look and find his compassion, his pity. But Nikolai was not like that, he would never be like that; he would just keep surprising her, over and over. After a wave of shock flowed by, he looked at her with a rumbling rage inside him. Despite herself, she was touched by his fierce reaction.

“What?” He sputtered, trying to control himself. His eyes never left her.

“We had nothing when I was young. So, my mother tried to sell the only thing she could make profit from: my beauty. But something happened, and the wedding was stopped.”

“You were a child, Zoya.”

“I was”, she conceded, “but it didn’t really matter.” He shook his head with a troubled look.

“It does matter. What happened?” You matter, Zoya. That’s what she heard in his strained tone.

“Someone saved me.”

Her voice wavered and cracked a bit at the thought of her aunt. Sweet Liliyana, brave Liliyana. She left and now Zoya was on her own on the ship with the two-star flag, sailing a restless sea. She couldn’t find the words to say this; it was a pain so carefully nestled in her heart that she feared she would’ve still succumbed to it, even with Juris guidance to accept it. Her lungs grew tighter, the weight of that loss pressing on her chest. She felt Nikolai moving on her side, regaining his calm: he was so close she could feel his warmth and the scent of his skin, still salty after the year since he abandoned Sturmhond. Their hands were already almost touching each other; suddenly, his made a shift and came to rest on hers, curling gently on it. She tensed for an instant and sucked a sharp breath in, but when she let herself relax, she found that his touch was soothing. It was an intimate and delicate gesture, driven by the despair he sensed even through her perfect stillness.

As he held her tight, Zoya felt she was not steering the ship alone in this particular storm. Her eyes wandered around, trying to distract herself: she foolishly thought how much she really liked this room. She liked the walls painted blue, a testament to the longing Nikolai felt for his days as a privateer; as much as she gave him hell about it, she enjoyed that part of him, the ruthless pirate and explorer. She could see why he chose that tint, it was comforting for him too, made him feel at home. It was so much like her own chambers, with the towering waves painted all over them. She glanced briefly at him under her lashes and found him silently looking at her. He didn’t push her, didn’t ask for more, just waited patiently for her to decide whether to go on or not.

Silence enveloped them like fog on a winter morning. The sea wasn’t troubled anymore; Nikolai was there with her, in a place that seemed to be always made just for him. She inhaled deeply.

“Then I was the one to save us in return. My power came through, and I cracked the roof of the church open. I was taken to the Little Palace and begun my training. You know the rest of the story, or some of it.” She turned to him: his eyes were hard to read in the faint light of the room. He was looking at her with marvel, and something else she couldn’t quite place. Something that dangerously looked like a kind of affection they couldn’t indulge on. The shadow of a smile flashed on him.

“It’s perfectly in your character.”

“What is?”

“To tear down a church at nine years old. Highly predictive of what came next.”

She smiled too. She couldn’t help but smile at him.

“Tolya might frown at my disregard for faith.”

“He most definitely would.”

Zoya knew she should’ve let go of his hand. She could hear his breathing, and if they stayed silent enough, she was so close she could hear his heartbeat. It was an intoxicating feeling.

“Before that happened, I dreamed of being a soldier, as I told you once. After that, I became one. Just not the kind I thought I’d be.”

All the lives she could’ve had flashed behind her eyes. She saw herself in an olive drab coat, serving in the First Army, with a rifle in her hands instead of the wind as her ally. She saw a little girl taken too soon, her suffering and helplessness. A young woman working in Liliana’s shop, who grew up to marry a nice farmer and be a mother, maybe. Lives that weren’t hers anymore, and that she would never trade, lives that peaked every now and then in her nightmares. There was another future too that she saw, distant and blurry: one full of Nikolai’s light, one she couldn’t dwell on, that was lost before it was even possible to conceive it. And yet their hands were still bound, none of them brave enough to break the connection.

“You’re still a soldier. A general, as a matter of fact. And your beauty is still something that makes people do insane things, isn’t it?”

She rolled her eyes at his teasing tone, wondering if he would do insane things for her.

“Beauty is a double-edged blade, Nikolai, as much as any other virtue. You can let others use you for it or be the one to weaponize it. They tried the first with me, so I learned to do the second. I shaped my appearance to be something that I could exploit for my own goals; be it to be respected, to gain favours, to have whoever man I wanted to toy with. To be the one in control. The way I look is a sword just like the ones made from steel.”

She would never admit she threw in the "toying with men" part just to gain a reaction. Not that it wasn’t true, or that she wasn’t proud of it, because she was. That was just how they were used to provoke each other, and none of them usually yield to the taunts, or they would just keep answering with the same snarky remarks. But this time, Nikolai flinched. A shadow went through his face and betrayed his inner turmoil, and it looked more like remorse than empty jelousy. She supposed she should’ve taken it as a victory and be satisfied, but this win just felt sour and left a bitter taste in her mouth. They were getting worse at this game. What are you thinking of, Nikolai? He nodded without answering; they both knew he understood this well. His charm was a weapon too, one he learned to wield at a young age, one that brought him to success and distracted his enemies many times. He began to brush his thumb on her palm, squeezing her hand lightly.

“I know you don’t need me to tell you. But you’re so much more than that.”

For all her confidence and withering glares, he seemed to know how sometimes she still felt like the child being dragged to marry an old man. How sometimes she was still scared, and lost, and lonely. He knew this was the reason why she left the lamp burning for him when she wished him goodnight: because everyone is afraid of their monsters when we’re alone in the darkness. Her heart missed his rhythm and she tightened her hold too, a way to told him she understood, that the gratitude she felt was too hard to voice. Zoya wondered how someone could feel so full and empty at the same time, until Nikolai interrupted her train of thoughts.

“Do you remember the night in Ivets? The carriage ride back?”

I remember everything, Nikolai. Every word you have ever said to me. She cocked her head towards him, some curls falling on her face, imitating his teasing tone.

“Want me to read your fate again?”

“What future do you see in the stars now, general?”

Her lips quirked in another smile. Wife, that’s how he called her that night. She didn’t miss how he seemed to have casually chosen another title now; it was a joke they could hardly afford anymore, one that caused too much ache somewhere deep inside of them. She kept the lightness in her tone, but replied with honesty.

“I see a war. A war fought on many fronts, but with many allies too. With friends. And I see a great young King leading his country to victory, against all odds. I see you rebuilding Ravka.”

“We.” He corrected as quickly as if it was an instinct. We. As if it could ever be a reality. She shook her head with a fond smile.

“This is your fate, Nikolai. You’ll read mine another time.”

He was still grazing her palm. With a sudden movement, he intertwined his fingers in hers, looking at their bound hands as if they were something sacred. She was all too aware of his warming touch on her skin. There they were, closer to their burning star than they’ve ever been.

“You really mean it.” It was not a question: he heard the certainty in her voice.

“I do. I believe in you.”

Nikolai locked his eyes in hers, casting her a longing look that made her want to fall at his knees. A whisper came out of him.

“And even if he wins, how much will his eager country take from the young King?”

The despair in his voice sent a stabbing pain through her. It will take you from me. And there it was, as their orbits almost crossed, the fire blazing, telling them it was time to say their goodbyes. The weight of his hand felt suffocating now; she trembled and untangled their hands abruptly, and it was like someone had just tore a limb away from her body. The fear had clutched her heart: an icy wind swept her, as the armour of the general slipped back into place and she cast aside her desires. Zoya remembered why she was here, what she had told herself. Who she was and what she had to do to save them. Things that were too easy to forget when Nikolai was standing so close. You can’t be here anymore. She couldn’t have this weakness. He seemed to want to reach for her, leaning slightly towards her, struck by her sudden shift in mood. She slowly got up, smoothing her kefta.

“This is a broken place, Your Highness. You will bring this drowning man to shore, of that much I’m sure.”

Even in the quiet of the room, Zoya could swear she heard him shout at her to stay. This she couldn’t endure; she paced towards the door, turning around to him when she trusted herself to be far enough not to surrender. The fire crackled, lighting up Nikolai’s golden pained eyes.

“But we will pay a price nonetheless.”

For days to come she would ponder wherever she had found the willpower to walk away from the safety of his hold. Zoya pulled the handle and got out without looking back, hearing the lock click behind her. Her steps were unsure, fragile. She wondered how many times she had left to hear this sound before his door would close forever, never to be opened for her again.

#zoya nazyalensky #nikolai lantsov #zoya and nikolai #zoyalai #fan fiction #my writing #post kos #king of scars #rule of wolves

[wiypt-writes]

Riding High

Ch19: Unfair Comparison

Chapter Summary: Fliss is not a happy bunny when she realises Frank hasn’t dumped the card.

Chapter Warnings: Bad Language words. Smut (NSFW, NO UNDER 18s!)

Chapter Pairings:  Frank Adler x OFC Fliss Gallagher

Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please respect this and do not read if you are underage. I do not own any characters in this series bar Fliss Gallagher and the other OCs. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer.

Riding High Masterlist // Main Masterlist

Chapter 18

  “What an ass hole." Greg shook his head, tossing the card onto the coffee table. "Tell me about it." Frank sighed as he ran his hand through his hair and leaned back heavily against the cushions of Greg's sofa. "I just..." "I know pal." Greg soothed him, "Technically you’re right, he has breached his parole. So Fliss would be perfectly within her tights to call the police. However, he’s gonna deny it, there’ll be an investigation…you’re back into statements possibly court again...all it needs is one member of a jury, if it even goes that far to doubt he sent it and..." "So I'm just supposed to sit back and let it lie?" Frank looked at Greg, almost pleading with the man to give him some kind of advice he could use. "In a word yes." Greg shrugged "and not least because that's what Fliss asked you to."

“I’m worried Greg.” Frank shook his head “Yes, it’s just a card but it proves he knows where she is…” “Not hard, her business has a website.” “Yes, I know that…” Frank started but Greg cut him off. “Frank, he can’t come out of Massachusetts. He cannot physically set foot outside of that state without his GPS tag tipping the police off.”

 Frank bit the inside of his cheek, his jaw twitching.

 “Look, buddy, I get it.” Greg continued, his tone soft “I really do…it’s shit. But for now the best thing for you to do is listen to Fliss.”

 “This is bullshit.”

“Tell you what. I’ll keep the card. If she gets any more stuff from him then we can build a portfolio and send it to the police. It’s more likely to come to something if we have more incidents.”

“So basically, we just have to wait until he sends her more crap and then we might, or might not be able to do anything?” “I’m sorry pal.” Greg shrugged.

“It’s not your fault.” Frank sighed, shrugging. “Sorry I snapped. I appreciate the advice.”

 “I wish I could be a little more positive.”

 “Don’t we all?” Frank said, slapping his thighs with his hands “I best get off, got stuff to do this afternoon.” Greg eyed him for a moment as he stood up, before he rose from his seat to see Frank out of the villa.

 “Just be there for Fliss ok?” he said as they walked to the door “Frank, if she’s asking you to do something, unless it’s really dumb then do it. Give her the control, yeah?” Frank merely nodded and then climbed into his truck, still as pissed off as he had been when he had arrived. He reached for his shades, slipped them on and headed down to the marina. He spent the afternoon cleaning the boat. And whilst it didn’t take him long as they hadn’t taken an awful lot with them, he decided to give the entire thing a good wash down and polish inside, more to keep him occupied. Paul arrived at just gone 3 pm, and was over the moon with the fact his boat had come back to him in a better condition than it had gone out in…making a quip that Frank could borrow it whenever the hell he wanted if it meant service like that.

He was just heading back to his truck when Fliss called him.

 “How are my girls?” he asked and she chuckled slightly. 

“Good, we’re done now so be heading home soon. What do you fancy for dinner? Anything in particular?” “I’ll swing by the store, pick up a few steaks and we can grill.” Frank said, climbing into the truck “And a bottle of Rioja?” “Perfect. Did you get rid of that card?” Frank hesitated for a second. “I took care of it.”

 “Frank?”  her voice had grew a little sterner. “What does that mean? What did you do?” “I took it to Greg.” he grimaced as she made an angry noise on the other side of the phone.

 “Damnit Frank, I asked you to get rid of it…” “I just wanted some advice. Thought I’d see what Greg made of it and-“

“You had no right to do that…” her voice was angry “That wasn’t your decision to make…” “Lissy…” he sighed “Look, let’s not do this on the phone. We can discuss it at home ok?”

 And then the familiar tone hit his ear, signalling she’d hung up.

 With a groan he banged his forehead against the steering wheel in frustration. He wasn’t looking forward one bit to that conversation.

He walked into the store a few blocks from their home, and for a second debated taking his time, just to stall but he knew he would simply be delaying the inevitable. It didn’t matter how long he left it, there was going to be an argument. He grabbed what they needed for dinner, and a few packets of snacks before he headed back out to his truck. 5 minutes or so later he was home, and walked up the steps, letting himself in. Fliss and Mary were both in the kitchen, Mary sat on the counter with a juice box, Fliss clutching a beer.

 “Hey…” he said, a little tentatively. Fliss gave him a tight smile and turned her head so that his kiss landed on her cheek. 

Yeah, he was in for it. Big time.

“You had a good day?” he asked, placing the bag on the side and looked at Mary.

 She nodded eagerly “I cantered today, off the lead line,” “Did you?” He smiled at her “Nice work Stack.” “Fliss got a video. Can we show Frank?” “Sure.” Fliss smiled at her, and pulled out her phone. She swiped at the screen and passed it to Mary who took it, and Frank moved so he could watch the footage over her shoulder.

 “My balance is still a little bit crappy…” Mary shrugged “But I didn’t fall.” “Your balance is fine.” Fliss said gently “You just need to keep your lower leg still but that will come in time. You’re doing great.” Mary beamed and handed Fliss her phone back.

“Why don’t you go get showered?” Frank looked at Mary “I need to speak to Fliss for a moment ok?”

 “Can I go on my computer once I’m washed up?” “Sure.” Frank nodded. She hopped down from the counter and wandered out of the room. Frank watched her go for a moment before he turned to see Fliss was stood looking at him. “So what did Greg say?” she asked, folding her arms

 “Nothing different to what you said.” Frank looked at her.

 “Right, and if he had said something different, like told you to go to the police, would you have done that behind my back too?” “No, of course not!” Frank shook his head as he leaned back against the kitchen counter, both hands either side of his body on the edge of the worktop, “That’s not what I-“ he took a deep breath “Honey, I just want to make sure that we do everything right. Greg’s gonna keep the card on file, says if you get anything else then he’ll keep that too, build a case.”

 Fliss looked at him for a moment before she shrugged “Whatever” “Whatever?” Frank frowned “That’s all you can say, whatever?” “Well what else am I supposed to say?” she looked back at him “You clearly know best…” “Fliss…” he sighed, “Don’t be like that…” “I’m not being like anything.” she shook her head “You’re the one that went behind my back, ignored what I asked you to do.”

 “With good reason…” “You know, I thought I might be at a point in my life where I get to make the decisions about things that directly affect or concern me but clearly, I was wrong…” “Woah, woah, woah, now hang on…” Frank pushed away from the unit he was leaning against, holding his hand up “Are you seriously comparing what I did to him….” “No, of course not.” she snapped. “Well that kinda sounds like what you were doing…” his hands fell to his hips.

 “Oh don’t be a dick, Frank.” she glared at him. “That’s not what I meant.” “Well what did you mean?”

 “I already said exactly what I mean!” she said, her voice rising in volume “You had no right to do that, no right at all to go behind my back like you did. I couldn’t do anything about him getting released, but the one thing I can control is how I react to this entire situation…and you took that away from me!” “You’re completely overreacting…” “Overreacting?” “Yes…” he strepped towards her “Liss, I didn’t do it to take control…nothing of the sort…” “How would you feel if you told me not to do something with Mary, something that meant a lot to you, and I still went and did it anyway?” “That’s…” he shook his head “That’s completely different.” “No, it isn’t!” she yelled back “It would be a complete disregard for your wishes, it’s exactly the same…” Frank looked at her, his eyes locking onto hers as she simply snorted and shook her head “You don’t even see what you did wrong do you?” “No, and I’m not apologising either.” he shook his head

“Of course you’re not.” she snorted “This is getting us nowhere.”

 With that she turned and called for Thor.

 “Where are you going?” he frowned, following her into the hall as she slipped on her sneakers.

 “Out.”

“Where?” he asked, when she didn’t reply he pressed again “Lissy.” “Piss off Frank.” she shot back, and with that she stormed out of the front door, slamming it behind her.

 Frank stood still, his hands on his hips before he dropped his head with a sigh.

 “Nice job…” he heard Mary say from behind him.

 “Shut up.” he snapped, a little harshly as he turned to face her. She glared at him and then rolled her eyes.

 “I’m going back to my room.” she said simply, stalking off down the corridor, laptop under her arm.

 Frank watched her go before he shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Way to go Adler, you fucking idiot.

**** Fliss angrily stomped across the lawn and took a right, Thor trotting at her heels. She walked down the path that led to the Marina, took a left and dropped down the stone steps onto the beach, pausing to remove her sneakers. She dug her toes into the sand, rolled up her riding britches as much as she could before she headed to the waters edge, allowing the water to splash over her legs, Thor giving an excited bark as he gambolled in and out of the waves.

She was angry. Angrier than she had been in a long time. But it was more than that, she felt betrayed in a way. She had asked Frank to do something, something she felt she was perfectly within her rights to request and he had deliberately ignored her.

 She wasn’t sure how long she had been stood there, simply looking out over at the horizon but she was jolted from her thoughts by her phone ringing. She debated ignoring it for a while, but eventually she pulled it from her pocket and took a breath as she realised it was her Dad.

 “Hey Pops.” she greeted him. “You ok?” “Yeah fine Titch.” he said, “Just noticed I had a missed call…” “Oh, yeah…” she said, for a moment she had forgotten she had called. She had been planning to tell him about the card but as she stood there, she wasn’t sure she wanted to anymore “It wasn’t important.” “Charming…” she heard her mother and Fliss let out a chuckle.

“You got me on speaker?”

 “Bluetooth.” Bill replied “We’ve been to the store.” “Stocking up for tomorrow.” Verity said “Can’t have a roast dinner with no potatoes…Mary would have a fit.”

 “Yeah…yeah she will.” Fliss said with a sigh.

 There was a pause before Bill spoke again “Lissy, you ok?” “Not really no…” she said, her eyes brimming with tears. “Me and Frank, we had an argument…a pretty big one…” “What about?” Bill asked.

“So, this morning I had a card arrive at the yard…and it was from John…” Bill made an angry noise as Verity let out an exclamation.

“That’s…he’s broken his parole…” “I know, but they’re not gonna launch an investigation over a card…so I asked Frank to get rid of it. But he took it to Greg behind my back and…” She trailed off, rubbing at her temple.

“So I’m guessing you discussed your disappointment with him in a calm and collected manner…” Bill said sarcastically.

 “If by calm you mean calling him a dick and storming out then yeah.” Fliss replied.

There was another moment of silence and Verity spoke again. “Honey, look…I’m sure he did what he thought was right…” “That’s not the point!” Fliss groaned “the point is I asked him not to. And he did it anyway. The one thing I can control in all of this is how I deal with it. And he completely disregarded that.” “Look, Liss, I love you to pieces, we both do” Bill spoke “But so does Frank, and him taking that card to Greg won’t have been about going behind your back. Have you considered how he feels in all of this?” “How he feels?” “Yeah, this is…this is something he will never have dealt with before. Seeing some other man basically trying to terrorise his girlfriend…he’s going to want to hit back, try and see if there’s something he can do. This isn’t about control. It’s about keeping you safe.”

Verity picked up the conversation at that point.

“I see your point sweetheart, and yes, he should have discussed it first but...” “So you both think I’m in the wrong?” Fliss asked gently, as she looked at her feet, Thor returning to her side and flopping down on the damp sand. “No…that’s not what either of are saying, is it V?”

 “No, not at all. He had no right to go behind your back, I get that honey I do, but…well, this can’t be easy for Frank either. And maybe…” “Maybe you should cut him some slack.” Bill finished “He’s a good man Fliss, and heaven knows you waited long enough for one to come along.”

 “I know.” Fliss said quietly, the tears trickling down her face. “I know…” “I can hear the ocean…so go home.” Bill said gently. “Talk to him. Calmly. Don’t let that asshole get in the middle of what you two have Titch, you both deserve more than that.”

 She nodded to herself, wiping her face and then bidding her parents good-bye she placed the phone back in her pocket.  Mulling their words over she turned and headed back across the sand, the sun setting behind them as she made her way over to the food truck parked by the side of the boardwalk.

******

 By the time Frank had convinced Mary to speak to him so he could apologise for snapping, it was getting dark out. Fliss had been gone for a good hour and a half, and Frank was getting a little concerned. He was just about to call Roberta to watch Mary whilst he went out looking, when the door opened and Thor padded into the living room.

 Frank stood up and turned to see Fliss in the doorway. Her eyes locked onto his and he gave her a small smile.

 “I was getting kinda worried.” Frank said softly “Wasn’t sure you were coming home.”

 “Neither was I.” she replied honestly and Frank swallowed slightly as she looked at him and sighed “I’m going for a shower then to bed. I’m tired.” “Ok.” he nodded “Do you want something to eat or…” “I grabbed a burger when I was out.” she shrugged, “I’m fine, thanks.” There was a moment of silence during which Frank simply nodded and then Fliss turned and headed down the corridor, popping her head into Mary’s room to say goodnight. Once he watched her open the door to the bathroom and shut it behind her, he set about quickly tidying the kitchen up, tossing the empty beer bottles into the recycling box under the sink before he loaded the dishwasher and set it going.  He moved around the living room, tidying a few things away before he turned the lights off and made his way into the bedroom.

Fliss was led on the bed, remote to the TV held in her hand as she glanced up at him for a second, her eyes flicking back to the screen on the wall. 

“You still mad at me?” he asked tentatively as he pulled off his t-shirt. She looked at him for a second and sighed.

 “Dad told me I was being an idiot.” “Right.” he said, sitting down on the bed next to her, extending his legs down the bed “That’s not answering my question sweetheart.” “I don’t know anymore” she shrugged “Yes, I’m still mad you did it…but I understand why. The fact you had the right intentions doesn’t make going behind my back any better.” “I didn’t mean to make you feel like that, and yeah, ok, I should have asked you first, talked it over.” Frank conceded nodding “I’m sorry.”

“And I’m sorry if you thought before that I was saying you’re anything like him because you’re not…and I know that…because I can get mad at you and…well, that makes it impossible to stay mad at you for long…”

“What?” Frank looked at her, smiling, his eyebrow raised. “What does that even mean?” Fliss looked at him, a faint smile on her face as she sighed “It means that I can get mad at you, and shout, and leave in a temper tantrum for a walk or whatever, without worrying that when I come back you’re gonna hurt me.” Frank looked at her for a moment, as her words sunk in. Something so simple as having an argument was such a huge thing for her, and the fact she even saw having an argument as a measurement of how much she could trust him because she felt comfortable enough to call him out on the things he did that she didn’t like or agree with, was utterly fucked up. But in a strange way, made total sense.

 She could argue with him because she felt safe…

 Frank moved so he was led on his side, propped up on his elbow facing her, his hand gently reaching out to brush a strand of hair behind her ear as she looked down at him where she was led, shoulders leaning against the bottom of the head board of the bed. He could see she was getting upset now, her brown eyes were watering and with a sigh he gestured with his head and opened his arms and she shuffled down further, allowing him to pull her into his chest, gently kissing her head.

 “I love you.” he said softly “So much. I only went to Greg because I was worried. I’d do anything to keep you and Mary safe, you know that.”

 “I know…” she said quietly as he slid his finger under her chin, lifting her head so that she was looking at him. Lowering his head, he kissed her softly, his hand cupping her cheek as his lips gently worked against hers. She relaxed into him, allowing him to deepen the kiss, his hand tangling in her hair as her fingers softly skated through his short beard. Frank let out a smile against her mouth and she pulled back to look at him, her soft, brown eyes searching his.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing…” he smiled, “I just like it when you do that…” “What? This?” she asked, her nails scratching slightly against his whiskers and he let out a sigh of satisfaction, giving a nod. Fliss watched him for a second as his eyelids flickered shut, those ridiculously long lashes resting against his cheeks as she continued to gently run her hands through his beard, before she shuffled closer and pressed her lips to his.

 “I like it when you do that too…” he chuckled and she smiled against his mouth. They continued trading soft, tender kisses before Frank slowly moved so that Fliss was led under him, caging her with his arms as she gently ran her hands through his hair, pulling his head back down to kiss her again. His lips gently trailed along her jaw line to that spot on her neck just below her ear where he gave a soft nip causing Fliss to let out a soft moan. Her hips bucked upwards slightly, drawing a soft growl from Frank’s throat at the feeling as she pushed against him, all the time his mouth continuing its path downwards, tracing the line of her throat as his hands reached down and gently tugged at the hem of her vest top. She sat up slightly allowing him to remove it and he fell back over her, his lips latching back onto her neck, drawing another soft groan from Fliss at the feeling of his beard scratching against her skin and the contrast of his soft lips. His tongue circled the swell of her breast before he gently took a nipple into his mouth, listening to her keens as he teased her, his other hand sliding down over the curve of her hip, fingers brushing the hem of her sleep shorts before he slid his hand beneath the material, parting her folds as he began to tease her with his fingers, coaxing more and more wetness from her as he went. He glanced up to see her head was thrown back against her pillow, eyes shut in utter bliss as she bit her lip.

 “Look at me.” he said softly, moving so that his face was hovering over hers again, fingers still working. She opened those deep brown eyes he felt he could drown in and her pupils were blown with desire. His fingers picked up their pace and he slid one, then two inside her, curling against her spot over and over again.

 “Frankie…” she panted as her back arched, “I..”  her words stopped as she found herself unable to form them any longer, instead issuing a low gasp which turned into a groan as her eyes fluttered shut and she convulsed underneath him, tighten around his fingers. Eventually she relaxed and her breathing evened out slightly and she looked up at him, a soft smile on her face before her hand slid up into his hair, as he slanted his mouth over hers.

 Then it was a fast scramble to get both of them out of the last remaining, thin barriers of clothing before Frank nestled into the v of her legs, mouth nipping at her collar bone.

 “Want you…” she purred into his ear and fuck, did he want her too. Her hand reached down between them, and she gently lined him up, pressing her lips to his.

“Don’t keep me waiting Sailor.”

 And Frank, not one to refuse his girl what she wanted did as she asked, worked into her with a steady, gentle movement which made him shudder, dropping to his elbows over her as she gave a soft moan. Her hands gently gripped at his broad shoulders as he began to move, his thrusts slow and gentle at first, hips rocking against hers. Their mouths crashed together in a sloppy kiss as she raked her nails down his back, the sting on his skin caused desire to lance through him even more and he gave a groan, picking up the pace slightly, her body moving with his from each steady thrust, skin sliding against skin, the soft sounds of sex and groans and whimpers filled the air and half the time Frank was at a loss as to who exactly was making them. 

 “More…” she begged softly, and he hooked his hand under her knee, wrapping her leg up round his waist allowing him to drive deeper. She gave a loud mewl underneath him as her nails dug further into his shoulders as he moved faster, reading the signs she was giving him, his hips now snapping back and forth with a needy desire, the carnal want he had for this woman consumed him and he knew he wasn’t going to last much longer.

 “Come on baby…” his breath was ragged on her ear as he gently sucked at that spot again, feeling her writhing underneath him. “I got you, let go…”

 His breath caught slightly as she tipped her head to press her lips to his, the kiss heated and he swallowed the loud groan she made before her head fell back her hands gripping to his back as if her life depended on it.

 “Frankie…I’m…gonna…” she managed to stutter before her mouth once more slackened and her sultry lament made Frank shudder as her body shook underneath him, her leg twitching as he held it tight round his waist. Her heat gripped him, pulsing again and again and he felt the burning deep in the pit of his stomach, the surge of his own orgasm felt like it was rising from his very toes as he drove into her once more.

 “Fuck, Lissy…” he mumbled and a guttural rumble erupted from his throat as his hips stuttered slightly before he made another few shallow thrusts before he collapsed forward, burying his head in her neck as the afterglow consumed him.

 He had no idea how long passed before he managed to muster enough about himself to raise his head. She still had her eyes closed but there was a satisfied smile playing on her lips, one he couldn’t help but mirror. As he watched her face, the tip of his nose gently resting against hers, her eyelids flickered open and he smiled down at her, gently pressing their foreheads together.

 “Ok?”

 “Yeah…” her voice was raspy and she swallowed “That was more than ok…” He chuckled as he met her lips in a soft kiss, before he gently rolled off her, laying on his back and reaching down for the duvet which was tangled around their legs. After a short wrestle with it and a bit more giggling they both settled down, Fliss’ head on his chest as he lay on his back, his hand softly carding through her hair.

***** The next few weeks skipped by fairly uneventfully, bar the almost meltdown Mary had when it was revealed to her that she wouldn’t be going back into Bonnie’s class when September rolled around. Frank tried to explain to her that wasn’t how school worked but she was besides herself, declaring she wasn’t going back to school if that was the case, leaving Frank groaning about the possibility of repeat of the scene they had the previous year.

 In the end, it was the twins that managed to explain it to her. Steve and his family came over to visit again for 2 weeks in the middle of August and the boys Charlie and Joel spent a lot of time at Fliss and Frank’s for sleepovers, Fliss loved having her nephews to stay and the boys thought Frank was the best person ever when he took them out on a boat he borrowed from work, allowing them each to take a go at sailing. Or being Pirates as they excitedly exclaimed.

One night when they were all sat in the lounge getting ready to settle in for a movie, Frank overheard Charlie telling Mary all about how he was looking forward to moving into the bigger classroom and learning cool news stuff. He could see the cogs whirring in her head and Fliss had smiled, leaning up to kiss his cheek, whispering that she’d told him it would all work out in the end. And, thankfully, she was right.

One person who was NOT looking forward to the return of the school year was Bonnie. One Thursday night she called Fliss begging her got on a girl’s night out as she needed to blow off some end of holiday blues. Fliss agreed and arranged to meet up with her on Saturday evening. The weekend rolled round fairly quickly and Fliss was in a good mood when she arrived at work, a few lessons to do before she could head home and start getting ready. She was just heading out to the first one when her phone rang. The number was withheld but that wasn’t uncommon as a lot of people called about lessons in such a way.

 “Fliss Gallagher…” she answered. No one spoke in response. “Hello?”

 Nothing.

 With a shrug she cut the call and replaced it back into her pocket, making her way over to the paddock, when the phone went again. She repeated the process and there was still no one talking on the other side. 

“You ok?” Joanne looked at her, as Fliss frowned.

“Yeah, I just had 2 silent calls…” Fliss shrugged

 “Probably someone ass-dialling”

 “Yeah, maybe…” Fliss said, not voicing where her mind had instantly gone, straight to John.  She stuck the phone in her pocket once more and strode into the paddock, greeting her client.

 There were no more calls that day, which made Fliss comfortable enough that it wasn’t her ex. If it was and he was playing some stupid game he wouldn’t have stopped. So by the time Mary appeared to do her stable chores and ride Monty she was in fairly good spirits. Fliss decided that they were going to do something a little different on Mary’s lesson today, and she placed a few poles on the floor and had Mary walk Monty over them first, then do them in trot. It wasn’t hard for the pony, and he knew his job but it was different for Mary, making her concentrate fully on where she was going. Frank leaned on the paddock fence watching the pair of them as Fliss walked along side Mary, chatting away to her before she stepped back and allowed Mary to try it on her own. The smile on Mary’s face was all Frank needed to see and he nodded to her as she looked over to him, his hand falling to Thor’s head as the dog had jumped up, leaning his paws on the top of the fence.

“Alright buddy?” he asked, scratching his ears as Thor panted in response, giving a sharp bark at Fliss who turned to look at them, grinning.

 One the horses were fed they all made their way home and after dinner Fliss grabbed a glass of wine and headed for a shower and then to get ready. 40 minutes or so later she emerged dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a white off the shoulder top that had large pineapples printed on it and on her feet she wore a pair of gold sandals. To finish the beach-chic look, her auburn hair was pulled back into a messy bun at the nape of her neck and she was wearing a pair of gold hooped earrings along with her Pandora bracelet.

“You look lovely.” Frank smiled at her, and she grinned back. “Ready to go?” “Yeah…” she nodded “Can we pick Bonnie up on our way?”

 “Sure.” Frank nodded, turning to Mary “Come on Stack. We’ll swing by for ice cream on our way home.” “Yesss….” Mary gave him a hi-five as they all headed for the door.

 It took them about 15 minutes to get to Bonnie’s and Fliss hopped out of the jeep heading up the steps to the small villa. Frank watched her go, quite happy to appreciate her ass in the shorts she was wearing, and smiled as she turned round, Bonnie following her down the steps.

“Hi…” She greeted Frank who nodded to her as she climbed in the back of the jeep. “Hi Mary.” “Hi Miss Stevenson…” “You can call me Bonnie out of school.” The dark-haired woman chuckled.

“I know.” Mary shrugged.

 Bonnie hesitated for a moment as Frank and Fliss exchanged a look, the pair of them grinning at Mary’s blasé tone before Frank shook his head.

“Mary…” he chastised her gently.

 “What?” she looked at him.

 “Just…oh, I dunno, whatever.” he mumbled, setting the car going again. Fliss and Bonnie struck up a gentle conversation about where they were going, Frank not particularly listening to be honest. His right hand absentmindedly dropped to Fliss’ bare thigh, his thumb gently rubbing at her skin and she dropped her left hand on top of his, gently intertwining their fingers.

 He was almost disappointed when he pulled up outside Rio’s that she had to let go.

 “Have a good time.” he said as she leaned over to give him a quick kiss.

“Will do.” she smiled “See you later Mary.”

 “Yeah bye!” Mary said, hopping out of the backseat to take up the vacant front one.

 “Ice cream or hot dogs?” Frank looked at her, tearing his eyes away from Fliss as her and Bonnie headed into the bar, already knowing full well what Mary’s answer would be.

 “Dur…” she looked at him “I got me a hankering for some Cookies and Cream.” Frank snorted and with a final look at the bar set off towards The Shack.

*****

“Did he just…” Fliss looked at Bonnie, her eyes flicking from the young man in front of her to Bonnie, then back again. They’d had a few drinks at Rio’s, then headed up to another bar a few doors down and had wandered over to see what was going on round a pool table, soon finding themselves watching three younger guys as they were racking the balls up, ready to start a game of killer. By this point they’d had a fair amount of beer and shots, so Bonnie, clearly emboldened by alcohol, had cheekily quipped to the boys that Fliss would kick their arses and one of them, a tall guy with floppy sandy hair had responded with an equally cheeky little smirk and invited the “Grandma” to join them.

 “Yeah, he so did…”

“Fucking Grandma…” Fliss glared at him, snatching up a pool cue.  “I’ll have you know, kid, I’m 34…not that old…” “You got 13 years on me.” he looked at her.

 “Experience…” Bonnie nodded sagely “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.” “You offering?” the lad looked at Bonnie who burst out laughing

“Sorry, we’re both taken…” “With each other…” Fliss said, causing Bonnie to snort again into her drink “We’re lesbians.” “Awesome!” the guy grinned, looking Fliss up and down before he arched an eyebrow at her. “I’m Joe by the way.” “Oh, I’m Felicia and this is Linda.” Fliss said, this time causing Bonnie to choke on her gin.

 “Nice to meet you…now…”  Joe clapped his hands and then everyone around the table looked at him as he began to write their names on the blackboard adding 3 lines after each. The game was simple, you took your shot, if you potted you kept a life, if you missed you lost one. The last person standing was the winner.

 “Money in and…”

 “Oh, hang on…” Fliss looked around “I didn’t know we were competing for money…”

“You chicken?” One of the lads looked at her.

“No, I just…you know what?” She shrugged, pulling a ten note out of her purse. “Fuck it.”

 “You can break.” One of the lads said and she shrugged. Taking up position she hit the ball, deliberately hitting the group of colours in the wrong place ensuring she didn’t pot one.  The lads all took a turn each and on her next turn she sank a ball into the pocket, then on her next go she missed again, deliberately.

 “Ok,ok…” she said, as the guys started to tease her. “You’re all so confident double up…double the money…” “Whatever…” Joe snorted, pulling another $10 note out of his pocket. Bonnie, grinned and started to play along.

 “Felicia,…is that…” “Shut up Linda I got this…” She lined up and took another shot, smashing a ball at the top straight into a pocket.  The lads all exchanged a look, shrugging and continued, the game. Fliss continued to nail shot after shot and eventually it came down to her and Joe on the last ball.

 “So if I manage this…I win?”

“Yeah…” “Ok, top right…” Joe let out a groan as the ball dropped into the pocket. Fliss straightened up, leaning on the cue smirk on her face as she turned to the boys who were all laughing and shaking their heads.

 “Here’s a tip…” she smirked, taking the money “Don’t call people grandma…pleasure doing business boys…”

 Bonnie laughed, sliding her phone back into her pocket, as Fliss looped an arm round her shoulders and steered her back to the bar.

 “Shots?”

 “Yes…” An hour later they were multiple shots down and half way through a crucial game of Fuck, Marry or Kill. 

“Ok…” Bonnie looked at Fliss “Fuck, Marry or Kill. All the Chrises…Evans, Hemsworth or Pratt…” “Oh man…” Fliss groaned “I mean…I’d probably kill Pratt. No offence but I couldn’t murder Thor or Cap…I just…no, not possible”

“So…which ones getting the one night treatment and which one is here to stay…”

“If I marry him does that mean I’m fucking him as well?” Bonnie paused “Yeah, I would assume so.”

“Ok, in that case I’d fuck Hemsworth, marry Evans.” Fliss said, shrugging. “Do you not think Frank as a bit of a look of him…in the face?”

 “I’ve not thought about it…” Bonnie shrugged, before she grinned “I think you just have a thing for guys from Boston…”

 Fliss frowned as Bonnie looked at her, her face dropping. “Shit, Fliss, sorry, I mean Frank…” Fliss couldn’t keep her face straight before she burst out laughing “I know…”

 “Bitch!” Bonnie nudged her on the arm and Fliss smirked, picking up another shot. 

********

Frank was sprawled on the sofa, channel surfing when he heard his phone go. It was a WhatsApp message from Fliss and he opened it, giving a loud laugh as he saw her holding a shot of tequila, her face screwed up in a huge fake crying gesture.

“Bonnie is making me do shots…”

“Course she is…” he replied “And did Bonnie make you hustle those boys at pool too?” “How do you know about that?” “It’s on Facebook sweetheart, Bonnie uploaded the photo of you winning. Those poor kids stood no chance” “In my defence they called me grandma…cheeky bastards.”

Frank laughed out loud as he could just see her indignant expression. “Well that’s just fucking rude. How much did you sting em for?” “Sixty…we’ve nearly spent it all

“Sixty bucks…” he mumbled to himself with a snort as he tapped his response “That’s my girl.” “Always…” she replied back, with a winking emoji and he smiled again before dropping the phone back on the coffee table as he stood up to go and grab himself another beer. Simon had already called him to say he would pick them up, which was a relief to Frank as he knew he couldn’t drag Mary out of bed at whatever time they were ready to come back, and he also wasn’t one hundred percent happy about her cabbing back alone. Stupid, he knew that, she was a grown ass woman but still. Thankfully, Simon had been on the same wavelength. With a fresh beer in his hand, he flopped back onto the sofa and resumed his channel hopping, grinning when he found that American Pie was just starting on one of the movie channels. Tossing the remote down he settled back against the cushions to watch the film, Thor jumping up besides him, his head resting against Frank’s thigh.

He had seen this film countless times, but it still reduced him to tears, and Fliss for that matter. He watched, laughing along and the end credits had just started to roll when his phone buzzed again.

“On my way to collect the girls and just a warning, Bonnie sounds smashed.” With a snort he replied “I didn’t expect anything else. Thanks Si.” He stood up and threw his empty beer bottle into the recycling, debating whether or not he wanted another. Deciding he would leave it he started to clear away the remnants of the nachos and popcorn he’d been munching on, gently re-arranged the damned scatter cushions that Fliss had made him buy, which he grudgingly had to admit were actually pretty comfy and then grabbed the recycling box and headed out to toss it into the containers, Thor hot on his heels. Just as he had finished he looked up to see Simon’s Audi pulling up at the road and he made his way over.

 “Hiiiii!” Fliss grinned at him as she got out, Thor stopping by her legs and she gave him a quick pet.

 “Hey…you have a good time?” Frank asked, as she gave a giggle and nodded.

 “Bonnie’s fallen asleep. She can’t handle her alcohol.” she snorted and Frank looked round her to see that Bonnie was, indeed, passed out in the passenger seat.

He shook his head and leaned down to speak to Simon “Thanks pal…”

“No problem.” Simon smiled, before he cast a look at Bonnie and then back to Frank “She said she was tired, not drunk…” “And I’m the Queen of England…” Frank snorted as Simon let out a huff of a laugh.

“Well hello your majesty…” Fliss hiccupped and Frank looked at her, grinning as she winked at him, her eyes glazed.

Simon shook his head and Frank rapped the top of his car twice as he pulled off and headed back up the road.

 “Frankie…” Fliss looked at him as he dropped his arm round her shoulder.

“Yes baby?” “I’m hungry.” “Are you gonna stay awake long enough if I throw a pizza in the oven?” “Hey, I’m not like Bonnie, I can handle my tequila…” “Yeah, you say that now.” he grinned “Bet you won’t be tomorrow.”

 “It’s Sunday…I can die on the sofa.” she shrugged, heading up the steps into the house. “But now I really need food.” Frank snorted, “Ok, I’ll throw one in. Go get changed.”

 “Can you undo the button at the back of my top?” Fliss asked, spinning around. Frank obliged, gently sliding the silver pin shaped tab through the hole at the back of the collar, his hands gently rubbing her bare shoulders as she dropped a kiss to her neck. “Hey, Bonnie made a good point before…” she spun back to face him, he hands smoothing over his chest.

 “And what was that?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Both of us, as in me and her, have seen you naked.” she grinned, arms connecting round the back of his neck.

“Jesus Christ.” he groaned, his hands falling to her hips.

 “And you’ve seen both of us naked…but we’ve never seen each other naked…” Frank looked at her for a moment, “What?” “Me and Bonnie I mean… don’t you think that’s unfair.”

 Frank looked at her for a moment, stumped for words before he gave a snort of laughter at her face. She was grinning wickedly at him, mischief shining out of her eyes. “Yeah.” he nodded, seriously, fighting to keep his face straight.  “Really unfair. In fact, I think it’s so unfair you should do something about it.” “You’re a pervert.” she narrowed her eyes at him as he laughed and shrugged.

 “You started it…” “Technically you did when you fucked her.”

“Ouch…” Frank raised an eyebrow at her as she smirked up at him “Low blow sweetheart”

 “I’ll give you a low blow later.”she winked and Frank’s eyebrow arched further up as she pulled his head down to kiss him softly “But first I need proper food…” “Well let go o’me and I’ll make you that pizza.” he reasoned.

With a final smile she kissed him again “Love you sailor.”

“Back at ya cowgirl.” he grinned, watching as she made her way to the bedroom, reasonably steadily as well all things considered, Thor padding along behind her. With a final snort and shake of his head, knowing full well she was going to be hungover to shit the next day, he turned and headed back towards the kitchen to make her something to eat.

**** Chapter 20

#riding high #frank adler #frank adler x original female character #frank adler x ofc #gifted #gifted fan fic

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom, season 3 episodes 3-6 thoughts!

see prev episode thoughts in this tag <3

-johnny was actually pretty civil with danny and left when he asked! thats nice. also, SKULKER?? HAD A FRAMED PICTURE OF EMBER?? oooo fuck wait had they established they were a Thing Before?? I dont think so. thats weird. its like that country boy/goth girl meme lmfao. I think i am going to choose to ignore this new info and pretend I didnt hear it. 100% unrelated to the jazz/ember fanart I already drew and posted....😳

-LADIES NIGHT EPISODE THIS IS WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT. wish it didnt really center around the guys or them being pissed at them, but. willing to bet this was written by men lol

-THEY ERASED ALL THE MEN??? meanwhile, jack and danny are fishing at. silent hill or something. im glad jack is trying to read a parenting book and making an Attempt. (theyre at lake erie, but, they made it actually eerie...thats fun)

-the girls alt outfits...cute. EMBER MADE A NEW SONG TOO!!! kinda. jazz being one of the backup singers and being AWFUL. NOOOO

-'how are we going to get kitty to blow a kiss?' 'she'll have to think there are still some males in town!' ...i dont know how to break it to you, but I dont know that a 100% het girl would wish for all men to Begone. I think. I mean im not a het or a girl so I dont really know for sure. she Is probably Bi tho. esp having the other ladies in town chanting NO MEN!!! excitedly............(then again, the kiss is to get Rid of men, so, she probably would have blown it at the ladies only if they were actively trying to attack/stop them, so...I MEAN. THE DRESSING LIKE DANNY BIT WAS SO EXTRA)

-I feel like an all female cast ep couldve been way way way way cooler than that was. like. why was it still somehow all about Men. ...anyway. (where was valerie...)

-next ep opens with the observants, and, way way more of them than I expected...existed? I mean I guess them being a council/jury of some kind is what I expected from their first appearance (bc at that time they were basically TELLING clockwork to kill danny, not asking,, so I figured they had SOME kind of authority) but. there were so many. anyway, here goes vlad! letting his own hubris go brrrr. releasing a weather ghost for political gain! #justvladthings

-okay say what you will about him (he IS an asshole) but having an umbrella with his own face on it and more prepared to share is SUPER FUNNY. and him being fanned by huge wads of money by his bodyguards. SO ineffective but so Dramatic. He UNDERSTANDS that if youre rich you need to be. you know. obnoxious and kinda eccentric about it! fuckign hate when rich people are boring about it. I would trust vlad with nothing except to not be a boring rich asshole who wears...fucking khaki or some shit. man knows his Presentation Skills. and that 'V' chair in his mayoral office. is that fucking embroidered?

-maddie get your MAN PLEEEEASSSE. IM SO EMBARRASSED FOR HER. the way jack stays simping for this man. in FRONT OF HIS WIFE!!!! ...my god its like a love triangle. jack clearly loves vlad, who loves maddie, who loves jack. jack fenton is at the very least bi, right................. this is an OBSESSION . 'THE V MAN COMETH'???? i...my god. (also, on a serious note, to have a friend THIS SUPPORTIVE...and still be SUCH A DICK TO HIM (TRYING TO KILL HIM AND STEAL HIS WIFE??) NOT COOL VLAD. JACK IS YOUR 1 AND /ONLY/ HYPE MAN. if someone loved and supported me THIS HARD...LIKE. CMON DUDE.

-STOMP the fucking GAS, JACK

-this would make a great shirt design, looks like a metal band design! we love The Maelstrom

-oh, so vlad did in fact get a mansion in amity park. and its purple! good color choice! not as flashy as a CASTLE or MURDER CABIN, but still pretty eccentric, which I appreciate.

-...vlad knows the difference between picasso and da vinci? in the ep last post where we were watching him fail at conquering every historical time ever he didnt seem to know history well enough to like. be effective...was vlad taking art history at college?? (was he an art MAJOR??? we never DID KNOW WHAT HE WENT TO SCHOOL FOR. I kinda assumed business because in the masters of time ep he was still rich without ghost powers so he had to have..known something about business or something, right...but also, art and or theater FITS HIS PERSONALITY. possibly also something science-y, I guess, but I always felt like he got roped into that, esp how pessimistic he was about the ghost portal in the flashbacks to college, like, i felt like he was just there for maddie and was uninterested/un-invested at the time...)

-THIS GHOST JUST ELECTROCUTED MADDIE (THE CAT) BITCH!! THATS MY FAVORITE MADDIE!!! vlad going after vortex and being ~shocked~ .....WHEN. WHEN WILL YOU LEARN. THAT YOUR ACTIONS. HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!!

-the way this random man with a camera sees the mayor laying in an alley covered in TRASH AND DECIDES TO TAKE A PICTURE HAHAH

*snap* this ones going in my cringe compilation!

-vlad 'if we're going to defeat vortex, we're going to have to do it together!' *immediately dips after dropping danny off in front of vortex* JKASDFHKJHJKN

-DANNY CAN DUPLICATE!!! ...he couldnt even attack with it, but he DID IT!!! INTO (4) OF HIMSELF!!! SO PROUD!!!!!!!!!!

-'THE ROLLER COASTER EMOTIONS OF A TEENAGER THREATEN MY PLANS!' ...0 self awareness of his own dramatic moodiness. incredible, how dumb this man is. its very close to circling around to endearing, if he was less of an asshole. at least its very very funny to see danny shooting him with tiny lightning bolts anytime he's even slightly irritated! vlad you should be nice to danny anyway. this is what you GET

-...making sandwiches and ice cream and playing video games with your nephew is a totally normal thing. WHY is vlad acting like this is the end of the world. if you were a GOOD UNCLE YOU WOULD ALREADY BE DOING THESE THINGS!!! bitch I make my nephew food all the time and dont forget what he does and doesnt like. if u didnt know danny didnt want tomatoes, thats on u. if u, a grown adult, are gonna piss of the 14 yr old by not letting him win, u deserve to have to pay for the arcade machines he ruins because he now has uncontrollable storm powers because YOU THREW HIM INTO A FIGHT WITH THE STORM GHOST. fuck u vlad. paypal me $400,000 while ur at it tho. (also, gamer vlad confirmed)

-VLAD CAN COOK THOUGH???! I assumed he had...people working for him that did that. I mean. billionaires usually dont do that. then again, we've only seen those vultures working for him (and I guess the dairy king was AT his old mansion, but it was never really clarified if he worked there...I think he probably just Hung Out and they Enjoyed Cheeses Together. thats what I think, I dont think a KING would be working for anyone and also the dairy king was nice <3) but then again he would be a private person and we cant have anyone accidentally finding Ghostly Things, so...still, that's hilarious. pour one out for that really cute banana split that got ruined 2 seconds later

-vlad just fucking picking danny up and THROWING HIM AT VORTEX TWICE WITHIN LIKE A MINUTE. JUST ABSOLUTELY LAUNCHING HIM. BITCH THATS MY SON BE CAREFUL!!! HES GOT ORGANS AND THINGS!!!!

-danny seeing those animal commercials and feeling sad is the biggest 2000s throwback so far. i legitimately had to change the channel or walk out of the room when those came on bc id CRY AND BE SAD ABOUT THEM FOR DAYS AFTER. fuck those commercials and fuck that IN THE ARMMMS OF AN ANGELLLL song 😭

-'vlads ego almost got the town destroyed!' yes danny thats the entire episode. the entire series anytime vlad shows up honestly. this episode was just him being really embarrassing the entire time, and, me laughing about it. 10/10 would laugh at him again

-NEXT EP WE HAVE A SHAPESHIFTING GHOST?? I've said it before but shapeshifting is the power I would want when asked those 'what superpower do you want' questions...its the Best power! this guy looks like a homestuck character. ive never read homestuck but thats the vibe

-I love every time we see tuckers family, they are by far the most functional family. and dash has a lil chihuahua!!! named pookie!!! i am crying (I've had 3 chihuahuas, so I am very biased, but...) AND HE WATCHES THE ROMANCE CHANNEL WITH POOKIE. POOKIE I WILL DIE FOR YOU YOU SWEET LITTLE BABY.

-danny can lift a bus! I shouldn't be surprised, but i am proud of my son. hes got lil kid fans. i am going to cry about this

-JAZZ KEEPS A SCRAPBOOK WITH DANNY'S LIL HEROICS AND NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS!!! we've actually seen it on her floor before, but I didnt realize it was a scrapbook!! thats sooo cute.

-...and danny has to stand there listening to his parents saying danny phantom sucks and is a 'filthy ghost' and calling him egotistical...i am once again stealing their kids!

-THIS GHOST RIPPING JAZZ'S SCRAPBOOK!!! ILL KILL YOU. SHE WORKED HARD ON THAT!!! BITCH

-yes, maddie, the one with red eyes is For Sure Actually Your Son. ignore the, red eyes... (CLEARLY she hasnt watched the other 2 eps where danny has been evil, she doesnt know red eyes= evil!!!)

-'billy fenton'.......................

-danny being stuck as phantom in his own house, no way out is a fucking NIGHTMARE. his parents pointing giant weapons against him and SHOOTING AT HIM. THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE.

-NINE INCH NAILS POSTER.

-this is the most screenshot of all time

-amorpho turning into mr. lancer because hes 'someone no one will want to be around' BUT HES WRONG, I WOULD BEFRIEND AND HANG OUT WITH MR LANCER SO FAST.

-tucker dressing as danny, now I have the full Tucker set of him being sam and also being danny. also saying 'the ghost...uh...RIPPED MY FACE OFF.' and then running. SMOOTH. NOT AT ALL CONCERNING TO ANY PARENTS.

-sam accepts the toast from jack. and then 2 seconds later is like 'why am i eating this.' THIS SHOWS HUMOR IS SO UNEXPECTED SOMETIMES ITS REALLY GOOD. and then the scene after, mr lancer running into his ghost doppelganger and being like 'YOURE GORGOUS' THEN FAINTING. I AM CRYING. AND DASH FAINTING TOO.

-sam disguising herself as danny again to help tucker run from the fentons. but leaving him shirtless in the streets. incredible. 'plEASE DOnt NOTice MY FACELessNESS I MUST LIVE IN EXILE' this episode is destroying me the humor in this show is exactly my brand of corny and cheesy

-the impromtu story made up by danny and amorpho to explain stuff to the fentons. my god they are both such bad liars. but amorpho is a good egg. wish danny wouldnt have said he didnt wanna see him in town again!! I want him to be reoccurring. not that thats gonna matter since I'm almost done with the series, but the idea of this being the Only Time We See him is :(

-NEXT EP SAYS STARRING MARK HAMILL??????!!! hello ! mr . joker....mr. star wars.... I feel like I should be. idk. taking off a hat im not wearing in respect. I shouldnt be surprised tho bc hes in a lot of cartoons as a very good voice actor, and dp has already had a lot of talented ones so I've been looking out for ones I might know, but....mr. hamill....

-sam has her own greenhouse, names all the plants, and says thank you to them (in the languages from where the plants are from) whenever she harvests from them. thats SO cute. and her lil gothy lunch box...

-and danny's lil red fuzzy lined jacket!!! ive said it before but every time the characters get alt outfits im like :D

-danny has ice powers now!!! THATS WHAT FROSTBITE MEANT. HE KNEW SOMEHOW WAY BACK THEN

-THIS SHOW NEVER LETS YOU FORGET VLAD IS A BILLIONAIRE, HUH.

-danny's lil 'holy hibiscus!' first off the 50s batman swearing is hilarious. 2nd. my username is from the flower sanchoyo hibiscus, so, shoutout to ME this ep. hi :)

-EURGH UNDERGROWTH MAKING EVERYONE PLANT ZOMBIES. HIVEMIND PLOTS SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF ME. and this dude made the city SO overtaken so quickly like how long was danny asleep?? oh god

-evil fucked up sam! now the whole trio has gone evil at some point! the voice actress did a really, really good job with making her sound like a zombie...

-frostbite's paws are so so so big compared to danny. oh my god. i want to hug the snow dog...

-the far frozen has an advanced medical stuff!!! very cool. very smart snow dogs

-im so glad danny has a friendly ghost snow dad to explain this new power and teach him!!! this is so sweet. DANNY'S GHOST SENSE WAS A PART OF HIS ICE POWER?? OOOH. COOL. we love a training montage!!!

-danny saying if he cant defeat overgrowth, that he'd want to stay with frostbite...oh my god...do you think this is the first real supportive adult figure in his life (I am NOT counting his parents because they threaten him on the daily even if they dont realize it.) I mean mr lancer is a Teacher, but he was also nice but this is different, but this is a GHOST WHO IS WILLING TO HELP HIM with his powers and also will help him when hes injured and is so so nice and comparatively so much more mature than 90% of the adults in this show!!!! god. dad frostbite is my everything.

-the framing and lighting this episode, and all the angles...they went all OUT and it looks really really good. this is my nightmare scenario, tho. like, FUCK zombies and dead city zones and hivemind shit. and using the humans as 'nutrients for the children' i am going to THROW UP.

-MALEFICENT VIBES WITH THE HORNS AND GREEN EYES! this costume kicks so much ass. sam is now mark hamills daughter, I guess.

-danny's ice powers making his eyes blue!!! thats neat. and him going for the roots underground was SO SMART. i will not stand for danny ever thinking hes stupid, hes SO smart.

almost done with the show... :"( thats a sad thought!!!

#sanchoyorambles #dp thoughts #danny phantom

[krastbannert]

Smellershot for the Ultimate Ship Meme?

MAH BABIES! Seriously, I love these two. I will forever be upset that we haven’t gotten a Freedom Fighters centric story that gave us more content for the group, especially Longshot, Smellerbee, and Jet.

For reference, all of these will be completed using the following headcanons:

1. Longshot is a firebender from the FN Colonies (this has absolutely no basis in canon, I just literally can’t unthink it).

2. Jet lives. Because he should have.

(and I’m still sleep deprived so these might be a little insane/weird)

General:

Rate the Ship -  

Awful | Ew | No pics pls | I’m not comfortable | Alright | I like it! | Got Pics? | Let’s do it! | Why is this not getting more attention?! | The OTP to rule all other OTPs 

How long will they last? - Till death do they part, and then a tad bit longer.

How quickly did/will they fall in love? - It took them a couple years. They’re children in the middle of a brutal war with an even jankier support system than the Gaang had. They’ve got a lot to deal with already. Plus, Bee has to process the fact that sweet fucking spirits he’s a flaming ashmaker what the hell when did that happen?!?

How was their first kiss? - When I wrote that scene in Ashmaker, it was very sudden and rather frustrated, and right after Bee literally slapped some sense into him (or tried to, anyways). It would definitely be either that, or it just...happens. Just a lazy thing, something that happens as they’re waking up, and neither of them realize it for a few moments. But in both cases, Bee is the one to initiate it.

Wedding:

Who proposed? - Longshot. It was a simple proposal - it just slipped out one day as they were walking together in the same woods they met in, just outside Gaipan. Marry me, he says, quietly at first, then louder when she asks what he said. Bee, of course, says yes.

Who is the best man/men? - Jet. Absolutely, 100% Jet. (Bonus: if he dies like in canon, Jet is still the best man - The Duke stands in his place, carrying a picture of Jet, forever sixteen. Instead of a Best Man’s speech, they have two minutes of silence. Longshot has to leave his own reception because the loss of his best friend is still that painful.)

Who is the braid’s maid(s)? - We don’t see Bee get many, if any female friends in the show. If they become friends at some point, though, it would absolutely be Toph. I have a feeling the earthbender-gremlin and the knife-gremlin would get along very well. Otherwise, it’s probably someone Bee meets in Ba Sing Se, or in Republic City post-war. 

Who did the most planning? - Their wedding really didn’t have any planning. They just sorta threw it together one afternoon. Longshot let Bee make most of the decisions because it’s her day, and he just wants her to be happy.

Who stressed the most? - Honestly, neither. They just...knew they were meant for each other. In the moment they were each a little nervous, but they’ve been together so long at this point, that they know: they have nothing to worry about.

How fancy was the ceremony? - 

Back of a pickup truck | 2 | 3 | 4 | Normal Church Wedding | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Kate and William wish they were this big.

Who was specifically not invited to the wedding? - There...really wasn’t anyone they specifically didn’t invite, to be honest. After the war, after the dust has settled, after they’ve traveled and grown and matured, they’re more than ready to leave past hurts behind and start a new future.

Sex: Opting out of doing this section

Who is on top? -

Who is the one to instigate things? -

How healthy is their sex life? -

Barely touch themselves let alone each other | 2 | 3 | 4 | Once a couple weeks, nothing overboard | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They are humping each other on the couch right now

How kinky are they? -

Straight missionary with the lights off | 2 | 3 | 4 | Might try some butt stuff and toys | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Don’t go into the sex dungeon without a horse’s head

How long do they normally last? -

Do they make sure each person gets an equal amount of orgasms? -

How rough are they in bed? -

Softer than a butterfly on the back of a bunny | 2 | 3 | 4 | The bed’s shaking and squeaking every time | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Their dirty talk is so vulgar it’d make Dwayne Johnson blush. Also, the wall’s so weak it could collapse the next time they do it.

How much cuddling/snuggling do they do? -

No touching after sex | 2 | 3 | 4 | A little spooning at night, or on the couch, but not in public | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They snuggle and kiss more often than a teen couple on their fifth date to a pillow factory.

Children:

How many children will they have naturally? - If they had any at all, probably just 1.

How many children will they adopt? - They’d be the ones to start an impromptu orphanage and take in every kid they can support because no one is going to go through the hardships they did if they can help it.

Who gets stuck with the most diapers? - Bee, because Longshot is dead asleep by 8:00 PM and he sleeps like the dead until he wakes up with the sun.

Who is the stricter parent? - Probably Longshot. He’s pretty chill with most things - he is married to a knife-gremlin, after all - but he’s still stricter than Bee, who doesn’t particularly care if the kid(s) aren’t dead, dying, or out committing felonies.

Who stops the kid(s) from doing dangerous stunts after school? - Both, but only if it’s too dangerous. It’s not like they have any room to talk, considering they literally lived in trees and swung around branches and used jury-rigged ziplines (made by kids) for several years.

Who remembers to pack the lunch(es)? - Longshot is already up, so he does it. Bee, however, is the one to make the food (more below).

Who is the more loved parent? - Smellerbee. She gets in as much trouble as the kids do; hell, she’s the one who gives the kids half their ideas in the first place.

Who is more likely to attend the PTA meetings? - Longshot.

Who cried the most at graduation? - Longshot.

Who is more likely to bail the child(ren) out of trouble with the law? - Longshot, because Smellerbee is probably in jail with the kids (she got in another fight with someone who mistook her for a boy).

Cooking:

Who does the most cooking? - After one too many incidents involving burned soup, near forest-fires, and Jet lacking eyebrows for a month, Longshot was banned from cooking, and the ban is maintained by Bee and the other Freedom Fighters throughout their lives.

Who is the most picky in their food choice? - Longshot grew up in the FN colonies. The boy needs spicy food. Craves it, actually.

Who does the grocery shopping? - They do it together.

How often do they bake desserts? - All the time. After so long living on hunted, stolen, and scavenged food, they both have a sweet tooth that will not be denied.

Are they more of a meat lover or a salad eater? - Meat, mainly because that’s what they’re used to. Salad is just weird.

Who is more likely to surprise the other(s) with an anniversary dinner? - Longshot always remembers things like that, but he doesn’t cook, so when he does get together a full dinner spread, it’s a big day.

Who is more likely to suggest going out? - They only go out when they don’t have a lot of food in the house, or when a friend wants to meet them someplace.

Who is more likely to burn the house down accidently while cooking? - Longshot. Absolutely Longshot (see above). Smellerbee might not be the best cook but she can manage to make food without getting rid of eyebrows or forests.

Chores:

Who cleans the room? - Both.

Who is really against chores? - Neither, really. They’re just so used to doing them that it’s automatic.

Who cleans up after the pets? - Whoever is their at the time.

Who is more likely to sweep everything under the rug? - Considering how long it took him to admit to being a firebender and that he had a crush, it would probably be Longshot.

Who stresses the most when guests are coming over? - They really don’t have guests. Just their really close friends, and they’re pretty much the Freedom Fighters and sometimes the Gaang, who went through the same shit they did. 

Who found a dollar between the couch cushions while cleaning? - Longshot did, but he gave it to Bee.

Misc:

Who takes the longer showers/baths? - Bee. She hates being cold, so she stays in the warmth as long as she possibly can.

Who takes the dog out for a walk? - They let the dog roam free most of the time. He walks himself.

How often do they decorate the room/house for the holidays? - They’re not big on decorating. They only do the big ones - Lunar New Year and Winter Solstice.

What are their goals for the relationship? - Honestly? They don’t really have any. They spent so much of their lives just trying to survive, one day to the next, and all they really want is time to relax.

Who is most likely to sleep till noon? - Smellerbee. 

Who plays the most pranks? - Smellerbee.

#krast answers asks #@ljf613 #i'll be honest i don't think i've thought this hard about a ship in a long time #but it was a lot fun so thank you #smellerbee #longshot #smellershot

[politicaltheatre]

Depraved Indifference

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's, like, incredible."

- Donald Trump, at a campaign stop at Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa, January 23, 2016

This quote didn’t find its way into the second impeachment trial of the now-former President, but it should have. In a better world it would have, but in that better world a man such Donald Trump would not ever have been elected to any office, let alone one as powerful as president. And yet, somehow he was.

Donald Trump is no longer president, something his defenders, standing before the Senate and sitting among the trial’s jury, have taken great pains to try to focus our attention on.

Note how they talk about the importance of “moving on” and getting over it, thereby distancing us and, far more importantly, themselves from what was done.

Note how they try to frame the charge against Trump - “inciting violence against the government of the United States” - as merely “partisan” and “political”, something devoid of any legal justification or standing, as if the crimes were not witnessed by billions around the world in real time.

Note how, when faced with having to face the morally depraved actions they either encouraged or enabled in Trump and those who followed him, and having to defend their own complicity in the indefensible result, they turn to not even a little bit thinly veiled threats against those daring to accuse. Any retribution, they do declare, any continuation of violence against Trump’s declared enemies, that will be on you.

This has all the subtlety and predictability of a trial in the Jim Crow South, and, given the number of Confederate flags waving inside the Capitol on January 6th, that really isn’t too strong a comparison.

Trump, as anyone anywhere in the world even casually paying attention should know, is entirely guilty of inciting that riot. He spent years cultivating doubt in the electoral system, months casting doubt on the 2020 mail-in voting results, and, finally, weeks spreading blatant lies about voting fraud, ones that he continues to tell to this day.

He did all of this while encouraging and enabling exactly the kind of violence done on his behalf that we all saw on the 6th and, as the House impeachment managers have helpfully shown at length, in the days, weeks, months, and years leading up to it.

“Stand back and stand by”, right? The Proud Boys stuck that on t-shirts.

If the videos the House managers have played have failed to persuade, we tell ourselves, perhaps the evidence of Trump’s Defense and Justice departments undermining the Capitol police and National Guard’s response will. How about a timeline of Trump’s fiddling while the Capitol burned and his own Vice President quite literally ran for his life? No? Really?

You don’t need a lot of time to prepare a case when the defendant has been caught, figuratively, thousands of times in the middle of Fifth Avenue with a smoking gun. Trump’s thumbs offered up hundreds of smoking guns to choose from. Videos of his post-election rallies do, too. The ones he posted that day, hours after the breach, calling the men and women hunting “traitors” of both parties and battering Capitol police with American flags “patriots”, well, that’s a prosecutor’s dream. Or should be.

So, yes, he is guilty. Very, very, very guilty.

Ah, but so are at least three of his jury members: Josh Hawley, James Lankford, and Ted Cruz. They all gave credence to Trump’s lies, they all gave weight to those lies by demanding that the Senate investigate them once more and yet again before confirming the election, and that day they all cynically and repeatedly called for the rejection of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.  Well, Hawley and Cruz did; Lankford was trying to when he was evacuated.

They were no less guilty of trying to profit from the misplaced and misguided rage of those storming the Senate chamber than Trump, and, if the rioters’ own social media accounts are to be believed, Hawley and Cruz at the very least were no less accountable for them being there. Lankford, it seems, needs to up his social media game.

Those three senators, of course, are not on trial. They are merely jurors charged with deciding the guilt or innocence of Donald Trump for doing what they did themselves. They will be joined in their guaranteed “No” votes by at least 41 other Republican senators who, like them, once again voted to claim that, despite over 200 years of clear legal precedent, this impeachment trial is “unconstitutional”.

It’s no shock that the House managers’ detailed legal history lesson fell on deaf ears, nor is it that those three and other Trump Republicans were caught “reading” during the presentation of evidence. Rand Paul, whose own ridiculous claims about the election and trial have been followed by threats of retaliation, was caught doodling like teen stuck in detention.

This, not anything said by Trump’s crack legal team, is the argument for the defense: they know what Trump did, they know it was wrong, they know what they’re doing, and they know that’s wrong, too. And they do not care. They do not care.

These aren’t stupid people, they’re just dishonest. More specifically, they’re corrupt. What they believe, what they take as a matter of faith, is that they’ll face no real consequences for anything they’re doing or anything they’ve done.

And who’s to tell them they’re wrong? What’s the worse Hawley or Cruz will face? Censure? You can’t shame the shameless. They’ll wear their censures the same way Trump would, as a badge of courage on which they can raise campaign money and, they hope, draw out votes from Trump’s millions of rabidly loyal supporters.

For Hawley, Cruz, and others already campaigning for 2024, that’s all that matters. For them, this is just an opportunity, a means to an end, as they pursue their highly profitable careers in politics. It’s just business. For them, Trump, and every other one in Congress, on TV, and on social media who chose to ignore what people might do if they lied to them and wound them up, and for all of those choosing to ignore the consequences of it now, that’s all this is: just business.

And that’s the problem.

Politics shouldn’t be a business. We know that without even having to be told. When we talk about it, we do so in terms of “service” and “doing one’s duty”, words and phrases that romanticize the selfless nature we want to see in our politics and our politicians. We don’t just do that because that’s how we’ve always heard it spoken of, we do that because we know that the ones who embody that ideal are rare. There’s just too much evidence to deny it.

Go back far as you want, there have been men and women seeking power for the purpose of defending themselves and their friends from accountability. Back in the day, they sought appointments through connections or simply joined the clergy. These days, they run for office.

The political party in this country that currently stands against accountability is the Republican Party. Sure, the Democratic Party has its own sizable share of complicity for allowing the country’s drift into right-wing aggressive selfishness, but, lucky for us, it hasn’t been able to rid itself of its accountable members the way the Republican Party has. Of course, that’s only natural, given the importance of accountability to the political Left.

The last two Republican presidents were elected in no small part because they had a background in business. Yes, they each ran their businesses into the ground, but they ran them.

George W. Bush came into office as a “corporate” president, one who would, we were assured, delegate to those more experienced and skilled in areas where he was…lacking. We waved away his inadequacies and were somehow shocked when he failed in exactly every one of those areas. Still, he and his friends made money hand over fist, so the corporate presidency was good for business, big business, in particular, which got a big bailout.

Donald Trump should have inspired even less confidence, but confidence man that he is, he played enough suckers to get him in the White House. As much pain, suffering, and death as he has caused in four excruciatingly long years, he and his cronies have made out like gangbusters, too. The government they were hired to manage, not so much.

From the start, he and his cabinet secretaries lived by the old rule, “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission”. Not that they asked for forgiveness. That’s for losers. They broke laws, fleeced taxpayers, and resigned knowing that whatever penalty they might face would pale compared to the profits they took with them.

This is the mentality that drives corporate decision making around the world. For them, the adage is a bit more like, “better to settle a lawsuit than risk profits”. They, too, avoid apologies whenever possible. That keeps the damages paid to to victims and their families lower.

Currently, there are companies selling cars, drugs, baby food, and other products that they know are defective and a threat to the people using them. They know this. They know there’s a high risk that people will die, and they do it anyway. Instead of recognizing the threat and stopping, they do cost-benefit analyses to determine the number of deaths from their products they can afford.

This, it’s worth stating, is not capitalism. We may tell ourselves that it is, but that’s just us looking for an easy answer, a scapegoat for our own failures. In fact, this pattern was just as common under communism, too; just ask anybody who used to live near Chernobyl. Mistakes are hidden, a given number of deaths are accepted, and the perception of success and prestige is maintained.

This is corruption, and deaths and suffering caused by a lack of accountability are what corruption does. A death is a symptom, a great, big red flag, something to tell you that something is very, very, very wrong, but how many of those red flags do we see and ignore before we finally stop to ask what it is we’ve been seeing?

How many smaller red flags, such as poverty, racism, anti-semitism, police brutality, injustice, and sexual abuse, do we pass because we’ve just become so used to seeing them? Do we tell ourselves that there is nothing we can do? Do we even ask if there is anything we can do? Or do we, as so many senators are now preparing to do, instead embrace corruption as a virtue.

This is the real threat, a system that accepts this and holds no one accountable, and a culture that pushes back against demands for accountability, embracing the very worst of who we are and what we can do to others just to prove that we can. The result is a flood of childish acting out and a loss of trust in products and services that we must be able to trust because they are supposed to keep us safe.

Is this as great a threat to our society as the January 6th attack on the Capitol? This is that attack. The product failures that led to the attack were political. We have watched as our political and government institutions have failed. We have watched as those entrusted to deliver a product that works and keeps us safe have, again and again, deliberately or not, betrayed that trust. As with any other product sold, each breach of trust carries over into the next, accumulating and compounding, eroding not just our ability to trust those products but all products like them.

Think of the doubts Americans have about the safety of vaccines? Sure, we can chalk that down to internet conspiracy theories and echo chambers if we like, but would they have gained the traction they have in a world in which we weren’t inundated with ads featuring paid-non-attorney-spokespersons asking us if we or a loved one took this drug or that and had experienced one or more life threatening side effects? How many of us heard about the Covid-19 vaccines and asked, How long before we see the ads for that?

For decades, we have allowed ourselves to become a nation of beta-testers, taking on the cost and burden of quality control that the companies releasing and profiting from these products, and these class action lawsuits have become big business as a result. Every new pharmaceutical product that hits the shelves, part of us is just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Time and the success of these vaccines should put an end to that, at least for this pandemic, but that we have to do so should tell us about the work we have to do to repair our society, or to build one that can exist without absolving us from being accountable to each other.

Until then, we have other kinds of corruption to face, including one that may be more destructive than anything we’re seeing in the Senate this week.

The Reddit-GameStop insurrection might have been fun to watch from the sidelines, a bit of schadenfreude for those of us on the outside of Wall Street, looking in, but the truth is the hedge fund villains still made their money, and the systemic fault lines this episode exposed should have us all scared and paying attention.

Our economy is overly concentrated in Wall Street’s product and therefore overly dependent on its success and stability. A loss of faith in its product has been underway for years. That’s how you get to day traders trying to take on hedge funds the way they did. This wasn’t David vs Goliath, this was guerrilla warfare over who gets to make the quick and easy profits.

The upside of that is that some of the “little guys” seem to win something; the downside of that is that it does nothing to fix the problems we have with Wall Street. Rather, it only makes them worse, by highlighting how easy it is to manipulate stocks and commodities and how few get to do it and get away with it.

What happens, then, when no one has any faith left in Wall Street? What happens when everyone believes it is nothing more than a casino designed to take money rather than make it?

Well, we’re almost there. We have a massive, growing online gambling industry, and with it an online gambling problem. Sports leagues, some with their own recent histories of cheaters (and worse) getting away with it, have turned their own fans onto gambling as part of the sport. How many of these people, blowing their money on bad beats, think of it as no different than investing on Wall Street stocks?

A better question: What happens to all of those stock prices when everyone, including the crooks on Wall Street, lose faith in that system, take their profits, and leave? An even better question: What happens if they do that all at once?

The answer is: Lost jobs, pensions, food and housing security, and hope.

In other words, 2020 on steroids. That’s what you get with corruption, an environment in which politicians like Donald Trump, companies willing to harm consumers, and right wing domestic terrorists thrive. As long as they aren’t held accountable, they will.

“Bad for the country”, indeed.

- Daniel Ward

#impeachment #corruption #politics #depraved indifference #aggressive selfishness #Donald Trump #josh hawley #ted cruz #james lankford #mitch mcconnell #lindsey graham #republicans #democrats #january 6th #insurrection #long reads #long read

[prurientpuddlejumper]

A Lipless Face That I Want to Marry, Ch. 8

<- Chapter 7 | Chapter 9 ->

Summary: Frederick alone. 

2,163 words

How many days had he been in the hospital? There had been at least one more surgery since you left. More blood transfusions.

It all bled together without you there. There was nothing to distinguish one day from the next except the tedious procedures—a blood test to see how his kidney was holding up, some new skin here, a z-plasty there. He was a little bit glad you were not there when they grafted his penis with a stretchable mesh of skin. God forbid he got aroused while that was healing. He laughed at the thought, as if your absence was just temporary.

The sun outside his window told him whether it was day or night, but the stretches of hours he was knocked out under anesthetic and pain meds made it impossible to know whether it was was from the same day, or if he had slept until the next one. Without your schedule to ground him, it was pointless bothering to find out.

At least you were not always touching him, asking him about his feelings. Staring. He could feel the pressure of your gaze on his face, dancing like jabbing needles across his barely-healed skin. He hated it. He had some peace and quiet now.

It did not feel real yet. It seemed so certain you would be back—you had become such a steadfast presence in his life for the past three years, he never imagined you could leave it. Not forever. It did not seem beyond taking back.

But as much as he was in denial, he knew what he said could not be taken back. One cannot break off an engagement, tell their fiancé to move out, and expect things to ever go back to normal.

He didn’t need you. You always hated his preening, the sophisticated circles he traveled in. You wanted him this way—destroyed and disgusting, unable to pass in decent society. He was not sure if he really believed that, or if he just needed a reason to hate you.

A nurse could bring him the phone. All he had to do was press the nurse call button and Pamela would come running, and he could call you. He could apologize. If he reached you before you got rid of the ring, before you packed your bags, he might be able to convince you to stay.

He did not call.

***

The sun was down, whatever day it was. There was still fluorescent light shining in from the hallway, enough to dimly light the room. Frederick lay awake. Parts of his back ached from lying in the same position too long, and it had been too long since a nurse came and shifted him. He shifted himself, what little he could, and the heart monitor climbed frantically with the feeble effort of a few inches. His tight scar tissue pulled like he was wearing too-tight denim over his whole body, and his more recent stitches stung. He was so weak. So pathetically weak.

The sun was up again, some time later. Frederick eyed the small stack of mail for him at his bedside table. You were always the one who read to him. But he did not need you.

He pressed the nurse call button, which had been rigged with tape and a wooden tongue depressor into a large switch he could push more easily with his limited dexterity. He pushed down on it and it buzzed so loudly he swore, a throb of pain shooting through the back of his skull. Part of the jury-rigged switch caught on the gauze mitten wrapped around his hand and left the switch stuck on in a continual buzz. He swore again, more fiercely, and jerked his hand until the makeshift switch snapped, and the call button fell off the edge of the bed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!”

Where the hell was the nurse? If this had been an emergency he could be dead by now.

In his last physical therapy session, he had been able to reach nearly as far as the bedside table, with assistance. He reached for an envelope, and his mittened hand made it all the way to the edge of the bed before bumping against the metal railing that prevented him from rolling out. That was it. All at once, every latent frustration came out at that goddamned railing in a primal scream. He punched the metal—barely a twitch with his atrophied muscles, but enough to sting his tender fingers and draw another enraged shout. His breathing came in heavy, choked bursts, and he began to sob.

When finally a nurse showed up—his favorite, Pamela—she didn’t make any humiliating sympathetic comments about the tears wetting his face. He asked if you had called or tried to visit.

You had not.

***

The dead at least have the luxury of being done with what they lost.

The sky was dark, nearly black with clouds, though Frederick suspected it was day. Heavy rain pummeled against the window, and it gave the room a cold, dreary cast. He wondered if there was a way he could kill himself. To be done. It would have been easy in a hospital, if he had use of his legs and hands—he could tamper with his morphine drip, or find some anesthetic… the options were limitless to one who knew what he was doing with medical equipment.

The one person who never manipulated him into danger, the one person who stood beside him, the one person who loved him completely for everything he was, he had thrown away. Was it worth it staying alive for revenge alone? He was never going to get better. Not completely. He would be trapped in this scarred, aching body for the rest of his life. If he died, his will left all of his money to you. Then you would be free.

But he was Doctor Frederick Chilton, damn it! He did not give up. He did not give up after Abel Gideon tortured him, or after being framed for murder and shot. Every time he fell, he held his chin up, and rose higher. This whole incident brought him notoriety, a spotlight he would take advantage of to bring him greater fame than even Hannibal Lecter himself. Forget national bestsellers, this time he was thinking movie deal. In a few years, he would be walking again, he would have a new face, lips. He would have everything back.

Except you.

He could never get back the one thing that already felt like a hole in his life, and would feel like a gaping sinkhole when he finally returned home and you were not there. His comfort. If you were coming back, you would have done it by now.

Every time he angrily demanded you leave, you would always slink off with your tail tucked, but crawl back all sweetness and forgiveness the next day. This time was different. He said so many unforgivable things. But he had to go that far, he told himself—he had to break things off.

He was so bitter, and angry. He was never the easiest man to live with, and now all of his compassion had been burned out of him. You didn’t deserve to keep running back to a cruel, bitter man out of loyalty, to be smothered inside a dark hospital when you were meant to be in the sun. He knew exactly what Chiltons could be like, and he never wanted to put you through that. If that was the nightmare he was turning into, then it was better for you to be far away, not married to it.

But, oh, to touch you one last time…

***

Another day. He thought about calling you again, if just to hear the sound of your voice. But what would be the point? You could have called him. Clearly you wanted him out of your life.

A nurse knocked tentatively on the door. Not one of his usual nurses.

“You have a visitor, Mr. Chilton. They said… they’re not sure if you want to see them?”

He perked up immediately, so eager to respond, “Of course I do!” that he didn’t bother to correct the nurse about his title. His face fell when a young black woman walked in, carefully tapping a long white stick across the ground. “Oh. You.”

She stopped in her tracks, a timid expression of guilt written on her face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here...” she stammered, turning around.

“No, no, no. Come in, come in, Reba McClane,” he pronounced her name pointedly. “I wanted to speak to you anyway.”

“You did?” She began searching her way closer to his bed.

“Naturally. For my book. An interview with the Tooth Fairy’s lover.”

Her tentative smile quickly turned into a scowl. “Freddie Lounds already offered to tell my story.”

Frederick scoffed. “Tell me you are not considering that libelous TattleCrime gossip rag. I am a distinguished, respected author—what I could do with your story is far—”

“I told her the same thing I’m telling you: I do not want my name associated with that man. My entire life is already tainted. I won’t talk about him anymore. I only came to apologize… it seemed the least I could do. You’re the only one of victims left alive to apologize to.”

“You forget to count yourself,” Frederick corrected with uncharacteristic empathy. “We are both his survivors.”

Reba’s shoulders relaxed a little at that. “I wasn’t sure you’d see it that way. A lot of people, they think I knew. Or that I must be a monster to have loved a monster like that. I can’t blame them… I don’t know what to think of myself anymore.”

“There is no accounting for taste.”

Reba and Frederick settled into a surprisingly comfortable chat. She unburdened her guilt—she thought she had sensed someone else in the room that night, and knew something was off, but didn’t call the police—and Frederick magnanimously forgave her. Dolarhyde would have killed her and slit Frederick’s throat on the spot if she tried to be a hero. He chose not to call out for help, knowing that. They talked about love, and the deep vein of anger they both shared. Perhaps it set Frederick at ease that she was blind. If she stared, it was not with any regard to his face. 

Then she went to the window, to stand in the warm light streaming through the glass, and knocked over a vase of plastic flowers. He snapped at her, his voice raising with violence so out of proportion to the offense, she wasn’t sure whether to apologize or yell back. After scrambling to find to the vase on the floor, she settled on dryly calling him an asshole.

Nobody had called him out so bluntly since before he was hospitalized, and it made him smile, as best as his cheeks could manage. “You remind me of someone,” he said.

Reba pondered why his voice was so fond at the memory of someone who called him an asshole. She wondered what the flowers meant. “Was this the somebody you were hoping it was when I walked in? Who—”

“Nobody important.”

“Really? That’s not what I’m hearing.”

He sighed grumpily. Then just sighed. “You told Dolarhyde you were not so damaged that you were incapable of love. Do you still feel that way?”

“If you’re looking for relationship advice, I do not believe myself qualified to give any,” she said, reading him like braille. “But I’m not going to give up on the goodness in people. Everybody has a darkness deep down, but not everyone’s darkness is murdering families. I survived Dee, and if I can do that… I can find someone whose darkness is a little softer. Soft enough to live with. I have to believe I can still love—that he didn’t break me. I hope he didn’t break you, either.”

***

Another day. He ruined everything with you.

The first question Frederick asked when EMTs found his still-smoldering body—rasping it over and over until someone understood—was if you were safe. Had Dolarhyde gone after his family? But of all the things that the Red Dragon had taken from him, you were the one he had destroyed all on his own.

Finally, after two weeks of resisting, he could not bear it anymore. When his physical therapy session ended, he quietly, firmly, with fragile pride, asked the nurse to help him with the phone. He dialed your number, and she held the receiver to his ear as it rang.

It rang.

It rang.

It went to voicemail.

Frederick leaned into the receiver as your friendly, guileless voice instructed him to leave a message. It must have been recorded before everything, back when you were so happy all the time. It had been ages since he heard you sound like that. He wondered if you would be happy and carefree again soon, without him.

• ● • ━━━━━─ ••●•• ─━━━━━ • ● •

Tags: @beccabarba  @caked-crusader @itsjustmyfantasyroom @thatesqcrush @dianilaws @permanentlydizzy @eclecticreader2020  @mrsrafaelbarba 

#did someone ask for angst?? Who do I have down for angst? Come get your order! #frederick chilton #Frederick Chilton x reader #Hannibal #Raúl Esparza #dr. frederick chilton #My writing

[jemej3m]

trial (objection p.2)

i love htgawm connor is such a problem child

*

“So your father was already incapacitated when you murdered him,” Andrew deduced, leaning back in his chair. He spun the land-line’s coiled cord around his finger, looking over the ceiling sconces of his office. The place was definitely built at least half a century ago, and the remnants of its previous occupations were everywhere, from the covered-up fireman pole holes to the sound-proofed insulation.

“When I killed him out of self-defence, yes,” Neil returned. His portion of the conversation would always be under surveillance. 

“Way to make my job harder, Wesninski.” 

“What good would I be, otherwise?” he retorted. “Also, please don’t call me that. I’m figuring out a new last name. How does Neil Smith sound?” 

“Dreadfully boring,” Andrew said. “Don’t say that word. I don’t like it.” 

“Which one, exactly?” 

Andrew grit his teeth. “Please.” It still sent shudders down his spine. “There’s no time for pleasantries.” 

“Fine,” the man said. “Is that all you wanted to waste my time on? The position my father was found in, when I - when he died?” 

“Considering that there are extremely graphic photos of his predicament for the jury to gawk at, yes. How is it self-defence if there’s no threat?” 

“He wasn’t cuffed there: I was. The DNA evidence was tampered with to remove traces of the skin tissue that the cuffs had scraped away. Have you even looked at those photos? His wrists are clearly free. I thought you were talking about the eyes.” 

“What about them?” Andrew hedged. 

“They’re gouged out,” Neil muttered. “I hate that our eyes are - were - the same.” 

“You did that whilst the two of you were fighting,” Andrew suggested. “Unless its clear you did it with a knife?” 

“All I had was his cleaver,” Neil said. “I used the handle. That’d look like fingers, right?”

“Right,” Andrew agreed, just as Wymack appeared at his doorway. 

“Could you keep the gruesome mutilation discussions off the worklines?” the old man demanded. “Matt just threw up into Dan’s paper-shredder.” 

“I’ll have to call you back,” Andrew said, vastly unimpressed. 

“I was going to say,” Neil said, sounding vaguely amused. “You have quite a stomach. Till next time, Andrew.”

“Bye, Neil.” 

Wymack had his arms crossed when Andrew threw the phone back onto the receiver, his glower shrouded and unknowable. 

Andrew gave it right back to him, refusing to stand as he mirrored Wymack’s stance. “What?” 

“First you viciously reject the case,” he said. “Then you drive to see him. Now you’re calling him every day?” 

“He’s in prison,” Andrew said. “I can’t just invite him over to interview him and gather evidence.”

“There is no valid reason for you to buddy up to Wesninski like this,” Wymack objected. “You barely speak to your clients unless they’re escapin’ juvie.” 

“You’re asking no questions, so I’ll give no answers,” Andrew responded cheerfully. “Have a nice day, boss.”

Wymack pointed at him. “No murder talk on the worklines. Three strikes and you’re out, Andrew.”

Andrew swivelled back around in his chair, knowing true and well Wymack had warned him about upwards of 72 different infringements of people’s delicate psyche. He had a job to do: if someone got in his way, he wasn’t going to be nice about it. 

Not for the first time, he wondered if Neil had a contraband mobile phone. It’d make his life a hell of a lot easier. For about twenty minutes he scrolled aimlessly through emails from desperate idiots convicted of white-collar crime, simultaneously considering how he might get a mobile phone to Neil next time he visited. He could go on the weekend, after Nicky’s godforsaken family night. 

Oh, shit, Andrew thought, when he noticed he’d lost an hour of his day making plans to see Neil again. 

Maybe Wymack was on to something. 

*

“You do seem awfully invested,” Betsy suggested, leaning on the porch railing as Andrew smoked through a second cigarette. She’d come along to Nicky’s Friday night fiasco at his request, seeing as Aaron had Katelyn and Nicky had Erik. It seemed a little ridiculous to being his old therapist, who was much more of a mother than a therapist, but Andrew’d wanted to talk to her anyway and their schedules clashed too much to meet up for lunch. 

“His case is simple,” Andrew objected, glaring at an owl that’d settled on the gangly tree in Nicky’s front yard. “He’s got physical evidence of his father’s cruelty, even though it’s been a decade. I’ve uncovered the DNA evidence tampering. Neil clearly acted out of self-defence. It’s open and shut, but no one’s going to want Wesninski’s child out on the streets.” 

“Jury?” Betsy inquired. 

“Jury,” Andrew confirmed sullenly. He fucking hated jury catering. When a case was on thin ice, it was up to selecting the perfectly biased (or prejudiced) people that’d think with their heart, not their head. Andrew was an excellent judge of character, but emotional evaluations were taxing and laborious. 

“You’ll do great,” Betsy promised, smiling her all-knowing smile. “You always do.” 

Andrew hummed gently, taking one final drag of his cigarette. Before he could chuck the butt into Nicky’s shrubbery, Betsy pinched it between her fingers and dropped it onto an ashtray atop a rickety windowsill. 

“It’s an interesting story,” Betsy continued. “There’s every reason to be intrigued by it.” 

Andrew just grunted. 

“Though,” she remarked. “I figured that case between the young girls was even more perplexing and intricate, but you seem rather enamoured.” 

“Shut up,” he mumbled. 

“I’m sure I don’t have to remind you about professionalism,” she said airily. 

“No,” he agreed. “You don’t.”

But - damn it all to hell - Neil was interesting. He was only a year younger than Andrew was, intelligent without seeming overbearing or arrogant, confident but reserved, a man of constraint taught by hardship but also a man of growth and reflection. Andrew was rambling and he knew it. Neil Wesninski was attractive, intriguing and completely out of Andrew’s reach. Even if he were just your average guy walking down the street, he wouldn’t look at Andrew twice. 

Andrew was fine with that. He didn’t need someone chasing after him, just like he didn’t need emotional intimacy or empathy or gentleness. It was like those nerve-endings had been scoured till they were numb and useless. The pathways were still there, but they echoed a nothingness that he’d never really figured out. 

Whatever. Whatever. Neil was just a challenging and well-paying case. That’s all he’d ever be. 

He was getting existential and over-contemplative. Betsy knew this and smiled, letting him take her by the elbow inside for a cup of cocoa. It was late when the other four finished their game of Monopoly and Nicky finally permitted everyone to leave. Betsy let Andrew walk her to her car again, warmth crinkling her eyes. 

“If you’re seeing your Neil tomorrow,” she said, with a wink. “Tell me all the juicy details.” 

“You’re a leech,” Andrew declared, pushing her car-door shut. She waved out the scrolled-down window as she careened off, leaving Andrew to his quiet but volatile thoughts. 

Your Neil, she’d said.

Now wasn’t that a confronting idea. 

*

“Suppose you are a danger to society,” Andrew drawled. They were sat opposite one another at another metal table, handcuffs dangling off one of Neil’s wrists, his blunt key being fiddled with in the other hand. “Suppose you are just as marvellously unhinged as dear old Dad. What then?” 

“Why bother entertaining the possibilities?” Neil cocked an eyebrow. “We both know I’m fine.” 

“You are the furthest thing from ‘fine’,” Andrew retorted. 

“You’re no paragon of mental health yourself,” Neil laughed, and Andrew wondered how the fuck he’d got himself here. 

Two months ago he’d met Neil for the first time. In two weeks his trial would begin, in his lovely hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. It’d be less of a drive for Andrew, so he didn’t mind. 

In two months, Andrew had found himself hanging onto every conversation. At first he clung on with apprehension. A wariness born out of unfamiliarity: he’d never been in the realm of wanting to associate with someone. Wanting someone’s company, their thoughts and opinions, their attention. It was ridiculous. Neil was a convicted murderer in a max-security prison. 

Then again, Andrew was the one who knew that Neil was undeserving of that title best. At most it was manslaughter. In reality it was a blessing. Ridding the world of the Butcher, a renowned and horrifically twisted serial killer, was a service to the public rather than a hindrance. 

And so Andrew had found himself in a strange position, between professionalism and exceptionalism. He almost couldn’t help it. He wanted to know what happened behind those ocean blues. 

“Someone’s been bored again,” Andrew accused, lighting a cigarette. That was illegal but he didn’t give a fuck. Neil gazed at where it rested between his lips, conflicted. 

He shrugged, caught out. “You’re an interesting person. Would it scare you to know we’re similar in more ways than one?” 

Andrew let a small smirk twitch around his smoke. “You should be more scared than I should be.” 

“Maybe I’ll go to law school when I’m out,” Neil leered, grinning. “Beat you at your own game.” 

“You can try,” Andrew said. “You’ll lose.” 

Neil hummed. His shackles jingled as he reached over the table for Andrew’s cigarette, his fingertips brushing over Andrew’s lips as he snatched it away. For a moment he watched the cherry’s glow, before letting it rest at the corner of his mouth. 

Unimpressed, and also oddly flushed, Andrew glared. 

“That sounds like a challenge,” Neil said, returning to the conversation like he hadn’t just stolen the cigarette out of Andrew’s mouth. Like Andrew hadn’t just let him. “If you get me out of this hell hole, I’ll prove you wrong.” 

“And if you don’t?”

Neil grinned. “Then you lose anyway. Don’t worry: I won’t cry.” 

“Good,” Andrew muttered, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded over his chest. 

Neil filled the rest of their valuable time with inane chatter about the more twisted happenings within a male max prison: Andrew had heard of similar stories and worse, but seeing as Neil instigated most of the fights, he still found it rather entertaining to be told. 

Before he knew it, their time was up. He stood, plucking the butt out from between Neil’s lips. 

“Till next time,” Neil said, a forlorn look at the cigarette between Andrew’s fingers. 

“I’ll text you about trial prep,” Andrew said, pointing at him. “Read it.” 

Neil sighed. “Not like it’ll help me in any way. But fine. I’ll waste my limited credit and battery on the shitty flipper for court etiquet.”

“You’d better, you ungrateful shit. I got you that phone.” 

Neil just winked and blew him a kiss. At Andrew’s scowl, he laughed. 

The laugh haunted - no, teased - Andrew all the way out of the stupid prison complex, across the car park, even as he blasted music on the way home.  

*

Andrew took one look at the woman who squirmed in her chair, leaning anxiously away from the middle-aged man next to her. It was instinctive and ingrained in her behaviours. An abusive father, then. Or, perhaps an abusive husband, if the twisting of her wedding ring was anything to go by. 

“Accept,” Andrew declared. 

“Do you have any qualms about gang violence?” the prosecution asked a balding man, lounging in his chair. 

“It’s a toxic function of our society,” he answered. 

The lawyer looked to the judge and smiled. “Accept, your honour.”

Fucking hell, Andrew thought. He glanced back over to the table, where Neil was cuffed to the iron loop. He didn’t smile, but simply tipped up his chin. An acknowledgement. Confidence in, well. Andrew. 

Something in Andrew’s stomach settled. He turned back to the man that the prosecution had accepted. “So you have heard of the Wesninski case?”

“It was ten years ago,” he objected. 

“What did you think of it?” 

“It was well resolved,” he said. 

“So you still garner some form of opinion against Wesninski?” Andrew eyed the Christian Society badge pinned to the strap of his messenger bag. “Surely your god would have some qualms with your inability to forgive,” 

“Mr Minyard,” the judge insisted. “That’s enough.”

It didn’t matter. The man was already spitting mad, going bright-red in the face. He pointed at Neil and hissed “He’s a monster, just like his father. God should’ve had him killed!” 

“Denied,” Andrew drawled. The man shuffled out of the jury box, frothing mad. 

By the end of the selection process, Andrew was sure that at least half of those sitting in the box would think emotionally rather than pragmatically. He settled back at his desk, ignoring the prosecution lawyer’s filthy glares, and tapped his fingers on Neil’s file. 

“I didn’t miss this,” Neil muttered, picking at the skin of his cuticles. 

From Andrew’s pocket he drew out Neil’s favourite key, of which he’d swiped after they’d searched Neil from head to toe. The man looked at him with undeserved awe, taking the blunt key and spinning it between his fingers. 

“Thank you,” he said. 

“Shut up,” Andrew retorted. 

The court was called to stand: Neil’s hearing had begun. 

*

FUCKs sake i was gonna try do this in three parts but the trial will be a whole part and the post trial too..... dammit lol

next we find out: what does the prosecution have up their sleeve? how will neil’s testimony go? what chaos will andrew cause in the courtroom? whose key does neil continually trace?? will neil be inevitably driven to distraction by andrew’s dope-ass suit?

#andreil #lawyer!andrew #felon!neil #law au #law firm!foxes #andrew minyard #neil josten #david wymack #betsy dobson #all for the game #aftg #hope u like this disaster of a fic lol #can someone please tell me what to name this au #i cant call it the htgawm au #(how to get away with murder) #unless? #idek #jem writes

[lifeofroos]

Part 60. I hate Minos, me my homies all HATE Minos.

In short: Nico gets therapy from Dionysus. In this chapter, he has decided he wants to talk to King Minos. Dionysus quietly agrees, but only so long as someone comes along. The story is also on AO3 and FanFiction.net! And in Tumblr tags like Dionysus, Nico di Angelo, percy jackson fanfic etc.  This Might Be Crazy: Chapter 60: Pomegranate Iced tea 

‘Did you bless the Jacksons’ house when I was there last time?’

Dionysus looked up. ‘I did. Sally Jackson runs a sanctuary. We can’t have monsters coming in.’

‘Very good.’

‘Now tell me the real reason why you came here. You can’t be here just to ask something you already knew.’

‘I mean, no.’

‘Spill.’

‘Don’t you trust...’

‘Nico!’

‘I want to go talk to king Minos. I want to know why he chose me.’

Dionysus took a moment to think about that. ‘Isn’t it clear why Minos chose you?’

I shrugged. ‘It might be. Because, you know, I was going around raising the dead and opposing Percy, which was very convenient for him. Still, I…’ I shrugged. ‘I want to talk to him. I want to know how he thinks.’ 

Dionysus thought for a second. ‘Minos is dangerous.’

‘So I can’t go?’

He thought for a second. ‘I can’t control you. You’ll go anyway, no matter what I say. Yet, I have a requirement.’

‘Being?’

‘Someone must be there with you. I am not letting you talk to a psychopath like Minos on your own.’

I sighed. ‘Who must it be?’ 

‘I’ll ask Persephone and Hades first. You’ll hear the answer tomorrow.’

‘Alright.’

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The next morning, early as all hell, I heard a knock on my door. ‘Nico. Come.’ 

I scrambeld out of bed. ‘Eh, I will.’ Whoever you are. ‘Can I put on some actual clothes instead of my pajamas first?’

‘Five minutes.’

‘Okay, okay!’

Within five minutes, I was done and I stepped out of my cabin. I raised my eyebrows. ‘Ariadne?’

‘The very one. Persephone will come too. She’s waiting for us near Elysium.’

‘I mean... cool.’ I tried to shrug, but half-way through we were already teleporting into the underworld. My shoulders hurt when I got there. 

-------------------------------------------------------

I disliked standing in front of the gates of Elysium again. It was soul-crushing to see all of the spirits, some of them hopeful, some of them sure they wouldn’t get in. 

I noticed Persephone standing near the judges. She was looking up at them, with her hands on her hips. She looked around when Ariadne called her name. ‘Still okay?’ She asked to the other goddess. 

‘As okay as it can get.’

‘Good.’ Persephone straightened her back. ‘We’ll let him do the talking.’ She pointed at me. 

‘And we’ll keep an eye on everything.’ Ariadne confirmed. 

Persephone nodded. ‘Come,’ she told (mostly) me. I nodded. We walked past the lines, to the three judges. The spirits didn’t seem to mind. 

Ariadne held up her hand. ‘Minos.’ All three of kings turned around. Minos mouth fell open. ‘Go on,’ Persephone commanded the judges. ‘Except for Minos. He comes with us.’

Minos got up, with a suspicious look in his eyes. 

---------------------------------------------------

‘What is it, my queen?’ he asked Persephone as soon as we were away from the line. His eyes ran past Ariadne without adressing her. His eyebrows raised when he saw me. ‘You brought me your own stepson? Unbelievable! Now why would that be?’

‘He has questions for you. We would like to see you answer them.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘That’s all.’ She gently laid her hand on my shoulder for a second.

‘Terrible to see you again,’ I began. 

‘You are the one bothering me.’

‘Still.’ I tilted my head. ‘I have my suspicions, but I wanted to know why you chose me. Why you had to haunt me instead of somebody else.’

‘You’re the son of Hades.’

‘I am.’

‘Doesn’t that seem like reason enough?’

‘Maybe. Yet, it would have been way easier for you to get a random scared kid to raise the dead for you. All the things you taught me are things you could have taught most other people. Raising the dead with Happy meals? You don’t need me for that. Don’t get at me with wanting to help Luke. You are way too selfish for that.’

Persephone and Ariadne gave each other a look when they heard me mention raising the dead with happy meals. Minos went on: ‘My goal might not have been to aid him, but perhaps what he had in mind spoke to me.’ Persephone crossed her arms. Minos smiled sinisterly. ‘My queen, don’t act like you didn’t know, even if I would never confess it.’

I pointed at him. ‘Didn’t you just…’

‘Let it go, Nico.’ I looked up at Ariadne, who nodded towards Minos. He still had not aknowledged she was there.  

‘I was easy to manipulate, but still on no-one’s side,’ I continued. ‘Any other demigod might have gotten dependent on you. They would have been your string puppet.’

‘But they would have had less power. Why have a string puppet when they aren’t useful for all sorts of things? Also, di Angelo, you can’t act like you weren’t dependent on me. You were so wrapped up in your silly hate and grief you didn’t see what was going on.’

‘Perhaps.’ Ariadne and Persephone tensed up. Maybe I had been more of a string puppet to Minos than I liked to think I was. Still… ‘Still, I did manage to break out. I listened to Percy after he showed me the truth. An agent of Luke wouldn’t have done that. They would have turned a blind eye and kept following you.’

‘The Jackson kid cared for you.’

‘He would have cared for any other demigod as well. You could have told them to play apologetic and then you would’ve had a spy. It would have been easier, it would have lead you to bigger things...’

‘What is it that you want? I picked you because you were powerful. That’s it. Every strategy has holes in it. It was a gamble to pick you over some nobody and…’ Minos bit his lip and did not say more.

‘And you gambled wrong,’ Persephone finished the sentence. 

Minos shrugged. ‘You win some, you lose some, my queen.’ 

Ariadne gave him a disgusted look. ‘Perhaps.’

‘You were a powermaniac,’ I concluded. ‘It would have been safer, be it a little harder, to use a minion from Luke’s army. Yet, I had power, and you fell for it.’

Minos shot me a disintegrating look. ‘Watch your words, demonspawn.’

‘Sounds like a weakness to me.’

‘Nico.’ Persephone slowly shook her head. 

‘I think I have what I wanted,’ I told Minos. 

‘Leave, then. I’ve got a job to do.’

‘Playing judge, jury and executioner even in death,’ Ariadne stated.

‘It comes naturally.’ It was the first time he acknowledged her existence. ‘I’d watch your mouth if I were you. Some of us might be power hungry, but we aren’t reckless traitors. Each their own.’ He grinned, before looking at Persephone. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll get back now, my queen.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t.’ 

He curtsied, before turning around and walking away. I had to bite my tongue to not yell after him that he was a terrible person, a terrible king, a terrible father, a terrible husband and a terrible judge.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

‘He is terrible.’

‘He is manipulative,’ Ariadne stated. ‘The gamble analogy is apt. He gambled he could take control of the kingdom by banning his brothers. He gambled that he could contain the Minotaur and make Athens pay for it, and he won that bet twice, until…’ she sighed, ‘Until someone messed with his stack of cards. Every gambler misses now and then, and so did he. Terribly, a few times…’ 

Persephone clenched her fists. ‘And then he still didn’t, because my father had to give him the power he desired in death as well.’

I slowly nodded. Persephone sighed and pushed something into my hand. It was a can of Pomegranate sweet tea. I left it in the underworld a little while ago. 

‘Did you learn anything?’ Ariadne asked. It sounded as if she was somewhere else with her thoughts.  

‘What I thought about king Minos was proven. And I once again realised that maybe I should not always go through with my strange ideas.’

‘At least someone was here this time. I can’t tell what that man would have done we hadn’t been there,’ Persephone mused. A little smile appeared on her face. ‘I wanted to come too. Honestly, I wanted to see if it would be better to kick him out. And well, that is more than proven. As soon as I can get rid of him, I will.’

Ariadne looked just as surprised as I felt. ‘They needed to be sons of Zeus, right? The judges?’ I asked. 

‘Yes. But that friend of yours is here now, too.’

‘Jason.’

‘The very one. I think we might have a job for him.’

---------------------------------------------------------------

‘Coming with you was my own idea,’ Ariadne told me when we were back in Camp half-blood. 

‘Ah,’ I said, while I nodded. 

‘I mean Dio didn’t ask me to come. I wanted it. I wanted to see how Minos would react to you, to see if he was really still like that.’

I nodded. ‘Well, so did I. Thanks for coming anyway.’

She nodded, although she didn’t smile. ‘I think it will be lunch soon.’

‘Eh... yeah. I think Dionysus is in the big house.’

‘Then I’ll go there.’

It was clear we were both too busy with our own thoughts. I said goodbye and went to the dining pavilion. Will would want to hear my story. I assumed Dionysus would already have heard it next time I saw him, which was, if I can be honest, a relief. 

A/N: I was originally going to do this with just one of the ladies but then I thought of this and it was good. 

Finals are over today which is good now on to results haha help

#nico di angelo #dionysus #ariadne #percy jackson #pjo #persephone #minos #king minos #dionysus pjo #ariadne pjo #persephone pjo #percy jackson fanfic #percy jackson fanfiction #percy jackson and the olympians #percy jackson and the olympians fanfiction #percy jackson and the olympians fanfic #pjo fanfic #pjo fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #hoo fanfic #hoo fanfiction #hoo #heroes of olympus #heroes of olympus fanfic #heroes of olympus fanfiction #hurt/comfort #therapy #solangelo #will solace

[batfamscreaming]

 Dick’s first day of school snuck up on them.

 Bruce drove him down in a rusty small blue honda civic from the 1990s. They’d picked it up off the lot for under 3,000 and were using it as a way to ferry themselves to the junkyard to pick up parts for their      special    car--but for now, they were using it to drop Dick off at school.

 Drop Richard Malone off at school.

On paper, Alfred paid for Dick to attend Gotham academy. A private school. It had both boarders and day students. Dick would be a day student, so long as it was feasible. 

...on the first day of school, Bruce drove Dick down to his alma mater (which translated to ‘place you never wanted to visit again,’) and dropped him off outside the gates.  

“Want me to walk you in, Chum?” he asked, despite it not being any  Malone’s alma mater yet, and Dick glanced back at him and shook his head sharply, mumbling a quiet “see you later,” before going off towards the gates. 

Bruce turned to drive home and realized, belatedly, that Dick had never  not been homeschooled. 

He waited for afternoon to pick Dick up again, and resolved to remember to pick up milkshakes on the way back, so he can ask how the day was with a backup plan. 

--

“It is not the right time of year to prune,” Alfred told him. It was far too close to school starting. Far too close to fall. “But, I suppose, it isn’t  impossible . It will just be a good bit trickier to know which branches need it.”

Bruce obligingly bought a new plant from a chain store--a nursery would’ve properly pruned it weeks ago, but chain stores didn’t have that same attention. Alfred brought it home in a little green planter: a tiny bush cut into a lopsided circle.

“This isn’t, in fact, how to do it,” Alfred said, setting it beside Bruce on the patio table. “Can you tell me why?” 

“..it doesn’t target the dead branches,” Bruce said, and Alfred gave a nod. 

“It’s indiscriminate. And  quite sloppy.” 

He handed Bruce a pair of pruning shears. 

“With it cut like this, it’s a little difficult to find the dead branches, but you’ll manage.”

...after a moment, Bruce shoved his hand inside the bush and just… gripped one of the little branches that didn’t have any leaves on it between his fingers. He glanced at Alfred, who nodded obligingly and gave a smile that felt far too much like it was meant for a child. 

“How far back do I cut?” 

“As far back as you can.” 

Bruce nodded and pushed the shears in. And snipped.

The metahuman had power over plants, the paper the day before had said. She argued she’d been acting in self-defense. Her children were crying out for help. And so she helped.

(“‘ I is hearing the scream of a flower as its stem is twisted from the ground,’”  Dick read aloud by Bruce’s bedside, trying to work through the recommended reading list for his level. One year behind his age level wasn’t bad for three years on the road, but it was a lot to catch up on all the same. “‘  I is hearing the soft moan of the old oak, like an old man dying, weeping, when it is felled.’ ”)

As the state of New Jersey did not recognize plants as people or her as the property owner, her appeal was denied. She would spend several years above minimum in Belle Reve for aggravated assault.

(even though the one she assaulted wasn’t there. Bruce hadn’t stepped into court. Bruce hadn’t said a thing. There was one phone call, and a woman, naked, trapped outside on a Gotham street, and then  five other people stepped forward, claiming to be someone she’d attacked. 

And he didn’t know what to think about that. If what everyone said was true was true, or if it was just falling into the fallacy of mob mentality. If it was easier to accept what was said as true. Even if he'd seen the violence first hand, it was  him  being attacked, that was  different--)

He kept his mouth shut, and reached for the next dead branch, and clipped. 

“...and how would I trim something that’s not dead, but it might… be overgrown? Or the wrong height?” 

“Hmm,” Alfred said, still watching him. “Well, first we will need to get you a proper ladder.”

Justly imprisoned or not, the metahuman--a former botanist called Pamela Isley--would be in Belle Reve for several years. 

Maybe he could change something in this town while she was gone.

Therefore, Mr. Malone came to the Gotham Parks and Recreation office, asking if when he got this 501c3 approved that he be allowed to enter Robinson Park and clean up the place.

And the budget-starved Parks office said  fuckin’ do it if you’re brave enough, man , and sent him on his way. 

It was… much easier than he expected, really. But perhaps the Parks department carried so little influence no one had even bothered to bribe them to keep people out. All the same, he’d listen to that backwards warning. 

He drafted the papers in two days. He worked over it at dinner, trying to fill the gap that had once been occupied by discussing with Dick where to travel next and how to best avoid a million impending dooms. He had a free consultation with an attorney in the morning who looked up at Bruce over his glasses, eyebrows up, and reminded Bruce that the park was where mob deals went down and that grassy lady attacked a fella the other day. 

Bruce said that was fine. He knew. He wasn’t here to cause a ruckus.

Legal documents. Articles of Affiliation. Mission Statement. It was helpful to have a second pair of eyes that actually expected the little bureaucracies innate in law, things that Dick and Alfred preferred to grumble at rather than knot through. Not that Bruce had been trained in law himself, but his school friend, Harvey Dent--

(was still in the hospital. Burn ward. He’d stabilized, but wasn’t often conscious--)

...Bruce submitted the paperwork after the Parks commission met with him, and then all he had to do was draw up a budget and wait. Alfred ‘lent’ Mr. Malone the startup money to establish a paper trail. After the initial donation, Bruce could make periodic donations to himself in various names; have miraculous windfalls whenever cash grew thin. Even without any backing or campaigns, he could make this startup impossible to fail.

--

...the problem is, Bruce has long proven his judgement is impaired.

When Dick returns from school not sniffling but  vibrating with stress all the same, Bruce’s first thought is to run and start over somewhere else. 

He thinks it might be an averted suicide response. The need to pack up and leave the current problems behind. With a hardline against being able to die, his mind latches onto another option. A fight-or-flight response that only hits  flight when the problem isn’t something that can’t be physically fought off, like a tween coming into the car and sitting down in the passenger seat with a deep sigh. 

...Bruce asks how his day was. 

Dick says it was fine. 

Bruce doesn’t ask if he wants a milkshake. He goes through the drive-through and buys some anyway. They go home and work how to install tail fins on the car frame slowly coming together in their garage.

--

...the ‘suicide’ response isn’t the only thing that lingers. Bruce isn’t really sure ‘lingering’ is the right term, actually. The flight response only arises when things can’t be handled directly in front of himself anymore, but the fight response--

Bruce has impaired judgment. 

He proved it as soon as his first ‘suicide’ response sent him to the League of Assassins, and he decided to not flee the moment they made it clear nothing would continue until he took a life. He proved it when he wasn’t able to avoid dragging a literal child in the middle of a personal crisis into his mess, rather than leaving him somewhere safe and far, far away from him. He proved it with each near-death experience from Deathstroke in Metropolis to Isley in Gotham. 

And yet, here he was again, finding himself cleaning up the Batman suit long after Dick was put to bed, adjusting it with better material to withstand a bullet’s penetration. 

The people at the parks department weren’t wrong. It would be dangerous to work the area while the mob still operated widely inside it, and he would not cooperate alongside the mobs for protection. The alternative was therefore relatively obvious: get rid of the mobs. 

Mobs weren’t  exactly like a snake, but they did function well enough like one. Cut off the head. And like a hydra, if new heads sprouted--smother them. 

...that, at least, he knew how to do. Kidnapping and recon, and finding information. Find proof of a mob boss’ wrongdoing and get a prosecutor not so cowardly to be bribed. Hand the information over. Don’t let them fail the charges. High profile dangerous people wouldn’t be kept in a local jail, but would likely be transferred to a higher-security prison, circumnavigating the cluttering, and with a focus on high-priority prisoners rather than most random people out on the street, they would be moved through the system more quickly, hopefully at least stalling out their operations in the meantime, if not shattering the whole system beneath them with the sudden departure. 

This was the best plan he had, and it relied far, far too much on too many external variables--finding a clean court, getting a jury that felt safe enough to actually put their foot down, finding witnesses willing to testify, a prosecutor who wouldn't be bribed--

(fuck) 

--and dealing with a Commissioner whose good graces he might’ve worn out. 

…

But the alternatives were to allow this to continue growing, complicit by his own inaction. 

(he was already complicit enough in too many crimes.)

(How did you clean up a world that you yourself aided in the destruction of?)

--

Prosecutors that couldn't be bribed?

They ended up like Harvey Dent. 

--

Batman appears without Robin that evening, because it is a school night and Dick needs to sleep. He stops what crimes in progress he comes across and starts watching Robinson Park more closely. 

He doesn't interfere inside it. He just watches. Plants cameras in the bushes and on the branches of trees, and zips his way out, to watch the footage and get to know the day and nighttime patterns of the area. 

It… will take time. That's something he's not used to. Dick and he worked fast on the road, and even before that he was either handed his information by the ones lower down the chain or only spent a handful of days doing legwork to verify things that'd been missed. Instant gratification, he guessed he could call it. Just… dealing out a death and being done with it. 

(And somehow, he'd drawn the line at known violent mobsters and Deathstroke.)

...he had to do a  lot of meditation to get through the park video feeds. He had a lot of work stacking up between tracking down faces from the feeds. Police database of mugshots helped more than he expected. He started a tally of how many people in the mugshots were brought in bloodied and who brought them in to look into later. 

After all, if Gotham was going to get rid of its mob problem, the police force would need some pruning, too. 

--

Gotham recidivism was above 80%. Bruce gargled his coffee and tried very hard to not spit it out somewhere, because somehow, he was more tired by this statistic than shocked. A bit of, ‘oh, I knew it would be high, but  really?’

No fucking wonder there weren’t enough cells in the world. 

(What do you do when you can’t put anymore garbage in a landfill?

Learning what a  fucking recycling program is might be a good first step.)

It's okay, though. He's totally got a handle on this. He's already been looking into what makes recidivism lower, and the difficulty of access to jobs for felons seems like a big one. Lack of change to living situations that caused pettier crimes like reselling material or shoplifting. The inside prison situation has an effect, according to Norway, which has a prison system Bruce isn't even hoping to replicate, even if he were a living millionaire with a clear conscience. 

Reading other people's’ writings on recidivism has… definitely helped clarify things for him, even if all he can think of for the worst of criminals is still to lock them in a cell far away from  everyone or until the death penalty finally takes it out of his hands. 

But it is one thing to lock up a murderer who sabotaged a family performance and killed in front of an audience, and children, and  child … versus locking up the child who killed trying to protect their family from an abusive partner. 

They’re different. They have to be. 

If Bruce has any right to be alive, he has to be able to believe in gray areas. 

--

Bruce drops the first of several Maroni forerunners on Gordon's desk in the northern precinct. When he finds the precinct desk vacant, he pays a visit to the commissioner’s house instead. 

The thought process is that it would probably be best to clarify that the dropoff isn’t an attack on the commissioner's authority. It’s an opening for compromise. Bruce will be mindful of the incarceration rates, but he won’t be leaving Gotham and he’d like cooperation from the police when it came to prosecution.

Unfortunately, he proposes it in the form of a paper note (written in his off-hand) slipped onto Gordon’s bedroom table where the man will notice it as soon as he returns for bed, which is much more threatening than he fully realizes.

(He doesn’t imagine Gordon’s daughter will find the note first and replace it just as she found it after reading. Then again, he doesn’t ever find out it happened, either.)

--

The county’s defense office wants to cut a plea deal with the gangster brought in, because no one wants to be the next Harvey Dent. The Assistant DA, a woman named Rachel Dawes, seems willing to try, but the department is extremely reluctant to support her, even as she steps up to take Dent’s place until another election can be held.

In the precinct, Bruce’s audiobugs catch officers he’s tracking placing bets on how long until someone finishes Dent off in his hospital bed.

Bruce decides he needs to be more aggressive.

-- 

Twenty-seven aggressive anonymous tipoffs and two synchronized FBI raids half a month later, and Bruce is startled when the door to his bedroom opens and Dick walks in. Bruce doesn't really jump in surprise anymore-- it’s more of… half reaching a position to fight, and stopping in a split second as he realizes the threat doesn't exist.

“Ah,” he says, “do you need--?”

“I was at school,” Dick says, answering the question in an odd way. He didn't need anything, he'd just come back from school--

Bruce’s neck snaps up to look at the clock, while the other part of his brain realizes that it’s nearly dark outside. 

“Did Alfred--” he says, a panicky shame he’s not used to rising up within him. 

“No,” Dick says, shrugging his backpack off and slumping onto bed. “When I realized you weren't coming I walked home.”

Bruce's throat feels tight. “You should've called.”

“Figured you were busy,” Dick says, watching the ceiling, “you've got more important stuff than school.”

Bruce remembers, the pain less raw with years, the slow agony of a school day, knowing there must be more he could do than sit through the farce. 

He remembers that agony of adolescent uselessness clearly, pain dulled or not, but he’s also wisened to its falsehood over the years. There was little he could manage at the time.

“...I’ll set an alarm next time, but school isn't unimportant,” he says, keeping calm and controlled for an extra moment, before doing a double-take on the thought he’d had just a moment before. 

Adolescence?!

--

School is over a month in. Dick’s anniversary is coming up soon. Bruce has gotten the Feds back in Gotham and an internal investigation into the police force for corruption. His nonprofit is finalizing some paperwork and looking into how to hire nonviolent offenders and start training them for small-time landscaping and cleanup by contracting with a local pre-established landscape crew that mostly does the outer and northern Gotham estates. Harvey Dent is conscious but minimally verbal in the hospital. And Dick is thirteen, officially a teenager. 

Bruce does not know how teenagers are different from younger children. He does not recall being any different than he is now at either age. Only morose haze interspersed by flashes of overwhelming tension and temper. 

Harvey once knew him at that age. Not that Bruce could talk to Harvey--not… as himself. The man Harvey knew was long, long dead, (or, it would be simpler if that man was dead, and Bruce as he was now was a new man entirely--) and it’s not as though Bruce could ask advice anyway. 

Still. Maybe he will send Harvey some flowers they’ve started in the backyard...

Once the Justice League gets out of his living room. 

Aside from Superman calling over the phone whenever he seems to please, once a month Martian Manhunter seems to show up, posing as just another social worker or lawyer or family friend, here to check in on how things are going with adoption, or the 501C3, or the… latest cookies out of the oven. 

And if it’s not Martian Manhunter helping Dick sneak cookies off the cooling rack, then it’s Wonder Woman, which is somehow even worse. 

There are not a lot of situations when Bruce would rather a mind reader with incredible telekinetic powers who could mentally and emotionally cripple him with a thought be in his presence, versus just a very strong lady who could rip him in two by breathing. 

Diana Prince has made that situation a monthly occurrence.

She came this time while they were in the garage, putting together a much-overdue car engine. Alfred had insisted on dinner before business. Diana Prince stands in his house for over an hour by the time the rope finally came out and they got down to business. It is an hour too long. Bruce doesn’t think he’s had more than a few words of conversation with her since they moved into Alfred’s townhouse late summer, but he has heard the same questions out of her mouth far too many times. 

“Have you been hurt lately?”

“No,” Dick says, because he only patrols on weekends, and Bruce makes sure he’s kept well away from anything that looks like it will have guns.

“Are you being treated well?” 

“Yes.” 

“Are you happy?” 

“Y…”

...Bruce blinks for a second, before he realizes that Dick’s teeth are clenched tight and his face is turning faintly to another color. 

“Dick…?” Diana says, before Dick gives into the rope, and says the truth.

“No.” 

He’s not sure if anyone else can hear the air leave the room, but it does, and Bruce feels his lungs collapse in the vacuum left behind. His stomach shrivels into a ball. 

He wants to run from the room, but his feet are too heavy and slow to move, so he just crosses his arms even tighter, and digs his fingers into his ribs.

“...why is that?” Diana asks. She doesn’t even glance back at Bruce when she does it. She doesn’t even glance away in the first place, even as Dick is screwing his eyes shut. The color his face has settled on is red, and blotchy, and fast. 

Dick drops the rope from his hand and hiccups. 

Bruce can’t move to comfort him. 

...Diana looks between Dick, and the dropped rope, and pulls it back into the lasso loop. She stands. 

“...I’m going to head outside for a bit and give you two some privacy.” 

She turns and walks out to the garden, where Alfred is still watering the flowers. 

Dick hiccups again, and Bruce is a stranger in his own body as he sits on the floor cross legged, and pulls Dick into his arms. 

...he’s a lot bigger than he was when he was eight and curled into Bruce’s side, just minutes after his parents fell. Bruce puts his hand on the kid’s head, fingers running through the cropped dark hair. 

“...Dick?” Bruce says. “Dick?”

He doesn’t get a response. He sits there, uncomfortably rubbing Dick’s hair, until Diana returns some long minutes later, announcing it’s about time she headed out. 

“I’ll see you next month,” she says, mostly to Dick, who still hasn’t looked up. 

Even as Bruce wonders if it’s a threat, something in his chest loosens when Diana leaves and Dick stays behind. 

Eventually, they get up, and try to get ready for bed. 

—

Harvey Dent wakes up again.

The last thing he remembers is a gun being pulled on him; a court case that he  had to win, no matter what—

The nurses are alerted to his consciousness by the sound of his screaming. 

Bruce Malone has no reason to visit him. No clearance. No nothing. All he does is run a small nonprofit startup, currently sending out applications to the very criminals Harvey put behind bars. 

He doubts Batman would be welcome.

— 

Gotham elects temp-head Rachel Dawes to permanent DA to finish out Harvey’s term by seventeen votes. Bruce doesn’t rig the election, though he thinks of doing so. Instead, he spends the week beforehand trying to disrupt the bribery network connecting the ballot counters to the remaining mob and asking Robin to go make sure the paperless polls aren’t hacked the night before.

...Robin isn’t happy with Bruce going out on his own still. But they compromise, some. 

They send Harvey flowers.

They leave a note on Dawes’ desk. An offer, if she needs anything. They don’t want her to end up like her predecessor. 

—

In the morning, at the first hint of workable weather, Bruce has some on-parole inmates and recent-releases standing in the middle of the park, shivering, holding shovels and rakes. 

This is the first day they’ll be working together and training on the job. There will be a stipend associated with the work. Tools are provided. There’s just—they haven’t done this before. And neither has Bruce Malone, who failed to shake off his kid, Richard, who is sitting off on a picnic table not far away, arms wrapped around his snow pants and pouting furiously. 

...He stays quiet as Bruce starts showing the group what they’re supposed to be doing— first snipping the large bushes down to size, raking the sticks and leaves into piles, and then coming up the back with shovels to help define areas for mulch beds around the bushes. Generally they would not be pruning this early into fall, but… the bushes have to go. 

It’s step one (ignoring Bruce’s personal twenty-step plan midway through execution) to help keep the park safe and free-er of illegal activities: just being able to see into the damn park. 

Once they actually start working, Richard gets up from his perch and glumly takes a rake, helping follow along and pulling the old foliage and branches into a set of neat piles a couple feet out of the way. 

It would be one thing if Dick seemed to be having fun, but… he doesn’t really. He’s tolerant enough with the car (whose construction has largely stalled) but he’s never really had the kind of brain like Bruce’s which likes the simple, repetitive patterns of gardening, or kata, or math. 

(“I don’t  want to stay home,” Dick had said that morning. 

“Then wouldn’t going out with a friend be better?” Bruce said over breakfast. 

“I don’t  have any friends!”

Bruce did not respond to that, and had escorted Dick to the park.)

...they pack up in the later afternoon, when the sun is still high but before banks close-- Bruce gathering up all the direct deposit information for the ones who sound interested in coming back, and paying the rest with checks. Dick waits in the car.

When they drive back home, something big, and blue, and midwestern is already in their kitchen, and is talking to Alfred about pie crust technique. 

( Hell. )

Superman is wearing his full goddamn uniform as they enter. He turns and smiles when they come into the living room, raising up one big hand to greet them.

“Hey there! Decided I’d stop by.” 

“....You did,” Bruce agrees, while Dick seems to perk up, eyes widening at the very large and blue man leaning on the counter. 

Dick had  met Superman already. Spent a week at least on the same spaceship as him. Stared him down over Bruce’s unconscious body. Somehow, it wasn’t stopping him from having that bright excitement in his eyes, now. 

Maybe Superman was more exciting when he presumably wasn’t here to arrest anyone. 

Presumably. 

“Uh-huh,” said Superman. “And Mr. Pennyworth was telling me some about how things have been going for you here! Community service work. Sounds good.” 

Sounded  innocent was more like it. Sounded like prisoners in bright orange vests on the roadsides picking up litter for fifty cents an hour. Doing time, paying back society for all he’d done to it— yeah, he figured it would sound good to Superman. 

“It is,” said Bruce. 

Dick, maybe in a better mood now that they were out of the Gotham smog, saves him again. 

“Are you here for dinner?” Dick asked, not quite on his tiptoes—not on his tiptoes at all, actually. 

He’d grown again, Bruce realized. Now he stood almost to Bruce’s ribs, where once he’d had to stretch to reach. 

“No, I didn’t think I’d be  that  welcome,” Superman said, smiling sheepishly, and  good.  At least he  knew.  “I’m just the messenger this time. Because we  are going to have to start cashing in on that deal we made.”

For a moment, Bruce’s heart stills, and he feels Dick tense just a little bit beside him. 

(Is it wrong, for a moment, that he’s still glad that Dick tenses when they both know it won’t be him attacked?)

“Woah, woah, no scary faces—“ Bruce’s face had  not changed. “We just need your input. Information sharing, remember? Flash has had some weird things going on in his neighborhood and we thought maybe it’d be something you’d recognize.” 

...Right. 

Right. 

He was getting protection from This League in exchange for cooperation, not just his dignity. 

Before he could pull himself back into his body, Superman added, “and Robin too, of course.” 

“Robin doesn’t  need to—“ Bruce began. 

“—Robin would be  delighted ,” Dick said, raising his voice unnecessarily high and drowning out Bruce’s own. 

Bruce looked down at Dick, mouth flat. Dick stared back up at him, scowling and arms crossed. 

“You  hate busywork,” said Bruce. 

“It’ll be fine!” Said Superman,  suddenly in his face  , arms moving between him and Dick, pushing them apart, like they were  dangerous to each other— “Flash was just going to bring his kid, uh, flash along with him, and thought it would be good for them to meet. Should’ve led with that. Just, giving kids friends in their own age bracket.” 

Bruce had stood rock still, staring at the same spot Dick had been, now blocked by Superman’s arms. He did not look away. 

“Yes,” Bruce said. “You should’ve led with that.” 

—

...the next evening, his attempts at trimming his hair were interrupted by Alfred, who was quick to steal the scissors away and finish things himself. Soon, it was short enough he could slick it back for the first time in… a while. He pulled on one of his better dark turtlenecks. Business slacks. Dark shoes. Dark. Maybe too obviously a hide-away-in-the-background type dark. 

They met Flash… on the other side of a zeta beam. Bruce hadn’t ridden one since first being escorted from the Watchtower to Gotham. 

He hadn’t  forgotten how uncomfortable it was, but it was one thing to remember in the mind and another to be given a reminder in the body. 

Neither he nor Dick were in costume. There was no reason for Batman and Robin to suddenly be in Central. There would hopefully be no reason for anyone to suspect Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson to travel so far away from their little safe haven and attack.

Flash, however,  did have some things to protect still, and so he waited on the other side of the zeta with his bright red costume made darker in the night, and an unfortunately bright smudge of yellow standing beside him. 

“Hey, Bats,” Flash said, holding out a hand. “Nice to meet you  nicely this time.” 

Bruce was really glad he hadn’t given in to breaking this guy’s legs. That would have made this reintroduction unbearably uncomfortable. As it was, he met the hand slowly, and enough of a sound for acknowledgement.

Flash didn’t say anything about it, turning instead to Dick. “And you! Also glad to see you’re doing fine; hooow’s the ankle. This is my sidekick, Kid Flash.”

There was no time to answer to the ankle before Flash had introduced and thumped the yellow teen him on the back, getting the very encouraging response, “I’m not a kid I’m a  teenager, ” which was too obvious to have needed pointing out, considering the cracks in his voice and the speckles acne surrounding his lips. “Don’t embarrass me!”

“I would  never do that.” 

(While Bruce remained cold in his skin despite the warm night, beside him, Dick let out a little bit of a laugh. Almost a few huffs of one, really. It was softening. It was enough to unfreeze Bruce some and get him going again.)

“You needed help with identification?” said Bruce, stepping forward to end the introductions. 

Flash’s expression changed back to serious in a… flash. At least he didn’t look disappointed. Or surprised. “Yeah. Follow me, there’s a place a little more private down the street.”

That place ended up being a deli bakery. One that had very much closed for the evening, and had shuttered its windows for good measure. This made very little difference to Flash, who pulled out a key from a very discreet pocket, and opened the staff door in the back. 

“They donate the day-old stuff to me,” Flash said, grinning, like that explained much at all. “Why don’t you kids go see if there’s anything set on top of the counters in the back?” 

The little yellow flash made a sound that wasn’t quite a whoop, but wasn’t quite quiet, either. 

And then the little hand reached out, grabbed Robin’s wrist, and pulled him through the door behind the counter.

“Woah, easy, chief.” 

Flash’s hand wasn’t touching Bruce, no, but it was  in front of him, ready to block and restrain in a movement as Bruce took a step forward to follow.

He turned to look at Flash, and met his same hard eyes looking back through Flash’s mask. 

“They’re just gonna look around and see if they can find some food. It’s fine.” 

Bruce  knew that was just what they were doing, of course. He just wanted to— check. Just to make sure. It was a closed up shop of people they didn’t know in a city that was too dark and empty at night, save for a few well-maintained streetlamps and a pair of teenage girls walking down the sidewalk to the seven-eleven, sticking close together in the Midwest fall—- 

“Let’s just get a seat and wait for them, and we can get started. How’s that?” 

Flash had removed his hand, and was gesturing now to one of the booth seats near the bar. Not by the windows. Maybe far enough from the windows that anyone who looked in and saw a book light on would just assume management was doing the books late.

(Bruce’s jaw was not  tight , it was just his teeth kept pressing down together. He sat down across from the seat Flash gestured to. It was better to get through work quickly, and head home.)

“Okay,” said Flash, suddenly in the booth with him. Bruce almost still felt the breeze of the movement as a book-clipped green folder was produced and laid out on the table. “So, this is a case that’s been going on a little while. Take your time and let me know what you think of it.” 

The file was pushed over to Bruce’s side of the table, and he took it quietly, removing the clip and flipping it open. 

He disregarded the notes and bios and instead turned first to the photos. 

...he did not  like  looking through other people’s photos. All he could think of was that he would have liked a  bit  closer look at the doorframe, or just a little bit out of angle, or frustration at someone’s focus being a little bit out. That was why you took  lots  of photos of course, but it was still a gnawing anxiety in him that they were going to just  miss something. All he had were his eyes through someone else’s lense and someone else’s word to take for it. 

Which he was very bad at liking. 

….but that was just what this was, he guessed. The case was from five years prior. A body of an older woman on the floor of an enclosed porch. Broken glass. Gunshot wound to the left shoulder, close enough to the heart she’d probably been dead within a minute or two, long before the first police officers had arrived. A bullet hole in the wall behind her. Fallen out of her chair. Glass window of the porch had shattered. A bullet had been extracted from the wall, looking like a .22– moderately furnished house with plastic sheeting over the couches. Wicker chairs. An expensive security system had captured what were rendered as stills of the moment the bullets entered the cameras view, and a man a minute or so later on the front door at the other side of the house, running inside, presumably to inspect.

There were other things. They seemed comfortably middle to upper-middle class, from the photos, and finally turning to look at the profiles confirmed it. 68. White. Retired with a moderate stipend. Married thirty years. No priors or connections that Bruce might consider linking to any of the people  he knew. Just things like public intoxication, driving violations, a few fines—

Her husband was found with her, and owned the same caliber gun that had broken the glass encasement, shot the woman, and knocked her out of her chair before lodging in the wall. He’d run in from across the street to investigate the gunshot, he said. He denied doing the deed, and circumstantial evidence was not enough to make a conviction on—

...Bruce flipped through the folder again, frowning. 

Flash, who had pulled out his phone, looked up. “Something?”

“...what is it you want me to say about this?” It was a neatly put together file. Very neatly. No real loose ends, if everything in it was true. What was he supposed to be catching, here?

“Just, I guess, your thoughts. Anything stand out?” He took the moment to arch his back and stretch his arms out a bit, one hand still holding the phone. Smiled a bit. Friendly. 

Bruce frowned while looking at Flash this time. 

“This is a test,” he stated, “and I doubt just to see if I’d throw out a name just to be ‘useful.’”

Flash blinked innocently at him, but he was still smiling. “I mean, haha, can’t blame us too much…? You found a  lot of trafficking chains, but, I mean—“

“The case has already been closed, and you’re certain of who did it,” said Bruce flatly. He flipped the folder shut and shoved it back across the table. “I’d rather see the scene myself, but if the numbers are right, the bullet hole is too steep an angle for a flat lawn if the husband shot from shoulder height. Someone half his height, or someone kneeling  or lying in the grass. He’s old enough to have trouble getting up from that position, much less from the edge of the yard, to run around to the front of the house and avoid grass stains from a new cut lawn. There’s not enough other information to know who might’ve had a motive to make it professional or not.” 

…

Flash blinked at him, leaning his elbows on the table to watch. He wasn’t smiling or laughing anymore. Good.

“Yeah,” Flash said. Moved the folder off the table, to the booth seat, out of view. “Some kids were playing with their new .22 in the yard across from the house and accidentally shot her through the window. They confessed a few months ago.”

It was a small enough crime that news wouldn’t have made it to Gotham. Or been widely publicized at all, if ‘kids’ meant they were  still minors. That would make them thirteen at most at the time of the shooting—

Bruce wasn’t sure if his throat was full of acid or metal as he said, “Is there anything else for me to look over?” 

Flash hesitated a moment (an eternity for him, surely) and said, “Well…”

Bruce stood and made a  straight fucking line to the door Dick had been pulled in and not yet emerged. Flash called out, “Hey—!”

….even as the hand fell on his shoulder and tried to pull him back, Bruce had frozen in the doorway. 

On the other side, he could only see a bit— the doorframe was too narrow and he dared not step closer—but he could see enough.

He’d wondered, a little bit, why Robin hadn’t emerged when he’d begun speaking. Surely he was loud enough to be heard from the back room. They were only meant to be separated minutes. Just a quick mission. Now, he could see, though—

Dick, sitting on an industrial chest freezer, his legs kicking, not near touching the floor. 

He was holding a popsicle. One of the fudge ones. Partly eaten and the top of the stick beginning to show, and Robin didn’t see how it was beginning to drip down over the crinkled plastic wrap, and would soon run over his fingers. 

He was busy, looking at Kid Fash. Kid Flash squatting on the floor with a creamsicle, holding it up to the color of his suit, and visibly whining with an orange tongue, a pouting face—

And Robin ignored his own melting ice cream to laugh.

...Flash’s hand tugged on his shoulder again, this time gentle enough that Bruce felt it. He turned with the pressure, and headed back for the booth. 

He sat down in it, across from Flash and his already-solved case folder. 

“...this was not for case files, was it,” Bruce said, staring at the table between them, feeling very stupid and small. 

“I mean,” Flash said, looking almost as embarrassed as Bruce was shamed. “...we did want to know. But… we thought maybe my uh, my cousin could use someone who could relate to him.” 

Ah yes. For  Kid Flash’s sake. For the boy who they’d never seen publicized before, who was complaining about his outfit color as if he hadn’t chosen it, who didn’t know that in Flash’s ‘occasional empty diner hideout’ he was allowed to run off and eat before being told. 

Not for the boy that for the past month Diana’s pitying face had hung over, the boy who had eagerly asked to Superman to stay for dinner, and who Martian Manhunter would deliver sleeves of choco cookies to, even though they had more than enough money to purchase a box for themselves.

...perhaps Bruce should be glad Flash wasn’t the best at lying. Perhaps Bruce was too used to looking for tells, and mistook super speed masking for the truth. 

“I see,” was all he said. 

When he’d been a child, there had been plenty of others who knew death, and who had never moved him an inch for all their crying. He’d done his best to make that untrue for Dick the past few years, and now they knew each other’s grief inside and out. 

Bruce did not know what else to do from there. 

It was grief all the way down. 

“He’ll need to learn how to counter people who might actually know how to fight speedsters,” he said, watching the table. “There’s pads in the basement, if he’d like to improve sparring with Dick sometimes.”

Flash blinked at him again. Flash sat up straighter, grinning. “Oh?”

“Oh,” Bruce agreed, looking up to scowl. “But for fuck’s sake, bring more than one casefile next time.”

—

On Robin’s anniversary, a gang fight breaks out in the Diamond District.

Something gone wrong. A shootout.

Bruce isn’t sure if it could’ve been called a shootout before the police arrive. By the end of the night, the building is on fire, and a gas vein has blown. Heavy smoke drifting down the street causes a panic, and then a stampede— 

He doesn’t want to let Robin out tonight. 

On the news, it looks like there are fights breaking out in the stampede. There are people lying down, specks of color on the ground as the helicopter news anchor tries to describe the scene. She’s pure professional. Cold eyes. Clear eyes.

The smoke momentarily engulfs the helicopter, and she begins crying. 

He does not want to let Robin out tonight.

He will deal with the outrage in the morning. 

—

(On Robin’s anniversary, Harvey Dent sees the fires and hears gunshots from his hospital room. He drags himself and his IV stand away from the bed, towards the window, and fumbles with the latch with ineffective hands. The nurses come with the heart monitor alert. When they sedate him, Harvey is still screaming “Burn it down, burn it down.” )

—

...as often as it happens, Bruce doesn’t think Gotham knows how to deal with tragedy. Wasn’t it common by now? Weren’t they used to it? But as much as the flags should’ve flown half mast and statues been erected, the world stood still— the next morning, school busses take the children to school, and their parents march out to work. 

Bruce has a distinct face, but with enough makeup and a red wig, he can seem to be a different person for a while. He can dress himself up as officer and with enough confidence and disdain walk right passed the caution tape and into the crime scene the next morning. 

Is it still accurate to call several city blocks a crime scene? Is it a crime scene at all? 

There’s caution tape around it. He knows what the words mean in his head. A shape, more than a real definition, with real letters attached— a block of space that has crumbled differently from the world around him. A depression of buildings, some with more tarps laid down than others. 

Most of the bodies have been taken to the morgue by now. Not all of them. But most. 

Is he going to sneak into the morgue tonight? Is he going to cut open an innocent person who gave no consent to him? To do more than what their family may have agreed to? Will he just steal the coroner’s report and assume they did their jobs properly? 

….it is Gotham. He will assume nothing until proven otherwise. Even now it feels like the police are more rattled than usual, like something has actually gone and bitten them and made them pay a bit more attention.

Inside the building where the shootout started, he starts to look for the bullet holes and take pictures. He looks for scorch marks to track towards the origins of the blaze. 

He doesn’t find a blown gas vein, no matter how hard he looks. 

There was a difference between a storage building and a warehouse. This was a storage building. It had perhaps had a secretary and some organizers. Someone in charge of keeping track of records. There had been unused parts of the building. Bare rooms without much beyond stripped light switches and unpainted walls. One or two empty office spaces, for meetings perhaps. For presentations. 

It was on the second floor where he found the lab. What appeared to be the remains of a lab, in any case. It had been shot up through the floors, and the papers had burnt up in the fire. Police hadn’t officially come up this high yet. The stairs didn’t seem stable. Bruce had not specifically used the stairs. As long as no one saw him slip back down, it would be fine. 

It seemed as if the lab had not been in use at the time of the shootout. Fortunate. The beakers were broken, but they were all clustered together near the sink, clean, and so presumably had all been put away after any use. There was nothing sitting out that seemed to have been mid-use. He would’ve believed a Bunsen burner might’ve started part of the fire, but there was none of that, either. 

...there  was one thing. A broken tankard in the corner that had caused most of the damage, to be certain. A high caliber round seemed to have punctured it, either from the floor below or fired from the hall outside. Otherwise, there would’ve been another body up here, or at least the remnants of one. But the sudden decompression seemed to have mostly left just… a badly scattered room and shrapnel damage on the opposing wall. 

He was about to move to the next room when he noticed the faint texture inside the tank and a matching sort of stain on the ceiling above. 

...he moved closer to the tank, holding his breath and not daring to hope (should he be  hoping  for something?) and investigated. 

A thin layer of green-ish white powder layered the insides of the tankard. An explosive cloud of the stuff must have also flown towards the ceiling and stained it during decompression. He’d assumed it was an oxygen tank. Assumed wrong. 

Taking out a few q-tips, he picked up a few wipes and sealed them away in an evidence bag, did another once-over of the room, now trying to double check everything and ignore his ‘assumptions’, but the burnt papers remained largely illegible, and the cleaned lab materials yielded nothing new. 

He moved on to the next room, and slipped out quietly from there to check the rest of the street. 

—

He arrived back home in different clothes just about the time that Dick (picked up by Alfred) returned home from school. 

The kid looks at Bruce as Bruce enters the front room, and a silent but perceptible drone passes between them. 

For a moment, Bruce simply looked back, wondering what it was he was supposed to say here. 

Eventually, he fumbles in his pockets and pulled out dust-covered q-tips. They’d done this lots of times on the road, hadn’t they? And it had been fun, then. “Want to help identify oddly colored dust?” 

Dick lets his head drop back with an open-mouthed groan at the ceiling, but he does come to the garage lab without… any other response than that sound and movement.

...Bruce was not sure what that meant. 

—

Who the  fuck was rigging exploding nitrous oxide cans to deliver green-dyed powdered LSD?

—

Monday, at the park, he tells the ones who show up they can stay and work in the park as they’ve been doing the last two weeks, or they can come with him to help clean up the areas damaged by the fire.  

Most of them, eight out of the ten, peel off to go help with the fire damage. He can’t say he expected that. But they wander out of the park, keeping together in a group, and spend the day with magnet sticks picking up nails and crooked metal and stacking bricks up out of the walkway. They hose down the ashes to stop dust and at Bruce’s insistence, scoop the ashes into garbage bags instead of just washing it all into the sewer. 

It gets him some weird looks, but no one is ready to argue with him after only working for two weeks, because these are the ones who  stayed  for that daily stipend-- there’s not a contract here; these ten are the ones who hate this work less than anything else they might’ve had available, so they break out two flat shovels and bag things up, wearing cotton masks to avoid inhalation. Bruce trots back to the park to get the truck and pick up all those bags for disposal.

He’s prepared for the ones they left behind to have skipped out early, unsupervised, but as he rounds the (now lower) hedges to look at their base of operations he finds… they actually have acquired an extra person. 

No, the shovels aren’t moving and the hedges don’t look that different from what they’d been like this morning, but that’s still not  abandoning a position. And instead they have some soda cans from the nearby vending machine, and are leaning on a termite-eaten picnic table, talking with rapt interest to Dick Grayson. 

Bruce paused to take it in a second time. Dick certainly clocked him coming into view even though the kid didn’t turn to look his direction. Dick was still there, though, sitting on the other side of the picnic table with a fizzy orange juice and his legs crossed under himself. It wasn’t Bruce’s day to pick him up, Bruce was certain, and yet he had a moment where he had to think of it again to make sure, and checked his phone, and his pocket schedule. But his instinct was right, and it was indeed Alfred’s day to pick Dick up from school while Bruce worked here in the park--

He started to walk over just as Dick turned and raised a hand in greeting, letting the recruits cue into his presence before he was close enough to startle them. And yet, they were still startled enough to look at their shovels and very obviously say “shit,” even when Bruce was still too far away to actually hear it. Then, one seemed to realize they had cursed in front of a tween, said “shit” again, and smacked themselves on the forehead.

Dick’s nose wrinkled up as he smiled. Bruce couldn’t hear it, but he knew it was a laughter snort. 

(He did not acknowledge his jaw untensing as he walked up to Dick who was smiling and sociable again.) 

He came over intending to smile and say words and have a nice conversation, and… then he was close enough and realized he didn’t know what to say. Did he tell them not to corrupt Dick? Would they take that as him implying they were poisonous to others? Would Dick take that as him being protective and spoil the mild good mood? If he told them to take the rest of the day off since clearly things weren’t going to happen, was that dismissal? Or was that chasing them off? Would it be a threat to their paycheck, even though he intended to pay the day’s wages fair as always?

Things seemed to be going almost well lately. The park was slowly being cleaned and Dick was in better spirits than he’d been for two days since the anniversary--

“Oh, he stalled out, don’t worry about it.” 

It is not  embarrassment, but Bruce does snap out of his train of thought and back into the present. “Sorry,” he says, and looks to the two grown men in their baggy jackets and laced up work boots and secondhand hats. “We’re just finishing cleaning up some of the ash. If you come help move the last bit, we’ll all call it a day.”

As they got up and started shuffling away from the picnic table, Bruce did glance at Dick, and after a moment of still confusion, say, “Coming?” 

...the expression Dick gives him was not a smile. But he did come. 

-- 

They throw the garbage bags in the back of the trunk, and pack it largely to the brim. Surreptitiously, before Dick can climb into the passenger seat, Bruce digs out a simple dust mask and hands it to him. With barely a second look, Dick puts it on and rolls down the window before settling in. It’s smooth, and no one asks questions or looks much askance, because he and Dick are good by now at not announcing  something is happening that is different than normal to the world at large. 

(And Dick has become very good at seeing through that with Bruce, but Bruce is… starting to wonder if perhaps, he has taught Dick too well to hide anything that would draw attention that something was wrong. Like a wounded animal could run on a broken leg, or a predator bleed from the mouth, and neither would ever make a peep.)

They drove the bags of ashes home to hide behind the house’s perimeter walls, and Bruce tried to explain. The dust, and the huge plume of heat and smoke that could’ve blown even heavy particles down the street, and the sort of cues that psychedelics took from the state you were in. How most people probably wouldn’t exactly get a good trip, surrounded by gunfire and smoke. And maybe there was something else he missed, in the ash, unsafe for casual disposal, how he wasn’t  certain he hadn’t missed something--

Dick laid his head back on the car seat, sighing through his mask, and Bruce stopped his mumbling.

Glanced over. 

“...maybe I can… arrange for Flash to take a look, if you want to come along,” he offered as they pulled onto their street.

Dick sat up a little straighter, a little light in his eyes.

--

...he wondered, maybe unkindly (but mostly tiredly), if Dick would rather move in with the Flash and his sidekick. He didn’t have any real evidence for this. Kids did tend to be fairly excited to see friends around their own age, and just because someone might enjoy a trip to a festival didn’t mean they wanted to live in one.

...yet, Dick probably would’ve been quite happy, adopted into a renaissance fair circuit.

Maybe it wasn’t that Dick needed more friends. Maybe the issue was Bruce.

But it’s too late to change that now, isn’t it? Dick drew his line in the sand in front of the Justice League, and Bruce had given him too many secrets to have to keep, and there was nowhere else to go. 

—

Bruce goes to Gotham Academy early. Very early. Two hours before pickup is meant to be.

Dick has gotten into a fight. 

The parents of the other kid are already there when Bruce arrives and is shown to the principal’s office (it is in the same place it has been since Bruce went here) and ushered inside to the sound of anger and snapping threats. 

The office is wood, with a centered carpet and a large mahogany desk at the center, and surrounded by three adults and two children, one of them his. 

Dick doesn’t have a scratch on him, unless you count a faint bruise starting to show on his knuckles. The other boy, who is bigger and taller in every way, has a tissue up to his nose and an ice pack on his ear, and is simultaneously shielded and towered over by his two parents, neither of whom have stopped arguing with the principal since Bruce arrived. 

He barely gets a chance to get to Dick’s chair by the wall when he is also pulled into the argument by a “Is  this little heathen yours, Mister Malone?” from the mother. 

Things are not going to improve from there, he’s pretty sure.

“What’s going on?” he asks the principal instead, who is a balding white man with age spots on his face and horn-rimmed glasses on his nose. 

“ Master Richard here has assaulted Master Reynolds--” the principal begins.

“--and we will be pressing charges if adequate disciplinary action is not taken,” says the father.

“But what actually happened,” Bruce says, and somehow the noise gets louder in the room. Not the physical noise of three or four people talking at once, but also the hot dissent from Dick in his corner, the hidden bloodied fear of the boy he attacked, the principal patting the desk with his hands over and over, trying to call attention back to himself. Fluorescent lights bright as static. Itchy polyester fake turkish carpets even though his shoes. The room is small and red-orange with wood stained to look like cherry, yellow copper accents on the studs of cushions and trophies and the frames of portraits and certificates hung on the clustered walls--

Dick is suspended three weeks. 

--

Dick is curled in the front seat of the car, furious that Bruce didn’t defend him enough and fight back, and get his sentence reduced or vetoed entirely. His body is balled up tight enough he’s no bigger than he was at eight, curled around the seatbelt in a haze of fury. 

“He was  picking on people  ,” Dick says in a way Bruce knows means Dick had seen it before, but this time it had crossed a line. “  He should be suspended.”

‘He’ is getting two stitches and a formal apology written (ostensibly) by Dick. Dick will not be the one writing it, even if it’s his name at the bottom. ‘He’ will be in school, not in trouble for bullying but now with free reign to his targets without Dick to stand in the way. If Dick was even in the way before at all. If being in the way without being physical meant anything in this case. 

“You’ll just have to be more subtle about it,” Bruce says, trying to be encouraging. Because Dick didn’t do anything  wrong to step in. Maybe it didn’t deserve a bloody nose, maybe it could’ve been handled some other way, but he still hasn’t been able to wrangle the exact story out of anyone but he is certain that--

Dick goes “RRR” and kicks the windshield hard enough that Bruce startles and slams on the breaks. 

Their seatbelts jerk tight and a car horn behind them blares. 

...there is the faintest tap on their bumper, but Bruce is already speeding the car forward again, heart pounding too hard to stop. 

There’s not even a scratch when they get out at their house later.

--

He goes to Dick’s bedside in the evening. Dick’s lying on top of his covers with the lights turned off in a darkening room, staring at the wall opposite the door. There was music playing before, but the CD player turned off as soon as Bruce turned the door handle. 

He sits by Dick’s bedside and asks if he’d like to go out for the evening. 

Dick agrees, but there isn’t much laughter that night, except the sort Robin scares people with.

The mood is still there the next morning.

--

It is Superman’s turn to check in. Apparently. 

The visit is unscheduled (and probably because of  Dick’s suspension) and today involves casserole, which Bruce is primed automatically to dislike. 

"Yes?" Bruce says upon seeing big blue and buoyant in their kitchen, hovering over the kitchen island with a glass dish covered in aluminium and Alfred looking over a handwritten paper beside him. 

"Oh, hey, good morning there," Superman says, as if he's surprised to see Bruce here when there was no other person for him to be there to  see . "I was just dropping off the casserole recipe Alfred wanted to try."

…one of the only people for him to be here to see. But Bruce still doubted a casserole was a real reason for a whole visit. So Bruce tries again. "Did you need something?"

Alfred looks up from the paper with a frown and without a word starts shooing them out of the cooking space if they're going to be talking business. "I dunno. Was there something you needed to talk about?" 

They make it to the couches of the living room, though neither of them sit down. 

"No," says Bruce.

"Alright then," says Superman, who Bruce is learning is an asshole. "I heard some stuff happened with Dick at school?"

Which is entirely unsubtle and a very clear sign that Superman is not leaving until Bruce asks  some  sort of question or resolves whatever this is. 

So fine. Bruce hasn't even had some fucking coffee yet. He'll ask a question. "What would you do if your child, who is aware that at nightime they can go out and punch abusers and rapists, during the daytime attempted to defend an underclassman, and as a result are threatened with criminal action or suspension while you are trying to lie low and causing a big fuss about it and fighting the decision will do the exact opposite of laying low, severely limiting their freedom regardless of if we win."

Like a coward, Superman's expression says he had been thinking of Dick as a kid who was not  Dick , and sheepishly says, "I guess, what would your parents do?"

Bruce thinks he feels it this time. The expression on his face turning colder. He feels it the same way Dick can always see the change. "I wouldn't know that, now, would I?"

...this was why he left in the first place, wasn't it. This eternal loop of days upon days surrounded by people who just  forgot or never could let him forget. It's been easier as an adult, almost-- it's normal now for people's parents to be dead. It's normal to not have people ask after them like limbs they can't see have detached. Even if Superman doesn't know his old name, doesn't know that stupid story about a boy billionaire and his rich family, its jarring to realize that even the most alien being on earth just assumes--

--well, of course. He would know  all  humans have parents. 

But the bite in Bruce's voice is cold enough, and the way Alfred's slight shuffling in the kitchen goes quiet, it's enough to get through apparently-- Superman's head is ducked down embarrassed and he says, "right, sorry," because perhaps Bruce returning to Gotham to the fucking Wayne Butler's House should've been enough reason to realize he didn't have any family left of his own. "The person who raised you…"

"Nothing they said," Bruce interrupts, "has ever done anything about this."

…

Maybe he's angry. He hasn't had any coffee yet. But he turns to end this conversation and walk out to the garden, and hears Alfred's sigh from the kitchen. 

But he's telling the truth. 

Even if Alfred had found something new to say in the years since Bruce tried to bite his therapist's face off, if he's tried to say it to Dick, it clearly hasn't been working. 

--

There is a thing like a piston beating up against his head. A hammering rhythmically at the front of his skull. One thing, then another, then another, then another, and when he wakes up the next morning to one more ring there will still be all the ones behind him, echoing through the halls still unresolved. 

He wasn’t made to live like this. How was anyone made to live like this? One thing after another and another and when he wakes up in the morning there are still more banal, useless things to do in a world that eats up and eats up and eats up--

How does the grocery store clerk wake up each morning? How does she go to bed at night knowing the same thing will happen the next day, but worse, and more tired, and less pay, over and over, for eternity.

#batman #dick grayson #bruce wayne #robin #fanfic #roadtrip vigilantes