#good night says past/current me; good morning says the me when this actually gets posted | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

The Tumblr office adopted Tommy, an 11-year-old Pomeranian.

#good night says past/current me; good morning says the me when this actually gets posted

measuredingold · 9 months

Text

safety net: part two

authors note: part two as promised! i hope you all enjoy and feedback is always appreciated. (p.s. please be kind :) don't like it, don't read it!)

pairing: nicholas ruffilo x reader (previous noah sebastian x reader)

cross-posted on ao3

part one

word count: 4.0k

cw/tags: fake dating/pretend relationship, past relationship (with noah), angstish, all around fluff, kissing lol, p in v (protected sex!!!!! always use protection pals), fingering, 18+ minors do not interact

A week later, you’re back at Nicholas’, curled up beside him as another one of his favorite movies play on the screen.

"Oh." You turn your head to look up at Nicholas. "Did I tell you some guy tried to ask me out last weekend?”

Nicholas stills beside you.” …No. What did he say?"

Last weekend was the first time in weeks that you and Nicholas didn’t hang out with each other, both busy in your own respective ways. He had band things to do, and you had promised a few of your friends you’d go out with them, since you had committed a lot of your time to Nicholas and pretending. It had been a good night, a pretty fun one, until a man came up to you.

Your friends gushed, having known about your break-up with Noah but not your current agreement with Nicholas, and it came as a complete shock when you had declined his offer with a smile. Your best-friend stared at you in shock, like you had said no to the fucking lottery, but the second you said you already had plans with a friend of yours she knew. She was the only one besides Nicholas who knew about what the two of you were doing, and she always had her suspicions, but this confirmed it all.

She gave you an ear full the next morning and told you to get the fuck over yourself and tell Nicholas how you felt, in which you called her crazy and never spoke about it again.

You shrug, focusing back on the screen. “Eh, not much. Told me I was beautiful and actually asked if I was busy tonight, which I was, so I told him no.”

Nicholas goes silent next to you, and you feel him sit up. You glance up at him, his eyes already on you, and he’s looking at you like you’ve got two fucking heads. You look around the room, confused, then back at him.

“What?”

“You said no to a date… to hang out with me?”

You pause.

“Well… yeah.” You shrug again, this time weakly. “I promised we’d watch this episode together.”

And he wasn’t you.

“…Okay.”

Silence fills the room. You try to relax back against his bed, but the way Nicholas seemed to be so taken back with your words wouldn’t leave your mind. You shift uncomfortably as the worry fills your mind and try to focus back on the movie, but the silence next to you didn’t help at all. You spare a glance at him and see him staring straight ahead, chewing on his bottom lip and you can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking.

Did he find it weird? Really, it wasn’t that weird. It’s not that far-fetched to decline plans when you already had some made… right?

The movie finishes almost an hour later and the two of you have barely spoken, barely even looked at each other. He’s still sitting on the bed in silence, almost as if he’s fighting with himself mentally when you slowly get up, walking over to where you jacket lied against his desk.

“Hey,” His voice startles you, your jacket slipping from your fingers. You turn to look at him. “I have a question.”

You watch as he finally sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. He looks nervous, brows furrowed as he finally looks at you for the first time in an hour.

“What’s up?”

He plays with his hands in his lap, picking at his fingers as he dips his head down. “…What is this?”

“What is… what, Nick?”

“This.” He looks up again and motions with his hands between the two of you, lips pulled down into a frown. “Us.”

“Oh.”

You’re not sure what to say, mouth falling slightly. Your heart pounds against your chest as his words settle into your mind. Us. Was he implying what you thought he was?

“I…” You begin, but no other words follow. How can you even answer that?

You press your lips together as your eyes meet Nicholas’. Something shines in his eyes, something you can’t exactly place but it was the same look he gave you after your kiss, and it’s enough to have your stomach swirling with nerves. Your heart pounds rapidly against your chest.

“This…” Nicholas sucks in a deep breath but his gaze doesn’t waver from yours. “This stopped being… pretend to me a while ago.” He lets out a huff of laughter, cheeks twinging in pink. “Actually, I’m not sure if it ever was pretend.”

Your eyes widen at his words, and you’re stunned into silence, not able to find the right words. I’m not sure if this was ever pretend. What did that mean? Okay, you knew what it meant but he couldn’t be serious, right? There’s no way this entire time he was into you. He would’ve said something.

…Right?

You swallow down your nerves as you catch his gaze again and he reaches out for you, and like some kind of gravitational pull, you’re stepping forward. He pulls you closer to him, fingers circling around your wrists and your body heats up just at the simple touch. Your feet move before you can even think about it, standing in between his legs easily. He looks up at you, eyes bright and so fucking hopeful. He releases your wrists and rests his hands against your hips.

“Please tell me you stopped pretending, too.”

Clear, grey eyes stare up at you and you swallow down the lump that was beginning to form in your throat. You have to take a deep breath to try and calm yourself down, the feeling of being overwhelmed almost taking over your entire body. It wasn’t bad, no, but it was a lot. You had hoped for this, hoping that Nicholas had felt the same, and the fact that he does was enough to make you want to cry.

You give him a tiny nod, scared to use your voice and reach up to brush your fingers through his hair. His eyes immediately flutter shut at the feeling, and you see the ghost of a smile on his lips, and it has your heart feeling like it’s about to soar right out of your chest. You smile down at him, fingers moving through his hair before you scratch at his scalp gently. He had told you once that he liked when people did that, and you stored it into the back of your mind to maybe use another day.

Today seems to be that day.

His eyes open to stare up at you again, fingers gripping around your hips.

“Come here.” He murmurs, gently tugging you to him.

You follow, your legs rising to rest on the bed and on each side of his hips, settling onto his lap easily. He tilts his head up, only slightly, and your lips barely brush together. You gasp, low and quiet but you're sure he's heard, especially with the teasing grin threatening to stretch across his lips. Your arms shake with nerves as they wrap around Nicholas' neck and he notices, his hands sliding up and down your sides reassuringly.

"You're shaking." He mumbles as your foreheads press together. You let out a shaky laugh, eyes fluttering shut.

"Sorry." You say sheepishly, "I'm nervous."

"Why?" He squeezes your hips gently before letting his hands wander up under the hem of your shirt, fingers brushing against your skin. "This wouldn't be the first time we've kissed."

Your cheeks heat up at that and you roll your eyes playfully, pulling back to tilt your head up towards the ceiling as a groan left you.

"Okay, but that was different!" You whine, eyes squeezing shut. "We were pretending then. This time is real."

"I wasn't pretending then." He murmurs, leaning forward to press a chaste kiss against the base of your neck. You freeze in his hold and his thumbs rub soothing circles against the skin of your hips, pressing another kiss. "It was very real to me.”

You blush at his words, shaky hands reaching up to card through Nicholas’ hair as he continued to place open mouthed kisses along your skin.

“It was real to me too.” You whisper, and feel him smile against your neck.

His lips moved tenderly against you before he reaches your chin, pulling away from you. You whine at the loss, eyes finally opening and gazing back down at him. He tilts his head up, eyes hooded, and you feel yourself leaning down as your eyes flutter shut.

His touch felt like electricity, even if it was barely there, and you couldn't stop yourself from shaking in his hold as your lips finally met his in a kiss. You let out a noise, something mixed with a whine and a cry, as your lips finally moved against one another’s, and Nicholas' fingers dug into your skin. It went from gentle to heated in a matter of seconds, soft pants leaving the both of you as your hips rocked down against his own, your lips still working against his.

He hisses, "Fuck", his grip on your hips tightening as you ground your hips into his. You felt his hardening cock underneath your now aching core and the feeling made you dizzy, more noises slipping from you as you pulled away, trailing your lips from his down to his neck.

"Baby," His voice is rough, and the pet name made you clench around nothing, teeth nibbling against the skin of his neck. He groans again. "If we keep going, I don't know if I'll be able to stop."

You feel one of his come up to the back of your head, fingers tangling in your hair to gently tug your head back and it pulls a whimper from you. His eyes were now blown wide, pupils dilated. It made your skin buzz, a shiver running up your spine at the look of pure desperation on his face. He wanted you just as bad as you wanted him. You rolled your hips down to meet his, your gaze never waving, and he pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth to hold in a moan.

"I need to know if this is what you want." He grits out and drops his hand back down to stop your hips from moving again. You whimper at the loss of friction, trying to wiggle in his hold, but his grip only tightens. "You need to tell me yes or no.”

"Nicky," You whine out, dropping your head to rest your forehead against his. "I would not be grinding on your fucking lap if I didn't want this. Yes, a million times fucking yes."

You see his eyes flutter shut and he lets out a huff of air, lips slowly curling up into a teasing smile as his grip loosened on your hips and brings a hand up to rest on the back of your neck.

"That wasn't so hard, now was it?"

He brings your head back down to his as your lips catch in another kiss. There was no gentleness behind it this time, all wet and messy as you continued to work yourself over his lap. Even with the layers between the both of you you could feel just how big he was, and the feeling of his clothed cock had your cunt already soaking through your underwear.

His hands that were on your hips have slid up under your shirt now, touching you everywhere that he could. You moan against his lips, not caring if you were loud.

“Off.” He mumbles against your lips before pulling back, whining softly. “Let me take this off, baby.”

Your brain is mush at this point, and you stare at him with hooded eyes, trying to come back to earth, but he’s already tugging your shirt up. You raise your arms to make it easier and before you know it it’s already tossed to the floor. You hiss when the cold air meets your chest, forgetting you hadn’t put on a bra, and you feel Nicholas’ eyes glued to you. You flush under his gaze.

His hands drop back to your hips and gently raises you up from his lap, and you get the hint, moving off of him and crawling onto the bed. Shirt already forgotten, your back meets the bed and you look up to watch Nicholas find a place in between your thighs, sliding his shirt off and tossing it to the ground beside your own.

He leans down to take one of your nipples into his mouth, while his fingers come up to play with the other. You moan, back arching off the bed and into him, and you feel him smile around you. He pulls off to glance up at you, keeping his eyes on yours as he trails his lips down your middle before reaching the top of your pants.

You bite down roughly on your bottom lip as he starts working them off of you, your hips lifting to help him slide your pants down your legs. He groans when he nestles back in between your legs, cheek pressing against your inner thigh.

“God, you’re already soaking. Aren’t you, sweetheart?” His eyes aren’t on you, but instead on your center, locked on the dampness in between your legs.

You clench around nothing. “Nicky.”

Your whines pull him from his thoughts and his clear eyes flicker towards yours, brows raised in question. You blush.

“Tell me what you want.”

“You.” You whimper, growing impatient. “I want you.”

This makes him smile, all bright and pretty and your chest clenches at the sight. He leans up to press a few kisses against your hip before tucking his fingers into your underwear, tugging them down your legs. Once discarded, he dips his head back between your thighs, and without warning he licks a long stride up your drenched folds. You moan out in surprise, hands immediately darting down to tangle in his hair.

He takes this as motivation and shows no mercy, tongue flicking over your already swollen clit. You feel his pointer finger poke at your entrance before slowly sliding in, curling into the spot immediately. You squeeze your eyes shut as his mouth works against you, his finger slowly pumping in and out of you. It already felt like heaven, the heat in your stomach building up. He adds another finger, stretching you out deliciously, and you tug at his hair when you feel yourself clench around his fingers.

He pulls back from you and rests his cheek back against your thigh, still working two fingers in and out of you. You have to force yourself to open your eyes and stare down at him, a smirk settling on his now slick lips.

“Think you can take another?” He questions softly, turning his head to press a kiss to your thigh before resting his cheek against it again. You nod but whimper halfway through it, his fingers curling inside of you. “Words, baby.”

“Yes.” You moan out, rocking your hips up into his hand. “I can. Fuck. Give it to me.”

He adds a third finger, and you brace yourself for the stretch. It burns more than you’re used to, and he can tell, feeling your cunt spasm around his fingers. He hisses out a moan but pauses his movements, letting you adjust, before you give him the okay. The only sound in the room are your moans, getting louder with each thrust of his fingers. He pulls them out all too soon, the heat in your stomach almost snapping, and you can’t help but whine in protest.

“Sorry, ‘m sorry.” His voice is muffled against your thigh as he presses a few more kisses there. “But the first time I make you cum, I want it to be around my cock.”

His words have you shivering, and you watch as he pushes himself up and off the bed, and you can’t help but follow his fingers as they mess with his belt. He pushes his jeans down in one go, and your thighs clench together at the sight of his hardening cock straining against the fabric of his boxers. Your eyes widen as you watch him push his boxers down, his hard cock springing free from its confines.

You could feel that he was big when you were grinding on his lap earlier but seeing it with your own eyes made your mouth water, eyes following him as he finally crawled back onto the bed. He was definitely the biggest you had been with. You don’t think you’ve ever wanted something more in your life, and at this point you don’t care if it ends up inside you or your mouth. You just need it.

You start to grow impatient as he rolls the condom onto his cock, hips wiggling against the bed. He chuckles but doesn't say a word, a hand running up your thigh before hiking it up against his hip. He hisses as he wraps a hand around the base of his cock and drags his tip up and down your folds, and your breath hitches at the feeling of the tip catching at your entrance. He pauses, eyes locking with yours to silently ask if he can continue, and you nod.

You suck in a breath when he slowly pushes himself in, inch by inch, and your fingers grip around the bedsheets. The stretch burns, but it feels so fucking good.

“Fuck. You feel like fucking heaven, baby.” Nicholas looks down to where the two of you meet, before flicking his gaze back up to yours. “Alright?”

You nod, squeezing your eyes shut as he pushed further in.

“Mhm.” Is all you can manage to say through your ragged breaths, whimpering quietly when he finally bottoms out.

Nicholas leans forward, resting his arm beside your arm to hold himself up while his free hand comes up to cup your cheek. His hips still once he’s fully inside and you hear him take a deep breath, thumb brushing against your cheek. It takes you a few moments as you let yourself get used to feeling of him inside of you, the stretch finally turning from pain into pleasure, and your eyes flutter open to look up into his.

“You can move.” You hum out and he nods, dipping his head down to catch your lips against his own.

He pulls back until only the tip is in before giving a shallow roll of his hips. Even with the condom you were still able to feel everything, his cock sliding in and out of you with ease as his hips continued. Your back arches off the bed at the feeling of his cock pressing deep inside you, mewling his name against his lips. This only spurs him on, a low growl leaving him as his movements sped up.

Flesh slapping against flesh, the mix of heavy pants and high-pitched whines filled the room. You’re not even kissing now, lips parted and brushing together as Nicholas thrusted deep inside of you again, and again, and again.

“Shit.” His forehead presses against your own, eyes dropping down to where the two of you met and he gave a shallow roll of his hips that has you crying out. “Taking me so well, sweetheart. Like you were fucking made for it.”

His hips snap against yours to enunciate each word and your eyes roll back at how deep he was, at how full you felt, and your cunt clenched around his cock. He moans, deep and low from deep within his chest, and the hand that was cupping your cheek fell in between your bodies. Calloused fingers press against your swollen clit and your body jolts, back arching again.

Nicholas leans down, pressing messy open-mouthed kisses against the span of your neck, rubbing quick circles around your sensitive bud. The heat in your belly was building up once again and you knew you were close, the feel of his cock and fingers against your clit was slowly pushing you over the edge.

“C’mon, baby.” He groans out, followed by a moan as his forehead pressed against yours again, fingers pressing harder against your abused clit. “I wanna feel you, please.”

You came with a sob, your cunt spasming around his cock as the warmth of your release flowed throughout your body. You went rigid, back halfway off the bed, vision blurring. Nicholas whimpered above you, your pussy still clenching around him and he gave another deep thrust before going still, his face pressing against the crook of your neck.

The two of you lie there for a moment, chests heaving as you tried to come back to the present. It was hot and sticky, but you found yourself not minding the feel of Nicholas pressed against you, tiredly reaching up to card your fingers through his hair. He makes a noise, the hum of it tickling your neck, and you scratch at his scalp.

“Shit.” He finally says, pulling his head up to look at you.

You can only give him a fucked-out grin in response, the ability to form words having left you awhile ago. He chuckles before leaning in, pressing a much gentler kiss to your swollen lips before pulling away seconds later. He slips out of you carefully, but you still whine at the feeling, and he mutters out a quick “Sorry, baby,” before standing up from the bed and throwing away the condom.

He searches around the room for something to clean you off with before settling for the shirt he had just discarded, running it between your thighs carefully. You let him take care of you, only because you know how much he wants to, and the thought makes your skin buzz. You sit up on the bed and stretch out your now sore limbs while he changes into comfier clothes and watch as he grabs some for you.

“Arms up, sweetheart.”

You blush but follow his directions, arms lifting and letting him dress you. You weren’t used to this, usually having to defend for yourself after a hook up, but having Nicholas do this for you has your heart clenching.

Finally, in much comfier clothes than before you lie back down on the bed, on your side this time, and Nicholas crawls in beside you, tucking his body into yours.

“That was… nice.” You hum quietly as Nicholas pressed his face against your neck again.

“Just nice?” He teases. You let out a sleepy laugh as Nicholas wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you close.

“No, it was absolutely mind-blowing. Best sex I’ve had in a long time.” You say matter-of-factly, turning your head to press a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you.”

His body shakes with laughter now, his hand dipping beneath his your shirt. “… Are you thanking me for rocking your world?”

“I sure am.”

His laughter doesn’t subside until he pulls back to look at you, giving you another smile that you easily return. You share a glance before you’re leaning in, lips brushing against each other. There’s something behind this kiss, much tender than the previous ones shared, and you think you finally understand what he’s trying to convey to you without actually saying a word. It has your stomach turning, heart flipping beneath your chest as he pulls you into him, hand sliding down to your thigh to prop your leg up over his.

A knock at the door breaks your moment with Nicholas, the two of you pulling away to look at each other like a deer caught in a headlight.

“Uh,” You hear Jolly’s muffled voice from the other side. “I was going to ask if you’d like to join us for a movie, but I can uh… hear that you’re pretty busy. So… do you care to at least keep it down this time?”

You and Nicholas can only laugh in response and you press your face against his hair to try and hide your burning cheeks.

#bad omens fanfic #bad omens fanfiction #nicholas ruffilo fanfiction #nicholas ruffilo fic #nicholas ruffilo x reader #mine

122 notes · View notes

maccreadysbaby · 5 months

Text

A Hundred Ways to Become a Wayne

batfamily + oc insert

tw: none

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

want to read the first fic in the hundred days series so you understand what’s going on here? here it is!

this chapters kinda short but I wanted the ANGST to have its own moment lmao, loved leaning into damian’s insecurity for this one

also thank you dami for refueling bentley’s incredibly irrational and borderline stupid idea making tendencies

part nine

❝ PITY ❞

THURSDAY — AUGUST 6 — 5:11PM

BENTLEY DIDN’T SLEEP AGAIN AFTER HIS NIGHTMARE, AND NEITHER DID BRUCE. Instead, they went back to the cave after a while and sat with Dick. All of Alfred’s swabs and tests came back clear, which meant he hadn’t been injected with, inhaled, or even misted with any kind of toxic chemical that could do this to him. (Bruce had told Bentley about fear toxin, an inhalable chemical one of their past villains used that made a person live through their worst fears in their head.) A quick comparison of current Dick’s vital charts and past-Dick-on-fear-toxin’s charts looked freakishly similar, despite one major change: he didn’t have any fear toxin in him.

Which meant, if it wasn’t chemical, he was being attacked psychologically. Somehow.

All signs pointed to it being the Secret Keeper, but she hadn’t done anything to anyone besides plaguing them in bad dreams, much less knocking them out without touching them and wreaking havoc on their brains for six hours. (Which was how long Dick had thrashed and cried and whined for in his unconscious state.) On hour seven, he went limp and still, which probably meant he’d tired himself out.

Bentley didn’t go to school on Wednesday or Thursday, and he didn’t sleep Wednesday night, either. Bruce didn’t seem to mind (he actually seemed a little relieved) and Bentley didn’t want to risk seeing the Secret Keeper out and about. His teachers posted his classwork online, anyhow, so he wouldn’t miss any schoolwork. He spent the better of the two days switching between using Tim’s old computer to do his schoolwork, playing red light green light around the Manor to avoid Damian, drifting down to the cave to check on Dick, and attempting to take power naps that never lasted that long.

Not to mention being texted… like a lot. Ot started when Nico texted early Wednesday morning to ask if he was okay, and why he wasn’t at school. Bentley simply told him he had been sick the night before. (Technically not a lie.) Then Nico took it upon himself to text Bentley all about their environmental science class, even including pictures of their worksheets, and had also taken it upon himself to ask how Bentley was feeling just about every hour. (He always just said better than last night.) Then, Bentley got a text from a random number at lunchtime on Wednesday about how Damian was, quote-on-quote, so creepy. And only ten minutes later and lots of confusion from Bentley did that number come back and say, oh yeah, it’s asten, got your number from nico. heard you were sick. sucks dude.

While Asten wasn’t as incessant about asking how Bentley was doing as Nico was, he did tell him about Spanish class and rant about Ms. Venetstantos making him speak Portuguese every day. And he decided Bentley was a good outlet for all things conspiracy and detective-y, because he kept sending him random articles about metahumans and missing people and Secret Keeper sightings and typing long, drawn out theories about what was going on that ranged from plausible to outright impossible. (Bentley only pretended he read the ones about the Secret Keeper.)

He didn’t remember until those texts that he and Asten had both put detective as their dream job on their get to know me sheets. (Nico had pointed it out on the second day of school when the teacher put those up in the hallway.) He was obviously getting started early. The amount of recon and web-surfing and conclusion drawing he did reminded Bentley of Tim.

Speaking of, Tim and Jason and Steph and Cass had all shown up at the Manor Wednesday and Thursday. Which was strange, considering they’d all been avoiding Damian like the plague. But he didn’t mind — he liked having everybody home.

Bentley started to get really worried about Dick when, on Thursday at five in the evening, (42 hours after Dick had collapsed on Patrol.) he was still laying in that same bed, not thrashing like before, but tossing and turning, still visibly distressed.

He’d been long since changed out of his Nightwing uniform and into some loose sweats, and was connected to drips and other things to keep him hydrated and nourished in his unconscious state. Bentley had finished another color-the-map geography paper about an hour ago and made his way back to the rolling chair stationed next to Dick’s bed.

He had no earthly idea what was wrong with him, but he wished it would all stop. It'd been hard enough seeing Dick during a nightmare he could wake up from — but now, when he was trapped in his own head and no amount of yelling or shaking could snap him out of it, it was practically a form of secondary torture for the entire family. Tim had retired to the Batcomputer, trying so hard to find some kind of solution, or at least a case of something similar, and Bentley didn’t think he’d been upstairs since Dick collapsed.

As of now, five in the evening on Thursday, he, Bentley and Dick were the only three in the cave. Alfred popped in and out often, and Bruce a little less often.

Bentley was sitting next to Dick’s bed, telling him about all the texts he’d been receiving. (Alfred said talking to him would help, so Bentley was trying his best.) He’d taken to telling him about Asten’s conspiracy theories and the new group chat he’d been added to not three minutes ago, with Nico and Asten, in which they were arguing about the possibility of said conspiracies and asking for Bentley’s input. (Asten’s conspiracy about aliens swapping a human’s brain for an alien brain via something he called ‘materialization tech’ and endowing them with the power of the stars being the origin of metahumans was the one on the table now. It was already segwaying into metahuman world domination.)

But eventually, even with the group chat blowing up his phone with the probabilities of metahumans turning the country into a dictatorship, he fell quiet and just took to holding Dick’s hand. He didn’t scream when he grabbed it, at least. But it didn’t seem to make anything better, either.

He was just debating on whether or not he should try to wake him up again when a voice sounded from the doorway of the medbay:

“Hey, Bentley,”

He glanced over, brown eyes locking onto Tim’s icy blue ones. He looked exhausted. Bentley knew he’d been working hard on the missing person and metahuman cases before this happened to Dick. But now? Bentley wasn’t sure if self-preservation was even on his radar anymore. He hadn’t seen him ingest anything other than coffee in a solid two days (given he very well could have when Bentley wasn’t around.) and he was pretty sure sleep wasn’t even a thing he thought about anymore. Though he looked like he needed it.

“Hey,” Bentley replied quietly, slipping his hand out of Dick’s and pulling it back to his lap.

“Doing okay?” Was Tim’s next question, and he moved forward just enough to rest a hand on the top of Bentley’s head.

He shrugged. “Have you found anything to help Dick?”

The weakly plastered-on content expression fell off of Tim’s face. “No. I haven’t been able to find anything.”

Bentley said nothing, but looked back at Dick, who was moving his head back and forth with soft whines.

“Is he going to die?”

It was a heavy question, yeah, but a question that had undoubtedly been floating around in all of their minds since his unfortunate patrol. With all the metahuman stuff out of the way, Dick would technically be classified as in a coma. And lots of people who went into comas didn’t come out of them.

Bentley heard Tim let out a puff of air.

“I don’t know,” He said, hardly a whisper, letting his hand move down Bentley’s head and rest on the back of his neck. “He’s stable, even if it looks like he’s in pain. It’s not ideal, but it’s… better than anything getting worse, I guess.”

Bentley nodded slightly, and hoped that Dick would get better soon.

He heard someone walk across the room on the other side of the cave, and both he and Tim glanced over just in time to see Damian disappear back up the stairs to the Manor. When had he come down there? He wasn’t down there five minutes ago.

“Maybe you should talk to him,” Tim suggested after a quiet moment. “He might actually open up to you.”

Bentley glanced over at him skeptically. “Damian? No he won’t.”

Tim snickered. “That kid would never in a million years cuddle up next to anybody sick like he did you. And he definitely wouldn’t get up in a hospital bed with any of us except, maybe Dick.”

Bentley said nothing. He did kind of miss Damian. Like, the old, not-angry Damian, that took him around the Manor to do things and actually talked to him.

Bentley shrugged. “I’m afraid he’s gonna stab me.”

“Aren’t we all?” Tim snickered. “Seriously, though, he cares about you. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

“I know, but…” Bentley trailed off, glancing down at his hands.

“There’s still a chance,” Tim finished his thought. “Yeah, I know.”

Bentley said nothing.

“It might be good for you to go upstairs for a while,” He continued, and Bentley glanced back up at Dick, who was still shifting uncomfortably in the bed. “I’ll sit with him.”

Bentley nodded. He wasn’t really in the mood to argue, and he needed to finish his schoolwork anyway.

He pushed himself out of the chair and bid goodbye to Tim, heading back up to the Manor. He took to reading the group chat messages he’d missed on the way through the house and up the stairs. Nico was currently trying to explain to Asten that aliens couldn’t use technology he’d made up, and he was arguing that they could because they could read everyone’s minds.

Bentley had nearly made it into his room when he bumped right into someone.

“Sorry-“ He muttered, glancing up from his screen to meet Damian’s ice cold blue-green eyes. The assassin’s glare alone shut Bentley up.

Damian walked past him with nothing more than a faint scowl, heading for the stairs.

He wasn’t planning on talking to him, but it was a better opportunity than seeking the angry assassin out.

“… hey, Damian?”

Bentley turned on his heel, and Damian did, too, shooting him another dagger-like-glance.

Bentley wanted to recoil and say nevermind, but that wouldn’t be very helpful. “What’s wrong?” He asked instead, really focusing on the fact that Tim said Damian wouldn’t hurt him.

“You should know well enough, Whittaker,”

Bentley nearly flinched when Damian used his last name instead of Bentley like he always did. Why in the world would he know what was going on when Damian wouldn’t tell anyone?

“I don’t…” Bentley blinked, searching Damian’s face and then looking at the floor when the unpleasant expression got too reminiscent of his father’s. He knew what that expression meant. And coming from Damian, it made him want to cry.

A moment of silence passed, and when it was clear Damian didn’t intend on speaking, Bentley muttered in a tiny voice: “You’re mad at me?”

Silence.

Bentley thought and thought and thought about all the interactions he’d had with Damian before he started getting upset, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember doing anything wrong. He’d asked Damian to teach him about throwing knives, but he’d told him yes. (He hadn’t done it yet. Was it maybe Bentley’s fault for never asking again?) He didn’t think that was enough to make Damian so upset for so long.

Bentley wished he could bring his knees up, but he was standing, so he wrapped his arms around himself instead. He hoped Damian couldn’t see the slight wetness brimming in his eyes at the very prospect he’d done something so bad the assassin didn’t even want to talk to him anymore and he didn’t know what it was.

He looked at the floor in a vague attempt to hide it. “What did I do?”

“Exactly what you’re doing right now,” Damian replied bitterly, in a tone that literally made Bentley want to start crying. “You weaseled your way into this family with nothing more than pity. All you have to do is shed a few tears and you have the whole household at your feet — the only reason you’re here is because my father and brothers feel bad for you. Because you’re exactly what your father trained you to be. A manipulator.”

Bentley did flinch, that time, like he was dodging knives made of words. It wouldn’t be any use — Damian never missed.

“Your relationships are built on pity, your place in this family is built on pity. Even Drake has contributed more than you, and I’m not shy about discussing his obvious inferiority,” Damian spat. “I am a Wayne by blood and I have to work to be part of this. If I had even considered doing anything like you did with your father, considered betraying this family like you did, they would…”

Damian trailed off.

“You don’t deserve to be here. It’s pity that’s keeping you in this house, pity that’s holding your relationships together, and once that pity is gone, what’s going to be left? Nothing. Because pity is all you are. Pity is what you’re built for, and once it’s gone, you’re going to be left with nothing, useless, just like your father created you to be.”

Bentley watched through blurry eyes as Damian turned and continued down the stairs like he hadn’t just dispatched a carefully-sharpened killshot right through Bentley’s chest.

Damian didn’t want him there.

Thank goodness he was right next to his bedroom, because he hardly had time to get inside and close the door before he started crying.

Everything Damian said was right — he was in this family out of pity. If it weren’t for pity, none of this would’ve happened.

And Damian didn’t want him there. This was his worst nightmare. Tim was wrong, Damian had hurt him.

He walked over to his bed in the dark — the lights were off but the sun was still somewhat out — and curled up in a tiny ball in it, covered his head with the blankets, and cried.

Dick had been taken in when he had nothing, and became Robin to help Bruce fight crime. Jason got taken in off the streets and became Robin. Tim got taken out of a neglectful household and became Robin. Damian got shipped here from overseas to be Robin. Cass, Duke, Steph, Barbara, they were all superheroes, crime fighters, vigilantes.

What the hell did Bentley have to do to make himself deserve being a Wayne?

Become a superhero?

—

dedicated to @sassenashsworld 💚

—

tag list! (If you want me to remove or add you, ask in comments!)

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @cademygod

27 notes · View notes

lovesosweeet · 6 months

Text

better left unsaid // cth

chapter seventeen

in which orion has leukemia, and calum doesn’t know.

calum hood x fem!oc

read other chapters

august 14, 2018 los angeles, california orion

Since our tense conversation — I can’t call it a fight, nor do I want to — Calum has texted me at least once every hour that he’s awake. It’s refreshing. He’s a much better partner and boyfriend than any of my previous relationships in all regards, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s actually following up on what he says.

My ex that I’d dated from the start of freshman year through a few months before I left for Spain was horrible about texting me. He’d always forget to text me good night, then didn’t bother to reply to my good mornings. We wouldn’t start texting until I’d text him again a few hours later. I would time that message by posting a Snapchat story and then waiting to see if he’d viewed it. It was toxic, and he never followed up on his promises that things would get better and he’d text me more.

It had always felt silly to get so hung up on something so seemingly small, but it kept being a recurring problem. He always promised that he would text me more and show me just how important I was, but the proof never showed up.

With Calum, the moment he knows I have a problem with something, he works to fix it. This is another instance of it. While it may only be two days after he promised he’d keep in better contact with me, he has upheld his promise impeccably.

Just more reasons to love him, and more reason to be racked with guilt from keeping a massive, literally life or death, secret from him.

Today is round three of chemotherapy, and since we both are going to the same place, Macy and I are going together. Her mom will drop us off and Emelia will pick us up. I’ve packed my fluffy blanket again, along with Uno and a phone charger. It’s yet again another day where I wear one of Calum’s left-behind sweatshirts with a pair of shorts that are hidden underneath the oversized top. With my worn-out but very comfortable Birkenstocks, I’m wearing fuzzy socks.

Macy knocks on my door to let me know she’s here, and I give Duke a peanut butter filled Kong to keep him busy while I’m gone. I swing open the door and find her standing there, wearing an outfit almost identical to mine, except her sweatshirt is likely her own, with UCSD in large, embroidered block letters across the chest.

“Good morning,” I tell her. I close the door behind myself and lock it.

“Damn, I really thought I might get an Orion latte this morning,” she pouts.

“Oh, shit, I can go back in and make you one? It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Macy shakes her head. “No, I’m fine. Maybe next time, though?”

I nod and we start walking toward the elevator. “Yeah, next time. How are you feeling today?”

Macy has just this week and next week left on this treatment cycle. Her team is pretty confident that this final round should hopefully send her back into remission and she can resume her coursework in the spring. After years of going in and out of treatment, Macy doesn’t want to get her hopes up, so she’s currently still planning on starting school again in the fall next year. That said, she’s felt pretty miserable for the past few weeks.

Her cancer — Hodgkin’s lymphoma — is currently just in stage one, caught early because she has regular visits to her oncologist over the years to monitor. While my treatment is supposed to be six weeks of chemo appointments, hers is only three weeks, but she has them twice a week.

“Like death, but, just means it’s working,” she says, pressing the button for the lobby. “You?”

“Same.”

We ride down to the lobby in silence, listening to the hum of the machinery that makes it move. There’s no elevator music, which I’m grateful for since I don’t know if I could listen to it every time I take the elevator. When the doors slide open, we find Ron behind the desk like normal, and he smiles when he sees us. I fight to smile back at him.

“Good morning!” He calls out.

Macy and I both raise a hand in a haphazard wave.

“Morning, Ron,” I manage to reply.

Macy’s mom is waiting for us in the car in the parking garage, and she’s on some kind of business call when we get in, so she doesn’t say anything to us as we buckle our seatbelts and she pulls out of the parking space. Macy and I are both just on our phones for the drive, since her mom’s call seems pretty important and I don’t want my voice to be echoing in the background.

I check my phone for the first time since I woke up and see that Ashton has texted me. It’s in the wee hours of the morning in Adelaide, which is where they should be now, so I’m going to guess that he’s out partying or just coming back to their hotel from it.

From: irwie will you be honest can you tell me how you’re really doing none of the bs where you pretend you’re fine i’m worried i can’t stop thinking about it i can’t sleep i know you and i know you’re pretending it’s all fine and you’re not miserable. please just give me a real update

After reading through, I decide he’s probably not drunk. I don’t think he is out either. I think he’s probably just laying in his bed and overthinking. Kay is probably sound asleep next to him. I triple check the time conversion, and it’s 3:42 am there. I wish that he was as blind to what I’m actually doing back in LA as Calum is.

To: irwie ash, please go to sleep i’ll be fine

Calum had texted me goodnight a few hours prior, too, complete with a selfie of him wearing a sweatshirt I bought him, but I wait to reply to him, since I don’t want the notification to wake him up. I’ll send a message in a few hours while Macy and I get our drips of poison.

Ashton replies almost immediately.

From: irwie orion, please it’s late, i just want to know the truth

To: irwie ash… it’s fine just go to sleep

From: irwie stop it. tell me the truth

To: irwie i’m not lying. it’s fine. it’s gonna be fine

From: irwie you keep saying that but i literally don’t believe you at all just give me an ounce of the truth please

To: irwie oh my god fine i’ve lost 10 pounds bc i’m so nauseous i can barely eat and my body feels like it’s covered in bruises but there are no bruises it just hurts and i’m so fucking tired there’s your update

There’s no activity from Ashton after I send that, and when I look up, we’re at the hospital. Macy’s mom is still on the phone, so we quietly open our doors. I get out of the car and I watch as her mom gives her arm a squeeze, and then Macy joins me. We walk inside and check in, and then we go our separate ways to get our vitals taken.

When we reconvene at the armchairs, Macy is waiting for me.

“My mom says she’s sorry she couldn’t talk in the car,” she mentions as I sit down.

Two employees come over with their carts to hook us up to the IVs. As usual, I close my eyes so I don’t have to watch it happen.

“No, it’s okay, I know she has work.”

I feel the coolness of the wipe on my arm, and I brace for the impact of the needle in my skin. With the pinch, I feel my phone vibrate on my lap.

“I told her you wouldn’t mind, but I just wanted you to know she did apologize.”

I nod, my eyes still shut. When I feel tape over the IV in my arm, I open my eyes again, giving the nurse who’d done it a smile. She tells us to let them know if we need anything before they disappear to tend to other patients.

“Tell her I said thank you for the ride,” I say. I pull my phone out again, seeing what the notification is. It’s Ashton, unsurprisingly.

From: irwie orion promise me you’ll ask for help if you really need it we can’t lose you

His third text is gut-wrenching enough to send me into an emotional spiral, but I do my best to hold myself together. I fight the urge to start crying in the middle of this room where I’m surrounded by people who are all fighting the same battle. It would feel like I’m belittling them. We’re all struggling through the same thing. Why would I be special enough to cry while everyone else is acting fine?

I take a deep breath before I reply.

To: irwie i’m fine. it’s fine.

From: irwie can you please stop lying

To: irwie everything remains as is until i can tell calum.

When he doesn’t reply instantly, I follow up again.

To: irwie please, please go to sleep.

From: irwie 👍

Now he’s mad at me, but hopefully he will at least go to sleep now.

Frustratedly, I lock my phone and push it into the kangaroo pocket on my sweatshirt.

“You good?” Macy asks from next to me.

I gulp, rubbing my eyes. I feel like crying, but this isn’t the time or place. “Yeah, it’s fine. It’s just Ashton.”

“What do you mean?”

Macy knows that Ashton is the only one on the tour who knows about my leukemia, so I know she understands why there may be a problem there. I guess I didn’t really give much context, so her question is valid.

“So it’s like 3:30 am there and he’s texting me saying he can’t sleep and I need to tell him how I’m really doing.”

An unusual smile paints itself across her face. “And that bothers you?”

Bothering me isn’t exactly how I’d describe it. “I just want him to live his life.”

“Orion,” she starts. “Just because you’re stifling your emotions about this whole thing doesn’t mean he can.”

I’m not stifling my emotions. I’ve cried almost every day since Calum left. I feel like I’m drowning in everything that’s going on and it’s practically the only thing that I can think about. My little detour to feeling sad that Calum wasn’t communicating with me as much as I wanted him to was brief, and most of the time I’m just thinking about my literal impending doom.

“I’m not stifling my emotions.”

I don’t meet her eyes, but I know that she rolls them.

“Just because I’m not talking about them doesn’t mean I don’t have them,” I add.

“Can I be honest?” Macy asks.

“I’d prefer you always be honest, so yes.”

“I feel like you’re still in denial about all of this.”

When I don’t have something articulated to say straight away, she adds more.

“I don’t know if it’s truly all set in, and I think a lot of that stems from you not telling Calum.”

She’s probably right. I don’t feel like I can let myself really think everything through, because I know that once I do, I’m one step closer to calling Calum and messing everything up. I’ve worked too hard to protect Calum from my reality. I can’t just throw it all away because I get depressed about my lack of potential future. Even when I’m just home and all alone, I don’t let myself feel sad about the cancer. I just focus on being sad about being alone.

My life is ending, at a faster rate than most other people’s, but right now, I just feel like someone going through a long distance relationship while having the flu. I’m sick and I’m lonely but I don’t feel like I have really processed just how sick I actually am.

read next chapter

a/n: day 2 of nanowrimo we are just over 5k words so far!!!!!!

#5sos #5 seconds of summer #michael clifford #fanfic #fanfiction #5sosfam #ashton irwin #calum hood #luke hemmings #5sos fanfic #calum hood fanfic #calum fluff #calum angst #imagine #calum x oc #original character

19 notes · View notes

journalofanobody · 3 months

Text

Struggling just to keep posting, I become a traitor.

As I've been recovering from surgery these past two weeks, I've been trying hard to keep posting, to give something, however little, to my friends and followers here. Quite frankly, many times while posting I have battled a terrible tiredness while simply trying to post an interesting mix of things for those who have faithfully continued to look at my blog and my poor little poems.

Sometimes the fogginess nearly gets the best of me but, at the end of each evening's posting, I feel pretty good about what I have done here. Not great, just pretty good. And for now, that's plenty.

However, mistakes occur, as I learned this morning. A follower whom I was actually beginning to see as a potential friend, wrote to thank me for all the support and advice I have given her during her persecution by trolls here and then revealed to me that she noticed that I had reblogged something from one of them. This, she concluded, is evidence that I was now one of that group of her "enemies" who were "tightening the noose around her blog." I was shocked.

Often, in my current state, I am completely absorbed in just finding aesthetically pleasing content, and barely notice who the original blogger was, and this, I guess, was my undoing. I was now a "betrayer" of a friend and thus belonged to the enemies and internet trolls she claimed were pursuing her. Needless to say, I was hurt and disappointed that she could not consider the context of my trying very hard to post even while recovering from major surgery.

Funny, even as I was reading it, I was ready to apologize and ask her to point out which post it was so I could remove it but, alas, I found that I had been blocked and her blog deactivated. Judgment had been rendered and no appeal was possible,

Now, sitting here, thinking about this, I recall the small herd of trolls I had to deal with when I first started this blog. Some of my friends here were following and reblogging from some of those people and, when I mentioned it to them, they said it's just reblogging of images, nothing to do with our friendship or "sides" being taken. And I thought it made sense and got over it.

I didn't speak out in defense of her trolls, or even reblog a lot from them. One image got through and, even if I had noticed it's origin, it would have seemed wrong to deny the source of it. And so what?

I'm not up for this sort of nonsense right now. I feel like I'm back in high school with warring cliques, or in Donald Trump's circle being forced to care about whether the boss feels betrayed. But this person I was dealing with was no high school girl, or some prickly fascist, this was a well-educated, cultured, kind person, and this is precisely why I find it more disappointing and sad than all the sorts of people I usually imagine behaving this way.

It's a small bump in the road of my recovery, a wee ding on my spirit, and it makes it all that much harder to trust people on this site, but then, who cares? Society unravels even at its upper reaches, among people from whom we would reasonably expect better.

I think I am just going to take a few days off from posting here. My time might be better spent just reading, sleeping, and trying to get myself fit to work again.

A weary good night from a slightly sadder Nobody,

Michael

#michael boiano #No good deed goes unpunished

12 notes · View notes

madisonfilmss · 2 years

Text

Why We Try - Austin X Reader

warnings: angst

an: This is the longest fic I have posted yet and it's my favorite!

inspired by Why We Try by Matthew Mayfield so listen while you read!

Please leave requests for future imagines! :)

The fame was getting to Austin. He told you he was fine but you thought differently. You have grown up together, both of you seeing ech others faults and triumphs. You were grateful getting to grow up with Austin, your friendship turning into a romantic relationship in high school.

You would always be proud of him but it hadn’t been the same as it was when you first got together. Between his filming schedule and your workload, you had barely laid eyes on him in weeks, possibly months. At this point, you were done with it. All you wanted eas him there with you.

It was currently 9pm on Day ---- you didn’t even know ----- of shooting one of the many projects he had become attached to within the last two weeks. Between Elvis, Masters of the Air, Dune and a motorcycle biker gang film, you didn’t even know what was next for him. You could be proud from afar. That’s all you felt you were allowed to do from now on. You had made his favoeite meal but you knew, that for the millionth time, you were unable to wait up for him so you headed to bed.

A Few Hours Later…

The door opens, Austin tossing his keys and wallet onto the table by the door. “Baby?” He notices the plate of fod and a note you had left him. Here’s your dinner. Hope you had a good day. “Of course, she’s asleep. It’s 2am. I can’t expect her to be awake at all hours of the night. He walks up to your shared bedroom to see you facing away from him. “Good night angel.” he says in the silence and kisses you sweetly on your forehead as he has done every night since you decided to be together.

The Next Day

You wake up, once again, to an empty bed. The only reason you know that Austin slept next to you was by the indention his body had left behind in the sheets. Of fucking course. He left again. Heading downstairs, you hear the sound of frying bacon and a slow sweet hum of Elvis Presley music. You turn the corner to see your boyfriend shirtless, finishing plating breakfast for the two of you.

“Hey baby. I don’t need to go to work until later so I thought we could spend the morning together. Just the two of us since we haven’t really seen each other lately.” he tells you sweetly.

God, it’s gonna kill you to have to do this but it’s the only way for him to do something about it.

You walk past him on the way to make yourself some coffee for the day. Austin was confused as to why you ddin’t tell him good morning. He thought this is what you wanted. “Are you okay?” he asked you. You continue to ignore him. He gives you space, leaving to go to work for the afternoon. “I love you” he yells upstairs to you before walking out the door.

A few hours later

It was 6 pm. The earliest that Austin had been home in months. He walks in on you making dinner, sneaking up behind you and wrapping his hands around your waist and kissing you on the cheek. You turn away from his kiss. “What’s up with you today?” he asks you.

“You really want to know, Austin?” you ask.

“Yes, i really want to know.”

“Okay well, it’s the fact that we have been living together for almost a year and I am able to count on my hands how many times we have ACTUALLY been able to spend QUALITY time with obe another.”

“Well, I’m sorry that I have been booking jobs left and right!” he screamed at you.

“Austin, I am not upset with you for chasing your dreams. I am happy for you. I’m always gonna be proud of you and be right by your side supporting you.”

“But..?” he asks you questionly.

“I am upset with the fact that I have to go to sleep every night without you next to me. All I want is you here with me, I want to be breathing the air you breathe, being present in the moment with me. Not Olivia.”

“What does Olivia have to do with ANY of this?”

“Well, how bout the fact that she has been able to see you every single day for 3+ years? How am I supposed to feel when I see photos of you with her on the beach looking all cozy? When i told you to put your heart and soul into this role, I didn’t mean like this!”

“For once, won’t you just be there for me?”

“Really Austin? You think I haven’t been there for you? I always try to be as present as possible. I was the one laying awake at all hours of the night waiting for you to come home just so I can see you for 30 seconds. I read all your scripts with you just so you are able to do what you love!”

“Can’t you see it in my eyes? Can’t you see how much I love you? Can’t you see all the reasons I chose you?”

“Y/N…. Why has it come to this?”

“It’s the whole reason we try, why we fight.”

We give it all we got to keep this love alive because I know for a damn fact that you are the man i am meant to spend my life with.”

“I love you. I’ll never let you go.”

#austin butler #austin butler x reader #austin butler fic #austin butler imagine #austin butler elvis

159 notes · View notes

lysa1201-saucy · 2 years

Text

Don’t Read A Book In Abyssal At 3 AM! (Not Clickbait)(Emotional)(Gone Sexual) - Lucifer x F!Reader (Part 4)

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3

Read Chapters Early on my Patreon!! Chapter 5 is currently up! Also includes NSFW art uncensored!! <;33

Lmk if you wanna be added to the tag list!! Thank you for reading! Reblogs, likes, and comments appreciated!

This story will contain sexual themes and smut in the future, which is why it is being posted onto my 18+ account rather than my SFW account. Thank you <33

Genre: Comedy, Romance (Fluff + Smut), Angst

Warnings: None (that I know of, lmk if there is thanks)

Word Count: 1505

++++

Lucifer had been living in your apartment with you for around two weeks. You two had gotten used to each other and the dynamic you had created. You would check out books he wanted to study more intently for him since Lucifer had no ID to do so himself, and he’d stay at home working through what he needed and taking notes when he could.

Every weekday for work, you would get up at 6:30 am, which you found disgusting, and start your morning routine. However, now that Lucifer had arrived, you added him to your practice. He wasn’t a morning demon, but he wanted the time to get as much research done as quickly as possible.

“Here you go,” You put down the black coffee on a coaster on the coffee table, he was leaning over to read.

“Thank you,” Lucifer would recognize your kindness. He was still very questionable about you, but he got used to the routine and appreciated your hospitality. He would go as far as saying he tolerated you. “So what I figured out about the spell you used is that it only brought me, but I’m still unsure how Solomon was able to contact you.”

“Do you think Barbatos had anything to do with it?” You asked the demon, sitting behind him on the couch. You were already dressed for work and had your coffee in hand, so you had some time to spare to theorize with Lucifer.

Lucifer hummed. “Most definitely,”

You continued to read with him for another couple of minutes, occasionally asking for some translations you didn’t quite understand, but it was finally time to leave for work. “Okay, I’ll be back at 5 pm, as always,”

“I’m not a child. You do not need to remind me this every single work day,”

“I know that; I just worry about you,”

“And why’s that?” He turns on the couch by resting his arm across it to face you. He raises an eyebrow at you in question.

You groan and roll your eyes. “You don’t have a phone, so I can’t contact you, and you can’t do anything else. So you’re holed up here, and I feel bad about it. So I want you to know I’ll be back, you know?”

Lucifer let out a deep breath. “Sure,” He turned back to face the papers in front of him. “Enjoy work.”

He didn’t want you to know, but he felt nice that you cared.

++++

“Lucifer!” You shouted as soon as you entered your living room.

Your apartment was tiny, and you opened the door to the living room when you entered it, so he was very annoyed with your entrance. “What?” Lucifer spat out with annoyance.

You plopped on the couch next to him to place a laptop on the coffee table. “My laptop was fixed, so now we can use it for more research!” You excitedly explained. “I know some good websites with other spells and where I learned some abyssal. So I can open up those tabs and look through those while you look through the books.”

Lucifer just nodded. He looked tired. Very tired. And he was disappointed. He wanted to be home, and you wanted to take him home. You thought having one of your “demon boyfriends” in your actual life would be a dream, yet you feel nothing but guilt and sadness.

The rest of the night was silent, but you yawned loudly. Finally, you uttered a small apology and returned to your research when Lucifer raised his hand. “Go to bed,” Lucifer proposed.

“No, it’s fine. I want to help you,”

“You won’t be much help if you’re falling asleep,” He stated without taking his eyes off the books in front of him.

You sighed and nodded. “I’ll leave the tabs open. Don’t stay up too late.”

It was probably past midnight already, but that was fine by Lucifer because it was the weekend, so he didn’t need to force himself to wake up too early anyway. So he allowed himself to sleep in just a bit more since you did.

It wasn’t until Lucifer finally decided to use the laptop you provided that he found something he wished he didn’t. He was going through what he needed to until he misclicked and opened up a tab to one of your bookmarks. It would have been less embarrassing if it was the bookmark to one of the sites you go to for your bills, but to your luck, it was to a dating website. Even worse, you were logged in.

Lucifer went to exit out of the tab until he realized he was on your profile. He should have looked away, and he wanted to look away. A little peek wouldn’t hurt. He is living with you, and you hadn’t had time to sit down and get to know each other, so it’s not wrong to look at your answers.

That’s what Lucifer did. He scrolled through your profile and looked at some of your answers and pictures. He would sometimes let a puff of air out of his nose from a silent chuckle at some of your attempts at being approachable. It was kind of cute, though. Even with your writing, he could tell you were a kind and honorable person, and from knowing you for the past two weeks, he could confirm that’s what you were.

He couldn’t deny that the pictures you chose for your profile were phenomenal. Some photos were on vacations, regular candids, and just casual mirror selfies. You were so adorable. He didn’t want to think about you like that, but how could he deny it? He liked learning about you more than he would like to admit. Your favorite color, your favorite memory, your favorite food, your favorite type of animal, all of it intrigued him. Maybe you weren’t alike in every way, but it’s always good to have someone even a little different than you.

He noticed you had a message box, so he snooped a little more and checked. There were some messages that you never replied to. He shouldn’t have clicked on them, but he did.

Some upset him slightly from how different people treated you. For example, they were only looking for sex, and it wasn’t something you were looking for. On the other hand, he would occasionally feel nice at how sweet you were to certain people. But then, there was a weird pang of jealousy when you and another seemed to hit it off, plan a date, or even a second date.

MC: I would love to see you again. I enjoyed our time together.

Jensen: I did too. Plan something for next week? Can I take you out to dinner next Saturday maybe? 8 pm?

MC: I’d love that.

He would read your messages up to the next date, making him feel slightly angry with how flirty you two were with each other. Then, he would scoff at the lines that man told you, thinking he could do better. Lucifer prided himself on making whoever he was flirting with flustered, and he was sure he could fluster you more than that man ever could.

MC: I’m ready :)

MC: Jensen? We’re still meeting up today, right?

MC: It’s okay if you’re running late, just hope to get an update! I’m worried about you :(

MC: Hello?

MC: It’s 8:30 pm. I’m tired of waiting.

MC: I’m wearing a cute dress and prepared my makeup for this fancy dinner we planned. Please don’t stand me up.

MC: It’s 9 pm. Please answer me.

Jensen: I’m sorry.

MC: It’s 10 pm. Now you respond?

Jensen: I uh

Jensen: I met someone else, and they came over. I forgot about our date. And I think I want to keep seeing them. I’m sorry.

This user can no longer message you.

Lucifer felt sad that you got stood up, though he felt pride because you chose to block him instead of trying to fix something you couldn’t. You’re stronger than he initially thought you were. You knew how to stand your ground. Those messages were about two months ago, and since then, it appeared that you refused to mingle with anyone else. Leaving them on read or just not opening the messages they sent trying to get a hold of you. Jensen hurt you a lot, didn’t he?

That’s when he finally snapped back into reality and decided to close the tab. It was 1:30 am. He decided it was time to go to bed. Lucifer couldn’t stop thinking about you, though. Your words, your flirting, your pictures, everything about you. It was stuck in his head, how magnificent you are. He was disgusted with himself for thinking that way about some human that took him away from his loved ones. Yet, he couldn’t get you out of his head.

Lucifer told himself that after a good night's sleep, he would wake up and stop thinking about you.

He was wrong.

++++

Tag List: @sassykattery , @dfgdfgxftdd , @karmasadistic69

Next Part

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me lucifer #lucifer x reader #lucifer x mc #obey me x reader #obey me x mc #obey me smut

95 notes · View notes

nancylou444 · 8 months

Note

Hi! I hope you’re having a good day/night/morning!

So, I I need to share my thoughts with someone before I burst, and you’re always posting your thoughts, current and past, on destiel, so I’m hoping you can sympathize. Of course, you’re free not to read or post if you don’t feel like it (and I know you don’t need my permission for that either 🤦‍♀️ ).

So, I’m currently watching a reactor watch Supernatural who ships destiel. I’ve almost quit a few times due to annoyance, but they are otherwise entertaining and generally try (or tried) not to bring it up too often, and it’s now on season 15, so I’m locked in until the end. They just watched the episode "Last Call" where Dean is suddenly a good singer. Of course, they mentioned "bi lighting" and "subtext" because of course Dean can’t hang out with a male friend, especially one John caught him drinking with and got "mad" without it being because he was caught doing something "gay." 🙄 Not just because it was, you know, stupid to get drunk on a hunt. Plus being hungover for a hunt isn’t exactly ideal, even if Dean was old enough (he might have been). .

Anyway, this person actually used the words "I’m winning" in reference to the episode because Jensen (not Dean) sang, Sam was hanging back with Eileen, and Dean was chilling under the "bi lighting, " apparently. All I could think was, I’ve been literally watching this destiel shipper turn into a heller before my eyes over the months. And of course, they ship Sam and Eileen and were so happy that Dean went off to give them time alone 🙄 . It’s like heller brains only have one accepted scenario, and once they get in too deep, they become a clone of the rest.

Naturally, they want the show to end with Dean and Cass off on a beach (never mind that Dean mentioned wating Sam in that scenario) and mostly out of hunting, but not to get away from Sam, no. He’s there, too. Somewhere. Teaching the new hunters with Eileen or … something. It’s so ridiculous that they think this will/should happen. 1) When has the show ever hinted at a conventionally happy, or even happy at all, ending? 2) Dean would sooner gnaw off his own arm than semi-retire with Castiel on a beach while Sam continues in the hunting world without him. 3) Dean hasn’t wanted a romantic relationship since Lisa. 4) People who think Sam would want to continue hunting, on his own, if Dean stopped or semi-retired haven’t been paying attention to the show. I even saw one of their idiot followers saying Sam was alway better at adapting to hunting while Dean has always wanted out. 👀.

Anyway, I got ready to write a reply arguing against their idiotic ideas, but then I stopped and realized there was no point. There is literally no point trying to talk sense into people who spend so much time looking for hints and parallels pointing to the things they want (less codependent brothers and destiel) that they ignore the very literal and easy to follow canon, or actual text, of the show. It was a breakthrough fir me. There. Is. No. Point.

So, I deleted my planned response and just thought to myself, "You just enjoy your 'winning" honey, while you can." Because they are going to absolutely HATE the end of the show, and I’m just petty enough to be looking forward to seeing it. Does that make me a shitty person?

I realize it’s my own fault I’m annoyed right now, but I can’t just quit watching something once I’ve gotten this far, so I’ll have to suffer through (not looking forward to Despair 🙄) until the end.

Anyway, If you took the time to read this, thank you. I just needed to share this with someone.

This was an enjoyable ask, my darling. ❤️

LMAO, yes it is amazing the way that hellers 'see' the show.

Even now, almost three years after the finale, they still think destiel became canon because of the dubs and THEY had a 'wedding'.

Please let me know how they reacted to the 'confession' and the finale. 😆

#anonymous #destiehellers #no really what show are they watching

9 notes · View notes

bluenpjm · 2 years

Text

cloud9 agency ☁ jjk x oc

synopsis. faced with decisions that can change the course of her career, the art director of the cloud9 agency decides it is time to act and reignite the flame she had once lost. and all because of an intern...

genre. non-idol au ; slice of life au ; intern!jungkook ◦ fluff ◦ angst ◦ smut

pairing. JJK x OC

rating. M

wordcount. 4.2K

warnings. driving under the influence, drinking, making dubious decisions, some foul language, being somewhat displeased with current job situation

a/n. to the person i cannot go a day without talking to: happy birthday @itsceesaw! thank you for supporting me, always. may we be friends forever, surrounded by pizza, good vibes, and bts! ✌🏻🍕

chapters. 1 — 2

There was nothing more appalling than starting the day by answering emails.

Carolina figured there were far better things where she could waste her time and energy, especially this early in the morning. Daring to take yet another glance at the time on her phone, she sighed, noticing it was half-past eight and she was still stuck on this one email. She lacked what her boss would call the “delicacy” to make their clients understand how the business was and how simply their requests could be met. At least that was how she was supposed to present it to them.

If she had to be honest, she was wishing nothing more than to see her intern walking straight through those doors. And she never expected herself to think such a thing.

Carolina’s memories of her days as an intern were bitter. She never had the opportunity to do something out of the box — in her style — constantly trapped by the hawk-like eyes of her supervisor. And her taste was dull, to say the least. She was also never credited for the hard work she would put into her creations. Each assignment given to her was treated with all the care in the world, even if it wasn’t something she cared for.

So, when the chance occurred for her to have an intern, she had promised herself that she wouldn’t be a bitch and would actually let the person experiment and tinker with their works and put their personality in them.

Her intern — Jungkook — had been assigned to assist her in any way, shape, or form. She needed coffee? He would fetch it for her. The lenses in her camera needed a good cleaning? He had probably already taken care of that. But that wasn’t why he joined the company. Over drinks, one night after work, he confessed how much he loved photography and even had a secret Instagram account where he would post his pictures.

Secretly, she would check his feed now and then, often feeling immersed in the emotions that he could capture so simply through the click of a camera. He would never know, though.

With a soft heart — which now that she was regretting listening to — there she was, head pounding as instead of clocking in at 11 — no, actually — just make it an early lunch break and she would be at the office around 2 in the afternoon, ideas fresh in her mind.

The list of emails was endless and as she went further down, opening email after email, they seemed to get longer and somewhat stupider. It was… impressive, even.

Still, it was somewhat worth it as her intern was nothing but excited the day before, going on and about how much research he had and how many angles he had studied to make the photo shoot he was attending in her place absolutely perfect.

The kid got talent. She couldn’t deny that. But Jungkook lacked something she always had. And that was what she considered one of the most important things in her field: following your gut. You need to be able to trust your instincts in this area. After all, the client is hardly ever right nor knows what they want. You almost need to have a degree in psychology to understand the deeper meaning behind their simple-minded requests.

And well… her intern lacked the spontaneity she wished he had. He was quick and highly talented but… Every 30 minutes, he would come to her desk, an excited smile on his face, most similar to a puppy, wanting you to throw the ball back yet again. And she would compliment his work, most deservingly as Carolina would never say she liked something when she didn’t — and throw him another project. And once he was done… there he was again, waiting for approval and direction on what to do next.

She opened the sent tab on her email account, looking for some faint sight of hope there would be a standardized way of answering the clients' messages. A soft way of saying ‘Hey, I saw your email but won’t get to it now. So just wait until I feel like trying to explain to you, for the thousandth time, that I have what you described and you simply don’t know what you want! Toodles.’

“These people go to lengths…” She talked to herself, eyes quickly scanning all the different responses the clients would get. “They should get a raise!” She scoffed, realizing how ridiculous their efforts were as she leaned her body back on the chair, wheels shifting her away from the desk with the impulse.

Being an art director, she expected to have more creative liberty. After all, she had been hired for her inspiring mind, standing out from a homogenous pile of applications. And the reason why she was still there was due to the big check at the end of the month.

In her early years, she was content with some freelancing. Some gigs here and there while she managed to balance her social life. But adulthood proved itself to be well… inescapable. And being accustomed to a certain lifestyle, she had to sacrifice a little. Money over happiness… The tip of the iceberg of adult life. It couldn’t get any sadder than that, could it?

Her phone rings out of a sudden, being the perfect escape from the tedious action she had found herself trapped in. Not even needing to unlock it, she could already tell who was behind the incessant ringing. Very few were the people who would be texting her with such enthusiasm, this early in the day.

A smile immediately popped on Carolina’s lips as she read the incoming texts in her group chat. She would constantly be shocked at how her best friends would be in sync. And their energy in the morning… unmatchable. They tended to meet later in the day when Carolina would be fully awake and filled with energy. Usually for drinks, as they loved to complain about the most insignificant things in their lives. Deo would end up crying, confessing her love and loyalty to the two, Hyori joining a little bit after on the rampage, and Carolina would stare at the two with a sheepish smile, knowing she would be able to tease them in the morning.

Before she had the chance to answer them, another text came in.

She clicked on it immediately after reading the name of the sender. Her heart was quick to find its way to her throat and the mere seconds it took to open the chatroom made it feel like it was ready to jump out.

If she had to describe how she was feeling, it would be something very similar to what moms say when they drop their kids for the first time in daycare. Or when they get a phone, passcode-protected, and you fear that they have started to send nudes to lousy boys. The fear of something happening to someone you are supposed to look after and you are not there to hold their hand in case they need it. Or even more, the fear of something going wrong and she wouldn’t be there to fix it right away.

Thankfully, Carolina could relax. And her entire posture does so, body reclining once more in the comfortable office chair. Analyzing the texts again, her stomach growls, reminding her that she was still to have breakfast.

Shutting off her laptop, she decides her intern could have a fun afternoon answering emails. Now, she was going to have some much-deserved breakfast.

Carolina had gotten into collage early in life. And ever since her nanny presented it to her, it had been a constant hobby of hers. She would often do it for her own entertainment, a pure way of relaxing and having a fun evening. So it came as no surprise when the skill revealed itself as a useful practice in her work. It helped people around her visualize what she was thinking when words seemed weak to prove her point. She was always more of a visual kind of person rather than words.

Sitting on the floor, legs crossed, she leaned on her hands, body falling back as she looked up at how the ceiling of her favorite room in Cloud9 was turning from the softest shade of blue to purple. It was shaped like a cloud. Upon Carolina’s arrival at the company, she suggested cotton and led lights should be pinned to the ceiling, turning it into a different room from all the others in the company, making it seem like their own personal cloud-filled sky.

“Croissant?” Jungkook emphasized the word, a weak attempt of a french accent leaving his lips. He sits down, crossing his legs as well, the box resting right in the middle of the two.

“Oui, oui,” Carolina showed her never acquired skills of speaking french. Simple words were easy. But make a native speaker to her, she will give them a thumbs up, before smartly removing herself from the conversation. “How was it?”

Jungkook notices how she picks up the box from the floor, admiring the sweets inside while trying to make up her mind about which one she should pick. “It was good.” He spoke cooly.

“Good.” She eyes him, knowing he was trying to sound less excited than he was on the inside.

“I had the best time ever.” He showed her his bunny smile. “Thank you for trusting me.”

“Of course.” She dismisses him. “But I will never answer emails, ever again.”

He chuckles. Email answering was something he did with ease, but he couldn’t deny how boring the task was.

“That lady from the flower shop…” she snaps her fingers, trying to remember the name of the store.

“May Flowers?”

“Exactly! She sent yet another email about how the colors of the logo you did were different from her phone screen to her tablet…” Carolina rolled her eyes.

“Seriously?” Jungkook laughed. “I stayed with her on the phone— on the phone! for like an hour yesterday explaining to her why that happened…”

“She called?” Carolina scoffed, incredulous.

“Well… I did offer.” Jungkook scratches the back of his neck, sleeve pulling down and Carolina notices the tattoos adorning his arm.

“Why?” She did her best poker face. “Are you a masochist or…?”

“I never expected her to say yes…” He smiled embarrassedly. “What are you working on?”

Carolina had her notebook in her legs, half-closed. “I need to pitch an idea for a client Cassandra really wants.”

He nods. “Anything I can help with?”

“Sure,”

Removing the box that was standing between the two, Carolina scootches closer to the intern, opening her book in the pages she had been scribbling. She briefs him on the client, their business ideas, the concept, and what she already had in mind. In between sentences, she scribbles some notes down. She always found that brainstorming with someone resulted in better ideas. Jungkook also pitches in but remains contained in his words. Sometimes, he feels like being quiet is better. Carolina’s ideas seem so out of the box, he decides he is better left off just making little suggestions, instead of dropping something completely random.

“Do we know if other agencies are after them?” He asks. If there was something Carolina liked in Jungkook was how competitive he was. The tiniest thing was able to ignite something in him.

“We don’t know, but it’s most likely. A big fish dropping in the water like that is sure to make every head turn. It made Cassandra’s.”

Jungkook nods. “I’ll do some research on the CEO for you.”

“Thanks.”

Carolina calls it a day soon after her conversation with Jungkook. When she leaves her office, he’s still at his desk, headphones in and she notices from the corner of her eye the image of the CEO of the company they had been discussing on the screen. A smile appears on her lips due to the hard work he’s putting in.

The thought of telling him to go home rushes through her mind, you did well today. But it seems too personal. And Carolina isn’t, in fact, that close with Jungkook. So, instead, she simply leaves, her uber already waiting for her.

Before dozing off in the back seat of the car, she takes her phone out, exchanging a couple of quick texts with her best friends.

As expected, Carolina is indeed late to her dinner with the girls. Falling asleep on the couch right after her shower, she wakes up a couple of hours later, both girls calling her nonstop until the vibration of her cellphone, laying on top of her belly, is enough to wake her up. Still, she manages to keep them waiting for less than 30 minutes, calling her car before getting dressed and both things ended up aligning perfectly.

They order more drinks than food. A meal for the three of them would usually take 2 hours — if not more — to get finished, mostly because they would get lost in the conversation.

“He might’ve as well hit the self-destruction button.” Hyori lets out a dry laugh.

“Wait, didn’t he just print out the wrong reports?” Carolina asked, serving the girls who already had their cups empty.

“Yes. And I corrected him, but someone swooped the wrong ones from his desk without asking and delivered them to my supervisor.” Hyori massaged her temples. “So, I got scolded, as if I was a 5-year-old because the mistake of another person was my own nonetheless.”

“That’s why I will never accept an intern.” Deo scoffed, a spoon full of rice finding its way into her mouth.

“That’s ‘cause you’re a control freak.” Carolina laughed and Hyori nodded, a pensive look on her face as she eyed her friend.

“Speaking of intern… what happened with yours, then?” Hyori turned to the oldest.

“Nothing as severe as you drama queens were trying to make it seem.” Rolling her eyes, the art director takes a sip from her glass. “He went on his first photo shoot today.”

“Woa— look at her, looking all proud!” Deo teased.

“He’s good.” Carolina shrugged.

“But…?” Hyori sang. She always expected a but. Not that she was the pessimist of the group, instead of the real one.

“He’s just… inexperienced. I wish he would speak his mind, you know? Share his ideas…” Carolina struggled to find the right word. “But in time he’ll get there. I’m sure.”

“Oh, yes. I’m sure he’ll come out as a more experienced guy once the internship is over.” Hyori teased, Deo laughing right by her side.

“Hey, I don’t know what kind of games you play with your intern but don’t think I’m a perv like you.” Carolina attacked, chuckling once noticing the offended look on her friend’s look.

The black-haired girl gulps her drink down in one go. “I guess that’s my cue. Before I confess my sins.”

Hyori is already influenced by the happy liquid she has been ingesting. Leaving the bathroom, she walks by the counter, ordering another bottle for her table as her eyes fall upon a guy. A guy she could swear she knew. Staring with no shame, she even tilts her head to the side. Eventually, the staring becomes too much and as the guy turns to leave with his takeout bags, they become face to face.

“Can I help you…?” The man asked. His eyes are widened, as big as a dear blinded by lights.

“You’re Jungkook, right?” Hyori beamed, finally connecting the face to the name.

“Yeah… have we met? I’m so sor—” Jungkook’s tone goes from confused to embarrassed. He was never that good with faces.

“I’m a friend of Carolina— Hyori! Why don’t you sit with us?” Hyori asked but she was more demanding than inviting.

“Oh— no— I actually—” And Jungkook didn’t have a say, following the girl to the table where Carolina and Deo were sitting, every protest that escaped his lips being ignored by the friend of his superior.

“Look who I found!” Hyori squeals once she reaches the table, occupying her previous place next to Deo.

“Jungkook!” Carolina says surprised.

“Hey Cee,” He gives Deo a little wave, lips pressed together as he is uncomfortable with the social situation he had found himself in.

“Do you wanna join us?” The smallest of the girls asks, noticing that her friend was just staring at the boy standing in front of her.

“Oh, I don’t want to intrude.” He says politely, eyes shifting quickly between the girls.

“You don’t! Right, Cee?” Hyori tries to quick the oldest beneath the table, ending up pushing the chair in front of her a little bit behind.

“Of course. Unless… you have plans.” She notices the white bags in his hands.

“Not really.” Jungkook scratches the back of his neck.

“Sit then!” Deo gives him a warm smile and he ends up surrendering.

Both girls are quick to integrate Jungkook into the group. And, of course, they even share some old stories of Carolina. Conversation flowing, bottle after bottle comes to the table, until Deo is already snoozing, head laying on top of the table as Hyori is lost in thought. Jungkook and Carolina keep a light conversation when the servant announces that they will be closing shortly.

“Text me once you get home!” Carolina screams, seeing her two friends already dozing off in the back seat of the car she had called them.

“They are fun.” Jungkook comments, a sheepish smile on his lips.

“You’ve seen nothing.” Carolina laughs. She passes back, clearing away from the street. “Did you call a car for you already?”

“I drove actually. Do you need a ride?”

“Oh, no need. I’m calling a car for me now.”

“I promise I didn’t drink that much.” He assures her. “And I won’t charge you the trip.”

He jokes, making her laugh. “Sure, but I choose the music.”

“Deal.”

Red Orange County is blasting in Jungkook’s car. He keeps a hand on the steering wheel while the other lies on the gearstick. Looking to his right, Carolina is singing along softly, arms leaning out the window as she rests her head on top of them, the wind being a refreshment on her heated cheeks.

“Next left and then is the green building, you can’t miss it.” She says, lowering the volume a bit.

“Got it.”

She stares at him for a while, admiring his features. “How come you got a car?” Carolina asks, head tilting slightly to the side. “Are you one of those rich people that work for fun?”

“I wish,” He chuckles. “My grandma gave it to me once pops passed.”

“Oh,” Is the only thing she manages to murmur.

“It’s alright.” He gives her a weak smile and the tone of his voice makes her come at a loss for words.

“Why don’t you speak out?” Carolina asks, turning on her seat as soon as Jungkook pulls over.

“Huh?” Jungkook tilts his head, body turning slightly so he was now facing her as well. “What do you mean?”

“At the agency. I’ve seen what you can do. You have potential.” She leans her head on the headrest of her seat. “You never participate, never share your ideas…”

Jungkook shrugs, eyes falling on his fidgety fingers. “I’m just an intern.”

“That’s bullshit.” Her words come slurry, the liquor in her system affecting her speech.

“I don’t people would take me seriously— If I spoke out.” He now speaks more seriously. “I see how they are sometimes with you. Imagine how they would react with me.”

She shakes her head. “Your fear is valid but I won’t validate it. They turn me down but I still managed to be heard. I spoke out. And getting rejected is the exception, not the rule.”

“Start your own agency and I’ll start speaking.” Jungkook chuckles.

“Y’know what? I just might.” She shrugs, the idea not sounding too insane. “What about your insta? You haven’t updated it in too long.”

“How–” Jungkook looks her in the eye, confused, before getting hit by a flashback of the last time they had drinks together and his love confession about photography. The confused expression quickly changes into a smile. “You haven’t updated yours either.”

“Well, but I’m busy. You’re just an intern.” She turns his own words against him. “Don’t you have any good pictures? Post one now!” The excited smile on her lips is mimicked by the guy next to her as he takes his phone from his jeans pocket.

Somehow, both scootch closer, arms brushing on the armrest as Jungkook opens his gallery, images flying by with the simple swipe of his finger. Carolina would comment, from time to time, asking him to go slower or to return to a previous picture he had swiped on too quickly. Jungkook would look at her every time she commented. He wasn’t just trying to memorize every tip or compliment she would pay. Instead, he was looking at her features — the way the corner of her slightly parted lips were turned up, her eyes glowing with the light that emanated from the screen, showing how much of a soft brown they were, hidden behind a dark shield during the day by the rush of their lives.

“Woa— go back.” She comes to a halt as if suddenly getting hit by ice-cold water. Jungkook bites his lower lip. He had hoped she hadn’t noticed. “That’s me.”

“Yeah,” His voice shakes as he feels nervous about how she might react.

“When was that?” She’s now staring straight into his eyes.

“My first day.” He chuckles, eyes looking ahead as the memory comes back to him. “You announced my arrival to the team and referred me as if I was Spider-Man joining the Avengers. And then you said you wanted to leave the office earlier to go to the movies.”

“Well, first of all, I think I had just watched Avengers the night before. And second, there should be some sort of work license that allowed you to leave to catch a good movie session.” She shrugged, a serious look on her face that made Jungkook chuckle.

“I agree.”

“But why did you take that?” She nudged his arm, now resting her chin on her hand.

“I don’t know… I felt like I was supposed to eternalize that moment.”

“With me in it,” Carolina spoke coyly.

“Yes.” Jungkook almost whispers. “Lean back.”

“What?” Carolina is caught off guard, straightening herself in the passenger's seat.

“Lean back.” He repeated. “I want to take a picture of you.”

“Oh, I don’—” She tried to reason, but it was in vain.

“C’mon,”

The first picture comes out with Carolina giving him the finger, followed by another with her tongue out and a couple of others of her laughing, embarrassed. But you could hardly tell. Only by the way her cheeks were a soft shade of pink. It could easily be pinned on the drinks she had. As Jungkook keeps snapping, the pictures come out looking more like an old painting, the night making the quality of the pictures low but perfect in the photographer’s eyes.

“Perfect,” Jungkook sings. “Moment successfully eternalized.”

“Let me see. You’re deleting the ones I don’t like.” She gives him a threatening look and he opens his mouth to speak, before getting interrupted. “Or you’re getting fired.”

He pokes the inside of his cheek with his tongue, head flicking as he chuckles. “Alright.”

Yet again, they began to swipe through the pictures Jungkook took. The first few make Carolina laugh, the sound making the guy next to her open up a smile as well. Until they reach where Carolina wasn't so flattered and she laughs it off.

"Now here's one you're going to delete."

"No way!" Jungkook laughs, moving the phone away from the girl and out of her reach.

"I will fire you." She threatens in a light tone.

"You wouldn't dare." He smirks.

"Don't test me, Jeon."

"Are we back to formalities, Sousa?" Jungkook teases and the girl scoffs.

Almost kneeling on the passenger's seat, Carolina launches forward, catching Jungkook off guard as she goes for the phone. She ends up falling on his lap, the only thing between their bodies is the armrest that was still pushed forward.

Jungkook helps her up, hand still on her arm, keeping her close to him. "Who will answer your emails if I'm gone?"

"Oh, shut up."

Closing the space that was left between them, Carolina presses her lips against his. At first, he's shocked, not expecting her reaction but he is quick to kiss back, deepening the kiss as his hand travels from her arm to the back of her neck, pulling her to him so now she is sitting perfectly on his lap.

The loud bang of Carolina’s building’s front door makes the make-out session come to an end and the girl swiftly returns to her previous seat. “I’ll, hum, see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah— have a good night!” Jungkook lets out, watching the girl walk to the door until she’s out of his sight. “Fuck…”

[ chapter 2 ]

☁ want to be tagged in the next part? comment below or send me an ask!

144 notes · View notes

atmilliways · 10 months

Text

Dreams In Which I'm Dying (3)

part 3 of 16 | 856 words | Teen +

Summary:

Eddie Munson is tired. On his way back to the trailer park last night some alarm on his watch had gone off—BEEEEP! . . . BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!—and scared the crap out of him. It had been hard to fall asleep after that.

3 - Tired

Whatever nightmares he drags himself out of on Saturday morning are fucking awful. Maybe it's for the best that he’s forgotten them already.

By the time he emerges from his bedroom Wayne is long gone to work, and something about the empty trailer gives him the creeps. His head aches too much from lack of rest to blast music, so instead he hops in his van and just . . . drives, aimless, the radio cranked down to what most would call normal volume until he gets caught in a traffic snarl out near the old Benny’s Burgers.

Hawkins doesn’t have traffic, usually. Disconcerted, he u-turns and heads into town, snags more cigarettes at the gas station before pulling up in front of the arcade.

He doesn’t have enough pocket change left to make the arcade worth it. Maybe enough to rent a movie though, he thinks as he eyes the Family Video next door. Something to drown out the oppressive silence back at the trailer. . . . That should work.

The bell over the door chimes as he makes his way inside, no time to take in his surroundings before—

“Munson?”

Eddie jumps about a foot in the air with a yelp, flailing around to glare at Steve fucking Harrington in a green Family Video vest. It somehow matches his eyes. (Eddie had always thought were brown, but upon inspection that he never expected to get close enough to make, they're hazel.) “Jesus H. Christ, you have got to stop doing that!”

Great. A stupid attraction was so much easier to ignore when the subject stayed in a completely different orbit. But now, thanks to Satellite Dustin sweeping in and swinging shit out of alignment, this is happening. These are his first direct words to an attractive, athletic guy with a great smile and a greater ass, who Eddie has definitely rubbed one out to before. (He hasn’t kept count, he’s not an animal.)

Steve blinks at him, having the gall to look like he has no idea what Eddie’s talking about. “Riiight, I’ll get right on that. Anyway—” he claps his hands with the abrupt subject change, rubbing them together for good measure “—can I talk to you about something, man?”

“Uh.” This is a pretty benign conversation starter for someone who always seemed more likely to trip him in the school hallways and laugh. Eddie glances around Steve, still trying to decide between Fantasy and the Science Fiction. (Horror is a no go in his current post-nightmare mood.) “If you must.”

“It’s about Sinclair.”

His attention snaps back to Steve like a snapped rubber band. “If this is about luring a child into the dastardly clutches of a fantasy game cult, Harrington, you’re better off leaving that to the PTA moms. Besides, Erica can hold her own against the assembled forces of Satan.”

The wry smirk he gets in response is not what Eddie was expecting. “Yeah, I know,” Steve says, hands falling onto his own hips—and the thing is, it sounds like he does know. “I meant Lucas, actually. Dustin filled me in on the schedule conflict last night.”

Eddie doesn’t have the patience for this. He shoulders past Steve to head into the shelves. “Let me guess. Something something, championship game that was only announced the night before is more important than a final campaign session scheduled weeks in advance?”

“It’s not about scheduling,” Steve says, following. “You know that Lucas came off the bench and made the winning shot, right?”

“Don’t know how I could, considering I wasn’t there,” Eddie replies flatly as he pretends to browse. Pretends that proximity to Steve Harrington isn’t making him sweat.

“Yeah, well. All I’m saying is, next time could you maybe not make the shitheads choose between their favorite pastime and their best friend? It would’ve meant a lot to Lucas if they could’ve seen him do that.”

It’s so earnest, the way he says it, that Eddie almost forgets it’s not that simple. Between Jeff’s family dinners, Gareth’s insistence on actually studying, Grant’s curfew, Dustin’s frequent orthodontist appointments, and Mike’s Spring Break flight to California, it had been like herding cats to get dates and times that worked for everybody all semester.

“And all I’m saying,” Eddie shoots back, remarkably level, “is that Lucas didn’t even bother to tell me about his sudden schedule conflict in person, he made his best friends do it. Sorry man, he got what he got.”

This would be the perfect time to select his tape, shoulder past Steve, and saunter cooly up to the desk to check out.

It would be. Instead, the front door bursts open and startles Eddie into fumbling the tape he’s pulling from the shelf.

“Steve, Robin, we have a code red!” shrieks Dustin Henderson, sweeping in like a hurricane and trailing some red-headed girl Eddie didn’t know in his wake. “I repeat, code red!”

#donnie darko steddie au #stranger music anthology #steddie fanfic #my fanfic #eddie munson lives #chrissy still dies... sorry #time loop au #eddie munson #steve harrington

3 notes · View notes

talia-rumlow · 2 years

Text

My Works (Will be updated as I go)

First of all. Thank you so much for your likes, your comments and your support. I really appreciate it.

My writing is 18+, smut, and all that follows with it. Some stories are worse than others. Read on own risk. Warnings will be posted.

I usually write Marvel related stuff. But I can take requests for other things as well. Favorites are: The Night Manager, Supernatural, Criminal Minds, Bones, Buffy/Angel, 911, Chigaco Fire/PD/Med, Kingdom (I am currently in the process of watching the entire show), Wheelman.

Although I decided to take a step back from RPF, I could maybe take request for that too. But probably only One Shots. Send me a PM if you want me to write something for you.

I also post my stuff on Wattpad, AO3, My personal blog, TikTok and My Saviour is also ongoing on Instagram as a video story. (If you want to keep the thrill, and read the stories as I post them on here. I would recommend, NOT to visit my Blog, AO3 or Wattpad)

ON HOLD! (Given the recent news about Chris Hemsworth!)

Yes! You are seeing correctly. I´m actually writing a Loki fic. And this is an epic one!

Given your place in Asgard, a secret relationship with the God of Mischief isn't exactly a good Idea. But you can't stop. It's an obsession, a sickness. You can't get enough of him! And Loki can't get enough of you!

This story will go back and forth in time.

Chapter One - Twisted Reality

Chapter Two - Queen Of Asgard

Chapter Three - Loki & Thor

COMPLETED STORIES

Private Workout (Alvey Kulina One-Shot)

Another story based on one of Frank Grillos roles. The 2017 NETFLIX movie Wheelman. I love that movie.

After a real heavy night out with the girls, you decide to sleep it off in your car. But when a bankrobbery goes South, and the Getaway driver "borrows" your car, the night takes a whole new turn. While you´re being chased around the city by his enemies, you start to see the thrill of the criminal side of things. But things aren´t always as black and white as you or he thinks.

Chapter One - Wheelman

Chapter Two - Heating Things Up

Chapter Three - This Is Going To Hurt

Chapter Four - Do You Always Fuck The Girls You Kidnap?

Chapter Five - I Told You To Run, YN!

After tips from @nekoannie-chan I have decided to start to post my other stories on here as well.

My schedule:

MONDAY: My Saviour

TUESDAY: My Brother´s Best Friend

WEDNEDSDAY: Bound & Brockened

THURSDAY: Best Friends Forever

FRIDAY: Escort To The Multiverse

SATURDAY: Forbidden Fruit

SUNDAY: Strangers With Memories (Original Story)

You can read about the stories further down in this post!

My Saviour is a Rumlow X Reader story. This story will contain Graphic Sexual Description, Graphic Description of Violence, Death, Murder, angst, trauma, Domestic Abuse and Past Abuse. Read on own risk. This is a story where I portray Brock Rumlow as a decent human being. He also has a backstory. If you don´t like Brock Rumlow yet. You will, after reading this story.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the Marvel characters, only my original ones.

Chapter One - We Don´t Treat Women Like That!

Chapter Two - Can I Tell You A Little Secret?

Chapter Three - What Someone Like Me, Does To Little Brats Like You

Chapter Four - Who Is In Charge?

Chapter Five - Good Girls Gets Rewarded

Chapter Six - The Morning After

Chapter Seven - First Day At Work

Chapter Eight - I Want To Protect You

Chapter Nine - That´s Right, You Disobeyed Me!

Chapter Ten - Pick One!

Chapter Eleven - Mine! Say It!

Chapter Twelve - I´ll Find Him!

Chapter Thirteen - Want To Play A Game?

Chapter Fourteen - Pull Over!

Chapter Fifteen - What Do You Want Me To Do?

Chapter Sixteen - Want Me To Look For It?

Chapter Seventeen - Did You Lock The Door?

Chapter Eighteen - That Girl You Like So Much!

Chapter Nineteen - It´s A Date!

Chapter Twenty - When You Call Me Brock

Chapter Twentyone - See What You Get When You Ask Nicely

Chapter Twentytwo - Come For Me, Brock!

Chapter Twentythree - Please Don´t Leave Me!

Chapter Twentyfour - I Fucking Love You!

Chapter Twentyfive - Are You Alright?

Chapter Twentysix - You Disobeyed Me, Brock!

Chapter Twentyseven - Will It Be Dangerous, This Mission?

Chapter Twentyeight - Have You Ever Used A Gun Before, YN?

Chapter Twentynine - SHIELD Is The Safest Place To Be!

Chapter Thirty - Alexander Pierce

Chapter Thirtyone - Why Is This Happening To You?

Chapter Thirtytwo - How Did You End Up Here?

Chapter Thirtythree - This One Is Not!

Chapter Thirtyfour - Please Don´t Be Mad At Me!

Chapter Thirtyfive - Who Said Anything About Winning?

Chapter Thirtysix - I Love You, YN!

Chapter Thirtyseven - Good Agents Don´t Disobey Orders, YN!

Chapter Thirtyeight - You Are Fired Though!

Chapter Thirtynine - What´s Wrong With You, Brock?

Chapter Fourty - Well Played, YN! You´re Still Dead Though!

Chapter Fourtyone - What Did You Do To deserve This Treatment?

Chapter Fourtytwo - She´s Messing With Your Mind, Brock! Be Careful!

Yet another Rumlow as a decent human being story. Yes! I LOVE doing these. Give Rumlow some love.

After years not speaking to your brother, Jack Rollins. He invites you to spend the summer with him, in New York. When your flight gets cancelled, Jack tells you, that you can hitch a ride, with his best friend, driving home from a mission. Great, you've met Brock Rumlow one time before, and you hate his face. Cocky, self-righteous, arrogant bastard. Not your type at all. You're not looking forward to drive across the country with him. Will you survive this trip with him, or will past experiences make it impossible to get to your destination? Secrets will come out, the past will catch up with both you and Rumlow. This story will be kinda a slow burn, with sexual content, and a lot of humor.

Chapter One - What, Brock? He´s A Good Guy!

Chapter Two - The Stupid Obnoxious One!

Chapter Three - You´re Reading Porn!

Chapter Four - You´ll Never Understand Him!

Chapter Five - What Did You Dream About?

Chapter Six - Like What You See?

Chapter Seven - Arrg.. Piss off, Brock!!

Chapter Eight - What do you want me to say, Brock?

Chapter Nine - Get your fucking hands off!

Chapter Ten - Truth Or Dare

Chapter Eleven - His Best Friend´s Little Sister!

This story is the fastest growing story I´ve EVER posted. I absolutely LOVE to write this story. And I hope you´ll enjoy reading it as well. Just remember the warnings. Read with care!

Brock Rumlow, a ruthless badass, with a fucked up dominant side! After a mission goes terribly wrong, he gets fired from his job. After picking up girls in bars for a while, he gets that he needs more. No more of these fucked up, girls that leaves the next morning. He needs something stable. Someone he can use, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Someone he can get out his frustration on.

So he decides to buy you, at an auction!

You had no money, no place to live, nothing left. That's the only reason you decided to give yourself away. To use the only thing you had, to maybe get some food and a roof over your head. You had no idea what you were walking into!

DARK STORY!! ⚠️⚠️

Containing graphic descriptions of non-con elements, bdsm, different forms of torture, graphic sexual descriptions.

⚠️READ ON OWN RISK⚠️

🔞🔞🔞

Chapter One - Hades

Chapter Two - Owned!

Chapter Three - Choices!

Chapter Four - Play!

Chapter Five - Rules!

Steve and Bucky have been best friends since the 30's. Steve married you and Bucky married Nat weeks apart, and you've been best friends and double dated for years. What will happen when Nat leaves Bucky, and Bucky moves in with you and Steve? Will the friendship between the four of you last. And more importantly, will your marriage to Steve last when his amazingly handsome best friend moves in.

Chapter One - Divorce?!

Chapter Two - Nightmares!

Chapter Three - Breakfast!

Chapter Four - James.

One of my absolute favorite stories to write. This one made me tap into the darkest places of my mind. This will be a dark story. Containing graphic sexual description, Non-Con, BDSM, rough treatment, strong language, and everything else in that area. Rating X 18+! Read on own risk!

You were new to the city of New York. Your job didn't pay enough money to make rent, so you decided to start to work at a gentlemans club. Then a friend offers you a job at an escort service. To make ends meet, you says yes! One day you are sent on a mission to the SHIELD building, to take care of two agents, returning from a mission. Will it be too much for you to handle? Or will this be just what you need to get the new start you so desperately needs?

Characters includes: Tony Stark, Captain America & The Winter Soldier!

Chapter One - Jack Rollins & Brock Rumlow

Chapter Two - Can You Fuck Her Or Not?!

Chapter Three - I Think She Likes It!

Chapter Four - Shut Her Up!

Chapter Five - She´ll Fucking Listen Now!

Chapter Six - Listen Don´t Fucking Talk

Chapter Seven - She Enjoys The Fucking Pain

Chapter Eight - How Does She Taste?

Chapter Nine - Some Sort Of Super Human!

I´ve always been a fan of the Night Manager, so of course I had to make a fic about Jonathan Pine. This will contain a lot of feelings, past trauma, abuse, murder, Non-Con elements and sexual description.

You met Jonathan Pine 5 years ago in Cairo. One steamy night was all you had time for, before Richard Roper got hold of you. Now you've been his prisoner for 5 years. When some unforeseen events led to you and Jonathan Pine to meet again. Only this time Mr. Roper calls the shot. Your job is to Seduce Jonathan Pine, and make him talk. Make him reveal his secrets before he can put a stop to Ropers plan. Your only way out of Ropers control is to finish the job. Will you reveal his secrets? Or will he reveal yours first?

Chapter One - Cairo 5 Years Ago

Chapter Two - No Way Out!

Chapter Three - A Part Of Life

Chapter Four - Daniel!

This story means the world to me. And it´s heartbreaking, sweet and though. It´s about events from my own life, so I´m really putting myself out there with this one. It was the events in this story that got me into writing in the first place. If it wasn´t for what happened, I wouldn´t have been where I am today. So although I got my heart ripped out of my chest and stamped on. It was worth it.

What if you find love, with the most unexpected person? What if he gave you everything you missed? Only to leave you confused! What if that heartbreak gave you the chance to do everything you ever wanted. Would you risk it all? One more time...

Chapter One - Christopher He´s Good!

Chapter Two - Redecorate The Bathroom

Chapter Three - The First Date

Comment or send me a PM if you want to be on my taglist <3

And if you got as far as to this part.. THANK YOU for reading. And I hope you´ll read my stories, once I post them.

15 notes · View notes

snowdice · 2 years

Text

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 123]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. Feel free to send in asks about anything at any point, even if it’s not for the part of the story I’m currently on.

If you aren’t interested and don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.”

See the Folds in Time Universe Master Post for edited chapters. Not yet edited chapters are under the cut. I also have a playlist on youtube for this story.

My hope is to do a good amount today. (Though every time I say that...) Anyway, we’re about to get into the complicated part of this story and I’m so excited! Pay close attention in the next few days I write this. See if you can spot my machinations.

Chapter 44 (Escape from French Toast)

Logan was woken up earlier than he would have liked the next morning by chaos in the kitchen. He’d stayed up late on his laptop running through various programs he’d designed to track time related metrics. So far, he’d run the programs to scan the last 48 hours and had synthesized all of the data, putting it into an Excel document for easy viewing.

At some point he didn’t recall, he’d fallen asleep on the couch. (He’d given up his bed to Virgil.) Of course, both of his roommates tended to rise with the sun and were incapable of being quiet ever, so Logan had gotten a maximum of 3 hours of sleep depending on when he’d actually lost consciousness.

Logan glared at Patton as he shuffled into the kitchen to get a cup of tea, but the other man didn’t notice. He was too busy trying to figure out the right flavor profile for making asiago cheese bread into palatable French toast.

Roman was hovering over him making loud, likely inane suggestions while also vehemently defending his bakery choices. Patton was agreeing wholeheartedly with everything he said and adding his own ridiculous suggestions about how to make the French toast edible while blatantly not following any of his own or Roman’s suggestions.

Logan pushed past Roman to get to the tea shelf without a word.

“Uh oh, he’s grumpy,” Roman said.

“I have not even said a word,” Logan replied, swatting him away as he began picking at Logan’s sweatshirt to remove a few fabric pills near the shoulder.

“Exactly,” Roman replied. “You didn’t sleep last night.”

“I did,” Logan replied.

“And for how long?”

Logan did not respond.

“You know, sleeping can be very helpful for your mental and physical health.”

“So can you keeping your mouth shut,” Logan grumbled back.

“I’ll have you know people love when I talk. You are just being a grouchy old nerd. Isn’t that right, Patton?”

Patton hummed. “Yes, your voice is great, sweetie,” he replied.

“See,” Roman said. “Two against one.”

“Two against two actually, a voice even more tired sounding that Logan’s spoke up from the door to the kitchen, “and since you’re the subject of the vote, your opinion’s too biased to count. So, Logan wins.”

Virgil was standing in the doorway looking as though he’d never heard of the concept of mornings and did not like the new information he was being given on them right now. He was leaning against the doorframe as though at any moment he might slump over and fall back asleep while still standing. The yellow bottom of the slightly too wide nightshirt Patton had given him the night before stuck out from the black hoodie he’d came in.

Roman was sputtering. “Excuse me?!” he squawked.

Virgil made a show of wincing. “My point exactly,” he muttered.

“You’re rude!” Roman exclaimed. He turned to Patton. “Patton, he’s being rude to me!”

“You woke me up,” Virgil hissed. He pulled up the hood of the hoodie and pulled on the strings to tighten it around his face.

“It’s 7am!”

Virgil grumbled something that sounded more like an animal growling than any words.

Patton and Logan shared a look. Patton frowned scoldingly at Logan’s amused smirk as though he wasn’t also finding this argument amusing.

“Well,” Patton interrupted the two’s quickly developing staring contest. “I’m making French toast for breakfast, Virgil, but it’ll be a few minutes yet. I’m sure Logan has something to show you on his computer since he was working on stuff so late last night.”

Logan did not actually have much to show for his efforts yet. It was all just numbers at the moment, but the look in Patton’s eyes said, ‘We’re separating the children.’ Logan half wanted to shrug him off and see where this went as the look on Roman’s face was amusing, but then Logan looked at the tea bags in his hands, the disaster in the making that was the French toast ingredients, and the man tiredly rubbing his eyes.

“Of course,” Logan said evenly. “We will just be in the living room.” He walked over and shoved Virgil gently through the door. “Go get dressed,” he said under his breath.

“Wha?” Virgil asked with a squint.

“We’re fleeing the morning people.”

Virgil just gave him a confused look.

“Unless, of course, you want to be forced to eat French toast made from asiago cheese bread.”

Virgil’s expression darkened and he nodded before turning towards Logan’s bedroom. Logan had grabbed nightclothes and an outfit for the morning for himself before Virgil had gone to bed the night before (not that he’d actually changed into the nightclothes). He grabbed the outfit for today and quickly changed in the bathroom.

Virgil was already fully dressed and waiting in the living room by the time he’d finished. He’d changed into one of Logan’s grey hoodies. It was an older thing that Logan rarely wore, but it seemed to fit him. It had the vibes of a very tired college professor going to work on his research in a coffee shop on the weekends. He was also wearing blue jeans from an unknown source (they had appeared in the laundry one day and no one in the apartment claimed them) that were just a touch too large and thus held up by a belt.

Virgil raised an eyebrow at him without saying a word. Logan gestured with his head towards the front door. He grabbed his keys and wallet from the table near the entrance, being careful not to let the keys clang together and make noise.

He swiftly unlocked and opened the door before gesturing Virgil through. Virgil made less noise than Logan had thought possible as he walked outside of the apartment, but then again, Logan’s own experiences with sneaking out of anywhere were with one or two of the loudest people that had ever existed.

“Where exactly are we going?” Virgil asked once the door had closed behind Logan.

“We’re going to get coffee,” Logan said.

“And we can’t just tell your roommates about that?” Virgil asked.

“I’m not allowed to drink anything more caffeinated than tea since the hamster incident of 2011.”

Virgil’s lips quirked up into a half smile. “Do I even want to know?”

Logan hummed. “Did you notice the hamster cage in our apartment with seemingly no hamster?” he asked.

“…Yes?”

“Once a few years ago, I did not sleep for 72 hours and my caffeine addled brain accidently invented a device that turns things invisible,” Logan told him. “It’s temporary on plants and inanimate objects, but it’s seemingly permanent on animals or perhaps just on rodents. We haven’t tested it on any other animals.”

“W-what?” Virgil sputtered.

“To be fair, I thought I was making the rocks and flowers I’d tested the device on first travel through time. It was a bit of confirmation bias on my part as I was attempted to invent time travel and I did not properly observe the experiment before moving on in my testing.”

“How do you accidently invent an invisibility ray or whatever when trying to invent time travel?”

“It’s a spray,” Logan told him, “and I missed a negative sign.” They’d been walking side by side but needed to make a sharp left turn to get to their destination, and Logan found himself grabbing Virgil’s upper arm in order to guide him.

“Uh,” Virgil said which is when Logan realized it might be odd for a practical stranger to grab someone like that. “Er, where is the coffee shop?”

It’s just a couple of blocks north,” Logan answered, letting him go after they finished the turn and flashing him a small smile. Virgil smiled back. The concept of invisible hamsters seemed to have left his mind. “It’s a smaller place, but gets fewer actual college students, not that it matters since it’s summer break for them.”

“So, do you frequently perform coffee acquiring heists?” Virgil asked.

“Sometimes I drink tea there,” Logan replied, “but yes. How else am I meant to get my work done?”

Virgil laughed. “That’s probably not healthy. I don’t disagree, but it’s probably not healthy.”

Logan found himself chuckling as well as he led him down the path to the shop. “You’re probably correct,” he said, “but they have very good coffee.”

Chapter 45

Logan did end up ordering himself more caffeine than a man who was banded from caffeine probably should have, but honestly, who was Virgil to judge. They also ordered pastries to eat for breakfast which Virgil could already tell were way too sweet, but he wasn’t complaining.

Logan got a text from one of his roommates as they were waiting for their drinks to be finished. He probably didn’t notice the fond smile he sent the phone as he answered.

“I told them I’m showing you the town a bit,” he informed Virgil. “Which isn’t technically a lie.”

“Not, technically, no,” Virgil replied. He took a bite of the cinnamon roll in front of him and grimaced slightly. “Your time has a thing for artificial sweeteners,” he said, keeping his voice down. They were in a far back corner and it wasn’t busy at this hour, so he didn’t see too much of an issue.

“Apologizes, would you like something else?” Logan asked.

Virgil waved him off. “I’ll acclimate. If I could get used to 1950s post war, society is getting used to instant gelatin, recipes during my post-doc, I can figure out how to stomach an overly sweet pastry or two.

“You spent time in the 1950s?”

“Mmm, not my favorite, but seeing the direct results of World War II are important.”

“In the United States?”

“For a bit, but I hopped around a lot and also went to the 60s and 70s. I was basically tracing the evolution of different social issues in the wake of World War II for both the Axis and Allied Powers.”

“An interesting topic,” Logan replied. “I imagine even in the 21st century, I would not have perspective especially on different countries.”

“Oh, you definitely don’t,” Virgil confirmed.

“Perhaps I’ll take a look at your work sometime.”

“Oh, uh,” Virgil said, and he really shouldn’t be flustered about that. He’s gone to conferences and presented his work before. “Yeah, if you want.”

The barista called their drink names then, and Logan got up to go grab them. Get it together, Virgil, he begged himself while shoving another piece of too sweet pastry into his mouth.

Logan set the coffees down on the table in front of them and Virgil took his with a closed mouth smile of thanks, while still chewing on his cinnamon roll.

“So,” Logan began. “More than just escaping the disaster breakfast my roommates had in mind, I would like to perhaps return to the location you arrived at and see if there is anything there physically that wasn’t picked up on my devices. Do you think you’ll be able to find the location if I get you in the general vicinity of the farmer’s market?”

“I don’t always have the best memory,” Virgil said, “but I’ve had a deep-seated fear of being kidnapped since I was a small child, so I could probably lead you to the farmers market, let alone to where I came from.

“Ah.”

“My mom let me watch a horror movie when I was too young about a boy my age being kidnapped and taken out to the middle of the desert to be hunted like an animal, and he had no idea how to get back home. So, then I would spend any ride in any vehicle trying to memorize the path we took with my eyes closed.”

“I see.”

“And I’m really oversharing for having met you in person less than 24 hours ago, aren’t I?”

Logan crinkled his eyebrows. “Are you?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah, I think so,” Virgil said. “Traumatic childhood memories might be a bit much this soon.”

“I have never been the best at knowing social norms,” Logan said. “Would you like me to share a traumatic childhood memory with you, so we are even?”

“I…” Virgil said. “Can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“I am a bit,” Logan said with a small smile, “but if it would make you feel more comfortable, I am willing. We might not have known each other in person for very long, but we aren’t exactly strangers.”

And that was true. Lo had been emailing him for months at this point. They’d argued about the correct order to watch a television show in, they’d watched videos together with Lo logging onto his desktop (promising not to dive into his search history and private files), and Lo had somehow attended all of his publicly streamed lectures without getting caught by the university’s firewall. He’d even managed to make Virgil feel better when he’d had one of his bad days by ranting for hours about airplanes.

He hadn’t known Logan’s face for long, but they did know each other pretty well in spite of that.

“I got distracted on a fieldtrip once,” Logan said, and oops, Virgil had taken too long to say ‘you don’t have to be emotionally vulnerable in a coffee shop to make me feel better’ and now it was too late.

“Somehow, despite the fact that my teacher really should have been taking attendance before allowing the bus to leave the orchard we were visiting, they managed to overlook my absence. I had no friends in the class, and I was so quiet at that age no one noticed me not being there. I couldn’t find my way back to the entrance or find any workers. No one was aware I was gone until my parents came to pick me up and no one could find me. My parents were very unhappy with the teacher once they managed to find me.”

“That experience along with others in my formative years gave me a dislike of being ignored, which combined with my innate desire to have time alone has made friendships difficult to sustain.”

“Oh,” Virgil said, unsure how to respond. “Er, well, that sucks.”

“Luckily Patton is hyperempathetic and Roman cannot be removed from a person he deems his friend with a crowbar,” he said, “which helped me at a younger age. As an adult, I am aware of the issue and am able to work through it with logic most of the time.”

“What do you think about someone who is so anxious he can’t ignore anything, especially a person?”

“I think that would be someone worth knowing,” Logan said. He paused. “Though I would not wish social anxiety onto a person to be clear.”

“Thanks for the clarification,” said Virgil, amused.

They lapsed into silence for a few minutes then. It was still a bit awkward but not completely uncomfortable.

Logan took a bite of his pastry and spoke once he’d swallowed it. “Tell me more about what your plans were with your research before they were disrupted,” he requested, breaking the silence. “Why 2005 in particular? What had you planned to do? How long were you going to stay?”

Virgil smiled and drank his coffee as he did a short rundown of what his plans had been before they were interrupted by time travel. Logan listened careful and even though it sucked that he’d been stranded in a time he hadn’t even meant to visit, he wasn’t all too upset about it for the moment.

Chapter 46

Virgil was correct about his ability to find the location of the farmer’s market. After they ate and finished their coffee, they set out to investigate the location of the time anomaly. “I ended up under the stage,” Virgil informed him. The stage had already been taken down, but it was easy to see where it had once been based on the depressions on the ground.

Logan had brought a few of his tools when they had left that morning and he pulled out a modified iPad.

“You hide your time travel tech as an iPad?” Virgil asked curiously.

Logan glanced at him and said nothing.

“…You made your time travel tech out of an iPad!” Virgil exclaimed.

“It is one of the most easily accessible technologies of this time that is also portable,” Logan shrugged. “I use what I can get.”

“How did you manage to invent time travel with 21st century technology?” Virgil asked.

“It took me a couple of decades,” Logan replied.

“It took them literal centuries.”

“Well, I knew it could happen, so I simply made it happen.”

“You’re terrifying,” Virgil stated.

Logan just hummed and set the iPad scrolling through its diagnostic programs. It scanned the area around them for anything that might indicate time travel.

“Well,” Logan said. “There is definitely an anomaly, but we already knew that. It’s a strange one, however.”

“What do you mean?” Virgil asked.

“I’d assumed whatever had caused you to end up here had dragged you here, but what I’m finding doesn’t seem to be remnants of something to cause time travel. On the contrary, it seems to be similar readings to what stopped Janus time travel to stop working in previous circumstances. I don’t know a lot about the time travel technology from your time, but I have noted they tend to briefly ping off of times near to your destination in order to recalibrate when going a certain amount of time. Perhaps your device did a brief landing here at the wrong time and then was deactivated much like TPI devices have been deactivated beforehand and you got stuck.”

“What does that mean for me?”

“Well, it means your device isn’t broken,” Logan said.

“Then why isn’t it working?” Virgil asked.

“Because,” Logan said. “whatever is deactivating it is still here.”

Virgil looked at his feet as though expecting to see the device sitting on the ground somewhere.

“Not here here,” Logan clarified, “but close by. They have a limited range from what I understand, though I don’t know precisely how far. It’s definitely in this time however. But it’s strange,” Logan tapped out a few things on his device, double checking that he hadn’t missed anything with his regular monitoring.

“It’s not causing any other problems.” Logan continued. “We’ve only ran into them once or twice before and we’ve never managed to get our hands on one too actually study it, but each time we’ve seen them, they created some sort of issue in the environment, but there are no obvious time abnormalities or weather problems. In fact, if I wasn’t looking for it, I wouldn’t have noticed.”

“Okay, well then, can’t we just find it and shut it off?” Virgil asked. “That’s what I know Janus did when he ran into them.”

“It is,” Logan confirmed. “The only issue is without the obvious environmental clues I have no idea where it actually is to turn it off.”

“How the hell do we find it then?” Virgil asked.

“I’m not sure,” Logan said. “It definitely was here when it switched on, but it’s definitely not here anymore.” He looked around. “Perhaps it was attached to the stage or put in the musician’s instrument cases. Then again, by that logic, it could have been put in anyone’s bags or in a since emptied trashcan.”

“So, it could basically be anywhere?”

“Basically,” Logan agreed. “We will check the easiest possibilities to track down and if that produces no results, I’ll… figure out something.”

Virgil grimaced. “That sounds promising.”

“I will do my best,” Logan promised. “I just wish I knew more about these things.”

Virgil seemed to hesitate. “How would you go about learning more about it?”

“Well,” Logan said, “if I can get my hands on a similar device, I could probably figure out a more reliable way to track it.”

“You do,” Virgil said.

“I do what?”

“You do have one.”

Logan frowned. “I assure you, I do not.”

“But you do,” Virgil said. “Eventually.”

“…Oh, I see.” Logan replied. “Do you perhaps know where we do eventually find it?”

Virgil pressed his lips together. “I think I might already be saying too much,” he said. “It’s stuff you shouldn’t know about yet in your personal future. People aren’t supposed to…”

“Time is not nearly as sensitive as the TPI seems to believe,” Logan said with an eyeroll. “In fact, most of Janus and Patton’s interactions so far involve accidently giving more information than necessary.”

“I don’t know…”

“I’m a time traveler from the 21st century who lives with a French man from the 1800s,” Logan said. “I’m not asking for a run down of every part of the event, just a time and place to point us in the correct direction.”

Virgil still didn’t seem convinced.

“It would really only be a time saver,” Logan argued. “I could just blindly look for time distortions, but it’d take a while…”

“Fine,” Virgil said after a moment. “This is probably entirely stupid, but fine. Give me a moment to think about what exactly I can tell you, so I don’t mess everything up.”

Logan smiled slightly at his overly cautious behavior but waited patiently.

“Janus met Pat once in Cuba. There was a time distortion during Camaguey Carnival of 1755. Pat took the device that had been causing the disturbance and left before Janus could catch him.”

“Camaguey 1755,” Logan repeated. “Got it. I’ll look into it, and we can see what we can do. It’ll still take a few days to prep however.”

Logan would need to find exact coordinates and he’d have to talk to Patton considering he’d just recently gotten back from an unwillingly long trip to pre-history. He’d probably be willing to go, but he’d mentioned Logan making him a “time survival pack” before he was willing to go back into the timestream. They’d need to talk about what exactly that entailed and get the supplies for it. His mind was already making plans about what he needed to do.

Virgil nodded. “Should we head back to the apartment then?” he asked, interrupting Logan’s thoughts. Logan glanced at him. He had actually planned to show the man around a bit today instead of spending all of their time thinking about time travel.

“I cannot be sure that my roommates will have cleaned up their French toast nonsense by now,” he said. “We should likely wait to return until at least the lunch hour. It is not as though we could do anything about it today. We will need to plan.”

“Okay,” said Virgil, “then what are we going to do for the next 3-4 hours?”

“Well,” Logan said. “Perhaps I can show you around the town a bit more so as to not make more of a liar of myself than I already have.”

“Sure,” Virgil agreed with a smile. “What will you be showing me.”

“I was thinking we could visit the local museum. We can compare notes about how wildly inaccurate the exhibits present history.”

Virgil rolled his eyes at Logan, but there was something warm underneath his expression. “Fine,” he said, “but I bet I know more than you.”

Chapter 47

The museum was interesting, not because it taught him any more about the events behind the exhibits on display, but more that learning what people in the 21st century cared about and how they presented past events was an anthropological lesson in its own right. Their conversation became a game of not only finding the mistakes made in the exhibits, but also Virgil hypothesizing why those mistakes were made: prejudice, missing information, and unreliable secondary sources all contributed, and Virgil spent a lot of time talking through the possibilities.

They spent a few hours there before heading back to Logan’s apartment.

Not without stopping at a small, hole in the wall, bar inhabited only by day drinkers. When Virgil gave Logan a weird look, he explained, “I have to bring back a peace offering for running off this morning if I want Patton to agree to a time travel mission for me.”

“…And Patton likes… vodka?” he guessed.

“No,” Logan replied, amused. “This establishment serves cheeseburgers which are apparently the ‘best in the city.’ They do not, however, cook anything else. Not even fries.”

When Logan handed him an unlabeled brown paper bag that looked as though it had been dipped in hot oil instead of just it’s contents, Virgil shot him a raised eyebrow. “Ah, yes,” he said, “the quintessential 21st century American meal.”

“You once ate only bagged pepperoni meant for pizzas for breakfast for a week once.”

“I told you that in confidence,” Virgil said, smacking him lightly with the bag of grease.

“And I have told no one,” Logan responded. “Therefore, I have not violated any part of our agreement.”

“You’re making fun of me. That’s definitely a part of the agreement,” Virgil said.

“I don’t remember there being any clause like that in our verbal contract,” Logan replied with a slight smirk. Virgil rolled his eyes. “Besides, I’m not truly making fun of you. The decision to fuel your body solely with pepperoni is, while not the best strategy and one that would certainly prove detrimental in the long run, it is better to eat that then nothing.”

“Oh,” Virgil said. “Uh, good.”

“I’m simply citing another example where not as healthy food in the long term can be good in the short term.”

“But in this case instead of depression eating to stay alive, the purpose is bribery.”

“Exactly,” Logan said. “Bribery to end the time distortion and get you back to the proper time.”

“Alright, fair enough.”

“You don’t have to eat any if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, no, I’m going to.”

“Then why are you complaining?” Logan asked amused.

“I just thought you should know your time has way too greasy food,” Virgil said.

“Thank you for the information,” Logan said dryly. They’d made it back to the apartment by then, and Logan stuffed the bag he was carrying under his arm to unlock the door.

“And where have the two of you been?” Patton asked when they walked into the kitchen.

“I have cheeseburgers for you,” was how Logan answered.

Patton rolled his eyes as Logan set the bag down in front of him. He was sitting at the kitchen table typing on a laptop. “The French toast wasn’t that bad,” he said.

“I will take your word for it,” Logan said pleasantly.

Patton just shook his head and reached into the bag for a cheeseburger. Logan kept looking at him, and that obviously meant something Virgil didn’t know, because Patton glanced up at him after eating a couple of bites. “What?” he asked suspiciously.

“Virgil and I went back to where he arrived,” Logan said. “There are signs that one of the devices that cause time distortions is present.”

“There aren’t any weather disturbances though,” Patton pointed out.

“It seems to be a more advanced version,” Logan answered. “Which will make much more difficult to track.”

“Okay,” Patton said, “then what are we going to do?”

“Well,” Logan said, “if we could get our hands on an older version, we could probably use it to narrow down the current one’s location.”

“And how exactly are we going to get an older version?” Patton asked, eyebrow raised.

“I understand that you have only been back from your last trip for a little over a week and that your last trip through time was a bit difficult, but,” he nodded towards Virgil, “we do know of the time and place one exists that you would have a good chance of being able to find, deactivate, and bring home.”

Patton groaned. “And judging by the source of this information, steal off of the TPI.”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.”

“At least, in this case, you will go into it knowing there will be no major disasters.”

…

Should Virgil… say something. It’d be rude not to mention the whole time shredding almost drowning bullshit, wouldn’t it? Then again… giving him foreknowledge could be a danger to the timestream. He debated with himself whether general social courtesy should outrank the possible destruction of time or not.

…

Maybe he’d just suggest a boat if they didn’t plan to take one? Just in case?

“Fine,” Patton said, “but you’re finishing your tech updates and making me a survival pack before I make any jump. I’m not making the same mistake again.”

Logan nodded. “I can do that,” he agreed. “Just tell me what you want in your survival pack.”

“I’ve already been working on a list,” Patton said. “I’ll email it to you.” He turned back to the computer he’d been working on and typed a few things. “You can add to it if you think of anything.”

Logan looked at his phone as it dinged. “…Do you really need all of this?”

“Yes,” Patton said, taking another bite of his cheeseburger.

“…I’ll do my best?”

“You’ll do it,” Patton returned.

“Right.”

“I’ll start researching Cuba in the 1700’s,” he said.

Virgil saw him pull up google on his computer. He looked at the 21st century computer and then back to Patton. He couldn’t help but think of the museum he and Logan had been to earlier that day. “Do you want help?”

Chapter 48

It took a little over two weeks to get everything set up. Logan had already been in the process of updating their equipment for quite some time, and this situation only spurned him on. He also then had to figure out a way to meet all of Patton’s demands for his new survival kit. His list had already been quite long before he’d started to add to it. He’d even slipped in a request for a boat at some point despite Logan’s protests that Camaguey Cuba was nowhere near the sea.

Thankfully, Virgil didn’t seem to mind the delays too much.

In fact, he may have had a hand in the delays as his natural inclination towards anxiety seemed to infect Patton and cause him to add and add to his list of safeguards for Logan to make. He and Patton were spending a good amount of time together, actually. Patton was fairly good at researching the places he planned to go at this point, but Virgil was undeniably more experienced with that sort of thing considering he worked with the TPI. Patton seemed to appreciate his input.

Roman, on the other hand, decidedly did not. The two of them were prone to arguments about clothing which had gone beyond talking about Cuban clothing to arguments about clothing from pretty much all of time.

Logan could not tell if they were friendly debates or not. He’d even asked Patton who had claimed he also could not tell. Neither Roman nor Virgil’s responses when asked directly about the nature of their relationship were helpful either. Logan did notice that Roman changed the fabric of the outfit he made for Patton after one of their conversations.

Virgil was not much help to Logan unless you counted the intel, he’d given that helped Logan choose the correct time and place. At least, not in the sense that he was able to help with the mathematics and physics Logan was dealing with.

He was, however, good for company. Especially as his sleep schedule much more closely resembled Logan’s own in those weeks. Typically Roman and Patton went to sleep at a much earlier hour than he did himself and Logan would work alone in the living room, but with Virgil living in the apartment, there was constant companionship while he worked, and less volatile company than he was used to working with (assuming, of course, Roman had gone to sleep by that time). It was nice.

He seemed to fit into their little group in a way Logan had not anticipated. Or at least, socially he did. Physically, there were simply not enough beds and Logan had been sleeping on the couch for two weeks.

Eventually, with all of their combined efforts, everything was ready to go. Patton had three different time appropriate outfits, a good amount of knowledge about the festivities he was about to attend, new time travel equipment, and a survival pack that could help him survive an apocalypse. Patton was planning to arrive in Cuba two days earlier than the TPI protocol would send agents like Janus. That way, he would have time to set up and get acclimated before the TPI sent in their surveillance and touchdown agents.

“This is cool,” Patton said, flexing his fingers to see the hidden screen on his palms light up with a map of the area.

“It’s organized the same as your previous device, except for, of course, the control panel to control the cloaking technology and the access to the survival kit.

“Looks great, Lo,” Patton said, still fiddling with it. He changed it to its default state of a metal band projecting the screen and then back to the time appropriate bracelet Roman had designed. There weren’t many possibilities programed for hiding the device yet, but more could be designed in the future. For now, it only had the default band, the bracelet, and a wristwatch.

“I’ve already tested it a good number of times, but you should familiarize yourself with it anyway before leaving.”

Patton nodded, flicked his fingers and disappeared for a moment before reappearing in the same place. Then, he did it again and reappeared directly next to where he’d been standing. He did similar things a few times before predictably getting bored and starting to do ‘tricks’ which mostly involved landing in ridiculous poses and also accidently jump scaring everyone in the apartment at least twice. Eventually, Logan confiscated it for the evening so they could have dinner in peace.

Patton went to bed early, planning on leaving the next day. Roman quickly retired to his room shortly after leaving Logan and Virgil alone in the living room.

Despite knowing already his calculations were perfect, Logan still sat on the couch checking over them one more time just to make sure. Virgil sat on the floor with his back against the couch watching videos on Logan’s cell phone with headphones borrowed from Patton’s collection.

He glanced up when Logan shifted positions and Logan flashed him a smile.

Virgil removed the headphones to speak. “Thanks by the way,” he said, “I already said it to Patton and will again in the morning, but thanks for helping me out with all of this.”

“It wouldn’t have been particularly kind of us to leave you stranded,” Logan pointed out.

“Yeah, but still, you’ve all been working really hard. Right now you’re up at 3am working on it.”

Logan shrugged. “I’d likely be up working at 3am on something anyway,” he said.

“Sure,” Virgil said, “but this time it’s for me so, yeah, thanks.”

“You’re welcome then,” Logan said. “Any time.”

Virgil tilted his head back to grin at him. “Was that a time travel pun.”

Logan scowled. “No.”

“It sounded like a time travel pun.”

“It was not intentional. I will never intentionally say a pun.”

“You’re telling me you live with Patton and never make puns?” Virgil asked.

“I, unlike my roommates, am a responsible adult,” Logan insisted.

Virgil seemed skeptical. “Is that why you’re drinking forbidden coffee out of an orange juice carton at 3am.”

“Not so loud,” he hissed, leaning forward to put Virgil’s mouth and glancing back towards the hallway to see if anyone was about to come storming into the living room with another intervention.

His hand was bit.

“Ow!” Logan exclaimed, taking his hand back. “How do you know?” he hissed. The ruse had been working on Roman and Patton for years because neither liked orange juice.

Virgil rolled his eyes. “I can smell it,” he said. “I’m not dumb.”

“It’s worked on everyone else.”

“No,” Virgil said. “It’s worked on one dramatic idiot and one man who trusts people not to lie to him way too much. I, however, am a paranoid asshole with a doctorate. You can’t fool me.”

Logan couldn’t help but smiled. “I suppose I have met my match,” he said.

He tilted his head all the way back, so his skull rested on the couch cushion and he was staring straight up at Logan with his piercing hazel eyes. “Heck yeah you have,” Virgil said, and Logan was not much more sentimentality, especially not romantic sentimentality, but there was something about the shadows making the room seem cozier and the almost golden glint in his eyes from the lit lamp beside Logan that made it more difficult to breath.

68261

He was relaxed here in Logan’s apartment at 3 in the morning, looking up at him with warm eyes. He fit, slotting into place with an ease Logan had not expect. He’d found Professor Virgil Eran interesting from the moment he’d first heard him speak and had glanced through his university profile for information on whoever had plugged his virus into their computer. He had found him endearing when they’d corresponded through emails and occasionally one sided video chats. It was different with him right in front of Logan, within arm’s reach. He could reach down barely a few inches and brush his slightly unruly hair out of his eyes.

“You good man?” Virgil asked.

“I am perfectly well,” Logan said, clearing his throat. He glanced away from Virgil. “I think perhaps my roommates have a bit of a point when it comes to caffeine.”

“Maybe at 3am,” Virgil said in good humor. “You’re not a college kid.”

Logan glanced at the college professor on his living room floor. “Well, thank goodness for that,” he mumbled

“I think your calculations are fine anyway,” Virgil said, gently taking the papers out of his grip. “Why don’t we do something else?”

“Like sleep?” Logan asked.

“You think you’ll be sleeping anytime soon?” Virgil inquired with a raised eyebrow.

“Fair point.”

Virgil grabbed the television remote from side table. “Why don’t we watch a bit of that time inappropriate copy of the Epithet File I know you have.”

“Sure,” Logan agreed. “You can come onto the couch if you would like.”

“Nah. You can come to the floor.”

“…Fine.”

Chapter 49

Patton left in the morning and from there it was just a waiting game. Which, was Virgil’s least favorite type of game. He tried to keep his anxiety on the down low considering it was Logan and Roman’s lifelong friend who was running around some other century, and they were both obviously nervous as well, since the last trip had ended in disaster.

…

This trip was going to end in disaster a little bit too, but Virgil was going to ignore that. At least he wouldn’t be gone for months.

The point was, Roman was constantly going to the gym which was, reportedly not normal behavior and Logan spent his days re-checking calculations that were too late to correct and had worked considering Patton had been in contact occasionally.

Yet, despite the fact that he was clearly an anxious wreck as well, Logan eventually forced himself to put his lined notebook paper away for a bit. Roman was out once again when he did so and Virgil was doom scrolling on his phone.

“We should go out to dinner,” he declared suddenly.

Virgil glanced at the pile of take-out containers stacked near the kitchen trashcan. “Sure,” he agreed.

Which was why Virgil was leaving the apartment for the first time in the last three or so days. Logan had asked him if he wanted anything in particular, but he didn’t care and also didn’t know what restaurants were around, so he was just letting Logan lead him wherever he wanted.

He should not have trusted him.

He glared at Logan, but the man only seemed entertained by his ire. “Really?” Virgil asked.

“I wanted to see for myself if you were really that bad with chopsticks.”

“I’m not,” Virgil said, crossing his arms. “It was just the anxiety about the social situation, and I resent this.”

Logan just laughed, knowing well enough that Virgil wasn’t actually irritated. Honestly, he felt fonder than anything that Logan had chosen to take him here. “It’s actually pretty good sushi.”

“21st century American Midwest sushi,” Virgil drawled. “I’m simply quivering with anticipation for that authenticity.”

“It’s unanimously considered the best sushi in town by my friend group,” Logan said as if the fact that Mr. Asiago Cheese Bread For French Toast and Mr. Went Along With Cooking Asiago Cheese Bread French Toast approved of the restaurant would inspire any confidence in Virgil. If he could even call the place a ‘restaurant.’

“It’s. In. A. Mall.”

“So?” Logan asked.

“It’s a sushi stand in a mall. There isn’t even seating.”

“There is seating,” Logan argued nodding at the five chairs sitting in front of the counter. The seating was completely empty which could be because their eating schedule was off and they were eating dinner at 3pm, but more likely meant everyone else in the time had more sense than the man in front of him.

“Where is your sense of adventure for trying new things?” Logan asked. “Are you not an anthropologist. Don’t you want to experience the culture of the time first hand.”

Virgil glared at him.

“Please try it,” Logan said sill amused. “It really is good.”

“If I get food poisoning, I’m blaming you,” he warned.

“Noted,” Logan said, inclining his head. Then, Virgil reluctantly allowed him to lead him over to the sushi stand from where they’d been hiding behind a trash can so as not to be in the direct line of sight of the man standing behind the counter.

The man greeted them as they approached. He obviously recognized Logan and even asked about Patton and Roman as they took a seat. Virgil did have to admit, despite his instinctual misgivings about mall sushi, what he could glimpse of his set up seemed legit. It looked like a real sushi bar if a bit smaller than usual. Where they had sat, there was a glass case in front of them with chilled fish on display and Virgil could see a large rice cooker behind the man along with a normal refrigerator.

Laminated menus were handed to them. They were only one page front and back, but honestly that was probably a good thing. If it had a bunch of complicated or fancy stuff, Virgil might have been worried.

Well, he was still worried, but he wasn’t running screaming. At least his setup looked like it probably wouldn’t give him too much food poisoning. Logan suggested a rainbow and a snake roll and they got some different types of nigiri.

The chef was nice, and he assembled the sushi fully in Virgil’s view which made him a whole lot less leery about the meal. He seemed to know what he was doing at least. Of course, the fish was not as fresh as it would have been in a coastal area, but it was clearly properly handled. When he was finished, he handed it to them all on one big plate.

He had to admit, when correcting for ingredient availability, it was actually pretty good sushi. He would not say it was the best sushi he’d ever had, but it was worlds better than he’d expected. Logan could obviously tell what his opinion was and was overly smug about it.

“Yeah, yeah,” Virgil said when they were finished. “You’re good at picking restaurants.”

“I’m sure you are also when in a place you are familiar with.”

“I’m not actually,” Virgil said with a laugh. “I always panic choose the worst option.”

“Well, I tend to be quite decisive about such things,” Logan said. “I guess we make a good match.”

“Yeah,” Virgil said. “Uh, what are we going to do when we get home? Because sitting there drowning in anxiety like we have been for the past couple of days isn’t the greatest.”

“Do you have anything in mind?”

“You guys have Blockbuster still?”

“No,” Logan said. He paused. “We do have a Family Video store I think.”

“Is it close? Let’s go there.”

“And why are we not just using a streaming service?” Logan asked. “Or using my… library of movies.”

Virgil shrugged. “It’s the charm of it,” he said.

��The charm of a business already made obsolete and on the brink of collapse?”

“Exactly,” said Virgil with a smile.

“Very well,” Logan said. “If that is what you’d like to do I will look up its location on my phone.”

They were in a building that would look abandoned if there wasn’t a light on inside within 15 minutes. The video rental store had clearly seen better days. Its carpet’s pattern was clearly from another decade and had been trampled over so often it was basically like walking on the linoleum beneath. There was a door on the sign asking patrons to close it behind them because the spring used to close it had long since ceased working.

There was only one person working, a guy in his 30s who glanced at them briefly and then went back to looking at his phone. Ah, yes, Virgil’s favorite type of employee.

“What movie would you like to watch?” Logan asked. He glanced at one small, but still surprisingly present section filled with DVDs.

“I don’t know,” Virgil said. “Isn’t that the point? Stop by a movie rental place on a Friday night, grab a more than likely crappy movie and some Milk Duds and proceed to sit and watch the stupid thing anyway because you already paid for it.”

“Virgil, I grew up in the 90s. This isn’t exactly exciting for me. There is a reason streaming sites took over the market,” Logan replied. “Also, it is Tuesday.”

Virgil rolled his eyes. “Just panic choose a movie with me, nerd.”

“I don’t ‘panic choose’ anything,” Logan said. “I-”

“You do today,” Virgil interrupted.

“I…”

“Choose a letter.”

“…S?”

“Great!” Virgil dragged him off in the direction of the movies that started with ‘S’.

“This is just… gross,” Virgil said a little under an hour and a half later and about an hour into the film.”

“It is a random romantic comedy from 2002,” Logan responded. “What did you expect?”

“Yeah, but there’s weird sex jokes and actors that are probably from Mars and then there’s actual on screen physical abuse between the romantic couple.”

“I will concede that point,” Logan said, “but I will remind that this could have all been avoided if you had allowed me to do proper investigation of the movie choices before renting it.”

“Ugh, yeah, yeah,” Vigil replied, leaning back to stare at the ceiling. “Just turn it off.”

Logan complied, reaching over to eject the DVD from his computer. The three roommates didn’t actually have a DVD player connected to their TV, so they’d chosen to use the desktop computer in Logan’s room.

Virgil was laying on Logan’s bed with Logan sat propped up against the headboard. Logan leaned over to peer down at him. “Thanks for helping distract me,” he said. “Despite the fact that we now know more about what we’re doing, I still get worried about sending Patton through time. His last time travel experience didn’t improve my confidence. I have been… rather nervous.”

“Well, I’m glad I could help, at least a little,” Virgil replied.

“You did,” Logan replied. “A lot.” His hand reached down to touch pat his shoulder, but then lingered there for a moment too long.

Virgil sat up suddenly and Logan had to jerk back to keep their heads from colliding. “I…” Virgil choked out once he was sitting up. “Um…”

Logan’s mouth curled into a half smile. He offered a hand and Virgil took it.

Virgil glanced at the hand. “I, uh, I am an anthropologist.”

“I am aware,” Logan said with a raised eyebrow.

“And, uh, you were born in this time, so technically I’m studying you…”

“I’m a time traveler, Virgil,” he said amused. “I doubt I am a pure specimen for any studies you may be doing.”

“Right,” Virgil said. “That’s a good point. You’re right.”

70210

There was a pause. “So then,” Virgil said. “No moral quandaries. Just two people sharing a bed and watching a romance movie.”

“It was a bad one.”

“It really, really was,” Virgil said with a grin and then Logan was leaning forward and Virgil’s hand was on Logan’s shoulder.

And then the door was flinging open. “I’m home!” Roman declared as Virgil scrambled back, banging his head on the bed’s headboard.

“Fuck,” Virgil hissed.

“Roman! You need to knock!”

“Since when?” Roman asked, plopping down on Logan’s bed between them.

“Since we have a guest,” Logan said meaningfully. Virgil hid his reddening face in his hands, curling into as tight of a ball as he could.

“You were both in here, it’s not like one of you were naked,” Roman said flippantly. Virgil debated the merits of staying curled up in a ball for the rest of his life. There was a second of silence, and Virgil was glad he couldn’t see the expressions on their faces from his ball when Roman said, “Oh my god!”

Chapter 50

The breakfast table was silent the next morning. Though if one could call it a breakfast table when Logan was only drinking a cup of tea, Roman was chewing on a slice of unbuttered, untoasted bread, and Virgil was still either asleep or avoiding them both in Logan’s bedroom was debatable.

“…Look,” Roman said.

“We aren’t talking about it.”

“How was I supposed to know the two of you were getting it on?! Put a sock on the door next time or something. It’s common courtesy!”

“We weren’t having sex,” Logan hissed. Roman opened his mouth. “Shut up and learn to knock,” Logan said, pointing his spoon at him threateningly.

Yet, still, because it was Roman, the other man opened his mouth again. Luckily, before he could say anything else on the matter, there was a loud crack from the living room.

“I’m going to need a towel please!” Patton called.

“I’ve got it,” Roman said instantly, jumping to his feet, leaving Logan to walk to the living room.

“Why are you wet?” Logan asked immediately upon taking in the sight of his roommate. He was soaked, water dripping from his form like he’d just gotten out of a pool seconds before.

“There was an ocean in the church,” Patton said.

“What?” Logan asked.

Patton pushed his sopping wet hair out of his eyes. “The time distortions were a lot more intense than ones we’ve seen before,” he said. He held out a small innocuous appearing device whose only mechanism appeared to be a switch to him. “Be really careful with that. It’s unstable and we might have damaged it getting out.” Patton winced and removed his timepiece. “Actually, speaking of that. This might need a checkup too.”

“Were there issues with the tech?” Logan asked taking both devices in his hand.

“…No,” Patton said looking a bit sheepish. “We just… may have turned off all of the safety protocols.”

“Patton I just made this for you!” Logan said, horrified.

“And you did a really good job!” was Patton’s reply, “but we didn’t really want to drown in a church.”

Logan took a slow breath. “I’ll make sure it wasn’t damaged,” he said.

“Thanks, Lo!”

Roman entered the living room then, bright blue towel in hand. “I have returned bearing gifts!” he declared.

“My hero,” Patton said with a laugh, taking the towel and using it to wipe off his face and then start to dry his hair.

“So, an ocean in a church?” Logan asked.

Patton nodded. “I’ll have to thank Virgil for suggesting the inflatable raft.”

He paused as he finished running the towel through his hair and started to dab at his clothing. “I saw Remus,” he said.

Roman froze. “You did?”

“Uh huh,” Patton replied. “He was with Janus. I didn’t think I should say anything to him since that trip was way out of sync though, sorry.”

“Yeah, no, that make sense. That’s fine.” Roman hesitated. “How was he?”

“He seemed good,” Patton said. He flashed them a smile. “Happy. He’s quite the character actually. He and Janus seem like they’re good friends.”

“Oh,” Roman said. “That’s… that’s good.”

Patton’s face screwed up slightly. “He did flirt with me though, so that was weird.”

“He what?!” Roman practically screeched.

“It wasn’t particularly innocent flirting either,” Patton said, grimacing.

Roman took a moment to think about it before pulling a face that one would expect to see on a small child trying a lemon for the first time. “That’s disgusting! That’s like… that’s like my brother flirting with my brother. Gross!”

“It was… it was weird,” Patton said.

“What did he even say?” Roman asked.

“Mostly it was comments on my…” he made a motion with his head that apparently Roman could interpret.

“He talked about your butt!”

“…Well, he didn’t exactly use that word.”

“That sounds about like Remus,” Virgil said, poking his head into the hall.

“Oh, you’ve finally decided to join the land of the living, Emo?” Roman asked.

“Shut up,” both Logan and Virgil said at the same time.

Of course, he did not. “You know, Pat-pat, speaking of posteriors…”

“One more word out of you and I will actually kill you,” Virgil threatened.

“Um, what’s going on?” Patton asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” Roman promised.

“You will not,” Logan said. “Keep your gossiping tendencies under control.”

“Okay, but now I want to know,” Patton said with a pout.

“You go take a shower,” Logan ordered.

Patton shared a look with Roman that told Logan there was no way he wouldn’t have the whole story along with a good number of embellishments by the end of the night. Then he shrugged. “Yes, boss,” he said. Logan rolled his eyes as he turned towards the bathroom, the towel still on his shoulders. He was dry enough that he wasn’t dripping anymore, and he slipped off his waterlogged shoes and socks so he wouldn’t track water to the bathroom.

“Put that in the biohazard hamper,” Logan called after him.

“I know!” he called back.

“And you,” Logan said to Roman, “clean up all of the water he got on the carpet in the off chance there are any pathogens in it.”

“Why do I have to do it?!”

“Because you’ve annoyed me,” Logan said, “and I need to insure these two devices do not explode.”

“Ugh, fiiiine,” Roman said, dipping back into the hall.

Virgil glanced over at him, the picture of awkwardness. “Uh,” he said. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Logan said.

“…Are those things really at risk of exploding right now?” he asked.

Logan glanced at him. “Technically they are always at least slightly at risk of exploding, but admittedly the chance is further from 0 than I would like it to be at this point.”

“Great,” Virgil said. “One more thing to be anxious about.”

“You don’t need to be anxious about it, Virgil,” Logan said.

“Uh, I think I do need to be anxious about the maybe bomb in your hands.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” Virgil said with a sigh.

“We are two mutually consenting adults. There isn’t any shame to it.”

“Can we please talk about our very embarrassingly interrupted kiss after you’ve dealt with the explosives?”

“Very well,” Logan said. He walked to the other side of the room to grab a statis chamber from a cabinet drawer.

“What’s that?” Virgil asked as the cube shaped device popped up.

“It’s a stasis cube,” Logan said as he put the two devices in his hand into it and activated. “It will allow them to cool down completely from their earlier use in a safe environment. It will be less dangerous to work with them later.”

“If it just takes 5 seconds to deal with them, why are you making Roman clean up?” Virgil asked amused.

“Like I said,” Logan said. “He annoyed me. Speaking of,” he glanced into the hallway where Roman currently was. “How do you feel about leaving before he gets back to get coffee.”

Virgil smiled at him. “Sure,” he said. “Escape the apartment for coffee part two.”

Chapter 51

It took a few days after Patton got home for Logan to first make sure the timepiece and the distortion device were not at a risk of exploding and then to study the distortion device.

“It’s similar to what little we’ve seen of TPI technology,” Logan had mused, sitting on the couch while studying the information he’d managed to get off of it. “It’s definitely derived from the same technology unlike my time travel device, but it looks a bit different, and this version at least is rather shoddily made. Of course, creating disorder and almost ripping apart time is easier than seamlessly moving through it.”

“So, they’re probably from my time then?” Virgil asked.

“Most likely,” Logan agreed. “Though it could always be a Remus situation where they were from another time originally but accidently ended up in the TPI time. Either way, the origin of their purposeful time travel was certainly around your time.”

Virgil glanced at the device he’d set on the table in front of them all. It looked innocent sitting there, but it had the power to destroy so much, and they didn’t even know why. “Do you think whoever made this trapped me here on purpose?” Virgil asked.

“It would be a big coincidence if you in particular got trapped in this time in particular,” Roman said.

“I was thinking the same thing actually,” Logan said. “You do work with the TPI and with Janus, a time agent who both often is caught in the middle of devices similar to this being used and who runs into Patton frequently. Plus you know Remus, Roman’s brother even if we didn’t know that connection before you were trapped here and we already had a correspondence before you landed here. It would be strange for you to have ended up here on accident.”

“But why?” Virgil asked. “I am somehow connected to all of you, but I’m still not a time agent myself.”

“All I am to the TPI is a walking history book. I’m not actually involved.”

“Well,” Logan said. “Perhaps someone knows something we don’t.”

“Or maybe it’s just a happy accident!” Patton said. Virgil highly doubted that and it made anxiety churn in his gut.

“Well,” Logan said, “accident or not, we do now have a solution to the issue. I’ve managed to use this device to recalibrate my calculations and we’ve gotten a ping. I know where the signal blocking Virgil’s time device is coming from.”

“Where?” Roman asked.

“It looks like a local trash dump,” Logan replied. “It must have just ended up in a trashcan that day and was emptied before we checked.”

“Well, that should be easy enough to get,” Patton said. “Give Roman and I the exact coordinates and we can go and get it now.”

“Wait, why are we the only ones who have to dig through a garbage dump?” Roman asked.

Patton gave him a look.

“Oh,” Roman said, eyes lighting up. “Oh right!” Then, he scowled remembering he was going to be going through a garbage dump. “Fine,” he sighed.

“Think of it as an adventure!” Patton said.

“We’re time travelers. We have so many more exciting adventuring opportunities than dumpster diving, Pat-Pat,” he whined, but he still got up. “I’ll go get changed.”

Patton stood up and handed Logan his phone, so Logan could program the location of the distortion device into it while he changed as well. “We’ll text you when we’re heading back! I’ll give you a 15- and 5-minute warning,” Patton said with a wink. Virgil immediately hid his face in his hands.

“Do you think the TPI is hiring?” Logan asked as the door closed. “I’d love to move to a different century without those two.”

“Time agents don’t usually live in 4500s,” Virgil said, face still hidden behind his hands. “They’d probably still place you in this century, especially since you’re comfortable here.”

“No escaping them then,” Logan sighed.

“Mmm,” was Virgil’s response.

He felt Logan shift on the couch next to him and a warm palm touched his wrist, gently tugging his hand away from his face in a way that Virgil could resist if he really wanted. Virgil let the hand fall with a sigh. Logan smiled at him when he could see his face and Virgil smiled back despite how he could still feel heat in his cheeks.

“You will be going home this evening, I’d imagine,” Logan said.

“Yeah,” Virgil agreed softly.

“I would like to give you a gift before you go, if you’ll allow it.”

“Uh, okay,” Virgil agreed.

Logan nodded and leaned back to grab something out of the pocket of a jacket that was currently hanging over the side of the couch. “Ah,” he said when he found whatever he was looking for. He glanced at Virgil. “It is a ring, by the way, but this is not a proposal.”

“Well, I’d certainly hope not,” said Virgil dryly. “An impulse elopement would be a little off brand for us both.”

Logan smiled at him. “Very true,” he agreed. Then, he opened his palm revealing a small ring.

“So, then, what is it?” Virgil asked.

72530

“It is an emergency time travel device,” Logan explained. “It’s not particularly complex. It can only take you here to this room between 2 weeks and one year from now, but if you ever need something from me, you can use it.”

He offered the ring and Virgil opened his palm to let him put it in his hand. He studied the ring for a moment. It was a rose gold and very light.

“It also has some security measures,” Logan said. “It wouldn’t do to make an emergency time travel device that someone else might easily try to take from you. It’ll disappear when you put it on. You’ll still be able to feel it and take it off whenever you wish. It’ll become visible again if you take it off.”

“An invisible ring?” Virgil asked, curious.

“Yes,” Logan said with a smile. “It is designed to store your space time coordinates for up to 48 hours just so you’re aware, but as I said you can take it off whenever you wish and… I won’t use it against you.”

Virgil looked at him. “Okay,” he said. “Can I put it on?” Logan nodded, and Virgil slipped it on his finger. As promised it disappeared from view as soon as he did. He could still feel the weight of it on his finger though.

“You turn it three times counterclockwise to activate it,” Logan said, making Virgil look up from the seemingly empty space on his finger he’d been staring at.

“It would drop you right about where you are sitting.”

“Thanks,” Virgil said. It wasn’t nearly enough to say how much he appreciated the gift, but he hoped his tone said enough.

“Don’t use it against me?” Logan asked with a half-smile, and Virgil realized just how much trust was being put onto him by giving him a device that was directly linked to their base of operations despite knowing Virgil worked with the TPI.

Virgil shook his head. “I won’t,” he said. Deciding to throw out his nervousness and embarrassment over last time he shot forward to kiss Logan quickly on the lips. They bumped noses and Logan’s glasses ended up askew in the process, but Logan didn’t seem to mind judging by his delighted laugh when they parted.

“Thank you,” Virgil said again.

“Of course,” Logan replied.

Virgil could still feel the ring on his finger even after Patton and Roman got back from the dump with the device that had caused this whole mess. He could still feel it when Logan turned it off and his time piece reactivated. He could still feel it there when he made it home and gave an excuse as to why he’d left his trip early. He could still feel it when he got an email from an unknown sender making sure he got home okay.

Arc IV: (To Be Named)

Chapter 52

“What’s this?” Janus asked when a giant bowl was set on the coffee table in front of him.

“We’re eating on the couch tonight,” Emile said cheerfully.

Janus raised an eyebrow and switched off the tablet he’d been using to look at him. “Why?” he asked.

Emile shrugged and set a second huge bowl down next to Janus’s. “For fun,” Emile said. He turned back towards the kitchen and Janus leaned forward to look in the bowl. It was spaghetti with some sort of creamy sauce and a few different vegetables mixed in along with some shrimp.

“I made green tea,” Emile said, coming back into the room with two mugs.

“Thanks,” Janus said, taking one of the mugs with a small smile.

“What were you doing?” Emile asked as he took a seat beside Janus. He nodded at the deactivated screen now sitting on the end table.

“Just doing some puzzle games,” Janus said.

“That sounds fun,” Emile said with a smile.

“Head doctor said they might be a good thing to do to pass the time when I told him to fuck off after suggesting reading.”

Emile sighed. “Dr. Figueroa is my colleague. You could try to be polite.”

“I thought I was supposed to be my authentic self in therapy,” Janus replied.

Emile just huffed and rolled his eyes. Janus couldn’t help but smile as he picked up his mug of green tea.

The last few months had been…different. In a lot of ways, Janus’s life had become harder than it had been before. It had been easy to do nothing but eat pre-prepared meals, go to work, and pass out in his empty house every day. It wasn’t good for him. He’d known it even then, but it had been easy. This was not.

Emile had offered, insisted really, that Janus move into his house for a bit just to get back on his feet.

He’d taken time off of the TPI which would have been given to him anyway since he’d spent so trapped in the past. He’d had to give a report of what had happened, and he’d mentioned Patton, but he hadn’t mentioned everything. They’d offered him a shrink when he’d asked.

Janus had told Emile he needed to tell him something about why he’d been distant, so he wouldn’t end up chickening out, but he’d asked for a bit of time to figure out what to say. He’d finally worked up the courage to talk about it with Dr. Figueroa two weeks ago. Much like with Patton, it was easier to talk to someone who hadn’t been involved in Janus’s mistake, but it still wasn’t easy.

He was running up on the deadline he’d given for having that talk with him. It had to happen soon, and they both knew it, but Emile was just patiently waiting for him to suck it up. It felt… wrong to use his kindness without him knowing, but it was also nice to get to spend time with his brother. He didn’t even dare to hope that he’d still have the chance once he told him.

He was moving back into his own house in less than a week. He’d tell him then so if Emile ended up kicking him out of his life, he wouldn’t have to kick him out of his home too.

For now, though everything was fine. Harder, more complicated, and in threat of exploding at any moment, but fine. Fine wasn’t something he’d really felt in a long time. Or at least, fine while in his own time wasn’t something he’d felt in a long time. There’d been a few moments with Patton sitting next to the fire outside the hole in the ground they’d slept in for those few months where the man would turn to look at him and he’d felt fine. Yet, Patton had been right. Those moments were unsustainable with how Janus was actually feeling deep down.

“This is good,” Janus said, after taking a couple of bites of the pasta in front of him.

“Well, I always was the only one in the house that could cook,” Emile said, and that was true. “It was either learn to defend for myself or eat a cheeseburger for every meal.”

“Hey, I had a good burger seasoning.”

“Not for every meal, Janus.”

“Meat, dairy, bread. What more could you want?”

“Vegetables, Janus.”

“You could have put pickles on!”

“I don’t like pickles.”

“That sounds like your problem, not mine,” Janus argued.

Emile shook his head, turning his eyes to the ceiling. “How have you been surviving on your own?”

“Well, I mean,” Janus said. “Badly.”

“Right…” Emile said. He leaned over to bump their shoulders together. Janus flashed him a smile.

“Speaking of,” said Janus. “Could you physically force me to pack tonight? I meant to do it today and instead I ended up playing puzzles games.”

Emile chucked. “Sure, I’ll help you after dinner.”

“You don’t have to help me,” said Janus. “Just make me do it.”

“Maybe I want to help,” said Emile.

“Oh, yes, packing. The most entertaining of Thursday night activities.”

Emile hummed and then glanced at him. “Remember when you helped me pack for college?” he asked.

“Mmm, I do,” Janus replied.

“I was so stressed about going somewhere new,” Emile said, “that I avoided packing for weeks. Every time Mom would ask me how packing was going, I’d tell her it was going fine but in reality, I hadn’t even started. You’d come home two days before I had to leave because you were going to help me move into my dorm. It’s like you could sense no packing had been done the moment you stepped through the front door.”

“You were doing your ‘hiding the broken horse statue from mom’ shuffle,” Janus said with a smirk.

“Well, you walked me straight to my room and we packed everything up in those two days,” Emile said. “You made it so much easier.”

“Yeah, because I hovered over you until you did it and did half of it for you,” Janus snorted.

“It wasn’t just that,” Emile said. “You also found the music streaming station run by the university and put that on and talked about what your freshman year was like. You also had tips on what things I should and shouldn’t pack when moving into the dorm.”

“You still took all of the cartoon stuffed animals despite my advice.”

“I thought there’d be more space on the bed,” Emile frowned.

Janus snorted.

“But anyway, just having someone else around made me happier. It wasn’t just about the workload being halved either. You being there made me feel less lonely and reminded me I’d always have someone to come back to.”

Janus internally winced. He was sure Emile hadn’t meant to make him feel guilty in any way. In fact, he probably was trying to do the opposite, but him saying that just reminded Janus that it hadn’t been true. Janus had abandoned him for literal years and hadn’t been someone he could always come back to.

Emile had proven himself to be at least close to who he was before Janus messed with time the few last months. There were a couple of differences here and there, and Janus could not be sure if they were from him changing time or from him avoiding his brother for the past three years and him naturally changing. Most memories they shared that Janus cautiously brought up or Emile mentioned on his own were consistent with what Janus remembered, but he hadn’t pushed too hard or dug too deep. It just made him feel more guilty about avoiding the man for so long.

It made him want to ignore the man more, because it seemed every choice Janus ever made only hurt him.

…

Well, perhaps not the college radio station when helping an anxious 18-year-old pack up his childhood bedroom.

He should probably tell Emile that his words made him feel guilty because that was obviously not the intention and he’d want to know. He should probably apologize properly for leaving him alone for three years without an explanation. He should probably provide an explanation for those three years.

He should probably go see the head doctor again soon.

(He should probably stop calling Emile’s colleague who was in the same field as him a head doctor derogatorily in his head.)

74430

For now, he just glanced at Emile. “You’re trying to bully me into letting you help pack with logic, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Emile confirmed without remorse.

“Fine,” Janus sighed, “but only if you let me do the dishes for you.”

Emile took a long moment to consider the offer. “You drive a hard bargain,” he said, “but okay.”

“And no doing anything sneaky like getting bags ready for me on your own while I’m doing it or the deal is off,” Janus said.

“You always think of all possible loopholes, Janus,” Emile sighed.

There was a long silence.

“Agree, you prick,” said Janus.

“No promises,” Emile replied cheekily with laughter in his eyes, and things were good for a moment more.

Chapter 53

Today Janus was moving into his house in 24th century for the second time in his life, and honestly, the house wasn’t going to look much different than it had when he’d first moved in. Janus had unpacked his things more at Emile’s house in the past almost 6 months than he had in the two and a half years he’d liven in his house. His house held clothes, bare bone furniture, and exactly one skillet from when he’d decided to be daring and tried to cook himself an egg. All he’d really customized for himself was the setting on the LXC device which controlled the lights, media across the home, and prepackaged food ordering and prepare.

He almost felt embarrassed that his house was so empty. Emile, of course, knew that his mental health had been fucked, but the blankness of his house was a physical reminder of this fact especially considering how he used to keep house before all of this. He’d warned Emile about the fact that his house was empty, and he had said he understood, but still.

They gathered all of the luggage in a pile in Emile’s guest room. They’d had to get permissions from the TPI to allow Emile to travel to his house, and Janus went ahead and filed to give him permanent permission to travel there.

The decision felt far too hopeful for someone who hadn’t had that conversation with his brother yet, but it had made Emile smile in the moment.

Emile took three of the bags and Janus took the rest. He waved his arm and selected the third saved location on the device. In a moment, he was standing in the living room of his dark, empty house.

…

His supposed to be dark and empty house. More of the lights were on than Janus had ever switched on himself, and half of the windows were open. (He didn’t even know some of those windows opened.)

They were letting in the sounds of birds that made the lakeside their home as well as cool late fall breeze. There was also a racket coming from the kitchen. Emile was beside him a second after he himself had appeared. He looked around for a moment. “Did you leave it like this?”

“No,” Janus replied.

“Do you have squatters?” He had a security system from 2 millennia in the future on his house. He highly doubted it.

“I’m going to go check the kitchen,” Janus said, moving towards the noises coming from the other room.

He stopped in the doorway to his kitchen only to see Patton standing at his kitchen counter cutting up a carrot on a cutting board Janus didn’t think he owned, and if he did, it was buried in a box somewhere.

“What are you doing?” Janus asked.

“Cooking!” was the immediate reply.

“In my house?” Janus asked. “How do you even know where my house is?”

“I may be just a little bit ahead of you,” Patton said with a wink while tapping the side of his nose.

Janus sputtered. “This is my house!”

“I know!” He said it so cheerfully while being a purposefully obtuse asshole that Janus could help but crack a smile and shake his head. He’d missed him after spending so long alone with him though he wasn’t go to admit that to him when he’d broken into Janus’s house to…

“Again, what are you doing?”

“I’m making you soup.”

“Why?” Janus asked.

“Well,” Patton said. “I know it’s a bit of a rough time for you, so I thought I’d give you a nice welcome home present and what better present than food!” He smiled at him widely.

Janus looked closer at what he was making. “You’re trying to prove to me you can cook.” Patton frowned at him. “Have you considered I have had enough fish stew for a lifetime?”

“Nope!” he said. “It’s entirely different this time anyway. I have carrots!”

“I don’t like carrots,” Janus lied blandly.

“Liar!” Patton declared.

“No, I’m not,” Janus continued to lie.

“I mean, that was definitely a lie,” Emile interjected from behind Janus. He was looking at them curiously. “Er, hello, who are you?”

“This is Pat,” Janus said.

“The illegal time traveler you’ve been tracking?” Emile asked with a questioning lilt to his tone.

“Ah, yes, well,” Janus said with a cough. “We came to an understanding when stuck in pre-history.”

“And now he is cooking you soup in your house?” Emile asked.

“I’ve long since stopped trying to make sense of him,” Janus grumbled.

“Well,” Emile said. “Hello Pat.”

“You can call me Patton,” he said easily. “I hope it’s nice to meet me, because I’ve already met you.”

“We haven’t been meeting in the correct order,” Janus informed Emile. “So, he’s apparently already met you which will happen in your future. It is also something he shouldn’t be talking about,” he scolded. Patton took that with a shrug.

“I hate time travel,” Emile said, his nose scrunching up. “Isn’t life already confusing enough.”

Janus winced, not relishing the upcoming conversation with him about how confusing his life was now because of time travel.

“Don’t you work with the TPI too?” Patton asked.

“That doesn’t mean I like time travel,” Emile said. “I’m a stationary agent and I like that just fine.”

“Time travel can be a bit complicated sometimes,” Patton acknowledged, “but I don’t think it’s all bad.” He finished chopping up the carrot and turned to put it in the self-regulating soup pot. Janus squinted at it. It was certainly not something Patton had in the 21st century. So, the question was. Had he gone out and bought time appropriate cookware before breaking into Janus’s house or had he gone through Janus’s storage to find it?

“You’re a free agent time traveler, right?” Emile asked.

“Depends on what you mean by free agent,” Patton said. “I have always worked with a group of people, and we have rules and procedures. It’s basically a time agency itself, just not the TPI.”

“And you’ve met me before?”

“I have,” Patton confirmed, “but Janus is right in that I can’t say much more than that about it. In fact,” he said wiping off his hands on a towel hanging from his apron. (The apron was covered in cartoon squirrels and totted the phrase ‘I’m a nut for baking.’) “I should probably be getting out of here.”

“You’ve never been worried about us meeting out of order before,” Janus pointed out with a frown. He didn’t particularly want Patton to go even though the man had broken into his house and possibly went through his boxes of kitchen equipment.

“Well,” Patton said. “There’s meeting wildly out of order, there’s meeting in order, and then there’s what I’m doing.”

“What are you doing?” Janus asked alarmed.

Patton just shrugged with a smile.

“No, Patton, what are you doing?”

“Soup should be done in about an hour, but you can leave it on all day. I got a pot that’s fridge safe, so just shut it off and stick it in there before going to sleep.”

“Patton.”

“See you later! Bye!” He said and disappeared into thin air.

Janus sighed and rubbed the bridge of his brow. “Why is he like this?”

“Janus,” Emile asked. “Why did your self-declared mortal enemy make you soup?”

“Because he’s an asshole, that’s why.”

“Uh huh,” Emile said, looking at him oddly.

“What?” Janus asked.

“What exactly happened when you were stuck in the past?” Emile asked.

Janus sighed. “A lot happened. A lot.” He glanced at the soup pot happily performing its function on his kitchen counter. ‘I hope it’s nice to meet me, because I’ve already met you,’ rang in his ears. Fucking Patton with his little hints about the future. It gave Janus just a bit of courage though knowing that Emile at least didn’t flee the continent after the conversation they had to have. He was at least around enough to meet Patton. “In fact,” Janus said. “It’s probably time I told you what happened. Everything that happened.”

Chapter 54

They sat down in the living room. Janus let Emile have the couch and sat on one of the matching armchairs. There was a squeaky sound when he sat. The plastic covering the chair had been delivered in was still on it.

Emile had a pleasant, open but curious expression on his face and Janus suddenly had an idea what it felt like to be his patient.

“I,” Janus began after a moment, shifting uncomfortably on the squeaky chair. “I don’t know how to start this conversation. I talked about what I wanted to say and possible ways to say it with Dr. Figueroa, but I… I still don’t know.”

“I guess I should start by saying that I did something horrible that I need to apologize for and I’m not sure if apologizing will even be enough. The problem is you don’t even know what that horrible thing is.” Janus stared at his feet. “So, first, I should probably explain what I did. I just don’t know where to start.”

“Maybe start with what happened before it,” Emile suggested. “Just lead up to it. It might help explain why whatever it was happened too.”

Janus took a breath. “Okay,” he said. “That day was just like most that I remember. We both woke up early. I was going to the TPI and you were going to where you worked your residency. We ate leftover pizza for breakfast because both of us were exhausted. You because it sucks to be a resident and me because I’d been working on a big case.”

“I was getting frustrated with the case. That was my first mistake: being impatient and angry. It was just a thief, but a slippery one. She’d stolen a half-broken time piece and was using it to rob banks within about a 50-year time frame. I had an idea of where she might go, but no one would listen to me. Or at least,” Janus quirked a half smile, “that’s how I interpreted it. They said they’d look into my idea, but they were being extra cautious because of how close in the timestream her actions were to most of the agents’ lives.”

“I was so tired of the case and so egotistical. I decided to check it out on my own without being cleared by the TPI. I went back in time without thinking of the consequences and that was the worst thing I’ve ever done.” Janus took a breath. “I’m not sure how, but somewhere in the course of my self-appointed mission…” He trailed off. He didn’t know how to say it. He really didn’t.

“What happened?” Emile asked when he didn’t continue.

“I…” and his next words probably sounded like crackly nonsense to Emile’s ears because he couldn’t get his thoughts straight and his tongue wouldn’t make the words right.

“I don’t even remember living in that town or the fact that Mom used to work at that bank,” he choked out. “I didn’t think and I didn’t check and…” There was a long silence. “I erased you,” he finally managed to say in a whisper, but in the quiet of his barely lived in house, the words were loud.

There was more silence. “But I…” Emile said after a moment.

“I went back and fixed it,” Janus said, “but I… didn’t do a perfect job. I don’t even know how much I messed things up. It would have been one thing if it’d just been me. If it had just impacted my life, but I did it to you and I don’t even know how to start to apologize.”

Nothing was said for a long moment. Janus didn’t look at him.

“…Huh,” Emile finally said.

Janus risked a glance at him. He didn’t look irate, but he did still look confused which was probably the reason for that.

“I’m sorry,” Janus said. It was really the only thing he could say at this point.

Emile tilted his head to the side. He took off his glasses and cleaned them with the edge of his shirt with slow circles. Since he was 15, Emile only cleaned his glasses with specially designed wipes, but he’d held onto the habit of cleaning his glasses with his shirt anytime he needed a moment to think. Janus wasn’t sure if Emile even realized he was doing it, but he knew it was a signal for Janus to be quiet for a few seconds.

The glasses were perched back on Emile’s nose after a few seconds. “I think I remember that,” he said contemplatively.

“…What?” Janus asked, and he was no longer avoiding looking at Emile. He was now blatantly staring at him.

“Well, I didn’t know what it was,” Emile said, “but I did have a very odd dream on the day you mentioned and suspiciously I had said dream in the middle of the day and woke standing up.”

“A dream?” Janus asked.

“A very vivid dream,” Emile said. “I don’t believe you actually erased me completely from existence. My life was simply shifted slightly. I was working as a social worker for about 5 hours and then I was back in my appropriate place.”

76874

“Why didn’t you tell me about that?” Janus asked, but then immediately wince at his own hypocrisy. “Er… never mind.”

“I didn’t know it was possibly real,” Emile said. “Honestly, I thought I was just really tired. I’d been overworking myself a lot. I took the rest of the day off after that.”

“You shifted reality for a few hours, and you didn’t realize it?” Janus asked.

“Like I said, I was really tired and nothing seemed to be wrong…”

“Wait, but things were different,” Janus said. “Didn’t you notice things were different.”

“Not… really,” Emile said. “Like what?”

“Like…” Janus said. “Like a whole bunch of things!”

“Like…?”

“Like you had a different job title and you worked different hours.”

“I thought I’d fallen asleep standing up or had a vivid audio-visual hallucination at work from stress. I asked for a switch a couple of weeks later.”

“You used to hate time travel, but then you took a job at the TPI.”

Emile gave him a drawl look. “I still hate time travel,” he said. “I literally just said that not 5 minutes ago.”

“Well then why would you work for the TPI.”

“Because time travel is so confusing and distressing that people doing it on a regular basis as a career need psychological support.”

“Plus, Lia asked for my consultation when developing the mental health part of the Agent Management Office,” Emile continued. “Considering I already knew quite a bit about time travel from being around you, she knew me personally, and I’d finished my residency, she decided to give me a job offer when my advice panned out.”

“W-well,” Janus said. “You were allergic to pineapples.”

“You mean my childhood allergy?” Emile asked. “That has since resolved itself in my adult life?”

“It has?” Janus asked.

“Janus have you considered,” Emile said, “that some if not all of the inconsistencies you were seeing in my life have to do with the fact that you hadn’t spoken to me in 3 years?”

“I… uh… hadn’t considered that,” Janus admitted honestly.

“You were looking for information to support your incorrect world view,” Emile said sounding very much like a head doctor and not like a brother, “and you found some.” He sighed. “It makes sense after having faced a traumatic event where you effectively thought you’d killed a loved one that you weren’t thinking clearly.” The head doctor analysis voice slipped just a bit. “I just wish you’d talked about it with someone.”

“Sorry,” Janus said, because no matter which way this conversation had gone and no matter the revelations, the point was an apology. “I’m sorry.”

Emile sighed. “I would have forgiven you even if you had erased me,” Emile said. “You didn’t mean to, and you did your best to fix it. You did fix it even if you were an idiot about it.”

“What about for being an idiot and not talking to you for three years?” Janus asked.

“I already did forgive you for that Janus,” Emile said pointedly. “What did you think the last 6 months were?”

“Pity?”

Emile gave him his disappointed and exasperated head shake. “Promise to never do anything like that to me again,” he said, “and I’ll forgive you.”

“I promise,” Janus said immediately.

“And in the future, you’ll talk to me if you have any issue even if you think it’s horrible.”

“I think I’ve learned by lesson on that one.”

“And that goes for other people too,” Emile said. “If anything goes wrong with someone, you talk to them or if that’s too hard you talk to someone so they can convince you to talk to that person.”

Janus nodded.

“Great!” Emile said. “Then you’re officially forgiven for everything. Though I expect you to go to therapy and keep working on making yourself feel better, so these things don’t happen again.”

And Janus… didn’t know how to feel about that. He should probably feel happy and thankful or at least relieved, but if he was being honest, he just felt kind of empty in that moment like an old well that had finally run dry. Fuck his head doctor and fuck Patton. Wasn’t this supposed to make him feel better? Everything was fine. He hadn’t actually erased Emile permanently from the timeline, in fact, he’d apparently still existed in some form in the alternate timeline Janus had temporarily made. Emile had forgiven him both for erasing him and ignoring him even though that was far more than Janus deserved. This was something he’d never even dared dream would happen, but it had been exactly what he’d wanted.

Yet, he still didn’t feel good, not really, not like how he remembered feeling before all of this happened.

Though was that really a surprise? Things were not like how they were before. He and Emile were no longer close. There was love and affection there, but they didn’t really know each other. The last six months had been nice. He’d been able to pretend for a bit that everything was back to normal, but in the moments he hadn’t been able to pretend that, it’d been a bit stilted and awkward speaking to his brother especially at the start.

Beyond that, Janus was just used to misery at this point. It was his default state. Not being miserable took effort and energy he didn’t always have. He felt himself slipping into sadness or numbness even during times he should be feeling good. He’d noticed himself experiencing a sense of desolation when Emile cooked his favorite meal or in the middle of watching a ballet performance Emile had suggested they go to and he’d been looking forward to in the days before or even now when he should be so happy, so ecstatic. Everything should be okay, but it wasn’t.

“You doing alright over there?” Emile asked, and Janus didn’t know how long he’d been silent.

Instinct said to say yes and force himself to move on, but he wasn’t going to break his promise that fast. “Not really, no,” he admitted.

“That’s okay,” Emile said. “Anything I can do to help?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Why don’t we go taste the soup your arch nemesis,” there was a light teasing tone to his voice, “made for you. Some of the vegetables won’t be completely cooked yet, but I’m sure it’s already good.”

“Yeah,” Janus agreed. “Yeah, okay,” he got to his feet, the chair making that plastic squeaking sound again. “Maybe we could unwrap the furniture in here before you go home.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Emile said with a smile.

Chapter 55

Somehow, the strangest thing about his life right now was a picture on the wall. It was one that he’d gotten after college when he moved into his first actual house. It wasn’t anything special. It was just something that had caught his eye when he was specifically looking for something classier to put on his wall than the posters he’d hung in his college dorm and apartment with Virgil. It was a tall painting of a tree, but segmented into four parts, each representing the state of a tree in different seasons. In the top left, the three had small leaves and little buds, on the top right it had full leaves bathed in sunlight, in the bottom left the leaves had changed colors and started to fall off, and in the bottom right the tree was devest of leaves but covered in snow.

It was on the wall near Janus’s bed. It was one of the first things he saw when he opened his eyes in the morning and was usually what reminded him that everything was different now when he woke.

The picture had been in a box in the houses garage up until the Saturday before the last. Saturdays had become his and Emile’s unofficial unpacking Janus’s house day. They would usually pick one or maybe two boxes that had been sitting untouched for years, unpack it, talk, and eat dinner together.

Notably, dinner was usually not provided by either of them.

Patton had gotten into the habit of breaking into Janus’s house. Janus would sometimes catch him doing it briefly, but often Patton managed to avoid him. This was quite the feat considering Janus was not currently working and thus stayed at home a lot of the time. Patton had repeatedly reprogrammed Janus’s kitchen taking away the option for pop tarts entirely and replacing the option with real food. Janus’s kitchen was constantly stocked with something to eat that wasn’t trash. He also liked to leave around different smelling hand soaps, flowers, and paper cranes. Janus had an entire drawer in his nightstand dedicated to storing paper cranes now.

The newest one was still on his nightstand from the night before, sitting cheerfully in the way of his view of the tree paining when his alarm woke up that morning. He sighed. He had not missed getting up early for work.

He was finally going back to working at the TPI this morning. His therapist had signed off on it last week, saying his was fit for duty. Considering they were apparently still understaffed at the TPI and Janus was a senior agent, this was met with much relief. Janus himself still wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

He turned off the alarm and stood. Dr. Figueroa had him write out a morning schedule to follow when he’d expressed his struggle to get the day started. Either Patton or Emile had taken it upon themselves to copy the schedule on virtual sticky notes that appeared in every location necessary for getting ready in the morning.

First, he took a shower. He threw his nightclothes in the laundry chute. There were currently dozens of different scented soaps in his shower all in small bottles that had about 2 or 3 uses. Janus presumed they were curtesy of Patton. He decided to use one at random and it ended up being cotton candy scented.

Next, he got dressed. That was easy enough since he always wore the same outfit to work every day. It didn’t matter what he wore much since missions would force him to redress anyway.

Then he went to his kitchen and sat down at the counter. He pushed the pop tart button. As expected at this point, he did not get a pop tart for breakfast. Instead, he got two eggs, toast, a sliced apple, and a few cherry tomatoes with green tea. He ate his breakfast while finishing one of the puzzles he’d been working on the night before.

Once he finished, it was time to finally face going back to the office. He sighed, stood up and pulled up the screen on his timepiece. He selected his office as his destination and was off.

The first thing that happened upon appearing in his office was he got a face full of… something.

He sputtered, smacking the things fluttering about his face out of the air. “What is wrong with you?” was the first thing out of his mouth before he’d even really confirmed that the culprit of this attack was who he’d automatically assumed he was.

Remus, as anticipated was standing not 2 feet away from him.

Remus had apparently gotten into the prop department again because he had some type of softly glowing glittery confetti was no all over Janus as well as their entire office.

“Remus, I told you no!” Lena snapped. “You know it’s impossible to clean up 3150s sparkle nukes.”

“Welcome back!” Remus crowed.

“I hate you,” Janus replied. “I just took a shower.”

“You’re fine,” Remus said with an eye roll.

“This shit doesn’t come off in decontamination,” Janus spat. “If my first mission back sends me to a time where I’ll be tried as a witch for glowing, I’m blaming you.”

“We’re going to 2510,” Remus informed him. “You’ll fit right in.”

Janus grimaced. “Ugh, that decade.”

“It’s my favorite decade!” Remus exclaimed.

“Of course, it is,” Lena grumbled. “Just don’t bring anything gross back this time.”

“No promises,” Remus replied.

Janus chose to disengage from the conversation as Remus and Lena argued about was and what wasn’t allowed to be brought back to their shared office from what was well known as the least tasteful decade in history. It was also one of the least turbulent decades in history. The population was too busy making shitty ice cream flavors to wage war.

At least they were giving him an easier assignment for his first time back. He turned to his desk and pulled up the files on his next mission, glancing through them. It was just a small blip that the TPI had noticed in a small town in 2510. It probably wasn’t much of anything, but they had no record of what had caused it, so they were going to send someone to look. Honestly, they’d usually just send in a surveillance agent and be done with it, but they’d probably handpicked this one for Janus in particular. He’d be insulted if he didn’t honestly still feel a bit off kilter being in the office.

To his surprise, he didn’t have a scheduled meeting with Rhi. It wasn’t particularly important to see a mission coordinator for something this small, but it still wasn’t the usual protocol. Instead, he was just instructed to pick up his costume at the costuming department and leave in about an hour.

“Do we really not have an appointment with Rhi?” Janus asked.

“Senior agents haven’t really been meeting with Rhi unless it’s a high priority mission,” Lena told him. “We have too many newbies running around and there’s not time.

“That’s concerning…” Janus said.

“It’s better than trying to rush the inexperienced ones through. We at least have a general idea of what we’re doing. They’re trying to train up more mission coordinators, but that’s taking a while.”

Janus still frowned, but he glanced back at the mission instructions. He’d have to make sure he thoroughly understood what was being asked of him before leaving if he wasn’t meeting with Rhi. “We should go get changed,” he told Remus. “2510s clothing is notoriously difficult to put on.”

“Five minutes back and he’s already dying to get my clothes off,” Remus said cheekily.

“I would rather tear my own eyeballs out of my socket than see you without your pants on again.”

Remus just wiggled his eyebrows.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” said Lena when Janus looked at her in exasperation. “He’s finally not Fred’s and my problem anymore.”

Chapter 56

Getting ready for the mission was a bit of a mess honestly. The costume department barely even spared them a glance before sending them on their way. Remy at least was still there to give them one last debrief before sending them off into 2510, though he looked exhausted.

“Are you sleeping?” asked Janus.

“I’m drinking coffee,” was the reply as he shooed them out onto the streets.

The timeline disturbance that had been picked up was somewhere in one of the shops on that street.

“Do you want the bakery or the karaoke/stripper bar?” Remus asked.

Janus raised an eyebrow at him, and Remus clapped him on the back.

“This is why we’re partners,” he said.

He plodded off towards the building to their right, and Janus turned to the building on the left. It was a small bakery and coffee shop painted in bright colors and sporting the Brazilian and Albanian flags.

There was a soft tinkling bell sound when he entered the shop, and the person behind the counter glanced over at him briefly before finishing putting a pastry in bag for a customer.

Unfortunately, their attention meant Janus wasn’t going to get away with snooping around the store without buying anything. He glanced around the interior of the shop as he walked up to the till.

He glanced into the bakery display case the worker was standing behind. Oh… oh that all looked disgusting. He was not depressed enough anymore to willingly eat any of that.

“Uh,” Janus said when the worker looked at him. He glanced up at the wide selection of drinks over their head and winced at the ways the letters moved on the screen. He was pretty sure his dyslexia wasn’t quite that bad. Why did anyone choose to make letters move around and shake on purpose? As someone who had to deal with that on a daily basis, it wasn’t exactly entertaining.

“Is it possible to get a banana and chocolate potato chip smoothie, but without the potato chip part?” he asked.

“Sure,” the worker replied. “Anything else?”

Janus shook his head.

“Can I have a name for that?”

“Jay,” Janus replied.

“Alright. It’ll be out in a minute.”

Janus nodded and turned, able to take in the rest of the establishment now that there weren’t eyes on him. It was as colorful on the inside as it was on the outside and seemed to have a retro cowboy-space theme mixed with posters from a contemporary werewolf romance movie. Janus had actually seen that movie one. It was surprisingly tolerable.

The seats at least looked comfortable. There were a good number of tables and three couches. All of them were mix-matched. A few of the tables were outfitted with holographic chess and checkers, but most were normal tables. There were even a few physical boardgames and some bookshelves full of books, though he thought some of the bookshelves might just be there for decoration. He wasn’t sure which were and which weren’t.

He pretended to be very interested in the decorations as he waited on his drink, using that as an excuse to look around the entire shop. He was turned away when the door chimed again.

“Hello,” a familiar voice said, making Janus turn around instantly. Janus could immediately tell that the man hesitantly lingering in front of the bakery display was not the Patton that he’d spent months holed up with or who had broken into Janus’s house repeatedly to replace his soaps and cook him meals. He seemed out of place which was saying something in 2510. He had the air about him that he was an 80-year-old grandpa trying to embrace youth culture, but not quite getting it. He also spoke in an accent that people around him would probably assume was him just not being fluent in Spanish but was actually him not being completely comfortable speaking Spanish from half a century ago.

“Uh…” said Patton looking at the menu, a crease between his eyes.

“I’d suggest the banana and chocolate potato chip smoothie without the potato chips,” Janus said. Patton startled, whipping around to face him in surprise. “That’s what I got, though I would leave out the potato chips.”

Patton’s eyes narrowed on him. It was not, of course, the first time that Patton hadn’t been thrilled to see him, but it was the first time Janus had been happy to see him and he hadn’t been happy to see him in turn. Janus had gotten used to a Patton that liked him and he found himself not quite prepared for the way he pursed his lips in annoyance at the sight of Janus.

“I’ll do the banana and chocolate potato chip smoothie, but with the potato chips,” he said in a way that made it sound like he thought he was getting one up on Janus for some reason.

“What flavor of chips?” the worker asked.

“Er, what flavors do you have?”

“Uh, I think drywall, oak wood, and limestone.”

Janus almost laughed at his expression. “Uh, do you have any naturally edible flavors?” he asked.

“We might have grass.”

Patton squinted as the worker bent to look under the cabinet. “Oh, wait, no, it’s glass. Is that alright?”

“…Maybe just no on the chips.”

Janus did his best to school his features, so it wasn’t obvious he was laughing at him. He didn’t think he did a very good job considering Patton was glaring at him after turning around. That or he was just already pissed at Janus by default. It could go either way honestly.

“So,” Janus said when the worker turned away to start making Patton’s drink. “What are you doing here.”

“It’s none of your business,” Patton said with narrowed eyes.

“I mean, we could both be here for the same reason,” Janus pointed out. “We could share intel.”

“I doubt we’re here for the same reason.”

“How would you know?” asked Janus.

Patton just looked away from him. He immediately looked confused at the movie poster his eyes landed on.

“Unless,” Janus said curiously, you aren’t here for a reason, reason.” Patton said nothing. “It was a pretty small disturbance, so it would make sense that your equipment might not pick up on it.” At least at this point. “Acting the tourist, Pat?”

“I’m just doing research,” Patton said, crossing his arms.

“Research?” Janus asked.

“I’ve never been here before,” Patton admitted. “I wanted to get a feel for it and other places just in case there ever was an issue.”

“You just did France, didn’t you?” Janus asked.

Patton frowned and Janus smiled slightly. “It was recent,” he admitted.

“Well,” Janus said. “If you want some advice. I’d start with figuring out accents when you’re in different times.”

“I don’t need your advice,” Patton said and then smugly, “Janus.”

It took a bit for Janus to scan back through his memories and remember that Patton hadn’t known Janus’s name in France. He would have only figured it out after his friend Lo hacked into Silver Mountains University’s system and figured out Virgil had an appointment with him. Janus raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that, Patton?”

He frowned, pouting like whenever Janus told him he wasn’t allowed to try to catch a bird and make it their pet. It was strange to meet a version of Patton who had not lived in a hole in the ground with him for months when Janus had already done that. Patton was on the back foot for once throughout this conversation. Every time before this, he’d managed to somehow twist it around even when he’d been younger than he was right now. When Janus had arrested him at the University, he’d managed to figure out his equipment wouldn’t be stopped by the TPI’s despite having no idea what the TPI was.

In France, even when Janus had thought he’d been winning by taking his phone, he ended up getting access to a University in Janus’s time with information on the TPI, a situation that still had not been resolved.

Today, however, Janus knew far more about Patton than Patton expected. He still didn’t know exactly what his agency or whatever it should actually be called did, but he knew some things about it. He knew Patton was from the 21st century which explained the anachronisms in his speech in different times.

“You could help me look if you’d like,” Janus offered casually.

“Why?” Patton asked suspiciously.

Janus shrugged. It was not because he missed him, he insisted to himself. It wasn’t because after spending so much time with him, not getting to talk with him all day was strange. It had nothing to do with the fact that the few times he’d ran into a farther along version of Patton since he’d moved back home, their interactions had been brief and tinged with something. No, the only reason Janus was inviting him along was so he could teach this younger version a few things, so he hopefully didn’t go about messing up time. “We worked well together in France, didn’t we?” he asked. “Besides, it’s just a small mission without much danger to the timeline.”

“Pat,” the person at the counter called. Patton turned to him to go grab his smoothie, thanking the worker before turning back around and walking over to Janus.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll help, but you have to answer my questions.”

“I’ll answer the questions that won’t endanger any timelines or secrets of my agency.”

Patton considered it for a moment, taking a sip of his drink. “Fine,” he agreed.

“Good,” Janus replied. “We’ll start by looking around the coffee shop for anything unusual. Did you have any questions now. It’d look more natural to be walking around if we were having a conversation.”

“Does the glitter in your hair have to do with the style of the time or…?”

Janus sighed.

Chapter 57

Luckily, the cashier didn’t seem to think them snooping around was very odd. To be fair, the shop had quite a few odd decorations to look at. So, perhaps employees were just used to people walking around and looking at all of the different things. It helped that Janus and Patton were talking as they searched. They just looked like a couple… of friends… casually chatting and exploring the coffee shop together.

“So,” Patton said, keeping his voice quiet, though luckily the few patrons were on the other side of the shop. “What exactly is it that you do working for the TPI?”

“Well,” Janus said. “I’m a senior field agent. That means I am the person who actually goes on missions in different times. These missions can range from tracking down people who are committing crimes using time travel, stopping anything or anyone that could damage the timestream, and helping waylaid time travelers.”

“So, there are different types of agents?” Patton asked, curiously.

“Yes,” Janus replied. “There are a lot, but only four type time travel on a regular basis.” Should he be telling a very young version of Patton this? Probably not, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care too much.

“There are surveillance, touchdown, field, and cleanup agents,” he explained. “Surveillance agents do a bunch of things including research about the exact time field agents are going to and figuring out the best places for them to enter the timestream. Touchdown agents come slightly before field agents to do last second checks and stay when field agents are out. They mostly are just there to intervene if there are any unforeseen issues. Field agents actually interact with people from other times on a daily basis as they slip into the timestream and find whatever person or object they’re looking for. Cleanup agents come in afterwards and tie up any loose ends as well as observe the area for a few days to make sure nothing happened that no one caught.”

“Everyone else who works at the TPI is mostly in research and management. They don’t usually travel, though everyone who works there is licensed to travel if necessary.”

“That’s a lot of people,” Patton commented.

“What we do is important. We want to make sure we are doing it correctly.” It was honestly not meant to be a jab, but Janus could see Patton frown. He decided to change the subject. “Right now, we’re looking for something that’s causing a small disturbance.”

“What type of thing could cause a disturbance? Is it always a machine like the one in France?”

“No,” Janus replied. “That was actually unusual.” He thought for a second. “At least that used to be unusual, but lately we’ve seen more and more of that sort of thing.”

They were currently standing at a bookshelf, but nothing pinged Janus’s interest or time piece, so they moved on to look at a few of the movie posters. Patton seemed to grow more and more concerned the longer he looked at the posters.

“So, what is it usually?”

“Well,” said Janus. “Some things are natural events. No one’s really sure what causes those. There are theories, but I’m not really involved in that. We leave those alone for the most part if we find those. They’re usually small things, though on occasion they’re a bit bigger. Usually, time disturbances are caused by someone messing up. They say something wrong that gets someone curious and creates a butterfly or they leave an object that doesn’t exist in the time.”

“So, what do you think this one is?” Patton asked curiously.

“Well,” Janus said. “It’s a rather small disturbance, so it won’t be anything too major. Probably just an object out of place.”

“Hmm,” Patton replied. “Well, I’ve always been good at those find the difference games.”

“Have you now?” Janus said, unable to stop a slight grin from ghosting over his face.”

“Mhmm,” replied Patton. He drained the rest of his smoothie and then turned around, facing away from the wall of posters they’d been looking at. He slowly scanned the room, an action a lot less inconspicuous than what Janus had them doing, but he didn’t protest for now.

“That’s weird,” Patton declared, pointing rather obviously at a shelf. Janus noticed a woman looking at him funny. “Well,” Patton continued. “More like it isn’t weird, which is weird for here.”

Janus glanced at the shelf full of small figurines. Most of them were of mythical creatures: werewolves, dragons, and even one not even Janus recognized. Janus would guess, especially judging by the plethora of movie posters that they were all from movies or something of the like. However, Patton was correct there was one that stuck out from the rest. It was still a figurine, but unlike the rest, it was of a real animal: a cow.

“That is odd,” Janus agreed, peering at the cow. Figuring Patton had already been obvious enough, Janus stepped over to the shelf to study it more closely. When looking at it more closely, it became obvious that the cow was very unlike everything else on the shelf. It wasn’t even really a figurine like the ones around it. It looked more like a children’s toy. It’s fur was made out of a soft looking material instead of the stiff plastic of the werewolf next to it.

“It doesn’t really fit in with the collection, does it?” a voice asked from behind Janus.

Janus winced internally at the fact that a civilian had just noticed him acting oddly, but kept his face smooth externally as he turned to face the woman standing behind him.

“My friend and I were wondering what it was from,” Janus said evenly. “We recognized the rest of the figures, but I’m not sure where this one came from.”

“Well, that’s because it didn’t come from anything,” the woman said. “At least that I know of. I just didn’t know where to put the thing, so I put it on my movie figurine shelf.”

“Ah,” said Janus, a politely interested crinkle to his brow. “Where did you get it then?”

“A young kid came by about, oh, a week ago. He looked like a high school kid or maybe college. He seemed right confused and upset. He said he didn’t have any money on him, and got weird when I tried to ask him about his parents. I ended up giving him a free drink and let him sit here for a couple’a hours. We got to talking about my collections. See, I have a deal that if someone brings me back something of interest for my displays, they get a free drink. He insisted on giving me that in exchange for the drink even though I told him I’d given him the drink ‘cause he seemed upset.”

“I don’t even particularly want the thing, but he said he didn’t want it anyway, and he insisted, so I took it.”

“Interesting,” Janus said. “Do you mind if I touch it?”

“Go ahead,” she said with a shrug.

He reached forward to pick up the cow and felt the softest of fizzles that only someone who regularly time traveled would feel. Despite already knowing this must be what he’d come for, he still subtlety set his timepiece to scan it.

Patton was peering over her shoulder now. “If both you and the person who gave it to you don’t care much about it, do you think we could buy it off of you?” he asked. “I’m a big fan of cows.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess,” she agreed. “If you really like it. I don’t know what else I’d do with it.”

“How much?” Janus asked.

“Well it only cost me a Lemon CastelWalk and a scone, so about 12.”

“Sure,” Janus agreed, pulling out his wallet and forking over the currency. “Thanks,” he said.

“No problem,” she replied. “Hope you can find some use for it.”

Janus gave her a smile and then looked at Patton. “I think it’s about time to go, don’t you think.”

Patton nodded. “Thank you for the cow statue,” he told the woman as they left the shop. They walked a bit down the street. Patton turned to him once they were out of sight of the shop window. “So, that’s it?” he asked.

Janus nodded and checked his time piece which had finished it’s scan. “The fabric is from the late 43rd century,” he confirmed, “but that’s not all. It’s stranger than that.”

“Stranger how?” Patton asked.

“The materials are definitely from the 43rd century,” Janus said, “but it’s not from the 43rd century.”

“What do you mean?”

“This,” Janus said, looking at the cow. “This doesn’t exist. Every object has traces of where it’s been no matter how much you clean it. My timepiece can register debris sticking to an object down to the microscopic level and give a general idea where and when they came from. There’s no time travel residue implying it came from the 43rd century or even just dust or dirt from that time period. There isn’t even anything on it from this time period from more than the week the shop owner said it was in her possession. My scans seem to be saying, this thing popped into existence a week ago and didn’t exist in any time or place before that.

Patton frowned. “Well then, what does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” answered Janus frowning down at it. “I have absolutely no idea.”

Chapter 58

Janus didn’t know what to make of the cow he’d gotten in 2510. He’d said goodbye to the young version of Patton and grabbed Remus before heading back to the TPI. He’d immediately handed the time anomaly over to the labs, but even after a few weeks, he hadn’t heard anything back yet. The labs seemed just as stumped as he was.

The older version of Patton still drifted in and out of his life, usually unseen, like a ghost in the night. Well, a ghost that cooked him plenty of healthy food.

It felt odd slipping back into his old routine of missions.

Sometimes it felt like no time had passed, but then he’d see the faces of new recruits or get a mission where he didn’t see Rhi and remember that things were different now. The TPI was strained, constantly running after time distortions with no idea what or who was causing them. The new recruits were stumbling to catch up to the agents who knew what they were doing but were still needed to fill the gaps. It made Janus grimace, but he didn’t know what the solution was.

It was nice to be able to talk to Emile about these things.

If Patton made sure he was taking care of himself at home with nice meals and an ever-changing option of soaps and shampoos, Emile made sure he was taking care of himself at work. Janus was now forced to have a water bottle at his desk to make sure he wasn’t spending the day dehydrated and, assuming he was not on a mission, Emile would either drag him away to eat lunch or bring lunch too him if he was too busy. Today was the later kind of day. Emile had messaged him about 45 minutes ago asking if he was free and then had taken his order for a local restaurant when Janus said he had too much to do.

There was a knock on the door and both Fred and Janus, the only two occupants of the office at the moment looked up.

“I’ll get it,” Janus said, getting up before Fred did. He knew Fred was currently in the middle of a report on a trip to 2000B.C. he and Lena went to. They’d let a new recruit tag alone for training purposes. It had gone badly to say the least. Fred looked exhausted and stressed which was unlike the usually cheery man.

Janus shuffled to the door and opened it. A man in his early 30s that Janus didn’t recognize was standing there.

“Hi,” he said. “I, uh, moved into the office next door. My name is Dave.”

There was a moment of silence. “Did you need something Dave.”

“Right,” he said. “Yeah, I was just wondering if your integrator is running, because mine isn’t.”

Janus glanced back at the report he’d been working on. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

“Well, is it, like, connecting to the TPI system?”

“I don’t know,” said Janus, “I was working locally.”

“Yeah, well that’s the problem with mine. I was wondering if anyone else was having the same problem.”

“Let me check,” said Janus, walking over to his desk. He went to open his email and an error message popped up.

That was… odd to say the least. The TPI had very, very reliable technology. If it was just Janus who could not access the system, he’d assume it was just a local problem, but if the next door neighbor also was having an issue, that could smell trouble.

“Fred,” Janus called. “Are you connected to the internet?”

Fred glanced down at his computer and clicked a couple of buttons. “No,” he said.

“Hmm,” Janus said. He pulled up his timepiece. That at least connected to the TPI servers, so the servers themselves weren’t down, just the offices’ connection to them. “Well, I can still connect with my timepiece.”

“Same,” said Fred.

“So, what’s wrong?” Dave asked. “How do we fix it?”

“We don’t fix it,” Janus said. “We submit a tech support request.”

“Oh,” said Dave. “…How do you do that?”

Janus sighed and flicked his wrist to project a screen. “If you go to the web on your timepiece, it’s literally on the page that automatically pops up,” he said pointing.

“We can connect to the internet through our timepieces?” Dave asked.

“…Did you have any training?” Janus asked.

“Don’t be rude,” Fred said absently, still typing on his report.

Janus just rolled his eyes.

“Not on… that part. They did give me a handbook.”

“Have you read it?” Janus asked.

Dave shrugged which told Janus everything he needed to know.

“Just go back to your office,” Janus told Dave. “I’ll submit the tech support request this time since it’s affecting me as well but read your handbook and familiarize yourself with your timepiece for goodness’s sake.”

“Okay,” Dave said, turning around and wandering back to his office with no thoughts in his eyes.

“I’m not your fucking preschool teacher,” Janus muttered under his breath as he returned to his desk. “It’s not my job to hold your hand and wipe your ass.”

Fred glanced up at him. “Thanks for not saying that when he was still in the room,” he said.

Janus shot him a thumbs up.

He sat down at his desk and quickly submitted a tech support request. By the time he finished that, Emile was knocking on the door with a bag of food.

“Come in,” Janus said to him, and he did, pulling over Remus’s chair and plopping down the food on Janus’s desk.

“You look stressed,” Emile commented.

Janus sighed, already reaching into the bag to look at what Emile had bought. “Everything’s disorganized, everything’s broken, and no one knows how to do anything.”

“Yeah,” Emile said. “I’ve noticed the TPI is understaffed. Even with all of the new recruits, there never seems to be enough people to go around.”

“Yeah,” Janus said, pulling out a burger on a pretzel bun and going to unwrap it. “How about you? This all been messing up your job too?”

“In general, for the AMO, yes, because they have to get all of the new agents houses and everything. For my department, not as much, but we are seeing some agents getting stressed because they’re overworked. Mostly the more senior agents.”

“Honestly, I’m lucky stress makes me throw myself into work to avoid thinking about it. I shudder to think how all of the mentally healthy people are holding up.”

“Janus,” Emile scolded.

“Plus, I’m already set up to have an appointment with a head doctor at least twice a week, so I’m good on that front.”

“I guess that’s true. Just don’t overwork yourself,” Emile said.

“I’m fine Emile. Plus, they need me. I seem to be one of the few people around here who actually know what they’re doing.”

“I just worry…” he said.

“I can handle it well enough,” Janus promised. “I’ve got the toolkit or whatever the head doctor calls it. Plus… work wasn’t ever actually the problem.”

“I know. I know…Just…you aren’t even taking lunch.”

“I have a bit more time free in the afternoon,” Janus said.

“I was just in the middle of something today. If you’re free for a half hour or something, we could get a cup of coffee. How about that? Would that assuage your worry about me a least a bit?”

“Yeah,” Emile said. “Yeah, it would a bit. I have a break at 2, would that work?”

“Sure,” Janus said. He technically had a good amount of stuff to do, but Emile was right in the end. He should try to take breaks. It wasn’t his duty to do everything at the TPI. “A quick lunch now and coffee at 2.”

#study break stories #not writing

18 notes · View notes

rubywrite · 1 year

Text

Find the word tag game!

Thanks for the tag @verba-writing it took me a bit to find these words. I choose from several writings some I’m probably never going to post. But the last one is my current WIP called: The Mirror Effect. My words were drink, alarm, deep, circle

Drink:

“You seem stressed.” Elena, her close friend and coworker said as she printed some newspapers out. “I am. I keep seeing them.” “Again? Well I mean that's the norm for you. I wish I could.” “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.” Hannah sighed. “You could use a drink, I know let’s go to Tony’s Bar.” “I can’t. We got work tomorrow anyways.” “That sounds like a good idea actually.” Mrs. Eaves, they’re boss said. “What about my notes?” Hannah asked. “You need to relax once in a while dearie. I’m your boss that’s actually giving you permission to drink at a bar on a work night. You’ve all been working hard these past few weeks. I think a break is in order.” “Yes! For once I feel like I’m not a disappointment.” Elena cheered. Elena was actually Mrs. Eaves' daughter. “I wouldn’t go that far.” Mrs. Eaves said jokingly. Hannah smiled at them. “You know what? Yeah why not, I’ll come along too.” “Yay! But guess what? You’re paying since you’ve been avoiding going out with us at night.” Elena said. “Wow. Okay then.” Hannah smiled. “We still have to wait for Andrew, he’ll be very upset if he misses seeing Hannah drinking.” Mrs. Eaves said. “Where is he anyways?” Hannah asked. “I think he went to look for you actually.” Elena said. “Why? I was at a police station all day, nothing bad would’ve happened to me.” “You know he still cares for you.” Mrs. Eaves said. Hannah sighed. “He really showed it. I’d rather stay home if he’s coming.” “Aw what? You can’t back out now!” “We’ll have a girls night to ourselves okay? Just not today.” Hannah left. “I can’t believe they suggested bringing my ex along… what the hell were they thinking?” Hannah thought.

Deep:

Later that night Nick picked them up and they went to the crime scene. “So where exactly does this kid live?” Nick asked, looking at Rebecca from the mirror. “She can’t remember. And her parents never made it public.” “That’s a little suspicious.” “Why do you say that? They probably just wanted to grieve in peace.” Hannah said. “But why? Wouldn’t they think their daughter’s alive somewhere? They would want their information public so if someone found her they would be reunited.” “I’m sure the police have it written down somewhere.” “We do. But still. Something about that doesn’t feel right to me.” He pulled to the side of the road. “It’s walking now. It’s pretty deep in there so I would wear some bug spray.” “Let’s just go.” Hannah said getting out of the car.

Alarm:

And then it was morning, her alarm clock interrupted the amazing dream. Sarah groaned, she had a photo shoot this morning and was very not prepared for it. She quickly got dressed and made herself a cup of coffee to go. Her foster mom was already there waiting for her. “You’re late. As usual.” Sarah learned it was best not to comment on her snide remarks. “Don’t disappoint me.” Was all the grouchy lady said as she dropped her off. Sarah ignored her for the most part but gave her a slight thumbs up when she heard her drive off. The people there were all very nice and helped her feel slightly less uncomfortable. Still she did her job and got impressive shots thanks to the professional photographer and editor. She thanked everyone for their time and left. She sent a text to her foster mom rather than calling her, she also learned not to call her the hard way. She waited for a response for a few more minutes but one never came, so she decided to go get a coffee from the cafe next to the photo company. She noticed the long line and thought better of it. She looked at her phone, no answer yet, so she decided that it would be okay to wait in line. She listened to customers talking amongst themselves and people ordering their coffee and food. Though the line was long it went fast and before she even knew what to order she was up next. The cashier immediately recognized her. “Y-You’re..” she stuttered. Sarah smiled and nodded, but shushed her. “Sorry..” the girl cleared her throat. “What would you like to order?” Sarah looked up at the menu “Can I get the vanilla iced coffee with extra vanilla and skim milk, oh and also I would like that little pastry right there, is there any strawberry?” “The strawberry mini donut and a vanilla iced coffee.” Sarah nodded and thanked the girl. Sarah decided to sign a little slip of paper for the girl and give her a nice tip since she was genuinely so nice and didn’t immediately scream her name when she recognized her. When got her order and gave the girl the tip and signature she acted all giddy and immediately realized that was unprofessional, Sarah laughed at her apologies and reassured her. She felt a slight buzz in her pocket, her foster mom finally answered and was nearly there, so she waved to the girl and went back outside to wait for her.

Circle:

That afternoon she kept her promise. Taelor was sick again, this time she claimed the sun was burning her. Mom kept her home just in case. Now Lucille entered Susans gate and was knocking on her door just as loud as she did to theirs. She heard the grouchy women shuffling to the front door with a loud “I’m coming!” Susan yanked the door open and gave a curt “What?” “I’ve come to return that book to you.” Susan looked at her right hand. “Nothing can be done now.” She said shutting the door. Lucille knocked again, when she got no answer she gave up. What to do now. She felt her phone vibrate, it was Blair calling her. Lucille answered as she walked back to her house. “Hey.” “Luci. There’s something weird going on.” “What do you mean?” “I couldn’t find anything on the forums I’m in about the book you’re talking about.” “I kind of figured. I talked to Susan just now about returning the damn thing and she says nothing can be done.” She said as she walked through the front door. “I’m really worried about you. Everything points to darkness with what you’ve described. What does your tattoo look like?” “It’s like a round mirror with vines surrounding it in a circle, now the vines have thorns.” She described looking at her hand. “You need to see Ms. Stars.” “The psychic?” “She might be able to help you.” “I’m not really into that stuff like you are though.” Lucille put down her bag in the kitchen. “Just try I’ll come with you next weekend. I have a birthday this weekend or I would do it this weekend.” Lucille sighed. “Fine. Only if you’re coming.”

#own work #mystery #fantasy #paranormal #wip excerpt #current wip #thanks for the tag!#mystery story

3 notes · View notes

theartistknownaslymond · 2 years

Note

A playlist for the equivalent of the sequence where Francis thinks Richard and Sibylla have drowned (through to the revelations at Calais if you want) please.

My god you're evil Katherine <3

Nothing but the Cathartic

A band AU playlist for a six hour hungover drive through the night to confirm whether the relatives you keep trying to estrange yourself from, who you actually love beyond words, have drowned*

1) Kate Bush - Watching You Without Me 2) Joan Baez - House Carpenter 3) Jean-Roger Caussimon - La Manche 4) The Watersons - Idumea 5) John Lennon - Mother 6) Lady Maisery - The Changeling's Lullaby 7) Sily Sisters - Burning of Auchindoon 8) Anne Briggs - Lowlands 9) Justin Hayward & John Lodge - My Brother 10) Maddy Prior & Tim Hart - I Live Not Where I Love 11) Joni Mitchell [Morgan James, because Spotify] - The Last Time I Saw Richard 12) Pentangle - Lyke-Wake Dirge 13) Nic Jones - Isle of France 14) Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Crossing the Bar 15) Charles Trenet - La Mer

'Then all the more credit to you,' said Erskine, seating himself, 'for entertaining such strong family feelings. We heard of your ride. I trust you are now quite rested after it.' The young man's mouth opened. 'The ride!' He sat down. 'My dear sir, the ride was nothing but the cathartic. It was the banquet at the Hôtel de Ville that did for me.'

*n.b. for a real hungover night drive you should a) let Archie drive and b) choose louder songs to keep you awake

I know I should be posting the celebrating-Thatcher’s-demise playlist today, but that one isn’t ready, so you get a miserable mourning one instead whoops

1) This is from The Ninth Wave, the B-side of Hounds of Love about a woman lost at sea. It's her pov on her relatives waiting for her to return - so the reverse of Francis imagining Sibylla and Richard are dead, but Sibylla wants to see what he's like imaging Richard's dead, and in terms of the misunderstandings and not-hearing-each-others it seems fitting for the fmaily at this point. 2) A folk song about a woman who had an affair with some devil (also known as The Demon Lover), is later persuaded by him to leave her husband and child and then drowns at sea when he deliberately sinks their ship. Not that I think any of this applies to Sibylla, but atmospherically I think Francis, who is not currently certain of his past, would find it fittingly painful. 3) Don't @ me I couldn't find a transcript of the lyrics and my French isn't good enough to know that it fits exactly, but it sounds good for the kind of crooner FRC was, for the soundtrack to Sibylla's past in France, and obviously La Manche is the French name for the English Channel. 4) A sacred harp song re-introduced to the UK by the Watersons, it's just a great mourning song. 5) If the lyrics to this seem unfair to Francis, Sibylla and FRC, or even overly kind on Gavin, then just think about how much misunderstanding there is between everyone, how much distrust there is and how much isn't being said that needs to be said at this point of the story. 6) Ok, this is one modern folk song I allowed myself because I thought it fitted Francis' fears of what he is to Sibylla so well. Plus imagine the way this could be interpreted from Sibylla's pov, knowing who the words are actually referring to: 'Your father says you're not his own nor any child of man's, / But I think you have your father's smile, your father's gentle hands, / And I pray that you will love me like your father used to do, / So hush awhile, my darling, so I might know it's you.' 7) It's really more of a GoK song, but that's emblemetic enough of the tangled Crawford relationships anyway: 'As I came in by Fiddich side on a May morning / Auchindoon was in a blaze an hour before the dawning / Crawing, crawing, for all your crowse crawing / You've burnt your crops and tint your wings / An hour before the dawning.' 8) Drowned lover appears to woman in a dream. Another great angsty ballad. 9) Perhaps on the surface more of a 'Richard about Francis' song, but given the reference to the hand at the bridle when Francis suddenly realises his brother's not dead, it might also be a bit about Francis' idea of Richard when he was young. Plus 'So far / aross a wild and windy sea / So far / That our voices are / Divided by an ocean / An ocean.' 10) Again, technically written as a song for a lover, but I think it still fits Francis' feelings about home and family and his difficult relationship with Scotland and Midculter. 11) Bit on the nose? Mm. 'Richard got married to a figure skater And he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on And all the house lights left up bright. I'm gonna blow this damn candle out I don't want nobody comin' over to my table I got nothing to talk to anybody about All good dreamers pass this way someday Hidin' behind bottles in dark cafés Dark cafés, only a dark cocoon Before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away Only a phase, these dark café days.' 12) It's another banging mourning song from the canon of twentieth century folk revival! 13) The story is of a convict washing up from a shipwreck and being pardoned - you'd imagine Francis would see himself in it to an extent, while also thinking he deserves neither life nor pardon. 14) Another slight anachronism, because Katherine mentioned another recent version (by False Lights), and this is the arrangement that inspired that one. The song, however, is a Tennyson poem, and it had been set to choral music before, so it would sort of be known to Francis. 15) Again, big French crooner from Sibylla's glamour days, imagine her recuperating with this playing in the background as Francis steps into the room to see she's alive, while thinking Richard isn't...

#band au: checkmate #character: francis crawford #character: richard crawford #character: sybilla semple #playlists: period appropriate #playlists: anachronistic #it's both ok

6 notes · View notes

purplesurveys · 2 years

Text

1524

Do you believe you've met your soulmate or one of them?: No, but I also don’t believe in soulmates.

When did you last have grape juice?: I don’t think I’ve ever had grape juice. I’ve had lots of grape flavored candy LOL but never for juice.

Have you learned anything today?: Hmmmm. So I had been looking for new museums to visit because I feel like I’ve already been to every single one around Manila and the neighboring cities, until I learned that there is actually an absolute. fuck. ton. of galleries and exhibits around the metro. I went into a rabbit hole a few hours ago going through the social media accounts of all the underground galleries out there and followed them all for future reference.

Have you been to any parties here recently?: Yeah, I went to one last Thursday.

Are you good at reading body language?: Yeah, I’m too observant for my own good, I’m afraid.

How many hours of sleep did you get last night?: Around 5, which is my average.

What were the last 3 emojis you used?: I’d check my phone but the battery died half an hour ago and I don’t feel like charging it.

Is it currently warm where you live?: It is a little bit, yeah. I have the fan pointed at me so I feel comfortable, but I’d sweat bullets the moment I turn it off.

Do you use Facebook?: Yeah for the shitposting of it all.

Do you like the smell of coconut?: Oh gosh, no. Never did and I don’t think I ever will.

Do you prefer longer or short socks?: The shorter the better.

What size shoe do you wear?: 6 or 7, though I typically go with 6.

Chocolate or Vanilla ice cream?: Chocolate.

Do you or anyone you know have sleep apnea?: Nopes.

Where is your favorite place to be?: The beach, a museum, or a coffee shop.

How many times have you fallen in the past year?: Hahahahahaha, one. And it led to a busted-up ankle.

Do you like to leave your window open at night or do you use a fan?: I always have a fan on but I’ve since stopped opening my windows at night which I had always done before - too invasive. What I do is keep the aircon on til like 2 or 3 AM so that it gets cold enough to keep me comfortable till the morning.

Is there a celebrity you dislike for no reason other than they annoy you?: Taylor Swift.

If you find a spider in your home, do you set it free or kill it?: I let it roam around. They hide in the end anyway.

Would you say you're addicted to social media?: Nah, I’ve certainly toned down in the last few years. When I was a teenager I used to post 100, 200 tweets in a day; but I can now go days without tweeting anything. Same with my other accounts. I mostly check social media just to see if the boys posted anything new, lol.

How many pets have you had in your lifetime?: I’ll never know for sure because we used to have lots of goldfish. But apart from those, I can count 8 - two lovebirds, a rabbit, a chick, a cat, and three dogs.

Do you sunburned easy?: I had really bad sunburns as a kid, but I haven’t had any since.

Of all the houses you've lived in, which was your favorite?: This current one. It’s the first one that my immediate family can say is ours in every sense of the word, so it’s just nice to live someplace quiet and without extended family especially considering that the latter is the usual setting in Filipino households. I love my extended family, but I also like living in a house with just five people in it lol.

Do you or would you ever use online dating?: I did, but only for the ego boost after my breakup. It felt nice seeing people wanting to match with me, honestly. That was really all I needed lol - after I felt good enough and validated, I deleted the app since I was never on there to pursue a fling or another relationship altogether. What do you wish you could get paid for?: Watching videos on YouTube since I pretty much do it nonstop.

What did you get into trouble for as a kid?: Playing outside for too long. My grandma was pretty strict and we had a rule that we had to be back inside by 6, but we were kids and we liked breaking that rule so that we got to play outside for longer.

What's something good that has happened here recently?: My (now former) work wife aka Kata started her new job this week and I couldn’t be any happier for her. It’s high time that she started spreading her wings to explore other opportunities and boy is she also fucking swimming in money in her new position! Hahahaha.

Do you remember the first time you've ever driven a car? How did that go?: Yeah, but it was nothing notable. I used our super old Mitsubishi Lancer to drive around the village and nearly grazed the passenger side mirror by a wall.

Who did you last say "I love you" to?: The dogs.

When did you last feel beautiful?: I’m not sure; this isn’t really a sensation I feel too often. Not that this has any underlying meanings - I feel other positive feelings instead, like peace and confidence. Not so much of beauty.

Are you currently frustrated over something?: Uh, not so much. I am expecting to feel quite vexed tomorrow because for context, I get to enjoy a very specific non-working holiday whereas for most other people it’s a normal Friday, so I’m still expecting to get a flurry of work emails. But at least I won’t be obligated to reply to any of them, so there’s that.

Would you ever like to travel to Ireland? Or have you ever been?: I’ve never been but I’d never say no.

Have you ever had a yard sale?: Nopes.

Do you enjoy going to yard sales or garage sales?: Not really.

Do you know someone with a big ego?: Used to.

What color is your most used blanket?: I don’t have one.

Does it annoy you when people type in all caps?: I mean if the situation doesn’t call for all caps, yes, I imagine I’d be annoyed.

Do you like gummy bears?: Love them.

Where is your favorite place to grocery shop?: S&R.

Have any plans for the day?: SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

#survey #surveys

2 notes · View notes

findingmypeace · 2 years

Text

7/28/2022

I’m posting again because I really need a space to process. I’m fighting the urge to text my therapist because I don’t want to abuse texting. I’m just feeling very overwhelmed right now. This morning and focusing on behaviors/physical consequences has been a huge distraction from the things that are happening in my relationship with my parents. In the past 30 minutes it’s starting to sneak back into my conscious. Like I posted last night I really, really feel guilty for blocking them. I know it’s the right thing to do because I don’t think I could emotionally handle whatever they say to me without spiraling right now and that would not be good while I don’t have the extra support of treatment staff. At the same time, one of the first people I would usually tell about all of this physical stuff is my Mom. And yet I know telling her would not get me the response I would hope for in a Mom. When I told her about taking the medication for the tachycardia she asked me how long I would need to take the medication and then told me she had to go and hung up the phone. No real concern. I don’t think I will ever stop wanting love and caring from my own mother despite the fact that I am currently furious with her.

I want to text my therapist and get reassurance the keeping my parents blocked is the right thing to do. I could text LS but she in the middle of a convention and haven’t fully filled her in on what exactly occurred. I also don’t want to be a Debbie Downer. Like I said last night I just feel so guilty. I’ve never done something like this before. I’ve always just sat there and taken everything they’ve ever said to me. I don’t fight back. This feels like a betrayal and cruel. But isn’t that how they’re treating me?

Changing the subject, I am also feeling very unsettled about my ed behaviors today and now the upcoming doctors appointment. I already wrote all about what I am feeling this morning. I know I keep saying this but I’m frustrated. Frustrated seems to be the major emotion. However, this topic, I will update my therapist on depending on the outcome of the appointment although it’s a possibility my dietitian already talked to her given their other job (besides private practice) is working at the same SMI treatment center. But I also know that what I am currently looking for is attachment related, most like care and concern and not in an attention seeking way (like my parents would accuse me of). Just someone to comfort me and emotionally hold space for me. I am so tired to dealing with attachment stuff.

However, on a positive note I did start my paper. I’m feeling more confident that I can complete it by end of day tomorrow now that I have some of it written. I think I might actually be able to complete summer semester before admitting to treatment. I don’t think I will be admitting tomorrow because they haven’t contacted me at all today. That would be VERY short notice if they admitted me tomorrow. Most likely it will be Monday or Tuesday. Okay, I’m done posting for the millionth time. I did get out most of what I wanted to say so there probably won’t be a lot more posts.

#personal #attachment trauma #eating disorders #bulimia #ed treatment

2 notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs

haiaka-blog

Fighting fire with fire

bestcarleaseuk

Best Car Lease Deals

behindblueeyesworld

miyugoto

Miyu Goto

mustardd