#awake by zipps

[performativezippers]

I just reread Awake (or alive, depending on what day you ask me) and jesus damn am I ok??? I mean I love it but like, lordt almighty 😂😂

#awake by zipps #alive by zipps #kacy #kate whistler #lucy tara #ncis hawaii

[sochawrites]

Obsolete – part 1

Dave Lister x reader

part 2 (soon)

They/Them pronouns are used for the reader, with no other gender indicators. N/N for nickname. This was getting long, so I cut it into two parts. I was heading for a self-indulgent rewrite of the Inquisitor, so this is just a prelude, but it can be read as a standalone. TW: anxiety, minor depression episode

"-o Y/N! Holly to Y/N! Are you awake yet?" you stirred up in your bed, Holly's voice finally penetrating through your ears, yet taking a while to get processed in your brain. "No." you mumbled out, turning around and nuzzling deeper into the sheets, hoping that she had nothing else to say. Sadly not. "The boys are asking you to join them for lunch. What should I tell them?"

A dry chuckle escaped your throat, "Is everyone asking for me, or was it just Rimmer? I can't imagine he hadn't had any remarks on my behalf.". Holly excused herself and disappeared for a moment, but that gave you all the answers you needed. "I am not supposed to tell you that." she blurted out right after blipping onto the screen again. " 'course you don't…" you hummed, "Don't let them wait then, I'll come later."

You waited for Holly to fade out once again before you let out a long, tired yawn, stretching your limbs out and letting your body spasm for a bit. You turned onto your back, burning a hole in the ceiling as you tried to make your body listen to you. Waking up has been getting harder and harder, almost ever since you boarded the Red dwarf. You felt empty and lethargic, something you blamed your bad conscience for, as you had some unresolved disputes you could no longer settle. And since Kryten was the main cook, you were completely obsolete as a head chef, so what else were you supposed to do? Besides, sleeping helped to shut out unwanted thoughts and emotions.

But the longer you lay there, the more time will Rimmer have to prepare his spiteful comments, and you were not interested in giving him any ammunition. You tried to get dressed as fast as you could, silently thanking Kryten for cleaning your room daily, it would have been one big mess a long time ago, and you wouldn't have anything clean to put on.

You didn't bother to run, after all, your ubication was on the other side of the hallway, if anything, you slowed down. You cleaned the residual crust out of the corners of your eyes right before you stepped into the occupied ubication.

Lister and Cat were sitting by the table, the latter too busy stuffing his face with a second serving of grilled fish to notice you, at least Dave managed to wave at you. You waved back, a small smile appearing for a moment before the annoying pompous voice cut through the room. "Well, well, well, look at that! The sleeping beauty had finally woken up!", you sighed, sitting down at the table and grabbing a plate, there it was again. "Hello to you too, Rimmer.", you murmured, really hoping that was all he was going to say.

"You know, I would like to know how you sleep so well, knowing you contribute absolutely nothing. I mean, how did you even become a head chef?", you really didn't want to get into an argument with him, fortunately, Lister came to your aid. "Zipp it Rimmer. I've told you, if you want to be salty, go talk to the salt shakers." it looked like they had already argued today. "But you can't deny you had never actually seen them cook either!", so it was this topic again, Lister had assured you that Rimmer was just pissy about you having a technically higher rank than him, something that presumably attacked his ego. "What if I had? Besides, you know we only let Kryten stay as a cook 'cause he would whine 'bout being inefficient.", Rimmer wasn't giving up, "Why do they keep their rank then? It's useless for that gimboid!".

"Rimmer! Smeg-off!", Lister was getting irritated, and you were starting to get upset. Rimmer was right, but it truly wasn't something you had to listen to first thing in the morning or noon for that matter. You felt the pressure building up behind your eyes, and that just couldn't be, Rimmer would never shut up about it, so in between the fight or flight, you chose flight. But not without running your mouth just a tiny bit.

"You're right, Rimmer." you stood up with the plate in your hands and walked towards the door, locking your eyes with his as you stood between the frames. "I am completely useless here, but you know what? At least I know when to keep quiet." and with that, you stormed out, heading to your favourite spot with blurry vision.

The overpass over the chasm was quiet as always, the air pleasantly cold and the floor you sat on warm from the heater pipeline that ran below. You dandled your feet as you tried to get some more food into your stomach. You weren't even halfway through, and you were hungry, but something in your head was against every bite you tried to eat. It made you too aware of every movement your jaw did, and it felt repulsing. The chicken curry was great, but you just couldn't take another bite.

As soon as you put aside the plate, Lister showed up around the corner. "Thought I might find you here, are you alright?" he sat down beside you, quietly sighting at the unfinished dish and tear stains on your cheeks. You shook your head, "I don't know, Listy, probably not.". Dave put his hand on your back, your heart skipped a beat, but you subconsciously shrugged it off, not wanting to be touched, "You know, you don't have to put up with him. You have a higher rank, use it against him. Even if it means turnin' him off for a while.".

"I would rather not. You know what happened the last time I pulled that card." you knew that he knew, but sometimes it wasn't a bad idea to remind him since it was one of the roots of your current problems.

"That was on a different ship.", you were taking in a breath to protest, but Lister was faster, "Hey, I know that it's not somethin' one would get over easily, but shuttin' yourself in won't help anythin'. So… If you ever decide you want to talk 'bout it, or 'bout whatever you've got goin' on right now… We- I'm here… I'm here, whenever you need me, alright?".

You finally looked at him, he was looking at you reassuringly with a warm smile, hands folded in lap. He was so cute. "Anyway, I wanted to ask if you would join us on an expedition to that moon we found yesterday. We'll be leavin' in a few hours, Kryten's almost done preparin' the bug. We might be gone for a few days…".

"I would love to, but I'm not feeling well. Maybe next time?" you threw him an apologetic smile. You'd really like to go, you loved spending time with Lister, but the vision of being locked in a confined space with Rimmer didn't spark joy, especially today. "You sure?", you looked away, down into the abyss, nodding, feeling bad for turning him down, "Well… Alright… But promise me somethin'."

You hummed, slightly interested in what Dave was going to say. "N/N," he cautiously reached his hand towards you again, this time squeezing your shoulder, you glimpsed his way, he had your attention, "try to take care of yourself. And I mean it, I'm worried 'bout you.". You sighed, were you really looking that bad? You never wanted to cause the crew any distress with your own problems. Yet there you were, being fussed over by the last person who needed to be worried about you.

Nodding your head, you hesitantly reached for his hand, "You don't have to worry about me, Listy. I'll be fine.". "You don't sound too convincin'… But… at least try to finish that plate, ok?", you huffed, of course he had something to say about it. "I'm working on it, just give me some time." you smiled shyly, waiting for where the conversation will be carried to next.

Smiling back at you, Dave squeezed your shoulder again, you could swear you had to be blushing at this point, but if you did, he hadn't made any comments, he never did, "I'll have to believe you then, won't I? Well, I should go and pre- Oh! I almost forgot, I've got you little somethin'!". You arched an eyebrow as he turned around, pulling out a little chocolate muffin, "Aw," you pursed your lips, "that's for me? Where'd you get it?".

"Kryten made them for us as a dessert. But after you left, Cat made up his mind 'bout sharin' and was dead set on keepin' all of the muffins for himself. I almost lost a finger when I was snatchin' this one away from him!" Lister laughed a bit at the last part, but knowing Cat, he probably wasn't joking. You reached for the dessert in his hand, smiling as you inspected it, not looking for flaws, but rather looking at it with fascination, "Thank you, but you shouldn't have, I'm not worth the trouble.". If only you knew that for him, you were worth every single one.

"I'll safe it for later." you set it down next to the plate, returning your full concentration back to Dave. "I hope you won't stop at just keepin' it for later." Lister chuckled as he patted you on your back for the last time, moments later excusing himself before stepping up. He turned to you once more before you would disappear out of each other's sight, you were no longer paying attention to him, but that didn't stop him from beaming at you, as you held the half-eaten plate in your hand once more.

#dave lister #dave lister x reader #dave lister x gn!reader #reader insert #red dwarf x reader #david lister x reader #david lister #lister x reader #tw anxiety #tw depression #this blorbo #this mf #this smeghead #there's not enough content out for him. there'll never be. he deserves all the love #I had to get this out before I got to requests. they'll come after the second part

[infinitymyth]

Whumptober prompts 4-6. 

Warnings 

- blood

- video recording

-slight panic and worry

- a slight glimpse of a caring hero. ( very slight)

-waterboarding 

- public recording

- gashes

- screaming

- dissociation 

- drugging/kidnapping

Villain collapsed on the couch, a deep gash on his side, blood seeping into his shirt and lightly staining his jacket. He threw his head back as he sighed, removing his shirt form the wound.

He grimaced as dried up blood and dirt fell onto the couch.

A knock sounded on villains door. The knob turning. A firm yet gentle knocking. Villain pushed himself upwards, zippping up the jacket, hiding the wound; opening the door.

Villain stood dumbfounded, looking at hero just standing at the door, his hand raised again as if he were about to knock a second time. Villain stared, ignoring the burning in his side. 

Villain would have laughed if it weren’t for the calamity of hero’s stance and posture. Hero put his hands into his pocket, walking into the archway. Villain stood nearly frozen, his foot stepping back without much consent.

“ the world knows that I’ve gone rouge, villain. Time to prove it to them”

A black cloth was pulled out of his pocket, hero rushing forward and dragging the suffocating material over villains nose and mouth. Villain fell to the floor, scrambling to get up, a glass vase clattering to the ground. Hero grabbed villains legs, dragging him backwards into the wall. 

Pinning the sluggish villain down with his hips. 

Villain screamed as hero’s knee dug into his sides, a wail echoing though teh apartment room.  The cloth was thrown harardly back over villains mouth, a wicked glint in hero’s eyes as he watched villain drop unconscious.

***

Villain woke up nauseated, the room spinning as it slowly came into focus. Villain could hear hero speaking in the back, though his voice sounded muffled and far away.

Villain blinked a couple more times, nearly using a hand to rub at his eyes. 

He jerked and his hands stayed limp at his sides, something pinning them down. Villain focused on the brown rope wrapped around his body, his feet tied to a chair. 

Hero continued speaking, lifting villains face to stare at a huge tv in front of them. Villain stared, his eyes going wide and unfocused as he tried to recognize his face. A tiny red dot and numbers slowly passing on the top of the screen. 

Villains eyes darted to the side of the room, his face filling with horror. 

“There we go! He’s awake now guys!” Hero said cheerfully, judging villains face to Turn back to the camera. Villains breathing picked up pace, his arms and hands sweating as all sensations flooded into his body at once.  the burning in his side, burning with a hellish fire, his head pounding and every sound around him intensified. His mouth was dry as he watched his own fear appear on the big screen TV.

It took villain a second to realize that hero was still speaking to the camera. Sound fading as hero started to introduce “someone new.”

“ I want to humiliate you like how you humiliated me, villain. I want to hear your screams and cries. I want you to suffer whole heartedly.”

Hero grabbed villain by the neck, cutting off his air supply. Hero watched as villain thrashed in his hold, his neck turning warm and blood pulsing to his wounded side.

Tears fell down villains cheeks as hero finally let go, bending down to grab a red bucket.

“ When you exposed me, it felt as if I were drowning, though I’m not a big fan of figurative language. So, I’m going to make you drown. I’m going to make you feel the pain that I felt… literally.”

Hero lifted the bucket and placed it on villains lap, villain slowly starting to plead before the pain began.

“ Hero- we can talk this out, wait wait-”

Hero grabbed villain  by the hair harshly to shut him up, shoving his head deep into the bucket.

The world froze, the icy cold seeping into villains bones, the chill a stark contrast to his burning, aching side. Villains mind blanked as he was pulled out the water, nearly out of breath.

he knew he shouldn’t, but he did. 

Villain screamed. His lungs and vocal cords straining from the effort. villain begged, crying out for all forms of mercy, languages bubbling out of his throat like curses.

“ P- PLEASE!” Hero dunked villains head back under, his lungs burning with the sudden influx of water into his chest.

Hero only gave a slight smile, keeping the camera recording and repeatedly dunking villains head into the icy water.

****

The bucket was finally placed onto the ground. Villains eyes vacant as the video was stopped. Watching as it was posted on some random website. He couldn’t remember even if he tried.

He stared at a fixed spot on the floor, thinking and feeling nothing.

Hero eyed villain wearily. Watching as villain shook repeatedly, his body racking with shivers. Hero placed two fingers on hero's throat, the villain flinching and looking at hero’s  blue eyes with his brown tired ones.

His eyes were rimmed red, his nose a rosy pink and stare vacant.

Hero noted the weak pulse.  Villain shuffled, watching as hero removed the restraints, hero stopping as he noticed a stain on one of the ropes, a dark red, on the rope.

Hero looked at villains side looking at the blood seeping  through villains jacket.

With a face full of concern, hero started to remove the jacket, looking at the terrible gash on villains side.

“ When… when did this happen?” Hero asked, his tone bordering the end of rage.

Villain only looked at the rope held loosely in hero’s hands, his brain fuzzy.

“ I didn’t put that wound on you. Who hurt you.” Hero asked, worry showing all over his face.

Villain stayed silent, hero cursing under his breath.

#whumptober2022 #prompts 4-6 #october #2022 #pain #whump #heroxvillain #hero villain #hero #villian

[brick1458]

A princess and her sheriff Chater 2 I will always be with you

( warning there is one scene that is about a mature content and should not be treated as a joke even though this is fanfiction meaning that none of this is based on like anything that really happened )

Maritime Bay, being that classic beach town, was known to be a little, how do you say it, fragile, when it came to storms. Little events such as rain would most of the times hurt the town, with tree branches breaking from trees, plants being destroyed, and the town becoming very dusty when the water dries up and leaves the dirt. Even when it got windy, somewhere in Maritime Bay, whether it be in the town, or on the outskirts, a tree, or some signpost would fall over, resulting in fixing and or in need of replacement.

Today was no different. Not even close due to the storm from last night. Torrential downpour turned into a brutal storm, with high winds, lightning, thunder, and even hail at the end. This resulted in Maritime Bay looking very disheveled. But, the town, being used to something happening whenever a raindrop shows up to the town, quickly took action, and Canterlogic quickly got its heavy equipment out to clear any fallen debris.

The town was now still, as the only sound was all of the townsponies helping clean up. There was no wind, not even a breeze. Only clear skies. With the integration of Unicorns and Pegasi, it made cleanup a lot easier. Being able to magically lift heavy objects was a lot easier than having seven ponies help hoist and monitor a massive crane to get the trolley back on the tracks, or a tree out of the way.

With the sun now high in the sky, and the town started to make more noise, caused two certain ponies, now newly lovers, to wake up.

Pipp opened her eyes slowly, met with beige fur and a little bit of aquamarine.

Hitch.

Pipp smiled and tilted her head up, looking around the room that was mostly in the dark. She slowly grabbed her phone that was hooked under her wing to check the time. 9:40 A.M. Pipp then took the opportunity to open her phone to see her notifications, noticing a message from Sunny, delivered past midnight. ‘Hey Pipp, Zipp got your message of where you are. I’m guessing you can see that it’s really raining outside. Don’t try to come to the Brighthouse, it’ll be too dangerous. Text us when you two wake up ;)’ Pipp smiled at the last part.

The four mares knew that Hitch liked Pipp for a while now, and always encouraged Pipp to make something happen. Sunny often reminded her that Hitch is not one to make bold moves. ‘He may seem like a confident go-getter, but trust me, if he really does like you, which he totally does, he’ll never muster up the courage’. Eventually Pipp told the girls that it was time she took charge. A great feature for her was that she was very confident. She had realized in life that you really just need to take your chances, don’t worry about what others' reactions might be when talking to them, or making decisions, or even how you live your life. It’s her life, and she didn’t tell others how to live theirs unless they asked for advice. On her social media, sure, she did have boundaries. She knew that the canternet could be a dangerous place to easily get canceled on, but other than that, off social media, she was set loose.

“Hey Pipp”. The sudden words surprised the pink mare, as she looked up to see Hitch

staring back down at her.

“How long have you been awake?”

“Like, maybe 15 minutes, give or take?”

Pipp shook her head. “And you didn’t wake me?”

“I didn’t want to disturb you. And… I was comfortable watching you sleep. It reminded me just how beautiful you really are.” Hitch smiled when stating the last sentence.

“Well now, it seems that all of your nerves have gone back down to normal.”

“For now.” Hitch noted, causing Pipp to chuckle. “Are you hungry?”

Pipp nodded.

Hitch just smiled and decided to unravel himself from the mare, getting out of bed, putting his hoof out to stop her. Saying nothing the stallion left the room, and Pipp waited in silence, electing to go on her phone to go on Ponygram. The sudden smell of food being cooked filled her nostrils, something cake like, and coffee. ‘Yum’.

After a few more minutes, Hitch came back with a tray on his back, on it were an assortment of things. Waffles decorated with strawberries and raspberries, a bowl of fruits, orange juice, coffee, a glass jar of pure maple syrup, oatmeal, and cereal with a glass jar of milk waiting to be poured. It looked straight out of a commercial on TV. Everything was organized and sorted accordingly. Hitch came to Pipp’s side of the bed, setting the tray next to her lap, so when Hitch re-entered his side of the bed, it would be in-between them.

He gave her a knowing look, as she looked like she was ready to drool. “Dig in Pipp.” Immediately the mare did what she was approved to do and got a fork and knife and started towards the waffles. When the first bite hit her mouth, she realized it didn’t even need syrup. Her eyes widened.

“Oh my stars, Hitch, this is amazing!” She exclaimed with a mouth full of food. This caused him to laugh. “I can’t cook to save my life!”

Hitch took that as an opportunity to jab her. “Well guess we have that sorted out on who is the better cook.”

“Har har sheriff.”

Hitch took the cereal and poured some milk in the bowl and started eating himself. The two sat in silence, enjoying the food that the stallion brought, occasionally making eye contact and smiling. When Hitch was done with his cereal, he took the bowl up to his muzzle and drained the milk, with a little bit of it accidentally dripping to the side of his mouth, causing a giggle to emit from his left. She took the opportunity to make an interesting move on Hitch before he could pick up a napkin.

Giving him a seductive look, she leaned towards him, lolling her tongue out and giving the side of him a good lick, cleaning the stained fur, now milkless, replaced with the dampness of Pipp’s tongue. When she pulled away, she saw Hitch’s face change. He was shocked at first, not expecting this from such a posh pony, and when he thought it couldn’t get any more surprising, Pipp suddenly had a very small yet cute burp. Light and almost silent. This caused her to put a hoof up to her mouth, eyes widening in shock, her face very visibly red for having a pink coat. “Oops, sorry” Her ears now flat against her head, a shy smile on her now, all Hitch could do was laugh, to which Pipp joined.

Finishing up their breakfast, Hitch put the dishes in the dishwasher, and they headed out, their destination set to the Brighthouse.

But, when the two smiling ponies got outside, the town’s condition had other plans. While most of it was much better than in the early morning, it still needed help. A big lead in the cleanup operations was Hitch.

He looked over to Pipp, who was looking around at all the debris. “Hey, go ahead of me, I’m gonna quickly make sure that everything is being taken care of. I should only be an hour or two, oaky?”

Pipp smiled at the stallion’s commitment to being a worthy sheriff, and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Don’t be too long, okay? And stay safe.”

Hitch nodded at the last part. “Of course.”

Pipp took one last look before extending her wings out and lifting off into the sky, slightly startling the stallion from the sudden whoosh. ‘That’s gonna take some getting used to.’ He quickly shook it off and headed to the main point of town, set to find any ponies that may still need a helping hoof.

When Pipp got to the Brighthouse, she saw that it was mostly cleaned up from the debris and flew to the main door. Opening it, she saw the three mares that lived with her in the house. They were congregating at the kitchen table, now directing their attention to Pipp. They all smiled. “Pipp you’re back!” Izzy exclaimed. “How was your night with your new man, huh?”

“Oh nothing much Izz, but We did have an amazing breakfast. He can cook!” The girls laughed at this.

“What’s on your mind though Pipp. Now that all the dust has settled, how do you feel about this?” Sunny asked. Pipp knew Sunny meant nothing by it, wanting the best for both of her friends.

“Well as we all expected, he was a mess in the beginning of our little hang out. I have to say while I’m sad we didn’t make it here, I’m glad how it all turned out. Hitch is… just what I need, now that he is comfortable with me. It feels like I have no limits when with him. He makes me feel safe to do and say whatever I want.”

“Oh Pipp I’m so happy for you.” Sunny said, giving Pipp a hug. “Just know this. Hitch is a very nice and loyal stallion. I know him down to the tee, and he will never let you down or betray you or do anything shady on you. You just need to make sure that you do the same and be your best you for him. I’m not saying that you won’t, but I’m just telling you what to expect, which is nothing but the best.”

“I know, and thank you Sunny for telling me that. You’re right, I know Hitch would never do anything like that, and it’s nice to hear it coming from you, being his childhood friend and all.” Sunny smiled.

Zipp on the other hand had other plans. While she loved Hitch like a brother, would defend him to the end of time, and always be there for him, she knew that she needed to have a one-on-one conversation with him.

As if on cue, Hitch briefly knocked and stepped into the Brighthouse, looking at the mares, smiling. “Hey girls, what’s good?”

Pipp turned, smiling “Hey there sheriff.” she said in a soft tone, biting her lower lip for a split second, causing the stallion to become a bit embarrassed.

“Hitch, just the stallion I need. You think you can help me with something at the edge of the outside of the Brighthouse?” Zipp asked immediately when she got the chance. Better now than never.

“Yeah of course!”

When going outside, Zipp instantly cut to the chase.

“Okay look. I’m really glad that you and Pipp finally decided to take your relationship up a notch but I just need to give you a fair warning. You know, classic sibling talk. Pipp may seem very posh and forward and confident, but let me tell you, she was not at all that before you Sunny and Izzy came into the picture. All she had was her fans and the canternet. She never really talked to her fans directly but one day… she decided to look into her DMs, because I upset her…” Zip was silent for a few moments, her head hung in shame, ears low, a pained look on her face, attempting to hide it from the sheriff. Hitch, being trained to notice changes on the fly, noticed immediately.

He was going to apologize, wanting to tell her that it’s not her fault, that it’s in the past, and clearly Pipp forgave her, but Zipp finally continued. “When scrolling she saw the usual, ‘hey how are you, I love you, Pipp Pipp Hooray,’ the classics. But there was one that caught her attention that wanted to make sure that she was okay. Same age, stallion, good looking, good reputation… Unfortunately, she fell into his trap, responded, started talking to him, and things took a turn for the worst. Long story short, he asked her for inappropriate photos. She almost did send them but luckily she went to mom because of how mortified she was with herself and got the situation dealt with.”

Hitch didn’t know what to do whilst listening to this. First, why was Zipp telling such sensitive information? Was she trying to scare him? Also, why was she suddenly acting like he was a threat? Maybe she wants him to know that she will always be there to protect Pipp? Lastly, who was this stallion! Hitch knew that he would gladly break the law and dishonor his badge to teach whoever that colt thought he was a serious lesson. Not just because it was Pipp, but because it was in a way sexual harassment, to which the law had zero tolerance for.

As if she could read minds, Zipp continued with a look of reassurance. “Don’t worry Hitch, the stallion was dealt with, fined, given a restraining order, and restricted from attending or being near any government gathering or building of Zephyr Heights unless it was the city hall. I don’t mean to upset or scare you but let me explain. Pipp ever since has hidden that away and has become a more outgoing pony, being more of a flirt, not afraid to make others uncomfortable. It took her so long to come back around to being her normal self before even becoming near the way that she is now. If they can handle her attitude towards them, then they’re good in her book, which has proven to work, oddly enough… What I am saying is… don’t hurt her. Because if something happens, I don’t know if she’ll ever be the same. I know you aren’t going to, but seriously, if you don’t think you can handle this, or see yourself with Pipp forever, then don’t go through with it. Call it off right now.”

They stared at each other for seconds, feeling like minutes.

Zipp then put on a very serious and intimidating angry look. “And don’t you EVER think that I won’t interfere if something goes wrong. I don’t care who’s fault it is, yours or her’s, I can’t see Pipp like that again.

Hitch finally spoke. “I’m not going to abandon Pipp. I wouldn’t have gone into a relationship with her if I couldn’t see her in my life to the end.”

Zipp eventually relaxed her face. “Okay bud. I believe you… Thank you. I trust that you won’t go back on your word… She really does adore you you know.” Zipp started to turn around to the Brighthouse.

But as quickly as she did, she turned back around, also suddenly mentioning a fact that Hitch also thought about. “Oh, don’t forget, Pipp is the most famous and well-known pony in Equestria. She has higher status than me and my mother combined. Be ready to be a lot more popular when others find out."

Hitch chuckled. “Yeah, I thought about that. Worth it.” His simple response got a laugh from the snow-white Pegasus.

“You do also know that Pipp has fangirled about you for a while, right?”

This statement stopped Hitch in his tracks. He felt like he already knew that, but hearing it from somepony else… “Really?” Zipp Nodded.

“Yeah, she couldn’t stop talking about you. She always wanted to just keep talking and talking about you, to the point where I had to bring something else up just to force her to think about more than one thing.” This caused a laugh from the sheriff.

Zipp kept going, further resulting in Hitch’s laughter. “Sometimes she’d talk about you for so long when it was just me and her at dinner, that I had to remind her to continue eating her food!”

“Wow, that’s great, haha!”

“What also really got me was the time we were at the noodle shop in town for lunch, and you showed up for a lunch break I think.” Hitch nodded enthusiastically, remembering.

“Oh yeah! I was on break, yes. It was just you and Pipp that time, correct?”

Zipp nodded. “Yup! Of course, she had mentioned your name a couple of times while we were eating, and she saw you walk by. You hadn’t seen us yet and she flipped out. She literally told me in a whisper to act normal, as if I wasn’t already, and of course, she failed miserably, slurping her noodles in the loudest way possible. I remember, not only did it get your attention, but the entire shop’s too!”

Both ponies bursted out laughing at the expense of the princess. “Wow, I did not know that Pipp was so… all over the place about me.”

“Yeah, well like I said, she really has her ‘act how you want and don’t care what the other might think’ and ‘if they can handle it then they’re good’ attitude. But a few times when it came to you, she just… lost it.” Zipp was now smiling at Hitch, as he smiled brightly at the last part of what she had mentioned to him.

As Zipp turned back around, Hitch followed her to the main doors to the Brighthouse, and when getting back through said doors, the two ponies saw the other three on the couch talking. Hearing Hitch’s name told him that they were gossiping.

When they joined, Sunny decided to put Hitch on the flame. “So, sheriff, care to explain anything?”

“Actually, I want to know how you guys figured it out with Pipp.” Hitch butted back, Uno Reversing Sunny’s question.

Sunny decided to answer Hitch’s question, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight, adding a bit of spice to her answer, as it wasn’t supposed to be her on the hotseat. “Well, you acted so much differently with Pipp around, often directing your conversations towards her, standing with her, helping her, and always lending a hoof when needed, that it started becoming obvious. Your mood was always a little bit brighter when with Pipp or whenever you were doing anything that involved her, always laughing with her or, I don’t know, being more gentle with how you acted and talked, if that makes sense? Oh, and also, I may have looked into your search history on Ponygram when you left your phone on when you went to go use restroom one time.”

The last part got Hitch. ‘I really need to remember to turn off my phone when I put it down.’

Okay, well, since you answered my question, I’ll answer yours. I… really can’t describe my attraction towards her. Sure, there’s definitely a physical attraction. I’ve never seen a pony so beautiful in my life before you Sunny.” This caused Sunny to embarrassingly look away. “I just love the fact that Pipp is so smart and loves to be playful yet serious, fun yet organized, she’s outgoing, and a little bit reckless, but also self-sufficient. She has her whole life together better than me, even if she says otherwise and disagrees. She checks all of the boxes and more… She’s… truly a vision to me.” The last part got everypony’s attention, getting an aww from Sunny and Izzy. Hitch literally just poured his heart out on how he felt about Pipp. Maybe that storm was really a good thing after all.

“So… what now?” Izzy asked.

“What do you mean?” Pipp responded back, wondering what that meant. After all, with Izzy it could mean a million things.

“Does that mean you’ll move in with Hitch?”

Hitch was about to respond, but Pipp answered first. “Well, eventually I would assume yes, but as Hitch mentioned, we’re gonna take it slow. So, no, I’m gonna stay here until Hitch feels comfortable.” She concluded. Hitch couldn’t have said it any better if he was being honest with himself.

“Yay Pipp stays with us!” Izzy shouted, causing all the other ponies to laugh.

A sudden ring from Sunny’s satchel went off. Her phone. She pulled it out, seeing the time. “I better get going to my smoothie stand. I’ll catch you guys later, okay?” Everypony nodded.

“Yeah I better go too, I gotta meet my mom for some royalty training.” Zipp said, slightly straining on her words.

“Ooh, that reminds me! I’m gonna go to the local shoemakers to see if anyone can help construct a little kitty pool for us!” Izzy chirped, flying out of her seat before trotting to the door.

All said their goodbyes, waving off.

This left only the two newly colt and filly friend couple to themselves in the Brighthouse. “Well, Hitch, what do you want to do?” Pipp asked, turning towards Hitch, walking up to stand next to him.

“Well first let me say that I’m happy that you want to take things slow. It’s very mature of you.” Pipp blushed, ears slightly lowering with a smile on her face. “And by the way, I know this isn’t slow but, I’ve already made my mind up, you can stay with me whenever you want, and whenever you are ready to permanently move in with me, just let me know.”

They stood there, happily looking into the other’s eyes.

“As for what we should do now… I’m not too sure, but whatever we decide, we’re gonna have fun doing it together.” Hitch concluded, making a move and leaning down to tenderly kiss her, who welcomed the kiss without a single notch of hesitation.

[kiptsune]

Poor Zipp all alone, nobody to rub his back when it hurts and go for snack runs when he gets cravings. Also, nobody to care for him when he’s suffering from morning sickness. Do smeeting Irkens get morning sickness?

The nausea is definitely real!!  Worse than being lonesome though is definitely being alone and not knowing what’s really coming.  He’s used to being alone... but he’s not really used to feeling helpless.

He’s trying to race the clock to get to a Vortian space station so at least he’ll be at a port or something, but he knows he’ll be due well in advance because he has to steal PAKs from the Empire first.

Loneliness aside, he has a pretty pleasant time giving birth.  He relaxes in the nest he’s built, he’s installed the right tools in the ship’s computer to install the PAKs, the computer itself has enough of a personality that they just lightly joke with each other whilst trying to be patient.  The contractions hurt far worse than the smeets do, so he just breathes them out over the course of a few days, getting to meet all his cute new little traveling companions one by one.

#zipp #original character #lore #birth #labor #pregnancy #nausea #good lord it's like 5am WHY AM I AWAKE #Anonymous

[pastelponyparade-a]

@reginoctis​ plotted starter

“Ugh this dream again? come on brain why do you have stick me with the worst dreams when I sleep. Well bring it on doubts.”

As the pegasus spoke shadowy figures resembling her mother and various other pegasai would appear and start all speaking in unison that Zipp was a failure of a daughter and an even worse princess. Covering her ears Zipp would try and pretend it did not bother hoping to wake up soon like last time.

“Come on Zipp just ignore it! You’ll wake up soon on your own or Pipp will shake you awake.”

#( zipp storm; ic ) #( zipp storm; verse one ) #( going off her being aware she's asleep since Luna appearing and likely influencing the dream )

[hidiingplace]

TODD REBANE + DIET.

general. i’ve touched on Todd’s diet a few times in threads and chatting with partners but somehow failed to actually make this an official HC? So anyway! Here’s some little facts and tidbits about Todd’s diet and his eating habits.

vegetarian. Todd eats a mostly vegetarian diet, with the occasional meat thrown in there if it’s something he really enjoys. Todd’s vegetarianism, despite what people might think, is not linked to animal activism at all. Todd’s vegetarianism was more of less forced upon him due to the circumstances of his life when he ran away from his last group home and became homeless. Access to good meat that wasn’t days old was slim to none, and after Zipp came along, any meat he found that was half decent when to him. When Todd and Ira met and began to date, she too was vegetarian through circumstances rather than choice, so they simply continued on like this. Once Todd was making money and could afford meat, both him and Ira tried it, only to find that their bodies basically had an intolerance to it for not eating it for so long. In short, the pair end up remaining vegetarian for the sake of their bodies more so than desire. Todd complains about this right up until the age of about 16/17 when he actively begins to become more healthy. He quits smoking, and leans into the vegetarian thing by trying to get himself a more balanced diet that will help improve his performance as the Fox. Todd will occasionally indulge in meat from time to time, but it’s a rarity and only done if he’s craving a specific dish or if he has no option. He always has meat in his fridge and freezer though, and he has no problem cooking it! This is because Zipp’s diet requires a little bit of meat protein. So if you come over and hate his vegetarian food, he has no problem cooking you up some meat from Zipp’s stock. 

eating habits. Todd’s eating, much like everything Todd does, is chaotic and sporadic. He tends to go full days without meals if he’s not paying attention to it. He will also fluctuate between eating a lot and eating a little. This is specifically something that happens because of his mental illness. When depressed, he’s more likely to eat more and when he’s manic he’s more likely to not eat for a few days straight without realizing it. When he’s feeling fairly neutral, his eating habits are no less chaotic but are at least not so extreme. He will eat when he’s hungry, but his hunger is not a consistent thing in the slightest thanks to the conditioning of being homeless for a period of time. Todd is very good at ignoring his body’s signals such as pain, and yes, even hunger. Todd also consumes a hefty amount of energy drinks, which can suppress your appetitive depending on the type you’re drinking. Todd really loves to be cared for and fawned over in a loving and affectionate way. So offering him food or simply bringing it over to him while mentioning that he hasn’t eaten in awhile or thinking that he might have been hungry is a sure-fire way to get him to eat something (unless he’s manic). 

drinking habits. Todd has two things he consumes the most; monster energy drinks and water. It’s not all that common to see him reach for a pop or some kind of juice. Todd’s a card holder for the insomniacs and gym-rat clubs, so his drinks need to either a) keep him awake or b) keep him hydrated. When it comes to alcohol, Todd favours beer and shots mostly. He’s not a heavy drinker by any means, and he doesn’t use substances to be able to ‘escape’ anything in his life despite being riddled with trauma. Both his biological parents are addicts, his father is in recovery and his bio-mother is still an active user. Before knowing this, Todd wasn’t overly cautious about drinking or drugs, but after learning about his parents he struggles to be able to ignore the potential for him to slip into addiction himself. Not only that, but his step-sister is also a recovering alcoholic. Around family he WILL NOT DRINK ALCOHOL. Before visiting family HE WILL NOT DRINK ALCOHOL. He will still get drunk and enjoy partying with friends, but after he turns 20 he definetely eases up on his alcohol drinking.

#todd rebane ( general ). #todd rebane ( headcanon ). #( this one needed to be done !!! #PAINFUL ONE WILL BE POSTED NEXT ) #alcoholism mention tw #addiction mention tw #bad eating habits tw #food tw

[sapphicscholar]

A/N: For @performativezippers - hope you're starting to feel better, friend!

HELLLOOO! I'm back from the world of PhD applications--a little sleep deprived and so much poorer than I was a week ago, but back! And overjoyed to be done with that process! I'll be taking some time to get out a nice long update for Undercover(s) and to work on my Secret Santa prompts, but then I'll be getting back to pull a few from the queue that have been waiting. But I've also got 2 AUs in the works, one of which has been plotted and planned obsessively for about 9 months now, so they'll be taking more of my time and attention for a while because damn I do love a good long-form AU...

Hilariously, this story is plucked from my real life. Except I didn't meet Alex Danvers; I met a very flustered, awkward, burly security guard. And Zipps mentioned my life might make for a pretty cute Sanvers story. So voila. Please enjoy.

Fun fact #2: Every title mentioned was plucked from the bibliography of my paper, so they all exist, and you too can find them in your local university library and have a go at finding love or just the awkwardness I did XD

Chapter Text:

“Excuse me!” Alex yelled at the student shuffling through the entrance without stopping by the guard desk.

“Hmm?”

They always looked so innocent, the impossibly frustrating “who me?” look, as she thought of it. As though finals week was the first time they’d ever been to the library. As though they didn’t know that ID was required to get inside. As though they didn’t notice the line of people waiting to flash their student cards to her before going in. “I need to see your ID.”

“Oh, I just need to return something,” the student replied, waving in the general direction of his bag like it held some magical proof that made him exempt from following the same rules as every other person in line.

“And I just need to see your ID,” Alex nearly growled, her tolerance for bullshit having all but disappeared over the past few days. She’d taken the guard job as a way to make a bit of extra cash, since her graduate stipend was livable, but didn’t quite cover some of the luxuries she’d come to enjoy: a nice bottle of whiskey, say, or a new leather jacket. And for the most part, it wasn’t a bad job. It forced her to go to the library most days, and early morning shifts left her with long stretches of quiet time to do her work. But when finals hit…suddenly the library was the hot place to be, and she was left feeling like Charon and Cerberus and Hades all at once as she ushered in awake, if anxious, students, only to watch them stumble out hours and sometimes days later looking like haggard shells of their former selves, their eyes dull and souls deadened.

With a show of huffing and grumbling and rummaging in his bag, which appeared to be full of crumpled papers and snacks that Alex just knew would end up leaving sticky residue all over whichever desk he used, the student finally produced his card, flashing it in Alex’s direction until she waved him away, satisfied that he was a student. The next students in line at least had the decency to have their cards out and ready, and a few even thought to say hello and thank her or wish her a good day.

Eventually the rush dwindled to a slow trickle of students, most of them having settled in for the evening. Alex listened as the antiquated intercom system crackled to life and one of the on-duty librarians announced: “This is a last call for check out. You have ten more minutes to bring any books to the check out desk. As a reminder, the front desk will be closing at 9pm sharp. Thank you!”

Over the next few minutes a few students came rushing out of the elevators and stairwell, piles of books clutched to their chests as they got in the line that had begun to curl around the front desk. She chuckled at the sight of one girl nearly too short to see over the stack of books in her arms staggering out of the elevator and toward the check-out desk. Alex most definitely did not find her gaze lingering on her ass—no, that would definitely be unprofessional, even if it was obviously an ass worth noticing.

As the librarians got everyone through the line, Alex wished the ones who decided to pull all-nighters back in the comfort of their dorm rooms and apartments a good night, pulling out her own work again when it seemed like she might get a few minutes of peace. Of course, moments later, the girl with the great ass appeared in front of her, the stack of books now crammed into an overstuffed backpack.

“Have a good night,” the girl called out, giving Alex a small two-finger salute that made her stomach flutter—not that she’d admit to a thing as childish and Kara-esque as butterflies.

“You too. Don’t study too hard.” Alex cringed internally; she never made small talks, and she certainly wasn’t the type to make dad jokes. Yet here she was. Doing both.

The shrill beep of the alarm going off when the girl walked past the sensors saved them both from having to either laugh off the lame attempt at a joke or come up with an adequate response.

“I swear, I went through, and they got all the books!”

“I believe you. Still need to go through them one-by-one, though,” Alex offered with a shrug. Some of the scanners were a bit old at this point, which meant she’d gotten used to the process of scanning the titles and the receipts, making sure they were all listed before she sent the students on their way.

“Oh, um, you know it’s cool, I can just work here.”

Alex cocked her head to the side; the woman looked oddly on edge, the easy way she had carried herself before replaced with a stiffness to her movements. “It’s fine, really. I’m not saying you stole anything! I just need to go through and check your receipt.”

“Yeah, but I’ve, uh, I’ve got so many books—wouldn’t want to bother you. You’ve clearly got homework too.” She gestured to Alex’s notebook, which was littered with complicated graphs and notes in a scrawl that Kara had deemed indecipherable.

“Seriously, it’s fine,” Alex insisted.

With a grimace of a smile, the student plopped her bag down on the edge of the desk and began unloading the large stack of books. Once they were in a neat pile, she handed over the receipt and turned her attention to the floor tiles in front of her. She wondered if they might do her the favor of opening up into a surprise sinkhole that would save her from this moment.

Alex spun the books so that the spines were facing her and began skimming the first title, pen in hand, ready to begin checking the books off the receipt. The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure. Oh. Hoping her cheeks weren’t already the same flaming red color as the book cover, Alex checked it off the receipt and moved it into a new pile, looking for the second title. Coming to Power: Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M. She heard the student clear her throat and caught sight of her fidgeting with the zipper of her leather jacket. Lesbian Erotics was up next, followed by Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex.

“It’s for a research paper,” the girl finally said.

“That’s what the kids are calling it these days?” Alex couldn’t help herself. It was joke about it or ignore the elephant in the room—or, even worse, accidentally risk letting slip some hint of the images that had filled her mind about all the ways they could perhaps practice lesbian eroticism and BDSM together some night, maybe in the stacks, not that it was a thought that had ever flitted through her mind during exceptionally long, lonely night shifts. No, never.

The student relaxed at that, arching an eyebrow playfully as one side of her mouth curled up into a wicked smile, bringing out dimples that had Alex biting at her lower lip. “Mm, I prefer to be direct. Otherwise you end up with girls who didn’t realize the flannel and the flirting and the winking meant that what I called a coffee date really was a genuine date.”

“Not just two gals being pals?”

“Exactly. I’m Maggie, by the way. Maggie Sawyer.”

Alex nodded, like she hadn’t already looked at her name on the receipt. “Alex Danvers. Resident library security guard.”

“That title come with cuffs and everything?”

“Tragically no. Just a panic button that I don’t think even works.”

“Very fancy. They really went all out, huh?”

“Only the best for us guards.”

Maggie smiled and let Alex get back to work, finishing up with her stack of books. After a few moments, though, the silence got to her. Gesturing at the large textbook, Maggie asked, “Bio major?”

“Uh, bio-engineering, actually. Grad student.”

“Impressive. Sorry, didn’t mean to mistake you for an undergrad there,” she laughed.

“Oh, you’re fine,” Alex brushed off the apology. “I mean, by my age, I guess I really should still be an undergrad.”

“One of those child prodigies, then?” Maggie teased, though, given the look of the notes in front of Alex, she wasn’t exactly joking either.

Alex shook her head. “More like summer classes and a desperate need to live up to my mother’s impossibly high expectations.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Very. What about you? Undergrad?”

“Senior,” Maggie answered. “Had space for a few electives, so…” she trailed off, gesturing at the stack of books in between them. “Thought it would be fun to take a sexuality studies course.”

“Is it?”

“It was.”

“Oh no, what happened?”

“Oh just a little thing…you know, having to hand over a whole stack of books on porn and lesbian sex to a pretty girl…just a tad bit embarrassing.”

“I’m sure she’d tell you it wasn’t embarrassing.” Maggie looked unconvinced. “Or that it was just as embarrassing for her as it was for you.”

“Could I maybe make it up to her?”

Feeling a rush of boldness that could have come from the days of built up sleep deprivation, or the rather X-rated image flashing up at her from the next cover in her stack, or the sight of a very gorgeous woman flirting with her, Alex smirked up at Maggie. “Gonna impart all the lessons you learned from this—what’d you call it again? Research?” Alex teased, finding herself beyond pleased at the throaty laugh that spilled from Maggie’s lips and drew the ire of a student just trudging in from the night, ID card clutched in fingers turned red from the cold.

“I was thinking coffee, but I’m not opposed to, as the kids call it, Netflix and chill-ing.”

“Why don’t we start with coffee and see if you can’t entice me with all the thrilling facts you learned…”

“Challenge accepted, Danvers.”

#sanvers #fanfic #college au #meet cute #alex x maggie #supergirl #alex danvers #maggie sawyer #ao3feed

[ii-thiscat-ii]

Part two of what turned out to be three. The last will be up shortly. Have the rest of Incandescence.

Part one.  Part three.

On Ao3

Oskar pulled at the collar of his shirt with one hand while the other was kept responsibly on the wheel of the car. The tie might have been tied a little too tightly, but he was almost at his destination, so he would wait until he was there before adjusting it.

Placing the hand back on the wheel where it belonged, he went through his breathing exercises. Breathe in, four seconds, hold it, seven seconds, exhale, eight seconds. Repeat. He was fine.

Breathe in.

He was a simple inspector, making a visit to a lab on behalf of the sponsors, just to make sure it was actually doing what it had been hired to do.

Breathe out.

Not a federal agent at all, oh no.

Breathe in.

Because there certainly had not been an anonymous, untraceable leak exposing large amounts of a large criminal syndicate’s communications without alerting them. What a ridiculous idea.

Breathe out.

And he was definitely not Oskar Rasmussen, intelligence officer. He was John Zipp, Mafia enforcer and currently inspector, going to take a look at the progress of the project the bosses had commissioned, and he was perfectly calm.

He flexed his fingers on the wheel, then brought one hand up to his eyes. It did not shake even a little.

Just to make sure, he touched his fingers to his throat. His pulse was perfectly calm and steady.

He put his hand back on the wheel again. Did another breathing exercise.

This was good. He was good.

The researchers already knew he was coming. The bosses had sent them an e-mail about it, just a few hours ago. Soon enough that they could be there to welcome him, but not enough to hide away any mistakes. Perfect.

It would all be fine. All he needed to do was go there, talk to them, demand they showed him everything, and explained it too, and hopefully no one would have to get angry, yes? No reason to be upset. They’re doing everything they’re supposed to be doing, yes? Now please show him more things, because they would, of course. Yes?

Yes. Good.

He drove up and parked right in front of the door of the innocuous building, and took a moment to adjust his tie before he got out of the car. Showtime.

John Zipp walked up to the door and rang the doorbell.

It took less than a minute before someone turned the lock and the door opened. Inside stood a woman about thirty years of age, dressed in a sweater with the sleeves rolled up and with her hair in a ponytail. She looked nervous, but attempted to smile politely.

“Oh, hello,” she said. “I’m Doctor Ida Sheyenne. You got here alright?”

He nodded curtly at her. “John Zipp. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Right, right.” She nodded nervously and hesitantly stepped aside to let him past, smile still in place. “I know the place can be hard to find, though, especially with the roadwork that’s been going on lately, and with the roads all soaked from the rain-”

He brusquely pushed past her into the room. “I’m not here to small-talk, Miss Sheyenne.”

She faltered slightly. “Um, Doctor,” she said. “Doctor Sheyenne, please.”

He drew a breath, stopped, and turned toward her, looking her in the eye. “I’m not here for small-talk, Doctor Sheyenne,” he said. “I’m here to make sure you are doing what we paid you to do, or if there will have to be consequences, understand?”

She swallowed, then nodded. “Perfectly.”

“Good. Now, where exactly is this facility of yours?” He kept his body language to a minimum, and so did not gesture to the normal-looking residential hallway leading into a living room, which was mostly empty save for a few worn chairs that matched the faded wallpaper. Less body language meant less involuntary communication meant more control over how he appeared.

Sheyenne nodded again, and walked past him to lead the way to a door along an inner wall. She opened it to reveal a staircase going down, and flipped a light switch on the wall before she started descending.

“Downstairs,” she said over her shoulder.

He closed the door behind him as he followed. They passed a landing on the way. There was an entrance into a room containing a few tables with chairs around them. A few people sitting in the chairs looked up as he paused to have a look.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Oh, that?” She stopped at the edge of the landing, about to head further down, and leaned back to glance into the room. “Cafeteria and rest area for the people who work here. Further down is cut off entirely from all background magical fields and mindscape connections, and it can be distressing over longer periods even if you’re used to it, so we repurposed the old basement.”

“I’ll have a look later,” he said.

“Of course, we’ll want lunch,” she said. Then she resumed walking, and kept talking. “It has to be this far underground to be warded sufficiently. This spot is ideal, being about as far away from any major leylines as you can get in a populated area. It was relatively easy to isolate the sub-basement entirely.”

She gestured to some lines on the wall as they descended, and he looked closer to see that they were in fact the visible, runic parts of several high-level wards and containment circles. He knew enough about the subject to tell that they were professionally made and likely did what she said they did.

“So you’re hidden from any tracking methods down here?” he asked.

“Oh, I suppose,” she said. She stopped at the bottom of the staircase, one hand on the handle of the door there, and briefly furrowed her brows. “That wasn’t the original intention, as such, but yes, tracking something down here would be very difficult.” She shrugged. “Nothing gets through these wards.”

He gave another curt nod and looked pointedly at the door handle.

She seemed to remember herself, and opened it.

The corridor they stepped into looked more official than the homely building above. White walls lined with steel skirting. The doors along the walls looked like something out of a hospital. From what he could see, the sub-basement was much bigger than the area of the house indicated it should be.

Sheyenne hesitated for a moment. “I’m not sure where to start…”

“I want to see everything,” he said. “Start with what’s closest.”

She glanced at him and then nodded before she walked towards one of the closest doors. “In here then. The stasis room. It’s where we keep the bodies.”

He was glad she had her back to him, so she could not see the way he twitched at that. “…The bodies?”

She nodded without turning back to him. “We grow the bodies before we do the mind insertion. We do that in another room, further down, but when the accelerated development is complete, this is where we put them.”

She reached the door and held it open for him to walk in. He had luckily managed to blank his facial expression again.

It looked more or less like a hospital room without the privacy screens. There were five beds, four of which were occupied, with one a little separate from the others.

The figures on the bed were all human women, because that was what had been commissioned, he knew, and he carefully kept his emotions off his face at that thought. They were all young and relatively pretty, and all asleep, hooked up to various machines keeping them nourished and breathing. The separate one on the far left had more machines standing around the bed, and had a complicated harness around her head and chest in addition to the life support.

“You’re keeping them comatose?” he asked.

“Oh, not really,” she said. She gave a nervous little laugh. “This is why we have to be down here. They’re all soulless. Shells, at most. Without a mind and soul in them, they’ll just stop breathing if you leave them. You couldn’t wake them if you tried.”

Oskar nodded and breathed a little easier. He did not have a medical education, but they would not have sent him down here if he did not have basic knowledge, and he could read enough information off the instruments around the beds to tell that what she said was at least plausible. “That one?” he asked, nodding to the one in the harness.

“Right.” Sheyenne walked over to that one, relaxing slightly and smiling with a hint of pride now. “This is the one we’re currently prepping for mind insertion. It’s a complicated process, but within a few days we’ll hopefully have her walking and talking. We’re calling her Magdalena, for now.”

Oskar looked down at the shell Sheyenne called Magdalena and skilfully ignored the dread climbing up his spine.

“Just a few days?”

Sheyenne shrugged sheepishly. “Or a few weeks, it all depends. We want to see if we can learn more about what we did wrong with Eve before we start, you understand?”

The dread intensified. He looked up at her a little more sharply than intended. “Eve?”

She looked startled. “Oh. Eve is the first working prototype. She isn’t perfect, but that just means we have a lot to learn and improve on! I can almost guarantee Magdalena will work out better.”

“I see,” Oskar said. He forced his hands to relax at his sides. He was fine. Breathe in, breathe out. John Zipp would not be disturbed by this. “Do you still have her?”

“Yes, we do,” she said. “We want to see how long she’ll survive, now. It’ll give us valuable data. Um, we can go see her later. In the meantime, if you’ve seen all you needed to see here…?”

He glanced around the room again and nodded at her.

She nodded back and walked towards the door. “Okay, then we can go see the growth chambers, if you want.”

The life support monitors in the stasis room had been right at the edge of his medical knowledge. The operation and function of the artificial wombs and growth pods where they supposedly created the bodies was far beyond him, but he made her explain, and with the help of the two assistants already in the room monitoring things, he got a basic rundown of how the process went. Enough, at least, that he was convinced that whether or not they were truly soulless, as she said, the bodies were never awake and probably never aware.

Despite how disturbing it was to see them lie there as dead, he could admit that the medical applications of such technology could be astounding. Still, looking into one of the pods to see a human toddler strung up and still inside was decidedly uncomfortable.

It might be just as well that the thought of this Eve kept him distracted throughout.

He tried to supress the sigh of relief once they finally left that room. He let Sheyenne lead him on to what she called the mindscape labs.

Unlike the medical ones, the mindscape labs were mostly filled with various computers and machines Oskar could make neither heads nor tails of. A man of maybe forty years stood up from a chair when they came in and introduced himself as Doctor Garth Enns.

Oskar curtly introduced his cover before he said, “Now tell me what these things do.”

Enns nodded and turned to the machines.

Most of the explanations went over Oskar’s head, and would probably still have been too advanced for him even if the machines had been in use, which they were currently not, and, Enns said, would not be until they were closer to the next insertion attempt. From what little he understood, they were meant to see and manipulate objects in the Mindscape directly. Exactly how they did this past the wards was one of the things he did not catch, but it had something to do with virtual aetheric tubes, whatever that was.

Enns also followed them into the next room, where there was more medical equipment again, arranged together with more mindscape connectors around an operating table.

“This is where we do it,” Enns said. “The only reason most of the equipment is up right now is because it’s a pain to take down, but at least you get to see what it looks like when we’re using it.”

“The body goes on the table, I assume?” Oskar said.

Sheyenne nodded, and the two of them began to explain the process. Oskar listened with half an ear, nodding when it seemed like they expected response. He had most of the information he was looking for already. The place seemed to have no defence aside from staying hidden, though he would have to look closer into that to be sure. A team storming the place would not need any particularly heavy guns. The research itself was as of yet within the confines of the law, if narrowly, but if they succeeded, if they had succeeded, it would likely be a severe breach of several laws under sapient rights.

He dearly hoped they had not succeeded yet, no matter what they said.

They wrapped up their explanation neatly, giving him the impression that at least some of it was rehearsed.

“And you have already done this once?” Oskar asked.

“Yes. Eve,” Enns said. “Eve was… a success, of a sort, though not quite what we were looking for. We will do better next time.”

“What exactly was wrong with her?”

The two researchers exchanged a glance.

“We’re… not entirely sure,” said Sheyenne. “She seemed like she worked alright to begin with, but then she started fantasizing things, imagining things and confusing them for reality. Then she apparently decided that we were the enemy, and eventually she turned aggressive. Bit a chunk right out of someone’s shoulder. We had to restrain her.”

Oskar processed that. One thing about it stood out to him. “She spoke?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” Enns said. “Primarily English, but in the beginning, while she was still a little cooperative, we questioned her quite a lot, and she knows bits and pieces of several other languages. Probably it came with the memories we built her mind out of.” He huffed in apparent amusement. “If only that was all that had come with, things would have been easier, I imagine. At least we think we know what to look for now.”

“So you will be able to deliver the finished product relatively soon?” Oskar asked. Breathe in, breathe out. He did not care much for the answer, but it was what Zipp would say. He needed to stay in character.

The two of them exchanged another uncomfortable glance. Sheyenne shrugged apologetically when she looked back at him. “That isn’t really the only problem,” she said. “She’s also getting weaker.”

“Getting weaker?”

She nodded. “Yeah. She’s been refusing to eat, so in the beginning we thought it was just that, but we’ve been able to get her most of what she needs through what she drinks, and she’s still fading at a far too quick rate. Almost like something is stealing away her energy.” She shrugged again. “We don’t know, so we’re waiting until it comes to its natural conclusion and then we can cut her open and see what we can make of it.”

“I see,” Oskar said. He was glad the character he chose to play was one that kept his face blank and stern at all times, because he could fake that. Trying for anything else when he really just wanted to punch someone was unlikely to end well. “And you’re keeping her here?”

“Of course,” Sheyenne said. She glanced at Enns, who gave a small shrug, and looked back. “I know you wanted to have a look at her, but it’s about time for lunch. How about we take that first?”

Oskar raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want me to see her?”

At once, Sheyenne’s eyes widened and she raised her hands in a hurried denial. “No! No, that’s not it, it’s just… she’s not a finished product. She doesn’t look all that good, and I wouldn’t want you to draw any mistaken conclusions from looking at her, you understand?”

He hoped she was lying to him. He hoped so very much that she was lying to him.

“If you say you can fix the mistakes, I will believe you can fix the mistakes, Doctor,” he said, voice hard, “but if I have to go back to my bosses and explain to them that you had nothing at all to show me for all the money they have been throwing at you, they will not be very happy with you. So I will advice you to show me what you’ve got.”

Sheyenne took a deep breath, and said with a meek voice, “Yes, okay. It really is almost lunchtime, though.”

“Then we will have lunch,” Oskar said, “and then you will show me where you keep Eve.”

---

Lunch was an awkward affair. The scientists were too worried about him to make more than stilted half-attempts at conversation, and Oskar made no effort at acknowledging them.

There were other people in the room as well, eating or talking in low voices, and they occasionally sent glances Oskar’s way.

That was fine. He had no interest in putting these people at ease. He did not care to make friends here. The silence worked well for him. He was already drawing up the layout of the facility in his mind and theorizing at the best strategy for rounding up all the people and evidence in the most efficient possible way.

By the time lunch was over, he was almost surprised to see he was out of sandwich.

He brushed his hands off and stood up. “Well?” he said.

“Right.” Sheyenne hurried to stand, leaving the remains of her own lunch forgotten at the table. “Right, yes. I’ll show you.”

She started walking towards the door to the landing and once again he followed her. She nervously fiddled with her hands as she walked.

“It’s really more impressive than it looks,” she said. “We’re closing in on the end of her lifespan, I think. There isn’t as much left of her as there used to be.”

Oskar said nothing. They reached another door, pretty far into the sub-basement. He nodded towards the last few doors before the hallway ended. “And what’s in there?”

“Oh, nothing,” Sheyenne said. “We haven’t put them to use yet. I’m sure we’ll make plenty of them once we get further into the work.”

Oskar nodded and went through the layout of the place in his mind again to make sure he had it memorized, then looked back to the door they were currently standing in front of.

Sheyenne still hesitated. “We, um, we used to have a camera in here,” she said. “But she broke it. We think she might have realized what it was for. She hardly does anything these days, so we haven’t bothered putting a new one in.”

“Okay,” Oskar said, trying to communicate that she was being irrelevant. “Are you going to show me in?”

“Of course,” Sheyenne said, and opened the door.

The room was dark, with plain, sterile walls and a laminate floor. It was entirely empty, save for a single metal-framed bed along the opposite wall. Leather straps hung from the sides of it, evidence that someone had needed to be tied up, but right now they hung slack and empty against the floor, despite the shape lying on the bed.

She was a woman, almost definitely, with ghostly pale skin and dark, dirty hair. Maybe black, maybe dark brown; it was hard to tell in the dark. She lay straight on her back on top of the sheets, wearing a thin dress, possibly a hospital gown. She was completely still, facing the ceiling and with her arms straight and limp by her sides.

For a moment he thought she was dead, or uninhabited, like the ones at the stasis room. Then he thought she was sleeping. Then Sheyenne said, “Hello, Eve. I brought you a visitor,” and Eve turned her head to look at them, eyes open but empty, and he realized she was awake. Awake and staring at the ceiling in a blank room.

Eve did not answer, did nothing but stare at them as if they were no more and no less interesting than the ceiling.

Sheyenne did not seem to expect an answer, as she just continued without waiting for one. “This is John Zipp. He’s here to take a look at you. Are you going to be nice?”

Eve blinked, and turned back to the ceiling.

Sheyenne sighed, and turned to him. “Well, there she is. You can look if you want, but there isn’t much to see.”

Oskar was very glad the darkness hid his expression from her, because the current set of his jaw was not in annoyance. Instead of risking his voice betraying his emotions, he just nodded, and stepped closer to the bed.

Eve glanced at him again before apparently dismissing him as unimportant. He made sure to stop before he came within arm’s reach of the bed, feeling the need to give her some space.

There were marks down her arms, newly healed wounds, possibly scratch marks from nails. She was skinnier than the bodies in stasis, evidence of not having eaten. Mostly, she looked bad because she looked dead. Somehow she looked deader than the bodies did. They were empty, but cared for, ready to have new life put into them. Eve was withering away from the inside. Whatever life there had been to her was either hidden or entirely gone.

He needed to talk to her. He, not who he was pretending to be.

“May I have some time alone with her?” he asked of Sheyenne.

“Uh…” she answered, voice wavering, and a moment too late he realized what that had sounded like.

Whatever. Let her think whatever she wanted about John Zipp.

“Sure,” she said. “I, uh, I guess I’ll just wait upstairs? Just… don’t hurt her or anything. We still need that data.”

He nodded, and she backed out the door. He could not see her face against the light from the hallway, but from her voice he assumed she was at least mildly disturbed.

The door closed, and the room was once more plunged into darkness. He took out his phone and turned the flashlight on, putting it on the floor so it pointed at the white ceiling and illuminated the room. Then he looked back at the woman on the bed.

She had her eyes closed. Against the light, he realized.

“Sorry,” he said. “Is it okay if I sit down on the bed?”

She squinted up at him. There might have been a hint of curiosity in it that had not been there earlier. Then she closed them again and whispered, “I don’t care.”

He sat down on the very edge of the bed, careful not to touch her. “I’m not with them,” he said. “I know it seems like it, but I’m not. I’m lying to them. My real name is Oskar Rasmussen, and I’m going to get you out of here.”

Then, and only then, did she give him her full attention.

“Are you?” she asked, and it was not a whisper this time. It sounded vaguely accusing. She raised a hand and tapped her chest. “Will you get me out of this too?”

He frowned in confusion. “I’m sorry…?”

“You don’t understand,” she said, in a single monotone statement. She looked back up at the ceiling.

“No, I don’t,” he said. “So will you explain it to me?”

He would have said she stilled at his words if she had not already been perfectly still. Maybe she stopped breathing.

When she finally spoke again, she did not look back at him, and her voice was smaller, frailer. He heard hopelessness in it that broke his heart in two. “I have tried,” she said. “I have tried and tried to explain, but they never listen. They don’t care. They don’t believe me.”

He leaned an inch closer and his hand twitched in a need to comfort he was not sure would be well received. “I told you, I’m not with them. They told me what they did, but I don’t trust them. Please, explain. I need to understand.”

Her eyes reflected old, tired pain. She only ever moved her head and face, but it was enough to communicate as much when she turned back to him. Her next words were whispered again. “They stole me. They took me and broke me and locked me in this meat prison. I don’t know what I am anymore either.”

Bile rose in his throat at what she insinuated, and he swallowed it back down. It was increasingly clear that he had been right in assuming the worst.

“You existed before they tried to make you?” he asked.

“I did,” she said. “I remember. It’s real, no matter what they think. It still feels more real than this.” She closed her eyes, possibly trying to lose herself in memories. “It’s hard to describe the void in your words. It’s not physical like this place, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. The pastures are almost physical, though, by his power. It is more real than anything.”

He found himself nodding along. The scientists had said Eve fantasized, and that might have been what this was, but it did not feel that way. He wanted to believe her, if only because building a person that accidentally remembers being some kind of otherworldly being seemed less plausible than actually capturing an otherworldly being. On that note…

“They call you Eve,” he said, “but that’s just what they named you, isn’t it? Do you have another name for yourself?”

Her eyes sprung open in shock and disbelief, and she gasped, just a little. He was not sure the question warranted such a reaction, but she stared at him as if he had peeled his skin off to reveal her long-lost lover, so he figured it was important to her.

She stared at him for a long moment before she answered. “…I’m not sure I deserve it anymore.”

He sat back and tried a smile. It came out more like a forced grimace, and he quickly stopped. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“They put me into this,” she said. “They made me ugly and dull, and broken, and I don’t think it suits me anymore.”

“A name is for what you are on the inside, not the outside,” he argued, hoping there was something he could do to ease that pain of hers. This seemed like the right direction from her reaction, even if it was small.

There was a pained hope in her eyes, maybe a hint of longing, but still she said nothing. Scared, perhaps, that he was lying, or wrong.

He sighed. “I’m not sure if I should call you Eve. At least tell me what your name used to be?”

She drew a long breath, swallowed, and then, without blinking or taking her eyes off him, whispered very quietly, “Incandescence.”

“Incandescence,” he repeated. “That’s a beautiful name.”

A smile graced her lips. Just a small one, but it was real. “Thank you,” she said, voice filled to the brim with gratitude. “I think so too. The Master gave it to me.”

“The Master?” Oskar asked.

“Yes.” The smile stuck around as she once again retreated into memories. “The Master took me in, gave me a home and family. He smiled the most beautiful smile the first time he saw me, and I was so distracted by it all I didn’t know what to pick when he asked me what I wanted to be called, so I asked if he could find something that suited me and he picked that. I said that it was beautiful, and he said that then it really did suit me, and it was the best thing in the world. It was all the best and I wanted to stay there forever, to be his Incandescence forever. He’ll come find me.”

The last sentence was sudden and halting, as if it had been unintended. As if it had been a mantra, repeated so many times it came automatically. It took her smile with it as it ended.

“Incandescence…”

“He said he’d take care of me, that he’d look after me, keep me safe. He promised. I know he’ll come find me, he has to!”

“Incandescence!” He put his hand on hers reflexively, and she recoiled from the touch, her whole body shuddering before she shut it down again. He quickly removed his hand and apologized, then asked, “What is your master, exactly?”

“A demon,” she told him. “A strong one. He should be able to find me easily, but he hasn’t and I don’t know why.”

Oskar had to scramble to keep his emotions off his face. A demon. Gods. She had given herself to a demon and still thought it would save her. And he did not dare tell her otherwise. Not when it was the last bright spot she still had, even though any demon would likely have dismissed her as a lost cause from the moment she disappeared. All he could do was try to give her some hope.

“No one can find anything down here,” he said. “The place is warded tighter than a nuclear bunker. Even if he is searching, he wouldn’t find you here.”

That information was apparently too much for her to handle. Her face twisted through an array of unidentifiable emotions, most of which involved very wide eyes, and she gaped without speaking for almost a minute.

When she spoke, it was desperate and solid, accompanied by her hands clutching onto his shirt. “You said you were getting me out of here?”

He blinked once before he answered. “I- Yes. Once I leave this room, I’m pretty much done here. Just down the road there’s a base with a squad waiting for the information I’ve got. Within half an hour of me walking out that door we’ll be coming down on this place like divine judgement, and I’ll make sure we get you out of here when we do, I promise, Incandescence.”

“Half an hour,” she whispered, then said more insistently, “How long is that?”

A quick glance around the room confirmed what he already knew. There were no clocks there. After a moment of consideration, he unclasped the watch from his wrist.

“Here, I’ll show you,” he said, and she pulled herself up to watch. He pointed at his watch, digital, luckily. “You know how to read numbers?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Okay, well, these are hours and these are minutes. There are sixty minutes in an hour, so thirty is half of that. Look, the minutes are at twenty-four now, so after thirty minutes they’ll be, uh…”

“Fifty-four,” she said, and he blinked in surprise. “The fast ones are seconds?”

He blinked again. “Yes. There are sixty of them per minute. Uh. Click this button here to light up the screen, and try not to click any of the others, or you might change the screen. If you do anyways, holding this button in should get you back to the clock. Got that?”

“Yes,” she said.

He handed her the watch. “I’ll want this back later, okay?”

“Of course,” she said. Then she looked up from the watch in her hands. “Thank you, Oskar Rasmussen. Please come back quickly.”

“I’ll do my best.” He stood up and nodded at her. “Keep breathing, Incandescence. We’ll figure something out.”

He looked at her one more time before he left, sitting on the bed with the watch cradled in her hands. There was more life in her now than there had been when he came in, the echoes of a smile at her lips and a focus in her eyes. Still, her cheeks were sunken, her eyes bloodshot, and her hair dead and matted. She still looked dying, and he dearly hoped he could help her.

The door closed behind him.

He took the opportunity while he was down there alone to look through the last few doors, and confirmed that there was truly nothing behind them other than a bit of stored equipment.

It seemed naïve to him. Either these people truly believed they would not get in trouble for this, or they believed there was no chance of them being discovered. He was betting on the latter. Either way, they would be severely outmatched when he brought the team down on them.

He could not quite find it in his heart to feel sorry for them.

Making his way upstairs, he briskly told Sheyenne that he had seen everything he needed to see.

She half-rose from her seat before she stopped, expression somewhere between surprised worry and relief. “O- Oh,” she said. “Okay, good! Do you need me to escort you out?”

“I can find the door,” he said, and left before he could see her reaction. Either way she did not follow him.

He left the house and opened the door of his car with haste. Even as he started up the engine he was tapping away at his phone, making a call.

“Sir, I have all the information we could want. Yes, we want to get the strike team ready. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

---

Incandescence watched the numbers tick away.

The little screen was the only thing in the room that made light, and it was as weird and fuzzy to these senses as everything else, but that was not important.

31 minutes 44 seconds.

45 seconds.

46 seconds.

Were there really wards around this place, or was it just something Oskar Rasmussen had said? She was not sure.

On one hand, she wanted to believe it. She wanted to believe that there was a reason the Master had abandoned her for so long. On the other hand, she had never heard of any wards strong enough to keep her master out.  Maybe they existed. She was young enough to not have seen it yet. Or maybe Oskar Rasmussen was just trying to give her hope. It seemed as if he wanted to.

50 seconds.

She did not know.

He seemed like a good human. He had promised to come back for her.

(The Master promised to take care of her.)

54 seconds.

Maybe there were wards, keeping her hidden away. Maybe there was just dirt and stone, weighing on her even as the body choked the light out of her.

One way or another, he had promised to get her out. She wanted out. She wanted air.

32 minutes 03 seconds.

The screen went dark, and she clicked the button again to light it up. It did that once a minute. It took her half a second to react and click the button. She had checked. There were even smaller numbers than the seconds racing away in the corner. She thought she was getting faster at it.

14 seconds.

They ticked away, one by one. Each second exactly as long as the last. Not like she was used to.

Back home, in the Mindscape, time went in starts and stops. Sometimes it sauntered away, savouring each second like a breath of fresh air, pausing at the corners to contemplate itself. Sometimes, it leapt, sprung ahead like a spring lamb, ecstatic at itself and scattering seconds like dust behind it.

30 seconds.

Not like this.

31 seconds.

Never like this.

32 seconds.

This was strict, and cold, but in a way, she appreciated it. Everything down here was cold and wrong, unless it was hot and wet and even wronger, but the numbers on the watch at least made sense. At least they carried promise. They gave her something to focus on, something else than the hunger gnawing so deep she was afraid she would start consuming her own memories.

43 seconds.

44 seconds.

45 seconds.

The Master would come find her.

She had to believe that. She had to believe there was still light in the world.

In the meantime, Oskar Rasmussen might make good on his word, and get her out of this cold, wrong darkness, and into something else.

She held no hope that the something else would be any less wrong, but it had to be better than this.

33 minutes 00 seconds.

He had told her she still deserved her name. That it depended on her, not what she was wearing.

03 seconds.

The screen went dark again. She clicked it back on. At least this she had control over.

04 seconds.

Did she still deserve it?

The hunger ate at her. She did not know how much of her was left within all the wet and squishy things in this body. She did not know if there was anything left to put the name to.

08 seconds.

He had called her Incandescence. It felt… warm, and right.

She closed the eyes and recalled the feeling. It was a faint echo of the warmth she associated with her Flock, with the Master humming old songs and giving her ears a casual rub as he walked past, but it was warm. There had to be something left of her if she could still feel that warmth. She had to believe that.

She opened the eyes. The screen had gone dark again. She clicked it back on.

35 minutes 12 seconds.

Less than twenty minutes left. Incandescence waited.

36 minutes.

37 minutes.

38 minutes.

At 45 minutes 32 seconds, she heard a sound that was not the mortals moving around or talking among each other. At least she did not think so.

She froze up as far as she could and listened as hard as these ears would let her. A loud noise of something hitting something else. A door maybe? Raised voices. Heavy footsteps. Still far away, but getting closer.

She closed the eyes and tried to will the sounds closer.

They did come closer, getting louder and louder until they were right outside the door. Then it opened, and there stood Oskar Rasmussen, wearing different- no, wearing the same clothes, but with a vest of some kind thrown over them. He held a gun in his hand pointed at the ground. Beside him stood two other mortals, also wearing strange vests and with guns.

“I said I’d come and get you,” he said.

“You did,” she answered. She might have smiled. She held his watch out for him. “You can have this back now.”

He jogged over to her and took it back. “Thank you. Can you stand?”

Could she? She reached out for him and he took her hands to help her get up. Balancing on the legs was harder than it had been the last time they made her walk. There was less power in the body, but with Oskar Rasmussen’s help, she stood up and started walking towards the door.

“You’re barefoot,” he noted. “Unless we can get you some shoes we’ll have to carry you out to the car.”

“I can walk,” she said. She only needed to lean on him a little now that she had the hang of it again.

Around them, the other mortals with vests were hurrying in and out of various doors, talking into little receivers and searching the corners.

“You’ll hurt your feet,” Oskar Rasmussen said.

“I don’t care,” she answered absently. There were stairs. There were wards marked up on the walls of the stairs.

She held a breath as she climbed past the marks. She felt like there was something. Maybe a slight change in temperature, or pressure. Maybe a sound she could only barely hear. Maybe there was nothing but her own imagination.

“Were those the wards?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, we should be out of them now.”

“So it’s possible to find us now?”

He hesitated before he answered. “Yeah, if you’re looking. No one can be looking everywhere at once.”

“Right,” she said. The traitorous echoes of her twisted dreams still did not let go.

There was another door at the top of the stairs. She leaned heavily on him, having exhausted her little energy on the climb.

There was yet another door behind that one.

Then there was sharp sunlight spearing through the eyes, and an ice-cold wind registering through the feeble senses of the skin.

She tasted blood.

When she stopped walking, he picked her up and helped her into a car. His flockmates followed them, getting into cars and herding several of the mortals from her time in the dark into other ones. The mortals from the darkness looked confused and unhappy. Oskar Rasmussen and his flockmates looked determined and satisfied, for the most part. That was fine, she thought.

One prison down, one to go.

You’ve been abandoned. You’re going to die, the echoes of her dreams whispered.

She ignored them. It would be fine.

It had to be.

Next part >>>

#transcendence au #My writing #it is DONE! #Yuss!!

[performativezippers]

I’ve had quite a few people asking me on twitter and in the comments what my thought process was for writing Awake (which I keep calling Alive, LOL sorry). So I figured I’d write out what I did in case you’re curious. I mostly did this via voice-to-text while walking my dog this morning, so enjoy the ramble.

As soon as I saw the finale, I knew that I really wanted to address what happened in Venezuela because it was super fucked up. The writing didn’t make a lot of sense, and most of it was kind of out of character for Tennant. The whole set-up was that she couldn’t kill this one guy, but during the course of the episode, everyone kills a bunch of people. Including Kate. Makes no sense.

One thing that struck me was that I believe this is only Kate’s second on-screen confirmed kill, the first being the guy in the bottom of the boat with Lucy in Nightwatch 2. She’s shot at other people, but those are the times we see her bullets impact a person in a dead-sort-of-way. So her having to touch all these dead bodies in Venezuela, to kill one of the guys in the car with Tennant, having to ram her car into that other car, having to get herself out of handcuffs—all of that were new experiences for Kate. New hard, bad experiences. It was a rough trip, let’s say.

I didn’t like in the show that all we heard her say was “it didn’t matter why we were doing it, I didn’t need to know, I trusted Tennant, she’s family,” because Kate didn’t trust her the whole time, Kate did want to know what was going on the whole time, and then Tennant did all this terrible stuff to her. That was such an erasure of everything Kate went though, and I wasn’t here for it! There is angst to be had and god damn it, WE ARE GOING TO HAVE IT ONE WAY (CANON) OR ANOTHER (FIC).

Originally I thought that I would have all this in Kate’s POV, and then I thought maybe I’d alternate POV’s. But then as I was conceiving of the fic, I realized that I was most interested in Lucy‘s POV. In Kate’s POV, there wouldn’t be a lot of depth or complexity. You shouldn’t have betrayed me. You shouldn’t have handcuffed me. That was really upsetting so I’m now upset. There’s not a lot of curiosity, not a lot underneath the surface, or more than meets the eye there. That didn’t actually interest me that much, and I decided Lucy’s POV would be richer because she could be both really upset on Kate’s behalf and on her own behalf.

I was really fascinated by what it would be like for Lucy to not trust Tennant, and to feel betrayed by Tennant, because they haven’t played with that dynamic at all in the show. Lucy has always been her devoted mentee. There’s so much trust in Lucy for Tennant, and I was interested to see what the impact on Lucy would be if she had to stop trusting her.

When I was watching the episode, the thing with the handcuffs was really upsetting, obviously. The fact that Jane would do that to Kate, the logistics of how is Kate supposed to go to the bathroom?? The inherent danger the fact that people could’ve followed them—really, really upsetting. For sure. But the thing that impacted me the most was the scene with all the corpses under the tarps. Kate has just seen Charlie One, a person that she knows, dead. I’m not sure if she’s ever seen a dead person before, the body of a friend, someone she knows well. That’s so painful. And it was it was gross! There’s a piece of bone from his head in the pool of his blood. (I actually think realistically some of his brain matter would’ve been out, but I’m OK with the fact that they didn’t do that). But it’s graphic!

So she sees her one friend, dead, and she knows this is the last place her best friend was, and there are six corpses on the floor covered in tarps. It’s just such evocative imagery, it’s so upsetting. And Tori does this incredible acting job in that micro-scene where she’s pulling the tarps off the corpses one by one, where she somehow shaking and crying but not actually doing either. You can just feel it. It really hurts.

There’s that long horrible breath/pause before she takes the tarp off the last one, bracing herself for it to be Tennant. And then it isn’t. That immediately struck me as what the nightmares would be about. That peeling back, peeling back, peeling back, every time the tension just ratcheting up and up and up. This time it’s going to be your person, this time, this time, this time. I knew immediately that was going to be the crescendo of the dreams.

So then I had to figure out what happened before the crescendo. Originally the first line/framing was going to be “The nightmares change after Venezuela.” But then I realized that a much more interesting first line was “The nightmares change again after Venezuela.” More surprise/curiosity/depth there.

But then, of course, I had to establish what the dreams were at the beginning, and how they’ve changed in the past, oops. I have a friend who a couple months ago was telling me about how even as a little kid she had very adult nightmares. I don’t know what the content of them was or what they were like, but she talked about having a lot of trouble sleeping as a kid because of them. That gave me the idea for this originally, but then I had to figure out what would a child know about enough to dream it, but be too young to visualize safely.

That’s why so much of her nightmares are bodily, a because nightmares for many of us, for adults, are bodily (not able to run, stuck in quicksand, whatever). I didn’t focus on the stuff many of us dream about as adults, like embarrassment (being naked at school) or the unprepared dreams (final for a class we never took). They needed to be things that would be scary to a four year old, to a six year old, and little kids aren’t really embarrassed or unprepared. It’s pretty standard horror fare for a little kids, I think: the dark, monsters, being alone, fire, drowning. Of course because it’s Lucy, I want there to be lots and lots of water imagery, water everywhere. Plus corpses, and rotting. I imagine that most of Lucy‘s siblings are older than her, so maybe she watched a movie with a rotting corpse when she was very young, and it really stuck with her. The rotting, the decaying, the visual proof of not being alive.

So in her dreams forever there have been dead bodies and stuff, but they were always already dead. The crux for me was the realization that the first person she would see being killed other than herself was Kate. That would be the first time the dreams changed.

Watching Kate die instead of watching herself die—that’s so interesting to me as a way to demonstrate love. And I know that’s like super fucked up or whatever, but I was really curious about, for someone who’s been plagued by nightmares their whole life, what would being in love with a soulmate-type-person mean for you? What would it change? What wouldn’t it change?

So that’s how it came together. And don’t kill me, but at first, I didn’t plan on writing the second chapter at all. It was just gonna be a one shot that was honestly about love, because of the way the dreams changed, but also really just about Lucy’s well-being and the impact of Tennant’s betrayal on her. And then I decided that was too mean. I thought I was going to have her dealing talking about it with Tennant, but I realized that would be too far in the future. I don’t think she’s ready for that right now. She needs some time, to stop having the nightmares every night so that she could get some semblance of herself back. She needs to figure out what’s actually feelings of betrayal, versus what is left over fear from what happened. And I think Kate and Chase are going to be able to help her sort through that, although, of course, I think a good therapist could do wonders!

And tbh I don’t understand why Sam is joining the cast. I love the cast as it is. That’s one of the things that made me really not engage after the finale for a little while, this sort of disinterest in his character, and how he unbalances the gender dynamic. I’m worried he’s going to take some leadership and responsibility from Tennant, blah blah. And of course, I’m always worried that Yas is going to leave the show, #NoDiscourse.

But the fact that Sam was in Venezuela, that he just happened to be there, that he got the call to come help them, while Lucy was sitting at her desk, waiting for her phone to ring—so, so, so fucking scared—that was kind of beyond the pale for me, and I like thinking about how far beyond the pale it would be for Lucy.

The whole problem in the episodes is that Jane didn’t trust any of them with the truth, or care about Kate enough to keep her alive, but then she trusted Sam? That someone cared enough about Tennant to call Sam to keep her alive, but no one cared enough about Kate to call Lucy? To get Kate out of the hotel room? Fucked up.

So once Sam was there and I realized he could trigger a daytime activation of Lucy’s nighttime PTSD, the second chapter really came together. And that’s it!

I’m sure you didn’t care at this level of detail, but I have nothing better to do while walking my dog than voice-to-text all of my thoughts and feelings. Bye!

#awake by zipps #alive by zipps #ask zipps #in which i get too in depth about things you don't care about #ncis hawaii season 2 finale thoughts #how do i writing #kacy #kate whistler #lucy tara #ncis hawaii #ncis hawai'i

[meisteralready]

To live your life as if the world would die if you did not

Kick Zipps and broken shoelaces,

Discarded tires get new inventions,

They feel of something bigger,

The adventure of everything adult,

About a car and with a secret,

You fall in love with the smell of worn rubber

And the freaks of new radials

With chains and belts swinging,

Vaunt a deep sigh,

A swallowed tear or gasp...

Live Awake! This! ALIVE.

Revel there, mere mortal,

You magnificent bastard,

That you know living.

And shake yourself the honesty

Of truly knowing

That owning your own shit

Gives you humility

and love.

[kelpie-keeper]

Title: Harsh whispers of a different future pt 1 of 2 Rating: NC-17 Pairing/Characters: Yonekuni & Shirou Series: Sex Pistols Part of: Alt Universe Notes/Warnings: Rejection is hard to take, laughing at someone who has been rejected is the worst thing you can do. For someone who has never experienced rejection, Yonekuni is going to get the shock of his life which turns everything around. Will he be able to return where he’s supposed to? Idea based loosely on a side story in the manga “Menkui”  Please let me know how this turns out, I’m still suffering from writers block and I’m afraid that I screwed up on this >.>

Sunlight streamed through the window, broken up by the curtains that were only closed halfway, waking up one of the two that laid in bed.  He stirred, little movement as his eyes opened slowly before yawning and slowly woke.  He went to move, the arms around him tightened, smiling to himself as he remembered the night before.  His muscles a little sore, but he wasn’t going to complain.  The room was warm, a little too warm for him, though he wouldn’t complain.  Not when he had finally got to be with the one he loved.  Arms tightened around him again, the rubbing against his ass and the deep breathing against his neck.

Squinting at the alarm clock that stood on the nightstand, smiling to himself. If here to awaken a few days ago, he would have been in a rush to get ready for school. He would be urging the blond to get up as well, to make sure that they weren’t late. But they had graduated only a few days prior and had some time before they headed off to college. Tempted to just close his eyes and drift back off again, his hands rubbed the silk like sheets, soft under his hands and soothing to the touch.

“Hmmm, what are you doing awake?” A sleepy voice asked him in his ear, nuzzling into his neck. A suck against his skin, shivering as talented fingers slid down his body. Past his hips and down, around to spread cheeks. Parted, the feel of hard flesh rubbing against him, fingertips rubbing and he swallowed, trying to speak when tips of those fingers pushed inside.

“No reason,” a soft answer as he looked over his shoulder. A smile given to him, an awkward angled kiss that had him trying to catch his breath. “Well, if you don’t have a reason, perhaps I can give you one.” The smoldering look, fingers pulled away as he rolled on his back and pulled the blond on top of him. A deep chuckle, weight resting against him while his lips were stolen. The slight scrape of stubble against his chin as the blond slid down his body.  Blankets were grabbed and pulled over them, hiding away from the world as Yonekuni explored more of his body.

He thought that Yonekuni would never regress to the way he used to be when they were in school, before they were together.  Sure, he was used to the sarcastic way the blond would speak and the hesitant touches Yonekuni would give him in public.  A barely there touch, a brush of his hand against his skin was the subtle signs and he was used to.  He had gottened use to the idea of Yonekuni not really wanting to deal with anything that was male and though the blond had accepted him in almost everyway, the words that the heavyweight had spoken shook him.

Waiting for Kunimasa and Norio to show up at the agreed cafe later that day, their drinks placed in front of them, did they see something that was rarely seen in public.  They didn’t acknowledge the sound of chairs being pulled back as Kunimasa and Norio finally joined them when they, too, saw what was happening at a table near theirs.  Only watching as the man talked to the girl, hearing the confession of love and of asking them out.  Breathing deeply, Shirou heard the hesitation in the guy’s words, the stumbling and tremor in his voice.  Swallowing, he identified with him, could understand and feel for the man.  His heart when out to him when he saw the look of scorn on the woman’s face.  Her words laced with contempt, reminding him so much of the words that Yonekuni spoke.  Words aimed at him, hate and disdain of having to deal with him and other men.

He shook his head, though he no longer was on the end of such words, he wanted to go up to the guy and tell him that everything would be alright.

“Poor guy,” a murmur under his breath.  It was the chuckle of the one across from him and a shake of a blond head.  “He should learn not to ask a girl out who is out of his league.  It’s his own fault for being treated like that.  And if anything, he should have chosen a more private setting to confess.”

Pain that he thought he had gotten over rushed back at the callous words and all he could do was stare and swallow.  He never thought words such as those would hurt and to hear Yonekuni say them.  He swallowed before he spoke up.

“Ma-Madarame, you’ve never been rejected, have you?”

Grabbing his drink, taking a sip before setting it back down.  Shaking his head, a grin twitched at the corners of his lips.  Never having to deal with being rejected himself, though he gave plenty of rejections to those who approached him, all male of course.

“Do you know how hard it is to gather your courage up, swallow the nervousness you feel and confess.  It hurts so much to be rejected and laughed at.”

“Still, that guy should have been prepared for some sort of rejection.  Even if she was leading him on, she’s out of his league.  He shouldn’t have even tried.”

He knew he shouldn’t take those words personally, they weren’t directed to him.  They were Yonekuni’s observation and yet, he thought that if he were the one who was rejected.  If he didn’t try to keep the blond close when he came over when it rained, where would he be now?  Biting his bottom lip, worrying it before he excused himself and pushed back his chair.  Dodging tables, he made his way to the bathroom.

The three at the table watched as the heavyweight quickly left before two of the three turned to the third, the lightweight shaking his head.  ”Yonekuni-sempai, that was a little harsh of you.”  Norio scolded, handing the menu back to the waitress and faced the blond.  ”It hurts so much to be rejected and to laugh.  How would you like it if you were rejected like that then laughed at?”

A shake and a sigh, he turned his gaze away, not wanting to see the disappointment in the small cat’s eyes.  He didn’t think that his words were harsh and he thought he was speaking the truth.  But Norio’s words made him pause, just a little.  Never used to being rejected, always have gotten his way with both life and girls,  never would he have dreamed that rejection would hurt.  Barely remembering hearing Shirou’s confession that one night that changed everything.  The words spoken with hesitation, as if he was afraid.  In the back of his mind, a little voice urged him to apologize.  To admit that he was wrong and that he shouldn’t have laughed.

He would have, but pride made him stay in his place instead of going after the male.  Pride made him brush off words of concern.  ”Just think, Yonekuni.  Life is short and if those who were afraid to get rejected would never ask, life would be a lot different.”  His brother stated, setting down his drink.  ”Could you imagine if Fujiwara never told you that he loved you?  What would you do if you were in his position?  Think about it.”  He knew the nekomata wanted to say more and he would have, if Shirou hadn’t returned at that moment.  With a hint of read around gray eyes, they knew that the heavyweight wouldn’t have wanted to be used as an example.

As their food was delivered, the silence strained as they ate to the point that other conversations at other tables could be heard.  Feeling heated glances, a brush of a foot against his and when he looked up, it was easy to see the emotion behind Shirou’s gray eyes.  Swallowing and forcing himself not to look away, he wondered what he would have done if he were in Shirou’s position.  To lay one’s heart out on the link.  To be laughed at.  Turning his gaze from his partner down to his drink as he remembered the cruel way he laughed when Shirou told him that he loved him.  Mocking and degrading the heavyweight’s feelings for him.

The day wasn’t turning out the way he thought it would have and gave a silent thank you when Norio broke the tension with quick story that had them chuckling.  Chatting, awkwardness almost forgotten, the hand brushing against his and the tentative smile from Shirou, which he returned.  The incident nearly forgotten as they parted ways, the two heading off to the movie theater as planed.  He remembered Shirou had mentioned that he wanted to go out on a proper day with him and though he wasn’t one to act like a true boyfriend, he couldn’t help but give in to the wolf’s wishes.  Tickets in hand, sitting in the back row, he was glad that the lights were already dim and that he and Shirou were one of the few in the theater.

The hesitant hand on his, making him freeze and when Shirou pulled his hand back, he found himself scrambling to keep the male’s hand with his.  Under the cover of darkness, pulling Shirou’s hand closer and gently brushing his lips across knuckles, he faintly heard the sound of his name, giving into what he dreamed about when he first fell for the unknown male.

With his head bowed, chin almost to his chest while sounds were muffled by his hand that he kept clasped to his mouth.  In the dark of the theater, closing his eyes when the mouth pulled off though the weight against his leg remained.  Hand trembling, dropping from his mouth to the head in his lap when he felt the slight scrapping of teeth and the soothing touch of lips.  Fingers slipped through dark hair as Shirou nuzzled against him, snuffing hot air against his exposed skin.  Glad that the movie was loud enough, dark enough that no one could see as he pulled the wolf up off the cushion and onto his lap, glad that the armrests in the theater raised.  Feeling the heavyweight settle just right on his lap, he stole lips that had been wrapped around his cock while his fingers made quick work of the zipper.  In his haste the pull his lover free from the confines of his clothes, the hesitant hand on his stopped him, startling him.

Sound next to his ear, warm breath against his skin at every word spoken.  ”Shouldn’t we continue this back home?”

Heart racing hard enough, he was sure that the canine could feel it.  Hear it.  This was the first time that Shirou had ever referred to the apartment he shared with Kunimasa as “home”.  Trying to compose himself, the hand gently tucking him back into his pants also zipped him up and left his belt to be handled by himself.  Pushing himself up from the seat, he nodded though he was unsure if the male saw him and managed out a sound of agreement.  Nearly swallowing his tongue when he caught the look in the semi darkness, the scent that usually went straight to his head was thicker.  Denser that teased and taunted him, luring him to follow.

Abandoning their seats, movie forgotten as he followed Shirou down the steps and out of the theater.  Following both Shirou and the heavy scent that the canine gave off.  His feet paused, eyes widening as he suddenly recognized the scent that pulled at him.  Ignoring the looks he was receiving for his actions, grabbing the heavyweight by his arm and pulled Shirou along.  The couldn’t take their time getting home, not with the way Shirou was giving off that scent that seemed to pull others in.  Keeping his chest to the wolf’s back, the short train ride was almost pure torture for him.  Shooting off looks at those who seemed to breath in too deeply, catching Shirou’s scent.  The feel of his lover pushing back against him during the train ride, attempting to ignore the way his body was reacting.

He gave a sigh of relief when their stop came and as soon as the doors opened, pushing his way through the crowd of people and ignoring their mutters of rudeness.  Protests and questions were ignored in favor of getting home quickly, almost dragging Shirou up the stairs and finding door unlocked, which he flung open.  Pushing the confused wolf inside, he closed and locked the door behind him, ordering Shirou to his room.  Movement out of the corner of his eye, unsurprised to see his brother on the couch with a sleeping Norio tucked under his arms.  He must have went straight home after lunch in the restaurant.  When the nekomata gave him a look, his eyes narrowed and a sound of warning in his chest, a roll of eyes as Kunimasa nodded.

Really, did his brother think he’d be after Fujiwara?

Down the hall, his heart pumping and blood racing at the chance to experience the start of Shirou’s mating season.  Closing the bedroom door after entering, seeing Shirou pause as he unbuttoned the shirt he wore.  ”You once said that you don’t know much about wolves, so I doubt you know a lot about their mating season, right?”  He asked, his voice raspy when his lover abandoned his task of removing the shirt he wore to walk towards him.  Hands deftly removed the shirt that he was wearing, hands splaying across his chest, warming him up.  Clasping the canine’s hands to his chest, leaning down just enough to nuzzle the side of Shirou’s neck.  The tip of his tongue finding just the right spot to lave with attention, a shuddering moan as he inhaled the thick scent, drawing him im.

A wave of possessiveness filled him, taking over his thoughts and actions.  This was his male, his lover.  His mate and only he was allowed to breath in the delicious smell the canine was giving off.  Hands coming up and roughly pushing Shirou away from him and watching the canine stumble, falling back against the bed.  One foot in front of the other, stalking and kneeling above the stunned male.

“Since you don’t know about your mating season, that gives me a chance to explore and learn.  To push you as far as you can go.”  He breathed out, ducking down and nibbling, sucking on Shirou’s bottom lip.  The slight flinch from his lover, metallic on his tongue and the way the canine arched into him, grabbing Shirou by his hand and showed him.  Showed him what his body did to him.  Bringing Shirou’s hand to front of his pants and bucking his hips, forcing the heavyweight to feel him.  Hand falling away and his breath hissing between his teeth when Shirou’s fingers curled around him through his pants.  Being surprised as his belt was quickly slipped free, tossed away and landing on the carpeted floor with a dull thud.  Rocking into the touches, flaring a bit of his soul to show the one under him his dominance over him, the answering sound and the flare in return sent his pulse racing.

Slowly pulling away, his cock jutting out of his clothes while he gave Shirou little time to prepare as his hands made quick work of the clothing the wolf wore.  Covering he heavyweight’s body with his own, he took joy in the way Shirou arched towards him, begging for a quick touch.  A caress, anything he could get from him.  It was the sound of his name, legs curling around his hips to pull him closer.

“You should see what you look like right now,” he breathed out as he took in the tousled hair and flushed cheeks.  Lips that parted, swollen and being licked by a pink tongue.  The shimmering of the male’s body underneath his, faintly seeing the outline of ears.  Nothing seemed sexier as he was drawn in, nosing the underside of the heavyweight’s jaw and licking at the skin.  The urge to give in to the pheromones that the wolf was giving off seemed stronger as he drew closer to the spot just under the male’s ear.  Against skin, which he had licked and sucked, whispered words that would normally shock the male and instead, turned the wolf on even more.

“I want you, wanna fuck you.  I know you want me to fuck you.”

Trailing his lips up to parted lips, nibbling on the swollen bottom lip before slipping inside.  A rumble in his chest, a pleased sound as he slowly moved, rubbing trailing his hard cock against Shirou’s, leaving a trail of fluid on skin before rearing back and flipping Shirou onto his knees.  Rubbing the palm of his hand up and down the male’s back, pushing the chest to the bed while making sure that the pale ass was kept raised, just the way he wanted it.  Taking his time, enjoying watching and feeling the canine shiver with every touch he gave, dragging his tongue along the back before him, nipping his away up while his fingers slipped between them.

There was something about Shirou that wanted him to give into his wilder side.  To give into his instincts and become what they were.  Turning Shirou’s head as he came up, dipping his fingers inside, feeling the body clench on them while he captured cries with his lips.  Ignoring the sun as it slowly started to set, glaring through the window, he watched the wolf claw at the bed while hips pushed back against him at a demanding pace as the male begged with his body.  Calling out to him to become one with him and his last rational thought was that he wanted nothing more than to bathe his lover in his scent.  Make it so that others would skirt the heavyweight, that his scent alone would warn others to stay away.

His possessive side took control as he bent over Shirou’s back, rubbing thee tip of his aching flesh against the small hole that he wanted to sink inside.  Fingers reaching blindly for the bottle of lubrication, cursing as the male’s soul slipped out, as if Shirou was trying to taunt and tease him, urging him to give in and just fuck him.

He wasn’t sure what woke him, his eyes slowly opening to the darkened room before glancing at the heavy curtains that covered the window before frowning.  When had he closed the curtains?  Trying to remember, it was the slight sound that Shirou made in his sleep, reminding him that the male had closed them before they had entered the bath.  A faint murmur of his lover had him smiling to himself, wanting nothing more than to curl up and inhale the scent Shirou gave off, which was covered by his own scent in a way that only they knew.

Slowly sitting up, a sound of protest as the heavyweight burrowed under the blankets while the ones covering him pooled at his waist.  His mind went back to the night before, taking the wolf as many times as he could.  Having given the dark haired male what he wanted, pushing and pleasing the canine in ways that only he could.  And as he moved to stretch, the sting of deep scratches on his shoulders left on him had him groaning under his breath.  He knew his body well to the point that he was still a little shocked that he had lost control of himself.  Still, a glance at the slumbering heavyweight left a smile on his face before he pushed himself away.

Bare feet on the soft carpet, walking around the bed and reached down, grabbing the pants that he had tossed to the floor the night before.  Struggling to get into his pants, losing his balance and falling to the ground with a thud and an “oomph”.  A brief, intense light flashed behind his eyes while his head throbbed when he tried to calm himself.  Trying to keep his voice, lest he woke Shirou up when he knew that the canine needed to sleep.  Taking a deep breath, hoping that the combined scent of both of Shirou and himself would do more than just trying himself, he froze when the scent that he picked up wasn’t that of him and Shirou.  Just himself.

Scrambling to his feet, pulling and fastening his pants, he rushed back to the bed to find it empty and cold to the touch.  Trying to pick up any traces that the wolf had left behind and coming up empty handed.  Leaning further down, bringing his face to the bed to catch even the slightest hint of the canine’s scent, his nose to the sheet and though he knew he looked ridiculous, sniffing at his bed, he didn’t care.  Hoping that his door would stay closed, he bit his tongue when no scent other than his hit him.  A glance around the room and through the faint light, nothing seemed out of place, everything was there just as he left them.

‘Except,’ he thought to himself, ‘Shirou’s things that he’d leave behind.’  Noticing the lack of items that Shirou habitually left; extra clothes, items that he had bought Yonekuni, left on the dresser along with little trinkets that the wolf liked to buy.  Gone.  Everything in his room spoke that only he slept in the room, that he was the only occupant.  Grabbing his shirt from the floor, he pulled it only and ignored the cold feeling it left in him before leaving the bedroom for the hallway.  Taking in the silent apartment and the distinct lack of movement, the apartment giving him a cold feeling, as if he didn’t belong in the place that he lived for three plus years.  Further down the hall, past the opened door of Kunimasa’s room, giving a peek inside and frowning at the mess that scattered the floor.  Unusual for the nekomata to leave his bedroom in such a state, knowing that Kunimasa kept the room clean at all times.

Catching the very faint scent of Noririn, though long gone and stale, he continued in his attempts to find any clue to his missing lover.  When none came, empty handed and his heart heavy, he knew he had to hunt down the heavyweight.  There were times that he would enjoy hunting down his lover but this wasn’t the time, not when Shirou had just started his mating season.  Donning his jacket and grabbing his keys, he left behind the empty apartment to make the trek to the train station.  It wasn’t that late in the morning, rather early as he pushed his way through the crowd that blocked the sidewalk, shaking his head and making it to the train station in time, seeing the train approaching the plat form.  The few minutes that he waited for the riders to disembark, giving him a chance to pull his jacket closer as the early morning chill ate at him before getting onto the train.

Apprehension at him as he stared at the window, making him uneasy and irritated.  The feel of others boarding the train when it made its first stop, tapping his fingers in annoyance while he thought of why Shirou would leave without telling him.  Or how fast the wolf moved.  Watching as the houses blurred as the train picked up speed once again, waiting patiently for his stop and when it finally did, pushing through the throngs of people trying to get out.  Once free, breathing to get rid of the foreign scents of others away, taking the steps two at a time and down the sidewalk towards the neighborhood that Shirou lived in.

With the hopes that Shirou was home, it didn’t take him long to find his lover’s house.  He should have known the place by heart, having visited so many times while it rained.  Being driven to the male’s house and inside.  Suppressing the shiver that wanted to run though him, knowing that it wasn’t the time to be thinking about such things.  Turning at the little gate that blocked the walkway to Shirou’s home, he opened and pasted through.  Glancing up at second story window, hoping to see a figure looking down or at least, moving in the room, disappointment filled him but he shoved the emotion down and continued up the walkway to the door.

A brief pause of his hand as he brought it up before giving three sharp raps to the door and stepped back enough to allow the door to open.  The muffled sound of someone saying something before the click of the lock and the door opening.  He thought he kept his surprise well hidden as the older woman greeted him.  A woman that wasn’t Shirou’s adopted mother.  Still, he took in her pale hair and eyes, reminding him so much of Shirou in his true form.  A low voice tugged at the back of his mind, whispering words that he ignored as he spoke.

“Is Shirou home?”

His words seemed to linger in the air as the woman’s pale eyes narrowed at him in a way that seemed to warn him off.  Reminding him of a mother protecting her young.  The faint sounds of sniffing while calculating eyes took him in, lips twitched into a knowing smile.  She whispered words that he didn’t catch and didn’t think about, though he knew he should have.

“He is in, though I have to wonder why you smell like my son.”

She quirked an eye brow and crossed her arms over her chest in the way that Shirou did when he wanted to know something.  Her mannerisms seemed to echo that of the wolf’s before he cleared his throat, unwilling to tell the woman that he had laid with the male.  Made him cry and come over and over again, didn’t want to tell her that that was the reason that he smelt of Shirou.  Just as the woman started to turn, ready to call her son down, the presence that he had been waiting for came up to them.  From his spot on the porch he breathed deeply, the scent that had him intoxicated the night before seemed to overwhelm him even more.  He didn’t see the knowing smile that crossed the woman’s lips nor did he see the confused look Shirou wore.

“Madarame?  Why are you here?”

The calm voice of Shirou that he was used to wasn’t there.  The words cool and distant as the male kept his distance while the woman, who could only be Shirou’s birth mother slipped away, shooting him a knowing smirk.  The confidence that the heavyweight gave off seemed to be stronger than what he was used to.  The dusting of cheeks with color, used to seeing the canine color when he was talking to him, but not now.  Without waiting for an invitation, he stepped in and reached out, grabbing the heavyweight by his wrist.  Pulling his startled lover closer, he didn’t pay attention to the stiffening of Shirou’s body as he nuzzled the underside of the wolf’s chin.  Darting his tongue out, licking the area that radiated with pheromones that begged anyone nearby that he was ready to be taken.

His body shuddering, barely registering the feel of hands on his shoulders and the violent push.  Arms dropping away, stepping away in shock as the one he loved wore a furious expression, despite the dark flush to his cheeks.

“Is this some sort of joke to you, Madarame?  What right do you have coming to my house like you own the place and treating me like this?  What did I do to you that deserved treatment like this?”

Though Shirou’s voice was furious, angry and aroused all at the same time.  Rarely did he see the heavyweight beyond annoyed and it felt rather nice to see another side of the usually calm canine.

“Wha-”

Watching as Shirou tried to form words, angry as he was, he could see the flare of the male’s soul.  Only this time, it wasn’t the call to his soul.

“Your little jokes have gone far enough,” a harsh whisper when the male looked into his eyes.  Eyes that seemed devoid of the warmth that it usually held.

Confused, he spoke up for the first time since asking if Shirou was home.

“Joke?  This isn’t a joke.  I was wondering why you hurried home so fast, you should have stayed in bed with me.  You shouldn’t have left in the state that your in right now.”  He took a deep breath, knowing that the canine got what he was talking about.  The flush that Shirou wore deepened before a sigh and a hand that pushed glasses up back in place.

“Madarame-, look.  I’ve told you once before that I don’t appreciate you treating me like this.  Was isn’t bad enough to treat me like this in school?  I thought that since we graduated, I wouldn’t have to be treated like this.”  Gray eyes darted away, refusing to look at him.  ”I refused back then to be one of your conquests just because of what I am.  I thought you agreed as well.”

The one before him breathed deeply before standing to his full height, arms crossed over his chest before looking him squarely in the eyes.  He never noticed the way the corners of Shirou’s lips turned down and the way his complexion seemed to pale even further.  The way fingers curled and tightened into fists.

“Why don’t you leave?  I’ve told you so many times that I don’t want you.  I haven’t wanted you and I don’t think I ever will.”

#sex pistols #love pistols #sex pistols fan fiction #love pistols fan fiction

[performativezippers]

awake

I posted this meme on twitter and then i FULFILLED IT and then some.

You can find the full fic on AO3, and start reading it below. It's two chapters, and the second will be up in a few days.

The nightmares change again after Venezuela.

You’ve always had them. Ever since you can remember, you’ve spent your nights terrorized by people and feelings and images that were too much for you. Too much for any child. They were horribly adult nightmares, even when you were three or four. Your parents, dead. Your brother, decapitated. Your sister, wailing, blood pouring out of her eyes. Your house, sinking into the pit quicksand that was inexplicably where the garden should have been.

And water, always always water. Rising, frothing, waves coming out of dry land to sweep you off your feet. Eels muscling themselves up out of every pipe in the house, ripping your skin open with their sharp teeth when you were in the bath and on the toilet and millions of tiny ones gushing out the showerhead, tangling themselves in your hair until you woke up screaming.

As you grew older, the nightmares changed. You realized you were gay, and your dreams shifted from failing classes and falling off the top of the pyramid to your father screaming at you, his face gray and rotten, worms coming out of his mouth to rain down on you. You desperately sobbing in a room you couldn’t get out of, your legs leaden and impossible to move, as the rest of the family left the house, and you knew they’d never come back.

Marcella, standing on top of the pyramid, her white sneakers pristine, her ponytail flawless, her smile fixed in place as she, in the slowest motion, pushed you off. You toppled down for what felt like minutes, crashing into kids on the pyramid who felt like boulders, kids who would push you off them like Scar throwing Mufasa off the cliff, over and over as you tumbled head over feet. Your shoulder or neck would hurt for days after that nightmare, like it had really happened to you, like you’d really hit that mat.

After what happened at that party sophomore year, the next two years were filled with nightmares of violence and blood and a demon baby growing inside of you. Grasping hands and grunted demands and pain, a deep wrenching pain that never left you, even when you were awake.

You didn’t tell anyone. You’d told your parents when you were little, but they hadn’t understood. You were the fourth of five children; they knew what childish dreams were, and they were not worth this much drama, this much attention. It wasn’t real, they said, the very last time you ever tried to tell them. Go get dressed. You were six.

I can’t, you’d said at first. There’s a monster rotting under my bed. I can’t go in there.

Get dressed, you father snapped. Stop making up stories. Be quiet like your brothers and sister.

So you got dressed, trembling, visions of mutilated corpses hauling themselves out from underneath your bed by their long, dirty fingernails making you shudder and silently cry as you pulled on your white, frilly dress. It itched. Your mom saw the tear stains on your face, and she said nothing.

[keep reading on ao3]

#angsty lucy tara RISE #awake by zipps #zipps fic #angsty whistler #kate whistler #lucy tara #kacy #ncis hawaii #ncis hawai'i #ncis hawaii season 2 finale

[performativezippers]

Just wanted to say that I’ve loved Alive! Your writing is brilliant and I’m delighted with the amount of angst in this fic! Thank you so much for always taking the time to write for the Kacy community!

thank you so much! i guess it's now called both Alive and Awake because i've been calling it both LMAO I'm so good at stuff.

But honestly, comments like this make me so happy. I really appreciate you taking the time to send it to me! 🥰

I'm going to post something else about this fic later today, so keep an eye out!

#awake by zipps #alive by zipps #kacy #kacy fic

[performativezippers]

so remember how WifeZipps was supposed to live in New York this academic year?

and remember how sad I was about long distance?

and remember how i managed to get my work to send me to New York for over a week to be with her for a conference?

because i’m sneaky as fuck?

and then remember how she decided NOT to move to new york?

and we moved in together again?

and it was the fucking best thing in the world??

and then remember how i still had to go to that conference?

...yeah so i’m alone in a dumb hotel room right now and will be UNTIL FRIDAY

LOVE IS A CRUEL MISTRESS

#zipps is bored #also my body has decided it does not like being here #or on airplanes #or awake #p.zipps life update

[hidiingplace]

TODD HEADCANON + SLEEP.

general. Todd has a very strained and complicated relationship with sleep due to years of trauma and the compounding factors of his own mental health and mental illness. I want to give a complete overview of Todd’s relationship with sleep, the factors about his sleeping patterns, and other facts about it!

positions. Todd’s sleeping positions are odd for another who might not know what he’s been through. Todd sleeps primarily on his side, curled up in a ball. His knees are usually tucked up to his chest, and his arms are folded over his chest and his hands placed on his shoulders. His head is often curled in and protected. These are habits that were established while sleeping on the streets. Not only did taking up less room help with keeping him protected and warm, but it was actually a way to blend in with his surroundings to some degree. Todd is also quite used to sleeping in odd positions, and while he is not exactly comfortable falling asleep around strangers or others all the time, it’s not uncommon to see him sleeping in the weirdest, most uncomfortable positions you can imagine. Like half on the bed, half off with his head touching the floor kind of odd. as a whole, Todd generally finds beds uncomfortable to sleep in. It’s not uncommon to find him sleeping on the hard floor after getting frustrated with his bed.

insomnia. Todd developed insomnia at a very young age. Sleeping on the streets is a stressful thing to do. Unlike most homeless who are able to take frequent naps during the day so they are able to be alert at night, Todd had to attend school during the day. He would attempt to get some shut eye between classes where he could, but it often didn’t help. His sleep has always been broken and patchy during the night, woken up frequently by the sound of movements around him, people trying to rob him, and other things of that nature. Even while living in foster homes or in his first apartment, he would often wake up to the sound of violence in the home, so he learned that it’s sometimes better not to sleep than to sleep. This has trained his brain in a very detrimental way, so he struggles with sleeping on a consistent schedule. 

bipolar i. Todd is also diagnosed with bipolar i. during periods of mania, Todd struggles more with the concept of sleep. His body is energized, and his mind is racing constantly. being unable to settle means that during mania periods he may do chores at night, walk around NYC, do something reckless to get that energy out of his body and somewhere else. Lack of sleep can also make his bipolar i symptoms worse (both the depressive episodes and the mania episodes) so this is something to keep in mind.

light sleeper. Todd is very much a light sleeper. Anything will wake him up in the middle of the night. This is one of the many reasons Todd sometimes struggles with the concept of sleeping with someone beside him. During his time on the streets, he often acted as the protector of his partner, Ira, and as a result he was very aware of his surroundings when sleeping next to her. When sleeping with another person in the bed, it’s very reminiscent of this time and Todd’s muscle memory kicks in to a degree. Todd wakes up at the smallest movement from his partner. It can make for a very stressful sleeping situation.

zipp. when alone, often times Todd and Zipp will snuggle together during the night. Todd can usually be found hugging Zipp close to his chest, but Zipp will also curl up near Todd’s head, his back, his legs, and other various places. Even if Todd has a partner, Zipp will likely want to join in on the snuggle fest (and may even get a little territorial over Todd).

schedule. Todd has no sleep schedule. Some days he will sleep from 10pm until 10am. Others he might go to bed at 8pm and wake up at 3am. Others he might not sleep until 5am and wake up at 8am. This inconsistency can be blamed, not only on his nightlife activities, but just himself as a person. Besides his work hours, he has nothing that is consistent in his life schedule wise. It means that he is never home at a consistent time in order to maintain a healthy sleep schedule. 

additional notes. Todd does find it very weird when people are able to sleep well or people who can sleep in, but he knows for certain that he’s the one with sleep issues and not them. He just finds hard to relate to. Unless he is in a really bad mental state, Todd generally cannot sleep in past 8am. There are exceptions to this of course, but generally the minute his eyes are open and he sees sunlight, he will be awake and stay awake! Todd also does not experience any nightmares about his time on the streets or in foster care. He is often not asleep long enough to have long lasting dreams, so it’s not something people have to worry about when with him.

#todd rebane ( headcanon ). #todd rebane ( general ).