#jess talks into the void

[kindlythevoid]

So this point might have been made but I would once again like to link the Death of the Clones and to the Fall of the Republic

We all knew that the downfall of the Republic went hand-in-hand with Order 66. In Clone Wars, Filoni, as we all knew, emphasized the clones’ death in the series finale as much as the Jedi’s in the movies. He places real emphasis on the effect it had on the clones, who we had grown to see as individuals, as people, while the Emperor saw them as a means to an end. 

However, not only does Filoni acutely break our hearts by showing us the other side of the coin, he makes an interesting association throughout the show. The end of the Jedi means the end of the Republic, it’s true, but, in most media types, Luke Skywalker rebuilds the Jedi Order in a new way and helps preserve their legacy. The Empire is done away with and the Republic restored. 

Or is it?

On one side, the New Republic and the Jedi show the resurrection of an old idea in new ways, a transformation in order to adapt to new ideals. 

But the Old Republic is dead. The time of the Jedi intermeshed with the Republic is gone and buried, another story to be passed down as more of a cautionary tale than the height of an ancient order. 

You know who else is dead? That never gets revived or reformed? The clones. 

Our brave boys in every color under the sun die, and they never return, not in any way that prolongs them. 

You see, they age on the double. During wartime, this was so they could get more troops on the field faster. Afterwards? It’s pretty convenient that they die twice as fast as the rest of the population. And even though surviving clones such as Rex and Wolffe and Gregor, the main ones we truly know about surviving later on at this point in the Star Wars Canon, made huge contributions to the Republic, it ultimately will not benefit them from a genetic or cultural standpoint. 

Culturally, they were dead the moment the Emperor gave the order. 

And, here’s the kicker, so was the Republic. 

The Republic spent its last years mired in politics and war rooms and, as Filoni likes to remind us, clones. 

I’m still going through my rewatch of the clone wars, but there are a few prominent scenes that come to mind that make Filoni’s point, intentioned or not, extremely clear. 

The first is this gif of Commander Thorn’s death. 

As Thorn falls back after his admittedly badass last stand, he lands in the center of what I would describe as a symbol of the Republic. The gear’s right there, formed by the droids. 

This, of course, is just one of several moments where the Republic symbol is made, but it is a popular scene and a good example for the point I’m trying to make. 

Thorn in this picture, takes the place of the Republic. And just as the clone dies, so, too, does the Republic.

Don’t believe me?

Fives very literally held the secret to the clones’s survival. And, as we all know, had the clones had full control, it is likely the Republic would not have fallen, or at least not as dramatically and without the multiple genocides on its way out. 

Fives, in the gif above, is surrounded by the Republic symbol once again, only this time by other clones. It’s poetic, in a way, that two clones struggling to save their people die in a Republic symbol. Almost as if the fate of the Republic hinges on the fate of the clones. 

And if that doesn’t cover it enough for you, if you truly don’t see the connection between the clones and the Republic, I’d like you to meet a dear clone whom we all love:

Jesse. 

The only clone I’ve seen with a big ass tattoo of the Republic symbol stamped right there on his damn face. 

Jesse, who truly believed in the Republic and had served long enough to be the only clone other than Rex to keep his helmet creatively apart after Ahsoka’s return. 

Jesse, whose death marks the start of the Empire. His destruction and death under Order 66 marks the turning point in Clone Wars. Before they got the call on that ship, the Republic was alive and basically done with the war. But as soon as that ship crashed, as soon as we see that Jesse is well and truly dead, buried and respects and everything, the next scene, the very next scene, features Darth Vader and the Empire. 

The clones were the canaries of the Republic. When they died, the Republic followed. 

#thank you for coming to my TED talk #star wars #star wars rant #Has this point been made yet? #If it has then I salute you!! #And please direct me to the post #Also I am very aware that Kix technically lives for the next five decades #But his whole culture is basically wiped out at that point #star wars clone wars #commander thorn #arc trooper fives #arc trooper jesse #just yelling into the void #not shown: the clones giving me emotions #Your honor please #i connected the dots #i connected them #the fall of the Republic #clone death

[sequencefairy]

Feeling very needy for attention and interaction today for reasons I will not be examining too closely in public and I hate it when the RSD manifests into Any Attention Is Good Attention Disease.

This is the kind of day that results in me picking a fight with some stranger just so I will be able to feel something and I don't want to be doing that, so I am going to try not to, but I might crawl out of my own skin in the meantime.

Can someone take my brain out back and dunk it in the creek to rinse this off, maybe.

#things jess says #i'm not /not/ posting this as a plea for attention but i am also not expecting any #it is what it is #and i need to learn how to cope with this feeling without running to pick fights #or saying ridiculous things #or being a fucking clingy weirdo #just so someone will talk to me and fill the void in my chest #add things

[xstevex-world]

It’s Dublin comic con today and I found cans of monster for €1.70 in dunnes I truly am 16 again.

#screaming into the void #if you’re around say hi! #I’ll be manning the Ludosport Ireland table in the main hall #let me talk to you about lightsaber combat and me to slowly drift off Because I got two hours of sleep last night #I’ll delete this later but ask for Jess

[hipsofsteel]

girl help, i am witnessing the blogs i follow repeatedly misidentify the american wapiti (elk) as a regular deer

#im screaming into the void ''ITS AN ELK'' #jess talks too much

[grgie]

on the bus this morning there was a mum and her daughter doing a practice run of the bus route the day before school starts and i was like damn thats such a good idea why did i not do that i was anxious as hell getting the bus and it was 2011 so google maps werent readily avaliable but then i remembered my friend was a year older than me so i just followed her around

#god bless jess for having to do everything for me #helena talks to the void #also the bus is SO much busier than it has been during the holidays i might go back to walking in rip

[puppyluver256]

[Image Description: A human interpretation of the Hollow Knight, the titular character of the game of the same name. They have very pale scarred skin, long white hair in a ponytail, black and orange eyes, and a missing left arm. They are wearing a grey tank top, green lounge pants, and a silver hair clip shaped like the horns their original appearance has. They appear to be looking into a bathroom mirror that is out of frame, presumably mounted over a bathroom sink that they are standing in front of. They have a finger up to their mouth and are examining the strangely empty space inside, as their tongue has been mostly removed. The background is the pale blue bathroom wall, an open wooden door, and a view into the hallway with a beige wall and green fluffy carpet. End ID.]

-----

Hello and welcome to How To Make The Asshole Responsible For Mostly Everything In Canon Somehow Even Worse In Your AU 101! (: Step right up, it's gonna be a long-un.

So yeah, I still don't have all the details hammered out quite yet, but I do have significant points roughly accounted for. Even after they've been out from under his metaphorical wing for like four or five years, PK has of course still left considerable marks on all his kids. In this human AU, PK (who I'm tentatively calling Paul King until I find something that's not so perfectly fitting even if it's a bit bland for a character like him) is a fairly influential religious leader whose faith involved some principles akin to the quiverful movement, along with strict control over his progeny and a belief that children--or at least his children--only serve as accessories to their parents and something to be seen and not heard. This led to a lot of neglect for the kids under King's roof, thankfully only three full-timers this time instead of the likely hundreds of thousands just due to the differences of how mammal reproduction works compared to insects (or wyrm + tree I guess lol), and that neglect led to a Lot of Crap.

In fact, only two of the things that happened to any of the three kids were the result of direct action on King's part, and sadly both of those things happened to Hollow. One was the event that was the catalyst for getting the kids out (again I'm still trying to nail this down, but it does end in the house blowing up), and the other (: was the one time (: Hollow had the courage (: to talk back (: and King decided (: to make sure that never happened again (: and the man has medical training (: he was a doctor at one point (: so the glossectomy was professionally done by him personally (': ('': (''':

Anyway, yeah, that little detail is part of how I'm carrying over the "no voice to cry suffering" part of the Vessels, though in AU Hollow's case it's less "no voice to cry suffering" and more "no tongue to give that voice clarity and also they basically just stop trying shortly after". The other two don't vocalize for different reasons, Ghost is just the bog-standard neurodivergent flavor of nonverbal for the most part (they could probably speak if they tried under the right circumstances, they just don't), and BV's silence is due to neurological damage as they had a seizure that affected a nerve controlling speech, and that combined with them falling down the stairs shortly after certainly didn't do them any favors. ...though the black sclera for all three, that's another thing entirely, let's just say that their old house was similarly close to the source of a certain substance like the White Palace is in the game... As to why Hornet's not physically affected by any of this? Her mom's alive in this AU, obvs she lived with her. And even though she visited as per custody agreement, and also her wanting to be with her half-siblings to give them some actual human contact that wasn't just the bare minimum to keep them alive, if anything had happened to Hornet while in that house Herrah woulda gotten more than a little aggro (: Thankfully the siblings are in a much better living situation now!

.......also since voidy stuff is in this AU and they've got some and they can do this:

[Image Description: The same image as above, cropped to Hollow's face. Four black tendrils have been added coming out of their mouth, with black handwriting reading "void tendrils" and an arrow pointing to the addition.]

Yup. At least eating's not as hard for them as it seems to be for most actual willing glossectomy patients??? ^^;

💖🐶 Check out my pinned post for ways to support my artwork, among other things! 🐶💖

~Likes are appreciated, but reblogs are preferred as they let more people see my artwork! If you have something to say, feel free to give feedback in tags/comments/replies as well!~

The Hollow Knight and other Hollow Knight concepts © Team Cherry Human AU design and artwork © PuppyLuver Studios

#hollow knight #the hollow knight #human au #jess drew the thing #sfw #image description #long post #child neglect mention #child abuse mention #body horror cw #just in case #that is for the void tendrils! not their scars and amputation!! #if you tag this as body horror then you'd better specify that's the reason or i'll kick yer ass!!! #...more accurately i'll either give you a stern talking-to or block you idk o_o;

[laufire]

as much as I love Forwood (and as I've said, it's the Caroline ship that gives me the softest, warmest, angstiest ~feels), every time someone tags my edits saying something on the vein that they "should" have been endgame it's like... mate, they're high school sweethearts. let them grow.

my one (1) semi-related complain on this front is limited to Tyler's end and ONLY that tbh. the implosion of the relationship, the dynamic afterwards... I was in favour of all of that. even Tyler's regression was a good choice storytelling-wise even if it pains me and saddens me deeply.

I just wish Tyler had lived. ideally, I also wish that he had a good plot in seasons 7-8 (which could've included more evolution on the Caroline-Tyler front, whatever shape it took, yes). but I would've settled for. him living. period. smh.

but Forwood itself? it was bound to end and that's good in my book. it doesn't erase or take from them what that relationship gave them, what it meant for them or for the story.

#like once the show went past the constrains of high school... it was going to get end #(i do wish caroline and jesse had a he space to be something afterwards lol) #i also admit that as caroline stan first the fact that she was less into the relationship than him does colour my opinion #talking to the void #my thoughts #plecverse thoughts #plecverse #the vampire diaries #stackediaries #in a way #forwood #caroline forbes #tyler lockwood

[dizzybevvie]

finding Sebastian's old bloopers and realising how formative they were for me

#i miss the era where i would watch this + the video with his favourite moments to voice act on repeat #consipracy here but. I was not able to find these videos for YEARS. the last time i watched them was 4 years ago and i have tried to find- #them since then. and now theyre suddenly just up? #now? when jess + jason are bringing all the vas back?? #hmm........ #this might be farfetched idk #apollo says stuff #aphmau #aphmau mystreet #aphverse #aphblr #mystreet #laurance mystreet #to my knowledge all of sebastians bloopers and vids where he talked abt voicing laurance were taken down before void paradox #<one of my old tags

[werewolfrevenge]

I’m honestly shocked nobody has ever drew murder she wrote golden girls crossover art or murder she wrote Columbo cross over att

#the Columbo one writes itself Jessica in is town at the same time as Columbo they solve a murder together #gg one is harder to figure out why jess is there #talking to the void tag

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

See No Evil

Pairing: John Price x F!reader

Synopsis: The flowers came every week -- Tuesday, two O’clock, two minutes after your break. The only problem was that you knew they weren’t coming from John.

Word Count: 17.5k

Warnings: Stalking, violence, intense gore, blood, abduction, angst, fluff, protective!John, not quite smut, swearing, stereotypical ‘Bad Guy’ character who gets his ass beat, minor character death

A/N: Finished this at 3am so forgive the absolute deterioration of the plot near the end.

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

The flowers came once a week – Tuesday, two o’clock, two minutes after your scheduled break. The Triple Twos your coworkers would joke, slapping you on the shoulder with wide smiles and questioning eyes as they continued by asking if John had done something to piss you off. That was the only excuse to spend so much money on flowers every single week; the man had to have done something absolutely unforgivable. 

You always found yourself fake chuckling at the accusations with a tense jaw and flickering eyes, looking to the empty corners and the glass front doors as the delivery man exits the building; whistling a tune. Choking down the bile in your throat.

The problem was that John hadn’t done anything wrong, and the tightening in your chest had told you that something more sinister was going on even if you didn’t know exactly what. Another part of you, the common civilian voice in the front of your mind, hissed that you were just being paranoid. 

But something was just off.

There was always a note that came with the gift, and it was always stuck on a cardholder; the metal shimmering in the white light. It was a stark contrast to the black paper trapped in it, keeping your eyes transfixed like a void in the earth. You could feel your heart drop every time your gaze locked onto it and the blood-red lettering, like the fibers were bleeding with every stab of a long-gone fountain pen. 

The flowers themselves made you pause the first time you had gotten them. Jess, the kind old woman who works the front desk, had come and gotten you herself, and that alone was unusual. Like a man wearing shorts during winter – not entirely uncommon, but still surprising when you saw it happen to say the least.

“Why,” Jess had muttered to you as you gave her a confused look as to why she was in your department in the middle of the day, “That John of yours is just the sweetest. The hydrangeas are the prettiest shade of blue, Dear. The man of yours was an absolute God-send. A pity I’m married – I would have tried to snatch him up!” 

“Flowers?” You frowned, running over thoughts about presentations and powerpoints you still had to get done by the end of the day. Already you were at the edge of your rope, “What are you talking about, Jess, I don’t think that John…”

Jess had already bounced ahead, quite limber for her old age, you had thought before you followed after; sucking in a deep sigh. Turning a corner with the clack of your work shoes, you saw a flash of color in the otherwise dull gray of the lobby, kissing the sides of your vision. 

“Woah,” Your eyes widened, taking in the sight in front of you as a hand lifted to your lips in shock. 

The arrangement was massive – bigger than any you had seen except for one other place.

The first official date you and John had gone on was at a fancy restaurant downtown with similar gargantuan bouquets – a really nice place with candles and red tablecloths.

Throughout the course of the night, both of you had gotten to know each other exceptionally well, but it wasn’t like the two of you were unfamiliar in the first place. If anyone would have asked, many of your coworkers would have told about how, months ago, you had first started gushing about the most handsome man you had ever seen leaving the local library once more. Through many fake threats and warnings that if you didn’t snag the brown-haired Brit soon, they would steal him from you, you shoved down the nervousness in your throat and went to the library on your days off.

It was a week before you gained the courage to even look in his direction, and when you did, you had already found him sneaking glances back. You had offered a friendly smile, albeit a nervous one, and had flushed when he had given you a twitch of his lips and a tilt of his head back.

For six weeks you had gone back, borrowing books you had no intention of reading just to have a chance to speak to him – and when you did, you had both become infatuated with each other. John had asked you about any history book recommendations and you had laughed and said you only read fiction; the man had looked offended, but slyly commented that he would have to change your opinion over dinner.

It was easy to admit that you had agreed right away, body fuzzy and warm.

But on that first official date, you had told him something that you never imagined would come up again when the waiter had put the first-course dish in front of you. Blue Hydrangeas and pure white Orchids. Your favorite flowers. 

“John sent these?” You had wondered aloud at the first vase of flora on the granite desk-top, blue and white immediately catching your eyes. Your chest had lightened with love. This was so kind of him. 

“Look,” Jess had squealed, placing her withered hands on her cheeks. It was almost like she was getting the gift instead of you. Your lips had quirked in amusement, “There’s a note too. Quick, read it to me! I want all the juicy details.”

That was when you realized something was wrong. 

Note? You had raised a brow, John left a note? 

Your boyfriend was many things – loyal, brave, an absolutely lovely person to hug because of those muscled bear arms, and hard-headed when it came to you walking nowhere near the edge of the road – but a note writer? No. 

If John wanted to tell you something he would tell you – whisper it into your skin as he leaves gentle kisses behind, mutter it into your hair as he brings you into a slow dance in his house’s living room. Smugly grunt it into the hot air as he leaves you sobbing from pleasure, his fingers curling inside of your heat. 

Your nose had twitched at the smell of the flowers, but your digits had gravitated to the black note card and its red writing. 

‘Thinking of you now, 

Long to be with you always,

Morning, noon, and night.’

The paper crinkled as you held the edge slightly tighter, but other than that no outward expression told anyone how confused you were. This wasn’t like John at all and your feet fidget a bit as you try and think if you had missed a massive date on the calendar to elicit such a break in character. But no, you tilted your head, there was nothing going on today.

How did John even order these? You had raised your free hand and brushed one of the white Orchid pedals, He’s out on deployment, not down the street standing in the floral shop.

Jess was gushing at your side, and a few other coworkers come by and say how happy they are for you. 

Maybe I’m just overthinking this – John can send flowers and notes whenever he wants. He’s my boyfriend. 

Looking over to your coworkers you agree to a comment about how attentive John is, “Yeah,” You force a laugh and shove down the swirling in your gut, “He’s really great – you have no idea…Did you know he makes the best waffles I’ve ever had? He even brings them to me in bed when he’s home!”

Then the whistling delivery man, named Don as you had found out the second week deep into this strange event, had become just as familiar as your coworkers. 

Which leaves us in the present. 

Tuesday, Two O’clock, two minutes into your scheduled break. The Triple Twos. 

You’re already waiting by the front desk, leaning back into it with the granite top digging into your back like a heavy hand. You try to stop the way your stomach twists when you hear Don whistling – Jess laughs to your left. 

“Like clockwork, Dear.”

You don’t answer, only tighten your lips into a line; tap your foot on the floor. Your arms crossed.

If you had the option to contact John this would have been easier – ask if he was responsible and finally put this to rest. But your Lover had told you right before the relationship was made official that his job was demanding and that it could even put you in situations that would be less than enjoyable. John had long hours, few breaks with stretches far in between where he would be able to see you. No contact when he was away overseas unless you were in a life-or-death situation – too many possible variables of who could be listening over the line if you called.

“It’d make me feel better if I know there’s no chance of anyone coming back to London to mess with my girl, eh?” He had said, pressing a scratchy kiss to your forehead as he was about to leave your apartment to gather his gear at his home. John would be away for months this time, you knew, “Put my mind at ease about it. But don’t you worry, Love. I’ll be back soon, yeah? We’ll watch that movie you wanted to see when I’m home.” 

Don opens the door, holding another damned vase with blue Hydrangeas and white Orchids sticking out of the top. Your eyes find the note all too quickly and your fingers tighten over your biceps.

“Hell,” The delivery man snorts at you, “I’m starting to think this guy is going to buy up all the Florists’ stock at this rate! The hell did he do? Cheat on you?” 

You roll your eyes, not replying to the comment and never doubting John’s loyalty to you in the slightest. Muttering a soulless ‘thanks’ before moving to help Don, you take the object from him with a grimace. The vase is like iron in your hand – heavy and cold to the touch akin to a corpse. Like death gripping at the slim vines of life, petals blooming through its fingers. 

“I still wish you’d tell me the name of the person who ordered them,” You utter, moving to drop the vase with a plunk on the front desk. It was like you were repulsed by even touching them.

Jess narrows her eyes, “What?” She comments, tone exasperated that you were bringing this up again, “Do you think someone else is going through all this effort? Come on, Dear, no one but John would send these. They’re your favorites!”

“See you next week!” Don calls behind his back, already sneaking out the door to continue his work. 

“I don’t know, Jess,” You run your hands over your face, pushing back the hair over your forehead with a groan, “Something just seems off about it. This isn’t like John – if it was I wouldn’t be making a big deal over it, I mean, why would I? I like flowers as much as the next person, but really? This is a bit much.” 

“So what I’m hearing in the man never gets you gifts?”

“No!” You snag the black paper note with your fingers, huffing, “The flowers aren’t the problem – It’s the damn note that throws me for a loop.”

“The note?”

“It’s a fucking Haiku – since when have I ever mentioned John writing poetry?” Your voice turns into a gruff imitation of what it once was, “The man is romantic, sure, but he definitely doesn’t take his time to write out poems. He writes so many reports he barely picks the pen back up after he throws it down.”

Jess hums. 

“Oh, maybe he’s just trying out a new pass time – perhaps he’ll come back to London as the next William Blake, hm?” The older woman waves her hands around, creating grand gestures as you watch with a blank face and a raised brow.

“Now that’s funny.”

John had hobbies – reading and cooking being two of them. The only time he wrote was when he was working on reports from an Op. and locked away in his office to make sure you never saw what he was getting red, tired, eyes over.

“There are some things that I never want you to see,” He had told you when you had asked what he was working on once. You had come to his house to visit, and he promised to go out with you when he was finished with a report to Laswell, “Images that have no right living in that beautiful brain of yours.” 

“Why should you have to see them, then?” You muttered, gazing into his eyes with concern. He put so much on himself, “Don’t they make you sick?”

“Yeah, lie of the century, that is,” He had smiled stiffly, dragging you into his arms as you melt. Your hands wrap around his tapered waist, sighing, “But it’s the mission. Someone has to get their hands dirty. And I’d rather it always be me than anyone else – least of all you, Love. I’ll be ready to go in half an hour, copy?”

“Well,” Jess sighs, typing something on her computer, “Is the note the same as the last four times?”

You blink, and look down at the tiny paper you had been strangling in your grip. Black and red – just as always. Freezing you look at the letters and numbers written in that fountain-pen script. It takes you a moment of realization before it feels like a knife hits you in the heart, breaking open your ribcage and splaying the bones into the light. 

Your lungs chill over, air stagnant and unmoving so that your breaths are reduced to gasps. The pulse inside of you increases so suddenly that your feet stumble and your skin vibrates as your veins work overtime. 

The red script burns the exact address of your apartment building into your retina. 

“Call the police.” 

—

“Hello, this is Kate Laswell,” The voice over your phone wafts into the lifeless air of John’s home, and your skin crawls as it bounces off the walls. It felt wrong to you – taking refuge in John’s place without telling him first. But going back to your apartment wasn’t an option, “...Hello?”

With a start, you realized you had forgotten to reply. Placing a finger on the drawn curtains to the front window, you peak outside with tense shoulders, eyes roving the empty street.

“H-hi, Kate, I know this is probably stepping over a line, a big one, but I found your office number in John’s house,” You give your name tersely and clear your throat before stating you were the man’s girlfriend. Laswell stays silent, letting you explain yourself even if she was overwhelmingly confused. You appreciated that immensely. If she were to start asking you questions you might start crying, “but I would be really appreciative if you could tell him – if John’s even working with you on this deployment, that is, that I have to stay in his home for a few days… o-or a week…possibly.” 

It didn’t take an expert to know that you were shaken, your voice cutting out at the wrong times as the phone picks up the static of your constant movement and fidgeting. Your eyes follow a white car as it drives down the street outside, pupils small and eyebrows drawn in. You drop the fabric and take a step back, sucking in a deep breath. 

Focus.

A pause over the line makes your heart beat faster as you begin to go and pace the front hallway. There’s a paranoia in your blood that oozes out into the lines of the hardwood and around your socked feet as you zip back and forth. 

Kate utters your name over the phone slowly. She doesn't ask why you’re in John’s house or why you're staying there, just gets to the root of the problem, “...Are you alright? Do you want me to mention anything else to-”

“No!” You gasp out, waving your free hand in front of you, “No, I don’t want to make him distracted. I just…” Your voice trails off, air getting harder to suck into your lungs.

A gentle sigh flows out over the call, and the sound of a body shuffling closer to the landline. Feet sliding over the floor.

“What’s going on, Dear?” 

You stop pacing. 

Laswell was a good deal older than you, you knew, and the tone she was taking reminded you of a mother who was trying to console a child; particularly one who had just hit their head after falling to the ground. Smooth, calm, and with a kind insistence. It made your chest tighten as you swallowed down saliva in your closed throat. Your eyes sting.

“I-” You rub a hand up to your cheeks, feeling the heat enter your clammy palms as a glassiness coats the back of your eyelids. Before you knew it, everything comes spilling out in a spew of hiccupped breaths and tears, “Something’s been happening at work for a while and the police are involved,” You try to steady your voice, “But…but they can’t do much because there’s no imminent threat to my safety. Yeah, well, the problem is that this fucking freak knows my address and I didn’t know where else to go.” 

Your story jumps around, telling of the flowers and the notes. You take no linear path and instead you have to go back steps and explain that you didn’t even know who was doing this. By the time you had finished, you were sitting on the floor, knees drawn to your chest and sniffling. Your clothes were ruffled from you constantly flattening them down, wrinkles like veins visible in the fabric.

Kate coughs over the line as you come to a sobbing stop, trying to muffle your panic with a hand to your mouth as you tilt the phone down parallel to your chin. Tears drip from your face one by one.

“I’m sure John won’t mind you staying in his house,” Laswell speaks slowly, trying to ease your nerves and stop the panicked breathing over the call, “I’ll call my contacts in your local police force, alright? We’ll get someone on this; just take a breath for me, okay?” 

“Please, don’t tell John,” You gasp, wiping away the waterworks with your hand, “It’ll make him worry too much.”

“I think it’s a little too late for that.” 

—

John had gotten a text from Laswell just as he had finished taking off his gear, the small bleep from his phone distracting him from the straps of his leg holsters. He blinks, furrowing his dark brows and looking at the black device as it sits on the bench. The changing room lights fizzle for a moment, and the bear of a man spares them a grunt. 

The Captain’s athletic shirt is neatly folded under the phone, the fabric creased and drowned with sweat and dirt. He walks over with only his cargo pants on, liking the way the chilled air felt on his flushed skin as the adrenaline from the latest step in the mission wore off. 

AC, he decided, was one of man's greatest inventions. His dog tags clink over each other around his neck as a trail of sweat dripped down his abs.

John’s fingers snatch the phone, one hand going to unbuckle his belt so he can take a shower and wash all the grime from his body. The lights bounce off his physique, biceps becoming more prominent as he brings the phone up, but before he looks at the screen the back of his hand travels to his forehead. He takes a moment to wipe at his slick skin before sighing and itching at his hairline. Bringing the phone down, John looks at the screen absentmindedly, preoccupied with the thoughts of warm water to ease his aches and the forming bruises over his skin. 

Laswell: “Get to my office. ASAP. It’s about your girl.”

John stops, his pants only held up by his tense hips; his free hand at the front zipper about to send the slider down the tiny metal teeth. He utters your name with a grunt of breath, eyebrows furrowing as a concerned frown overtakes his face. 

It takes half a moment for him to shuck his pants back up and grab his nasty shirt from the bench. John shoves his feet into his mud-slick boots without a second thought; he doesn't tie the laces, instead, he shoves them into the sides. Sending a reply with one hand, he’s rushing out the door in under fifteen seconds, heart taking off like a plane and pulse being re-set alight. His jaw clenches and his tags bounce as he thunders onwards. 

Price: “On my way.” 

His feet hammer the floor, sending small shockwaves over the ground as the man rampages on. John sprints past room after room and runs down multiple hallways before finally getting to where he needs to be with stiff limbs. He grasps the side of the open doorway with a heavy hand and all but swings himself into the next hallway before he skids to a stop at the first door on the right. An all-encompassing grip is slammed onto the metal handle, and he mercilessly twists before opening it with his other hand on the woodgrain; his shoulder ready to ram the barrier open if it happened to be locked. 

It wouldn’t have been, but John’s mind isn’t thinking straight. In his head, all he can do is come up with the worst possibilities. You, dead back in London, or severely injured due to a freak accident, maybe on life support with no hope of waking back up. There were too many options – John had simply seen too much, he knows that if the worst could happen, it will. But fuck nothing was ever meant to happen to you. Not you. Anyone but you.

You were supposed to be safe – always.

The Captain doesn’t bother to knock before the door is swung to the side. Your voice is the first thing that John hears, high-pitched and strained as you sob into the landline on Kate’s desk. Papers had once scattered the woman’s workspace, but all are pushed to the side as Laswell’s hands are clenched on the metal top; full attention on the hysterical lady a world away. 

Kate snaps her hardened eyes up to John watching as his chest heaves before bringing a finger to her lips. Her expression twists into a frown. 

Clenching his jaw, John feels his heart sputter at the sounds from the landline – what were you saying? His ears strain as he pushes the door closed with a muffled click, feet unconsciously carrying him to your voice like you were in the room with him. He wishes you were. John stops by the edge of the desk, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides before he crosses them over his chest; fingers digging into the meat of his arms. 

His feet shuffle and he picks up the sniffled words of ‘don’t know him’ and ‘figured out where I live.’ 

Laswell sends him a glance as John’s eyes widen, beginning to paint a picture for himself of what was going on. A heated rage flies through his bloodstream, lips pulling back in a snarl, but he stayed silent so he could let you speak.

Has her address? Where is she now?! 

“I’m sure John won’t mind you staying at his house,” Kate mutters calmly, slowly, and John is thankful that the woman was who you had decided to call – even if he felt bad that you didn’t think you could get in contact with him directly for something like this. 

I told her not to, He lays his hands on the table, leaning closer to the landline, and takes a deep calming breath to help his head from exploding, Bloody hell, I made her feel like she shouldn’t. 

John’s face steadily gains a red sheen of self-hatred under his beard and over his cheeks. He would have made time for you – found a secure line and waited for you to call. So why hadn’t he done that yet? He should have checked in.

The man brings a hand to his face, running it over his beard and pulling at the strands. There was just so much going on with the Task Force that it must have slipped his mind. Laswell continues from her seat at the desk chair, not oblivious to John’s state.

“I’ll call my contacts in your local police force, alright? We’ll get someone on this; just take a breath for me, okay?” John hears your static-filled voice let out a muffled whimper and he suppresses a flinch, breath getting caught in his throat. He never wants you to make a fearful noise like that again.

“Please, don’t tell John,” You gasp out and the two in the office pause – John becomes as still as a statue, his face pained and eyes widening – they hear you wiping away tears with a ruffle of fabric, “It’ll make him worry too much.”

Against his better judgment, the man lets a small, emotionless, quirk of his lips grace the tense atmosphere. 

She’s the one being stalked and she’s concerned about me worrying about her? Damn this woman. If only she knew how much I actually think about her when I’m away, regardless. I couldn’t not think about her well-being if I tried – halfway around the world and I can’t get it together.

“I think it’s a little too late for that,” Laswell speaks after a moment. John hears you suck in a quick breath and he takes a deep intake of air in turn, filling his chest and trying to ignore the scent of his own stench. God, he really needed a shower, but warm water was nowhere in the vicinity of what he was thinking about right now. Not anymore. 

You took precedent. Always.

“...John?” Your voice wavers out, thin and cautious. 

“I’m right here, Doll,” The Captain utters, speaking softly as Laswell grabs her personal phone from the top drawer of the desk and slinks away – going to make that call to her contact no doubt. She sends him a close-lipped smile, nods to the exit, and walks out of the room. John tilts his head in her direction as the door closes, “I heard the last half, alright? Don’t you worry about a thing, it’ll all be sorted. Stay at my place long as you need and don’t worry ‘bout making a mess,” He nods his head even if you can’t see him, body wanting to hold you to his chest, “Even have your favorite snacks in the pantry for you, Love. Stocked up a few months ago just in case you ended up staying over…lucky guess on my part, yeah?”

“The chocolate ones?” You snort wetly, and John smiles in contentment at the noise of your slowing breath. Hearing you calm down was making his own pulse return to normal. You were okay – for now at least – and that was enough to make the tension in the man’s shoulders subside; the clenching of his fists on the table loosen. But there was a special section of his heart that held the knowledge that someone had made you fearful for your life – left you crying and desperate to have protection from the unknown. And here John was, not able to even press a kiss to your head. He can’t help the sliver of self-resentment at the thought, “But I…I thought you hated those?”

“Hm,” John grunts, conceding just for you. He tries to push his anger aside and force out his teasing comment, just focus on her, “The bloody things grew on me. How can I hate something you love so much? Especially when you’re making fun of me for not liken’ ‘em.”

A content silence falls, with your body shuffling occasionally as your try and find your bearings again. The man knows your mind will come back to you if you just focus on him; just like his own would. John’s lips fall into a line. 

“Darling,” He whispers, but knows you can hear him by how you make a small noise in the back of your throat, “I need to ask you, how long has this been going on?”

John's ears pick up a sigh, “A little more than a month,” The Captain’s eyes close, head slightly turning down into his chest as his fingers drum the desktop, “I just…I thought it was you at first - even if It felt a little off, you understand? Then the most recent note had my apartment address on it and I-I panicked. I didn’t know where else to go except to your house. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for that,” John firmly states, eyes flaring as he moves to sit in Laswell’s chair. A slight creak echoed out as he puts his weight on it, leaning forward intently, “Never apologize – this is some pathetic Muppet’s fault and will never, for one moment, be yours…Now, you stay at my home and lay low for a while. Did they give you time off from work? If not, I’ll send a call to your boss and–”

“You can’t just do that!” Your voice is coated with amusement, light laughter playing off your lips as you interrupt his methodical and soldier-like rant. John stifles a deep chuckle, closing his eyes and listening, “I already took a week off, I promise. I was just planning on staying here and letting things cool down...Just wanted to let you know first.” 

 John’s lips release a hum before he runs a hand over his beard and scratches the skin under the bristles. Dirt and flecks of ash fall to the floor, but he doesn’t notice.

“I’ll see if I can’t finish up here within the next few weeks. Come back to London early and help you figure all of this out. Look into it myself if I have to.” 

“You don’t have to do that, John. I know your work is important.” 

“You’re important, Love,” The man teases, “The Op. over here has run dry, the leads have gone for the moment and there’s no reason for Laswell to keep us here cleaning the empty rooms; I know for a fact I’m able to make sure you’re safe far better than anyone else back home. I can be back soon,” He growls, and his accent becomes thicker as he continues on in the ‘Captain Voice’ you had grown to love, “I’ll bloody make sure of it.” 

“How have things been, by the way?” You ask, steering the conversation away from you, worried about how his efforts had affected him. He sounded tired, “Everyone’s alright? No new injuries, I hope. I don’t know if I can deal with you coming back and having another gunshot wound right now – you know how I get when I’m doting over you.” 

“Hm,” John huffs, amused. He remembers how, when he had come back once with a shot to the thigh, you had practically restrained him to the bed as you ran around like a chicken with its head cut off. You had cooked, cleaned, and even helped him into the bath as his humongous body had towered over you. But it wasn’t like he was complaining about the last one, “Nothing to twist your hair over.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Only scrapes and bruises on my part. Should’ve seen the other guy.” 

Laswell enters the room silently as you giggle, heels not making a sound as she lowers her personal phone from her ear and closes the door behind her, “My contact is en route to your house, John. He’s going to check in and get a statement. With any luck, she’ll get a security detail to bring her to and from wherever she needs to go.” 

“You hear that, Love?” John shifts his narrowed eyes to the landline after nodding. 

“Yup,” You muttered, spirits now higher and the waver in your voice noticeably gone. There was no doubt that over the line you were calmer than you had been in probably over a month. John just had that effect on you, “I really can’t thank you enough, Laswell. And I’m so sorry for invading your privacy by calling you like that.”

“There’s no need to apologize. Anyone important to John is just as important to everyone over here. We take care of our own…The man that’s going to be coming to your door is named Mahdi Karim – black hair, tanned skin, and a cut just above his right eyebrow. Should be in a police uniform.” 

“I’ll be on the lookout. Thank you, Kate. Truly. If you ever find yourself in London, I make a great casserole – just ask John. My door’ll be open.”

Laswell smiles softly, wrinkles disappearing for a brief second, and John can’t stop the wave of love that sweeps his gaze. He stops a lovesick sigh just before it enters the air. 

“Be safe,” Kate tells you, “I’m sure John will be in touch with you soon and I’ll be sure to have a secure line ready to go.” Laswell nods before turning to John, “You were needed in building five for a debrief fifteen minutes ago. Gaz has been asking around for you…sorry, but you’ll have to make the goodbye quick.” 

John looks away, jerking his head into a firm nod and groaning out, “Affirm. Tell the Sergeant that I’ll be there in a minute for me, yeah?” 

“On it.”

“I’m sure Gaz is ripping the place apart for you, Love,” You laugh, and John’s eyes snap to the landline to give his attention back to you. Like a wave in an ocean, “Don’t keep him waiting. From what you tell me the boy can get into a startling degree of trouble when you’re not with him…something about falling out of a helicopter?” 

John feels his chest jerk with chuckles. What did he do to deserve you? Someone who could make him forget about the aches in his shoulder muscles from the stock of his M13 – forget about the layers of sweat, blood, and dirt seeping into his pores; death lives on him like a second skin. But, strangely, you either didn’t notice or didn’t care. That was the part that struck John every time you barreled into his chest when he came home – you stayed by his side so adamantly; waited every time he left and was over the moon when he returned. 

You love him, and he doesn’t think he deserves it. But like the selfish man he is, he’ll keep you at his side as long as he’s able, and love you back just the same. You were one in a million. And the thought of someone reducing you to something other than a god-send – to a mere object someone could prey on was enough to reduce the Captain to a feral rage. 

If I ever get my hands on the prick that made her feel like this, he’s as good as dead. Mark my fucken’ words – he’s dead.

“I’ll call you tonight, Love, you alright with that?” John clears his throat, grunting as he stands from the desk chair, “Around 0900 your time?”

“That’s nine O’clock, yeah?” You continue not waiting for him to answer, “...How late is that for you?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m still ‘gonna call.” 

You seemed to know that trying to sway him on this was pointless by the way you muffled an exasperated laugh, “Alright. Nine O’clock. I’ll answer.”

“You better,” John huffs, “Goodbye, Love. Talk to you soon.”

“Bye, John. Be safe – Love you.”

“Love you, too. Be safe for me.” He whispers, letting you hang up the phone instead of him. Kate and he stand in silence for a moment before John growls, eyes suddenly burning. It was like his only tie to being civil was severed after your presence – even as limited as it was through a call – disappeared, “I want whoever’s doing this put in cuffs before I’m back in London, Laswell, yeah? Otherwise, it’ll be someone else's bloody problem to pick up the pieces I leave behind of whatever bastard is responsible for this.”

—

Mahdi Karim was perhaps the only person in London that listened to you. He had told you in a soft tone as the both of you sat in John’s dark living room that he would work on the case you had brought forward personally – with the influence of Kate Laswell giving him all the jurisdiction he needed. 

You had briefly wondered how far Laswell’s hand reached into the inner working of the city’s police force but had decided it was probably better if you never figured that out. For just one American CIA agent – she sure knew how to play the game to her favor. 

“I’ll make sure to have another officer with you when you need to leave the house – Mrs. Talley – whenever you need to go somewhere she’ll be just a call away.” Mr. Karim had told you as you fiddled with your fingers in your lap, “And I’ll be at the station working on leads. Kate told me that you had handwritten notes?”

“Yeah,” You cleared your throat, nodding as you stare out the window; the street lights come on outside with an automatic timer. Your lips flattened, whispering out, “They’re all in my work bag.” 

God, you wished John was here. He would have held you to his chest with a firm hand on the back of your head; all-encompassing and steady as his heart beat directly over your ear with a steady thum-thump, thum-thump. John’s heart was always something of a comfort to you. When he was with you, staying the night, you wanted to keep your head on his chest and feel the melody of his pulse lull you into a slumber – like your own personal lullaby. 

It reminded you he was here; alive, and in turn, it kept you steady. His gentle kisses to your hairline were just another perk along with his fingers carding through your locks. Whenever he did that you swore you turned to mush, just like a cat letting out vibrating purrs. There were so many things that John Price did that could calm you down without even trying – the way he slow danced with you when you put his vinyl records on, his fascination with old movies to the point his eyes would light up when he explained them to you, and the press of his gargantuan body laying on top of you. 

That last thought brought a smile to your lips. He was always worried he would crush you.

“You sure, Love?” He would ask when you smiled smugly from your position lying on the couch, “I’d hate to have my girl suffocate because she asked me to lay on top of her. You trying to get me arrested?”

“John,” You had laughed, “I’ll tell you if I can’t breathe. I just want to feel you. It’s like a weighted blanket – just more you shaped! Come on,” You whine playfully, arms outstretched and making grabby hands, “Please?”

The man huffed, smirking before shaking his head and sending you a warm glance. He stalks over to come and lay on top of you, his thin shirt letting you memorize the press of his abs and pecks sliding over your body; the dig of his biceps over the small of your back as they circle behind you. John lay in between your legs, forcing them open and around his fitted thighs before your limbs slip down his legs. Your hand had gravitated to his soft brown locks, messing them up lovingly with a chuckle and a soft smile. The Captain’s head was tilted up, beard itching your neck as his grip over your waist lightly squeezed over your shirt. You stared down at him with that look on your face – the one you reserved only for John. 

Against better judgment, you feel a heat enter your body at the heavy press of his pelvis slotted perfectly into you. And the way he was staring up at you, his large nose just by your chin…

A cheeky smile filters over your boyfriend’s bearded face as you caress his forehead with your thumb. John’s eyes crinkle. 

“This what you had in mind, Doll?”

“Oh, don’t tell me you don’t enjoy this, Captain.” His eyes had sparked, narrowing as he paused a moment. 

A deep chuckle rattled against your body, and John tried to press you tighter into him; leaving you softly yelping in surprise, eyes widening, even though the glee stayed. The action was incredibly soft and left a deep yearning in your compressed lungs. As you sucked in small breaths, you found John’s dilated eyes watching you closely; like a deep blue river around a circular black rock. The gaze left a heat flowing to your face and neck – a pulsing in your lower body. You resisted the urge to roll your hips as your legs tighten around his own.

“Hm,” The man grunted, making your breath stutter for a moment. He felt it and smirked.

“Hm, what?” You ask breathlessly, John’s nose moving up your neck and tilting your head back. 

You open the skin to him readily; your skull falling back to the arm of the couch. Gasping, John’s lips pull apart, teeth grazing your pulse point before finding the one spot that makes you whimper. He lays open mouth kisses and swift nips, leaving the area red and pulsing causing your eyelids to flutter shut with pleasure. The heavy set of your boyfriend’s build makes the sparks that he leaves behind with his mouth increase tenfold. The man’s fingers dig into your waist, kneading the flesh.

You let out a breathless whimper as your hand trailed through his hair, pulling at the roots and leaving John grunting as they get messed up. Suddenly, with a sharp and confident bite to that perfect spot behind your ear, his hips lightly jump up into you; pelvis bones digging into the skin of your inner thighs as the fabric of your shorts hitch up. 

A breathly keen escapes your lips before you can bite onto your lips to stop it. Burning, your face moves closer to John’s as he licks the hickey he made and blows on it. You shiver as his lips pull in a smirk against your skin.

“This your plan all along, Pet? Get me to give you a good fuck?” John clicks his tongue, “Naughty girl. You know what you do to me – just had to bloody ask if you wanted me stretching you open.” 

His accent always became more pronounced when you both were horny; rutting against each other like animals. John sends another thrust up into you and your eyes roll back, eyelids snapping shut at the steadily growing feeling of wetness staining your panties. Fuck, you needed him – now.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. If you like me pressing into you so much, maybe I’ll take that cunt of yours right here, yeah? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Fucken’ hell I think I enjoy this just as much as you do.”

“Please…” You sigh, gasping as John grabs your hips and starts to force you to move in tandem with him; fingers digging into your bare flesh. Fuck that felt good – all his weight on you as your breath was forced to puff out when his chest bore down on you with every orchestrated pump of his pelvis.

“Please, what? Use your words now…Hm,” He angles deeper, and your nails dig into his back, sliding under his shirt and attacking his skin, “Such a needy little thing, aren’t you? You’re trying so hard to get me in that cunt of yours, might have to hurry this up.”

“Please, C-captain.” Your face burns, words coming out muffled as his lips smash to yours and forces his tongue down your throat.

“...There’s a good fucken’ girl.” One of his large hands moves to your abdomen, just about big enough to span the entire area of your skin before traveling down slowly to enter your shorts. His callouses burn so perfectly.

Shaking your head, you realize Mr. Karim was waiting for you to give him the notes. Startling, you stand and send him an apologetic glance before rushing to the kitchen and grabbing your bag off the counter, rifling through it with a quick hand. 

Pulling out all of the black paper notes, you turn back to Karim and shuffle up to him, “Here.” 

Holding out the notes and trying not to look at them, the man takes them from you with a gentle pull. Mahdi gave you a pitying look.

“I’ll get these dusted for prints and try and see if we have any records of the handwriting in our database.” 

“Okay,” You mutter, nodding, “Do…you need me to come with?”

Mahdi shakes his head, hair moving around his head, “No. You’re free to stay here and get your bearings.” The man stands, his officer uniform’s badge glinting in the light from outside, “How about you order out? Get some food and take a nap, yeah? Leave the rest to me, Ma’am.” 

He makes his way over to the front door and you trail behind, flicking on the outside house light for him but leaving the interiors pointedly off.

“Stay safe. Lock the door after me, okay?” 

“Yeah,” You lock your fingers together in front of your stomach, “No problem. Drive carefully, Mr. Karim, and thank you for coming by.”

“Anytime you need something done and no one’s listening – come directly to me. Sleep tight.” With that, the officer opens the door and disappears, going to his car in the driveway. Closing the door immediately after his departure, you watch his vehicle take off into the dark night with a tight chest. 

Clicking the double locks and turning off the outside light, you suck in a deep breath before turning around and falling back to place your spine on the woodgrain. You slide to the floor, eyes turning glassy. 

Mahdi said to order out – not strain yourself. But you had no appetite, even if you hadn’t eaten lunch today. Your stomach was in twists, intestines clogged with bad thoughts and concern. Closing your eyes, you waited for John’s call tonight at nine, tension living like a weight over your shoulders and neck. 

You would have much preferred your boyfriend’s mass holding you down instead of this, but no matter how much you wished you knew he wasn’t coming back to you for a while. But you’re patient. You can wait. 

—

You still hadn’t gone back to work even after Jess had told you the flowers had stopped – about two and a half weeks later. The older woman had said over the phone that Don had come by the building to explain that no more requests for delivery were coming in, either. That had made you breathe a sigh of relief. 

Maybe this is coming to an end, You had thought while pulling John’s green comforter closer to your chin, fixing the position of the phone over your ear as Jess comments on the handsome officer that had come in and asked about you. 

You blinked, cocking a brow.

“I told him you were staying at your boyfriend's house – had to give him the street too – though I don’t know why he had to ask me, Dear. He seemed quite pushy too. Such a dreadful boy. It’s a good thing you found that John of yours, I–”

Your ears started ringing halfway through the word vomit, eyes stuck onto the ceiling as the whites show like snow in the corners of your orbs. The quivering of your lip was the only part of you that moved – frozen over with frost and piloting stiff limbs. The comforter was suddenly suffocating you. 

“Jess,” You calmly spit out, breath hitching as you interrupt. The woman pauses over the line, and she asks if you were alright. Ignoring her, your fingers turn numb, “Did he show you a badge?” 

“Why, yes, of course, he did – it was a silver…oh…oh my…”

Silence falls, a tense rope being tightened over your throat as you sit up slowly, pushing the covers off of you with a shaking hand.

“Police badges are gold.” Dropping the phone from your vibrating fingers onto the bed, you rush to the dresser, pulling on John’s gray sweatpants over your underwear and grabbing a stray t-shirt to sit on top of your thin tank top. Nearly tripping over your feet, you huff out uneven breaths as you hang up on a blabbering Jess, quickly finding Mahdi Karim’s contact information and slamming a finger onto the green call icon. 

It takes three rings before the man picks up, and hot adrenaline is lighting your nerves; telling you to run and hide. John’s scent – gunpowder, pine needles, and smoke – is ingrained in the clothes you wear and yet you can’t bring any comfort from it. Your bones weigh more than lead, one hand going to cover your mouth to stifle a ragged inhalation as Karim’s confused voice comes through the receiver. You jump into an explanation with a waving hand, and the man says he’ll be over himself in just fifteen minutes while another officer goes to your work to get a statement from Jess. 

He hangs up first.

Fifteen minutes, You think about calling John but don’t want to phone him on his flight. He had said he should be back today or tomorrow the last time you both had spoken – when he was boarding the C-17, the whirling of the large plane’s engines blocking out everything else besides his voice. Carrying yourself into the living room, you reach up and close all the curtains; double-check the door locks, and clutch your phone in your hand with white knuckles near your hip, I don’t even know how long this guy has had his head start on me. What if he’s already outside the door?

Licking your lips, your mind runs with scenarios – what if this deranged person broke down the door? Ripped the window off its frame and jumped in? Your eyes snapped to and fro as your feet shuffled back over the hardwood; trying to figure out if you should go wait for Mahdi somewhere not near the front of the house or stay to make sure no one suspicious was walking outside. 

You chose a middle ground, moving into the kitchen and pacing with your bare feet as the morning light streamed in from under the fabric barrier over the window. Fifteen minutes passed far too slowly. 

A knock sounded on the door, and you rushed to the entrance to sneak a look out the sidelight. Mahdi stood shuffling in his uniform, peering behind him and speaking into a radio on his vest with tight features. You open the door with a shaking grip and usher the man inside with fearful glances behind him. 

Mahdi takes a few steps inside, keeping the door open behind him and frantically grabbing you by the arm. His eyes are wild.

You yelp.

“We have to get you to a secure area – quickly.”

“B-but I–” You send a glance behind you, not entirely willing to leave John’s house and the familiar solace it brings. You only utter half a sentence, not even able to explain your hesitance, before a sound like a great boom echoes into the morning air. Some type of liquid splatters the side of your face, dripping down your forehead before falling off your chin and your eyes snap shut instinctually.

Only able to flinch with a slight yell, you turn back just in time to lock onto Mr. Karim’s face. Or lack thereof. 

Half of the man’s visage was gone – white skull visible to the naked eye as the eviscerated tendons of his jaw leave the orientation off; hanging off his face and only on the unmarred side. Mahdi’s brain matter was splattered over your face, and your eyes widen in horror at the realization that you can see what remains of the officer’s cerebrum in the now half-circle of his skull. His remaining eye was bulging like an egg – nearly popping out and bouncing on the floor.

All of this happened in only half a second – the gunshot, you getting bathed in perhaps more blood than you initially realized, and then the limp body of kind Mahdi Karim falling into you; dead. His weight hits your numb body, your eyes wide, and your mind a thousand miles away as your arms snap to steady him. Your phone falls to the floor, with a deep thump, and at this point, you don’t register the fact that the man’s dead in your arms until it’s too late.

His head hits your shoulder, and your ears twitch at the sound of a wet splat – something mushy hits the floor before you stumble a few steps backward. Baptized in blood. It coats you like a second skin. How could a human body hold so much blood?

“...Mahdi?” You whimper, ears ringing and body shaking so badly you feel the man slide off you. The corpse slams to the floor, vibrating the hardwood. 

Your hands are held outstretched, fingers clenching and unclenching in shock. You don’t notice the shadow running up to you before the man has you by the wrist. The phantom utters your name into the air just as you notice the neighbor across the street rush to her front window.

“I’ve got you. Don’t worry – I’ve got you.” 

Reality comes to you in the thin moments between the realization that Karim’s body was bleeding all over John’s foyer and the knowledge that you were being dragged outside. For everything that was going on, you can’t help that your first coherent thought is ‘John’s going to have to replace the hardwood. That’s so expensive…I’ll have to pitch in.’

When your heels get skinned on the hard concrete is the exact moment you felt a shred of sanity come back and weave its way into your brain. 

“What the fuck?!” Screaming, your arm jerks back, eyes borderline feral as the adrenaline finally prompted you to consciousness. Looking up as the stranger's grip only tightens to a painful degree you stifle an enraged wail.

The man was familiar to you – not in a ‘this is my friend I've known for years’ type of way but more of a ‘this is a man I’ve seen in passing’ you think to yourself. 

It was the waiter. 

The fucking waiter from the restaurant you and John had gone to for your first official date. He had heard you talking about your favorite flowers while he poured you wine…

But that was upwards of a year and a half ago. Your skin crawled, feeling violated in such a way you had never experienced before.

As you feel your heart bursting through your chest, you bring your opposite hand up and clench it; trying to land a sucker punch to the bastard's smug face as he stares at you with dark eyes. Your fist grazes his cheek, bearly causing a reaction. 

His other hand holds a revolver, glinting in the light.

Before your shock-filled brain can attempt to understand what's exactly going on, the Waiter’s gun raises as your nails scratch at his face, peeling back skin and leaving red lines behind. As the butt of the weapon slams into your temple, the last words you hear are uttered right next to your ear – foreign lips whispering the sentences and making you want to throw up. Maybe you do, but you can’t be sure at that moment.

“I’ll take care of you, Orchid. Better than John Price ever could. Steady now. I’ve got you.”

Hands drag you by the arms, and you hear the opening of a rusty car door before you’re thrown into the back seat. Images swirl in your vision, and blood makes your skin taunt with gore. 

Your last thoughts are of John’s blue eyes.

—

The first sensation you feel is the tight bindings over your wrists and ankles. They weren't rough – and you instantly knew the restrictions didn’t have the fibers belonging to hard rope. Keeping your eyes closed as the pulse in your head pounds to a degree that leaves your hands shaking, you strain your ears. The wooden chair keeping you up leaves your neck limp; chin compressed into your collarbone.

To your left, your ears twitch at a noise. Classical music wafts like wind off walls you choose not to open your eyes and see. But based on the echos the room is small – not large enough to allow the tune to carry far. Your feet shuffle, and in the process your knee slams into a hard object that leaves you clenching your jaw to stop a yelp of pain. 

The jolt causes a reverb of wood sliding over the floor. Lightly peaking an eye open your blurry vision lands on the tall table in front of you – the stain is patchy, with paint flecks living on the legs as you look down. A morbid curiosity flows through you, and your horrified gaze jumps from one object to another; your chest palpitating. 

Everything in this room was worn down, old, and ancient. A radio sits to your left on a nightstand with one duck-taped leg; the momentary static that overtakes the eerily playing tune shows that the device was having trouble receiving the channel. 

Where am I? You ask yourself, looking at the table with a set of dust-layered plates and utensils. Two wine glasses glint in a single overhead light attached to a roof that comes to a sloping stop. This looked like a dingy attic room – the type where the Christmas decorations were shoved away to rot for a whole year and where young children were terrified to enter. Sniffing as your hands experimentally clench, you catch the scent of rotting wood and water damage. 

“...What the…?” Your lips grunt out, shaking your head to dispel the fog as you notice the blue silk bindings keeping you tied to a white-painted wooden chair. No one else was in here except for you, “What is this?”

Jerking your arms, your mind runs over the obscure facts that John would drop – either calling attention to the true crime shows you would watch in your free time or simply because of his extensive service career. 

Most people who are abducted are killed within a short amount of time from when they’re taken…three out of five women who are in this situation are sexually assaulted, abused, or exploited, You pull more heavily at your binds, feeling one on your left leg loosen as you let out a wavering sigh of achievement, Only 0.1% of people are abducted by strangers.

“Fucking hell,” You whimper as a pulse from your blood-stained temple leaves you light-headed, “Add me into that percentage, I guess.” Your thoughts border on hysterical, sweat coating your hands as a humorless chuckle shakes from your throat. You have to bite your lip to shut yourself up from divulging into loud barks of laughter.

The silk digging into your skin holds, and you don’t dare make any more noise than you already are. Looking around frantically, your flickering eyes land on the twin forks on the table; tantalizingly out of reach and mocking you. 

“Oh, screw you,” Growling, you throw your head back and try and look behind you, straining your neck to a point you start restricting your airways – maybe there was something of use? 

Nothing. Just a window covered in newspaper and the faint glow of a setting sun. You hadn’t even thought of the time. How long had you been unconscious? The blood staining you from head to toe was all dried and made your clothes hard and stiff; the wound at your temple had stopped bleeding. You licked your lips and couldn’t stop the sting in your eyes. 

Hours had passed. Precious hours. 

John has to be back in London by now, You reason, hoping against hope, He knows I’m gone and’ll be on it in no time. I have to hold out until then. 

Gasping at your lack of air, you turn your head back around and cough into your shoulder raggedly; sucking down breaths. Black dots fly over your vision in squiggly patterns. 

In that moment of trying to get your lungs to understand you weren't dying, a sound had started up from below your feet in this decrepit house. At first, you hadn’t noticed it – the thumps so muffled your mind had mistaken them for your own skipping heartbeat, but then there was muttering. 

Someone was speaking to themselves downstairs. Your body froze; becoming so still that not even your hair moved with the shallow puffs from your nostrils. It was like your nerves had turned to stone, and your ears strained to hear. 

“...hope she likes it…worked so hard to make it perfect…” Footsteps bounce off the wood as your eyes stay locked onto the door directly across the room. It wasn’t long before the handle started to jiggle. 

Keeping a scream locked in your throat, John’s voice comes to you from between the racing of your mind. 

He had been telling you about how he was captured by Russian Special Forces on one of his Black Ops. – totally alone and unable to contact his team.

“But I had to play their game,” John had muttered into your hairline; laying gentle kisses as you caressed a long scar up his abdomen and right peck. He grumbled his appreciation, shivering as your nails raked through his chest hair, “Make them think I was giving them what they wanted until I could loosen the rope.”

“That sounds stressful,” You had murmured, pressing your lips to his raised skin and feeling his mustache nuzzle your forehead with a delicate scrape, “How did you manage it, Love?”

“Well, I had years of practice under my belt.” John’s eyebrow rose with a smirk, “But they also knew what to expect from me right off the bloody bat – I just had to surprise ‘em; to keep them on their high horse. A little white lie is better than a punch to the gut, eh?”

The door opens, and a plan already starts to form before it closes with the click of a lock.

“Orchid!” You flinch, your body throwing itself back into the chair as your head snaps to face the entrance. The Waiter’s head of blonde hair was greasy with a product – slicked back and trimmed. Red marks are traveling down his face from your nails.

He was handsome, tall in a lanky sort of way, and in a suit; holding a handful of blue Hydrangeas and white Orchids. Even looking at the flowers causes your stomach to roll; bile to fill the base of your throat and burn to be expelled. 

You decided at that instant that you never wanted to see any type of flower again for the rest of your life. 

“You look stunning, My Love!” The man exclaims, rushing into the small space; placing the flowers down on the table delicately, and grabbing you by the cheeks. 

You let a small sob, trying to move farther back but his fingers only dig deeper and threaten to break skin. Something flashes over his dark gaze, irritating perhaps, or pleasure from seeing you finally in front of him? You don’t like either option.

Play the game; buy time.

But could you play it correctly with all the raging blood pumping through your veins? Hot sweat slithering down your spine like a snake? Would John find you before something horrible happened? 

“What’s the matter?” The Waiter asks you, caressing your cheek with one of his thumbs, “I’m sure I didn’t hit you so hard you forgot me? Right?” 

“O-of course not.” You choke out, voice hoarse. If your chest was any tighter it would implode on itself. 

The Waiters eyes brighten. 

“But,” The light overhead sways, and a slight pattering over the window hints at a coming rainstorm, “I think I must have forgotten your name – my head hurts really bad.” Stifling a yell, the man’s head rears back in surprise.

“I’m so sorry,” He gasps, removing his hands and shuffling back a few steps. You move your wrists experimentally, but the silk was still tight over you, “I was just so concerned you might start screaming,” The bastard dares to laugh, a sultry bark of a sound – nothing like John’s deep grumble, “I’m Colby, there, now you must remember me.” 

Colby was speaking so normally it made you even more afraid of him, but you still made a smile flicker over your quivering lips.

“That’s right,” You say, “Colby. I remember.” 

He smiles with all teeth, but his eyes hold nothing inside of them; his dress shoes click over the floor as he shuffles to the opposite end of the table to the empty chair. Colby moves the plates and utensils. One is placed carefully in front of you and after a moment the position is fixed by his slender fingers like he had envisioned this moment millions of times over. 

“I’m making dinner downstairs – Honey Roasted Duck. One of your favorites. You told,” Colby grumbles, venom leaking into his tone. His digits tighten before they slam a fork down on your plate. Your legs jerk, knee once more slamming into the table leg and making you hiss in pain. Colby doesn’t notice, thankfully, “John Price when we met for the first time, but I always listened better than him. He’s never made you Honey Roasted Duck before.” 

“Yeah, I know.” You try and reason, body shaking violently; your leg starts to struggle as you attempt to loosen the already slack silk of your left leg, “But, uhm, how am I going to eat my favorite food if my hands are tied?” 

“I’m going to feed you myself. Don’t worry, my Love.” Colby looks up and shakes his head, locks flying. He sets the glasses down and takes a step back, looking at the scene with roving eyes. 

“Oh,” You swallow the saliva in your throat, “But I don’t want to be a burden. I just want to–”

“No!” Colby suddenly yells, eyes flashing and making you release a yelp in fear, “I’m going to help you – what don’t you understand about that?!” 

“Okay!” You appease, waving your hands up as far as their able. A panicked look crosses your face and your eyebrows draw in, “Okay, but c-could you at least loosen them a small bit, please – I promise you I want to stay with you but my arms are losing circulation. It’s hurting me, Colby.” 

Colby’s expression is hesitant, lips taking a downturn as the storm outside starts to pick up, the wind hitting the house and shaking the walls. Rain slaps the window like tiny bullets. 

You try not to think about Mahdi Karim – about his body laying in John’s foyer. But he had been so nice to you. Your head starts running, running over possibilities about the officer's life. What if he had a family? A spouse? Kids?

Fuck, Your throat tightens, and your nose scrunches right after. Tears burn the side of your vision and a slight sniffle enters the stale air. Everything becomes blurry in a vile vale of waterworks. The agony at your temple increases as you tilt your head up to the ceiling, don’t cry. 

“No, no, no, Orchid,” Colby pleads, “Don’t cry! I’m sorry it hurts but It’s for your own safety.” He rushes over grabbing onto your shoulders, digging his fingers into the meat of our skin over John’s bloodied shirt.

“Get the fuck off of me!” You scream, your voice echoing off the walls as you begin to struggle. You weren’t John. You couldn’t play this game, “You goddamn freak! You killed Mahdi! I’m-I’m covered in his blood!” 

A clammy hand snaps over your neck, restricting your airways. 

Your eyes bulge; body stiffening as your mouth gasps open like a fish. The grip is hard – firm – and you already mark the way your legs try and break out of the silk from under you in desperation. Your mid-section dances around, arms bounce, and hands splay.

Colby only stops when you feel your own saliva drip down the side of your mouth, and the struggle has left your body until dark dots nearly swallow you whole. 

His hands fall, and your head does as well. Wheezing and feeling the burning in your throat, above the ringing in your ears, you make out the man’s sobbing snarl.

“Why would you make me do that?! God, can’t you see I’m trying to make things work?! God this is all that John’s fault. He’s the one that got in the way!” He stomps out of the door, slamming it so loud that everything on the table either falls to its side or hits the floor. The click of a lock is heard a second later as you try and will away the burning in your lungs as lightning cracks outside.

Gasping and feeling your tears slap your sweatpants like a river, you whimper under your breath but find that speaking only makes your neck hurt ten times worse, “John.” 

You stay in that room for two days. No food. No water. Colby had all but disappeared except for his muttering from downstairs and his shuffling; the occasional shadow would stand in the hallway just behind your door. In all that time the storm hadn’t let up and from what you could tell there was a leak in the attic ceiling because the constant drip of water was sounding off from behind you.

Drip-drop, drip-drop, drip-drop. 

You don’t know when the idea first pops into your head – maybe it’s when Colby finally peaks inside on that second day near suppertime – but since seeing the broken pieces of the plate on the floor a grim silence had settled in your bones. 

Colby doesn’t linger and with a promise of coming to check in on you later and ‘make up’ the deep swelling bruises along your neck pulse. It felt like your entire throat was held under a knife that was slowly being rocked back and forth like a seesaw, peeling back the blackened skin until your tendons and nerves were open to the air. 

Swallowing a thick glob of saliva and mucus down your dry throat, your foot catches on one of the longer plate fragments which ends with a razor-sharp tip. You know the sharp edge bites into your flesh, piercing it as your toes angle it just right but silk was an easy fabric to rip if you got the right angle, and pain had now become secondary. 

Survival was all that mattered – not how, just that you made it out of this with your head screwed on. 

What would John think about all of this? You numbly wondered, hunger and thirst working their way through you as your foot tilts up, heel hitting the floor. With a tooth biting into your lip, you drag the fragment back and begin pinching it into the flesh of the front of your upper ankle – right where the top edge of the silk skins you. Struggling the last two days had given you nothing but weeping wrists and ankles; blisters that leak puss and stain the blue fabric a nasty yellow.

Sucking in a quick breath that leaves more tears gathering in your eye sockets, your lashes flutter over your cheeks just as you hear a small tear. You jerk your leg up, and the silk completely falls from you, ripped with the sound of a zipper playing like a melody in your ear.  

The plate piece clinks to the floor nearly soundlessly and the storm covers for you as a bewildered smile cracks your lips open. 

I did it! 

You look down, and with your free limb, you go to pull the knot on your other ankle, eventually just getting to a point where you pull so hard one of your toenails completely rips off. Not even noticing, your continue until the floor is pooling with your blood, nails having completely torn into the flesh of your restrained leg until, once more, the silk tears with a blue glint. 

Yes! 

Pushing yourself up, you stop yourself from passing out by focusing on the broken wine glass on the table, stumbling forward, and nearly falling right into the table in the process. A moment later your fingers are all cut to hell, having grasped the glass and moving the pieces in your hand until one the right size cuts your palm open. Panting like a dog and whimpering, you tilt your mangled hand and use the piece to cut away half of your remaining restraints. 

Just like that, You tell yourself, just like that. 

The chair clatters to the floor just as you free your last hand. 

Remaining frozen, stilled into shock, the house goes silent in an instant. No shuffling. No muttering. Stale air and a storm that rages outside. 

You take a breath…then two. 

Maybe he didn’t hear–!

Running footsteps are coming up the stairs. They slam into the wood, and an enraged shout spurs your leaking body into action. There was only one way out of the house from this level – one exit that Colby wouldn’t take even if you were stupid enough to. But what choice did you have? By the time the door was blasted off its hinges by a rampaging man with a revolver, your body was disappearing from the attic window – the one once covered by newspapers that you had spied the first time you woke up. The storm pounded, and for a moment you imagined you were a raindrop, falling from the clouds to hit the earth and shatter into a million invisible pieces. 

In essence that’s exactly what you did. You fell. You hit. You broke. 

But adrenaline is a powerful drug. 

As Colby stands awe-stricken in what remains of the window, not even able to aim his revolver. Your body jolts up from a three-story drop into a dead bush and peels out over the abandoned neighborhood; old houses falling apart and more broken down than the last. 

You pant and sob, knowing that many of your ribs were broken even if you had never experienced the sensation before, and push on with failing legs. Glass sticks from our skin like porcupine quills, leaving stains of gore behind you as our blood footprints are washed away by the rain. 

It’s completely dark out – not a single street light on or able to illuminate your flooded concrete path.

Slamming into the side of a house, you scream, knowing your arm shouldn't be hanging like that by your side but not there enough to care. Rain pelts your head, cleansing you of the blood and puss and everything else. 

Taking a confusing path through the alleyways and open backyards, your feet dig into the mushy grass until you zip around a corner. Running so fast and banking so suddenly you don’t have time to stop yourself before you’re slamming into a wall. The solid mass causes your body to reel back, a wet, strangled, gasp ripping from you. Your clothes only add to the weight of your limbs as you fall a weak outcry meeting the air. 

But before your body can slam into the ground a weight snaps to your wrist and a frantic voice meets the air. Not a wall, then.

“Holy fucken’ shit!” The masculine voice coated in surprise meets your ringing ears above the downpour, British in accent, “Ma’am?!” 

The world is blurry, but with your flickering eyes you can make out a dark face, a ball cap with the British flag embroidered on the front, and wide brown eyes set into a visage with light stubble. He wears gear that you had become familiar with – John wore something similar; a beige vest with packs and straps down his arms and legs. An M13 hangs over his chest, his other hand holding it steady by the side.

“Ma’am?! Are you alright?” The world snaps back into focus, a great snarl of wind ripping down the alleyway and ruffling your frame, “Can you tell me your name?”

Wait, You blinked sluggishly, Didn’t John show me a picture of his teammates? Why does this guy look familiar?

Your boyfriend had a single picture of him and all of his Task Force buddies put in his living room above the fireplace – when you had asked about who he worked with he had grabbed it and told you. It put you at ease to know that in the field he was surrounded by the impressive caliber that the sill image had shown. John had been all too happy to tell funny stories about incidents in the field; careful to leave all the bits that he didn’t want you to hear, out. 

“Kyle Garrick?” The words sound like nails on a chalkboard; eyes narrow on both sides, yours in fatigue and his in confusion. You shiver and shake before weakly trying to pull your hand away from him. His grip remains firm, but not enough to hurt. The soldier moves his gaze down your body, eyelids lifting. 

“Fuck.” After the exclamation, Kyle brings you into him, just as you feel your legs tremble and buckle. Collapsing into his chest and feeling your body press uncomfortably into his pouches as you let out a bleat in genuine agony that most would only hear in a movie. 

The man utters your name breathlessly into that air and you resist a sob that bubbles in your chest.

“Bloody hell, Sweetheart, you’re coming with me. I’ll get you out of here, just keep your eyes open a little longer.” Kyle’s arms travel down wrapping around the backs of your knees and lifting. You yell, eyes scrunching, as waves of heat travel down your spine, “I’ve got you.”

The sentiment was nice, and the man that John calls ‘Gaz’ is incredibly kind, but you don’t want his arms around you – you want your boyfriend’s. 

Where’s John?

Gaz huffs as he stares down at you, cataloging the bruises and cuts – the dislocated arm that hangs uselessly out of his hold. Your head is pressed into his neck, the Sergeant’s reliable body suddenly taking off at a quick pace through the alleyway, boots rushing over puddles and garbage with surety. 

Off farther down the street, enraged screaming echoes out and you force yourself deeper into Gaz’s grip. The man curses under his breath, taking a turn out into the road and booking it with his long legs. Over the pounding of his heart in your ear Kyle’s fingers dig into your clothes, keeping you tight against him. After a minute of jerkily bouncing in his hold, Gaz’s feet stomp up a set of old wooden stairs, causing your body to flinch up and down. He utters a soft apology and shoulders his way into an abandoned house.

The decaying door smacks the far wall as the man drags rainwater all the way into the front hallway.

“Ghost! We have a problem - A big one – where have the other two gone?” 

A voice wavers in from upstairs as Gaz sets you on your feet, guiding you by your shoulders to lean against the wall as he takes frantic glances outside. He shuts the door quickly; letting darkness once more descend in the sheltered area.

“What you mean ‘we have a problem?’” Gaz brings a flashlight from his front pouch, coming up to you and grabbing you lightly by the chin. 

“Careful, Love,” He mutters, clicking the light on, “I just need to shine this in your eyes, yeah? Won’t take more than a second.”

You swallow and send a small twitch of your lips in approval but even that hurts. Your eyes squint when the man finally angles the flashlight right in front of his face, moving it back and forth from one of your orbs to another. It makes your eyes water, but you can’t tell if that’s from the heavy realization of what’s happened to you or if the light only agitates the sensitive makeup of your optics. 

“Sergeant?” That same voice flows from upstairs, and footsteps suddenly thunder from above. The sound makes you flinch back, snapping your head away from the light and locking to the staircase at the far end of the hallway. Gaz clears his throat ahead of you.

“It’s just Ghost – a-a friend. He’s here to help you.” Your lips thin but you nod carefully. 

A hulk of a man comes down to the ground floor, clothed in the same attire as Gaz beside a half-skull mask that covers his face. Under the covering, a black sheet sits over his head. You can only see Ghost’s eyes – blue and numb. Much colder than John’s…like ice rather than a Blue Bird’s underbelly. 

He stops for a moment and the two of you lock eyes. Shuffling, you look away first, gaze flickering to the side as Gaz stands to his full height. 

“Bloody hell,” Ghost monotones, “That her, then?” 

“Get the Captain and Soap on the radio, I need to stop the bleeding,” Gaz barks, grabbing you around your shoulders and practically dragging your body into the adjacent room – the living room, “Tell them I got her and that we need Medical Evac!” He sets you down on the couch and kneels on the floor; digging through his equipment and sending quick glances from under his cap at your rapidly deteriorating state.

You never registered Kyle’s sentence – already the veil at the edges of your vision is taking over. Your pain had begun to dim. In your mind, you knew that was bad but couldn’t, at that moment, care. The glass still sticks out of you, your bones still broken and arm dislocated; feet bleeding and neck more black and blue than any other color, but the euphoric feeling in your brain was enough to block it all out. Mahdi Karim’s life, at that moment, had never ended and you don’t wear the evidence in streaks down your face or on John’s clothes. 

“Hey,” Gaz lightly taps your forehead with a finger, making your eyes refocus for a moment before they blur again, “Hey, now,” He attempts to smile, forcing out a chuckle, “Come on, keep those eyes at me. I know I don’t look like John but I don’t think I’m that bad to stare at.” 

A pressure is settled on your ribs, and with a sharp inhalation, you pull back as bile fills your mouth. 

“Easy,” Kyle whispers, pushing the rag he holds deeper into a long cut over your side that weeps crimson. You blink down at it – you had never even noticed. Had you gotten that in the fall? 

“Tell me about how you met John.” Your eyebrows furrow, body beginning to slump forward as your hands shake violently in your lap; the clothes over your skin sticking to you uncomfortably. 

“Library,” You slur, voice gravely. Oh, that hurt.

“A library?” Gaz presses his hand tighter, smirking up at you, “Well, can’t say I’m too surprised. I’ve seen the man go through five books in a single Op. over in Egypt. Never understood that, to be honest. I can’t focus on one for more than an hour.”

Weak amusement filters over your expression.

“Garrick,” Ghost’s voice sharply enters the room, his presence making itself known as it lightly jogs into the room, “Mark’s near the kitchen window; coming around clockwise.”

“Shit,” Gaz hisses, about to stand up before Ghost stops him.

“I’ve got the curtains, keep pressure and make sure she doesn’t pass out.”

“Affirm.” 

Ghost rushes across the room, grabbing the moth-eaten fabric that was swinging uselessly over the living room and snapping it shut. His hands hold his Grau 5.56 Assault Rifle firmly as he angles his body on the wall next to the window. 

Watching his eyes flicker, his gaze once more finds yours. Blinking, both of your orbs stay locked for a minute or two until he looks away, going back to guarding the window. His feet move, legs angling themselves onto a ready stance.

Clenching your eyes shut, your lips pull down – pins and needles making your skin itch. 

A shadow moves from outside, leaving a melting outline that slithers past like a serpent. 

“Where the fuck are they,” Gaz snarls under his breath. Adrenaline was making the man’s hands vibrate over your side, and your eyes were becoming heavier. The hypnotizing sound of the rain puts you into a trance.

Your body slips forward. 

“No!” The man ahead of you harshly whispers – grabbing the limp form of your frame and rearranging you until you were on your side, body lying on the couch. His hands quickly return to your still-bleeding wound, setting his shoulders so he can bear more weight down on you. 

Your lips release a small exhale of air that wheezes from you and the squelching of a blood-soaked rag makes your eyelids flutter and skin wrinkle. 

“Gaz get the woman’s bloody eyes open.”

“I’m trying! Come on, Love…please–!” 

Gunshots ring out from outside, yells growing out over the thunder and lighting – a static sound enters the living room. At this point, the only part of you working property was your ears; in the thin bits of reality you could make out voices that leave your ears twitching in familiarity. 

“--outside! We’re coming in…Cover us!”

“Copy!” Ghost yells, rushing away from the window to thunder his way to the front door. 

The echo of running feet from outside suddenly became closer and the sharp ring of “MacTavish – Go!” 

That voice was so familiar, but why couldn’t you place it? 

Multiple feet storm inside, thumping over the floorboards, one continuing down the hallway as Ghost and the other stay to shut the door and stand watch.

“Where the hell is she!?”

“Here!” Gaz calls and a groan exits you at the loud voice so close to your sensitive ears. A heavy body can be felt moving rather than heard as it rampages closer. A shadow moves behind your eyelids just as a strong bout of wind makes the house’s windows rattle. There’s a pause, and then a slow breath inhaled.

A deep voice, layered with grit and dipped in urgency.

“How bad is it, Sergeant?” Your body tenses and with a flickering eyelid, you force your consciousness to come back to you. Opening your eyes halfway, the blurriness only peels back enough for you to notice a looming figure broader and more built than Gaz – a wet bucket hat sitting on top of a beard-covered face. Concerned blue eyes bore into you as the man knees down. 

“John?” Your voice wavers, a strangled tormented type of imitation of normal speech. Gaz’s hand leaves your side and your boyfriend replaces it. Your entire abdomen had lost feeling. Was this a dream?

“Garrick, where’s the fucking Evac?” John hisses, wild eyes falling from one open wound to another. His body orients itself next to you, free hand coming to grip your cold cheek. You breathe out a sigh of relief, familiar scared fingers and calloused palms wiping away rain, blood, and tears.

John was in the state he always was when he was on missions and a teammate was struck down – he had to be. If he thought about you too hard, or the blood that stains his grip, he would put you in even more danger; lose his edge. He would panic.

“Ghost contacted them, Sir. They’re ten minutes out – police are fifteen.” 

“We need to move.” The conversation continues, but you space out every once and a while, at least until the hand on your cheek shakes your head. 

“Love, I’m going to move you,” Your eyes refuse to stay open as John calls your name getting increasingly louder, “...Shit...!” 

Gaz’s voice warbles from across the room, “The Mark’s still out there – you sure we should make a move? We don’t have eyes on him, Captain.”

“What else do you bloody suggest I do, then, Sergeant? Let my girl bleed out? Not on my fucken’ life. We’re making for the Humvee. Guns hot…I’m going to need you on my six.” 

Arms go to wrap around you, dragging you to a warm chest that you go to limply and without protest. 

“Stay with me,” John’s breath hits your cheeks and you feel his breath stutter, his panic growing as your body grows colder in his grip, “please, stay with me.” 

But the Captain was an experienced man – praying for a future event was worthless to him. He had to act for it. 

So the man tightens his hold, hiking you farther into his sheltering grip with a brief and shaky kiss on your forehead that leaves your nose wrinkling.

“Muppets,” John barks, looking up and stalking out of the living room, “we’re making a run for it. Gear up.” 

Your boyfriend doesn’t know if he’s carrying your dead body in his arms, but as Ghost opens the front door and rushes out with his weapon at the ready, John doesn’t stop to think. Soap takes up a stance near his side, sending concerned glances at your non-responsive form, and Gaz settles on taking the rear. 

The street is silent besides the rain, and the entire Task Force rushes out with snapping eyes and tight chests. It was a dead silence – one where the air is quivering with tension.

John looks once more down at your face, pulling to memory the panic he had felt when he found Mahdi Karim’s body in his foyer. He had entered his house, gun drawn, when he had noticed the front door was open; a specific type of agony he had never felt before constricting his throat. 

Of course, he had relationships before you, but never had he felt this strongly before – never felt this level of anger and hatred for someone who had caused harm. 

You were so vastly important to him that it made him sick to think of you dead before him. 

Grunting, John increases his pace over the ground, now sprinting in complete distress.

“I promised you we would watch that movie, Love,” He whispers, rainwater weighing down his hat, “Go for a walk down in Green Park so you could see the baby birds.” A wet laugh bursts from his chest and he plays off the tears in his eyes as he clenches his jaw. John doesn’t care about the rain, or your blood staining his vest, not even the water in his boots. All that matters is getting you back to the Humvee; getting you immediate medical attention and making sure that the son of a bitch that did this is–

A shot rings into the night and John lets out a strangled shout. Burning pain erupts from his right shoulder. He falls, but conscious of the precious cargo in his arms, the man twists his body to shield you as he connects with the ground; water flies around as he lands in a puddle. John’s breath is momentarily expelled from his lungs.

“Contact! Contact!” Gaz screams.

“Steaming bloody Jesus!” Soap yells out, moving into a circle of John and your’s bodies, “Captain’s been hit!”

“I’ve got him! Johnny, Gaz, flush ‘em out!” 

John groans, cursing under his breath and drawing your body closer to him. 

Keep her safe, He thinks as he blinks away black dots, get her back home. 

“Come on,” Ghost’s shielded visage appears above him, gripping him by the uninjured shoulder and forcing him up. More shots ring out over the night, but far off in the distance sirens start to breach the night, “Now, you want to explain to your bird when she’s awake why you’ll be off on leave for a bloody month, or am I going to have to do it?”

John clenches his jaw to stop the waves of pain. Ghost offers to take you from him, but he snarls, forcing himself to his feet as his blood splashes over his clothes.

“Fuck off, Lieutenant.”

—

The beeping was becoming too annoying to ignore, like a fly buzzing around your head. With a groan, your eyelids flutter and it takes a few minutes for you to open them fully. Squinting, the dim white lights meet you and a small breeze from an open window makes goosebumps ripple up your arms. 

You first notice the fuzziness around your body – strong pain meds making you loopy and floating. Twitching your fingers, the mattress under you shifts as you do; you test the mobility of your limbs with gentle movements, a rotation of your ankles, which are all heavily bandaged, and a rolling of your shoulders. All actions spark a numb shiver of caution. 

It would be unwise to move. 

Lifting your now re-set arm and tilting your head down, the tight bandages around your neck make you pause. 

John was there, Your eyes widen; body messing up the cover over your lower body. The beeping of medical machines suddenly increases as you strain yourself to sit up. Just as you do, a voice from across the room causes you to halt, veins freezing under your skin; your heart skips a beat before you recognize the voice a second later.

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea,” Gaz whispers, “I just got him to fall asleep, you know.” Blinking, your gaze goes to the window across the hospital room there the tall man leans near the glass. He smiles lightly, and bags take shape under his dark eyes, “I’m sure you know how stubborn he can be. Especially about you. I’ve never seen him so damn restless.” 

Your brow furrows, not trusting your voice to speak your confusion. Gaz points, and you follow his gaze to an uncomfortable-looking chair mere inches from your bed. 

It’s made of wood and a small blue cushion, a hard backing that you could see someone getting a stiff neck over. But you focus on the man sitting there instead of the dented frame – the slumped build in a hospital gown and an IV in the left hand that’s held down by two pieces of medical tape. John’s face and neck are slack, small eyes shut as his chest rumbles with soft snores that put your heart at ease like listening to a cat purr. His skin was illuminated by the gentle glow of a new morning, but under his eyes, there was the heavy burden of black and blue bags. 

Had no one gotten any sleep beside me? How long have I been out?

“He wouldn’t let the nurses force him out,” Gaz mutters, but you don’t move your wet gaze from John, “Nearly punched the bloody Doctor, too – Laswell had to sort it out, or else he would have been discharged. Decking a Civvy isn’t a good look for a Captain, now is it?” 

The man shakes his head, releasing a highly amused chuckle, and walks to your opposite bedside; grabbing a glass of water he taps your shoulder and causes you to turn forward. Unwilling to stop looking at the ethereal image of your sleeping boyfriend, you keep him in the sides of your vision as Gaz brings the glass to your lips. You’d be unable to hold it – the nearly inch-thick gauze over your hands and wrists was incredibly restrictive. 

You gulp down the liquid thankfully and tap on Kyle’s wrist when you’ve had enough. He pulls back and your wipe the droplets from your chin before you delicately smile at the man as thanks. 

Gaz nods, placing the glass back on the table.  

“...The staff had to just about rip him off of you. They said you had to go into surgery for your ribs and he ‘bout lost his head. But he had lost so much blood himself that it was easy enough for Soap to drag him away.” 

Lost blood? Your head snaps his way so hard you sway lightly. 

“Woah, careful, Love,” Gaz holds out a hand and hovers it above your arm, but looks sheepish and spares a silent glance to John when your boyfriend grumbles in his sleep, “Yeah,” He scratches the back of his neck, “Cap. took a bullet to the right shoulder.”

You turn and look at John more carefully, landing on the afflicted side and spying the extra bulkiness under his garment. 

What do you mean he took a bullet?! 

John shifts and your eyes widen in horror when he flinches in pain. His chin had hit his shoulder, forcing his eyes to flutter open in retaliation.

“Sergeant,” He grumbles, the huskiness of his voice making your cheeks heat, “I told you not to let me fall asleep.”

“Sorry, Sir,” Gaz smirks, taking a step back and sending you a wink, “Must have spaced out.”

“Hm.” John shifts, moving and running a hand over his face and down his beard, scratching at the wire hairs and stifling a yawn. Your heart is in your throat as he blinks his eyes. Blue so momentarily being glimpsed in between flickers of dark eyelashes. You briefly hear the sound of receding feet and the door closing.

The sting of tears makes itself known to you.

“Gaz?” Your boyfriend questions, face squinting, and body shaking in a stretch, “Where did you–” He sees you sitting up and stops, eyes locking onto your own with shock. 

Your head tilts and a slow smile creases your face, making tears dribble down your cheeks. John sucks in a quick breath, immediately trying to stand, but you hold out a hand – stopping him. 

Just calm down, You want to tell him, Everything’s alright. You’re hurt too.

“Doll,” He breathes, hand coming to grasp the side of your face and keeping you there with a relieved smile. It looks like a weight had been lifted from his body, “There you are…How are you feeling? If there’s any pain just say and I’ll go grab the nurse – she’ll fix you right up, yeah?” 

You want to tell him that you love him, but settle on kissing his palm instead, feeling the heat of his skin on your own and wanting nothing more than to disappear into his hold. You don’t want the nurse, you want a hug. 

John’s eyes weave over your bandaged temple, and he runs a thumb over it as if his touch could make it better. If you had your voice you would say it did. Silence reigns for a few long moments.

“I thought he killed you, Sweetheart,” He whispers, vulnerable as his eyebrows turn in, and your hand comes up to run through his locks; dragging him closer until his face is slotted into your neck. Your heart breaks as John’s beard presses into the gauze, “I heard the glass from the attic window break, just about scared me half to death, that did,” John had never admitted to being scared before – not even when he was captured by the Russians. The realization has your heart skipping beats, nose going to press into the side of his head, and stifle a sob in his hair. Your vision was blurry, but not from the fatigue, “I saw so much blood but I searched and searched. I couldn’t find you. Then when Gaz had you in the living room, pressing that bloody towel to your side…You were so lifeless that I didn’t…I didn’t know if–”

“John,” You force out through gritted teeth, “Stop.” 

He was shaking just as badly as you were. You were both quite the pair, it would seem. Your Captain pulls back and begins pressing kisses to any skin available to him – your forehead, cheeks, eyelids, and finally your lips. You revel in the feeling of his soft kiss, leaving you breathless as he pours himself completely into you. 

You don’t know if you had ever met anyone as perfect as John Price before, and you would be content if you never did again.

He pulls back when you both feel your hearts slow and you look at him, eyes sliding over his face until they land on his right shoulder with a glint of guilt. But he notices. He always does.

“None of that, now,” John whispers, placing his forehead on yours and swiping your tears away. His tall frame blocks everything beside him and he smells of gunpowder, pine needles, and smoke, “You are so incredibly brave, you know that? You’re absolutely bloody brilliant, you are…but everything’s been taken care of – just leave the heavy lifting to the others for a little while. The only thing you need to do is rest for me, Love, can you do that?”

Your brow teasingly raises even as your heart bursts at the praise.

“Please.” You smile and point to his chest, poking right into the middle and huffing.

Only if you do too. 

John grunts and a chuckle makes his body rattle in the way only his could, “Won’t find me fighting you on that.” He disconnects your foreheads. 

You haven’t been sleeping, You brush the bags under his eyes, watching his eyelashes flutter, Oh, John…when will you stop being so stubborn? Your body was fighting with you to drag itself back to the mattress – lay down, it seems to say, go to sleep and rest. 

John’s heavy presence is like a weighted blanket, and although you knew there was much to talk about – when you were able – he gave off waves of comforting heat that made your muscles loosen. You seemed to have the same effect on John because he lays all of his body against the bed frame breathing deeply. 

“Wanted to be awake when you came too,” He whispers, and you smile, nuzzling into his neck, “Didn’t want you to be scared.”

I never could be, You think, not when you’re here. 

Getting an idea, you pull back and shake John’s head from side to side with your hands to get him to watch you. The man grumbles, opening his eyes with mock annoyance.

“Yeah, Love?”

Your body moves, and John’s tired eyes widen, “What are you–!” 

Scooting to the far side of the bed, you only release one grunt of uncomfortableness when you have to place weight on your reset arm. Around your middle, you feel the telltale pull of stitches and stop sooner rather than later. You pat the empty side and send John a look. 

“Alright,” He groans, “Just stop moving around.” 

John’s large body barely fits in the bed, leading you to mold into his side and him to wrap his arm around your shoulders. Wanting to show your disapproval as John clenches his jaw in pain as he moves his right side to give you more room, you slap his chest. 

“What else do you want me to do, woman?” He looks down at you, raising a brow and laying his hand on your arm; running a thump up and down, “Let you fall off? This was your bloody idea.”

You roll your eyes at his grumble, moving your head to rest on his peck. Already your eyes were drooping once more, and John presses his lips into the top of your head. A sigh rises his chest.

“Sleep, Love.” He whispers, beard getting caught in your hair as a deep rumble enters his body, “You’ll never have to worry about that Muppet ever again. Made sure of it.” 

Smiling, you fall asleep to the sound of his heart and the feeling of his large hands creating patterns along your arm; not long after he follows, small puffs of breath from his snores moving your locks as the morning light enters the room. 

Gaz would return not fifteen minutes later with two trays of hospital food, Soap tailing after and talking to Ghost about what Laswell was going to do with Colby. The Manchester man only slides his eyes down to the Scot from over his lower-face covering and hums; scratching at his neck.

“Laswell? I’d be more cornered with what Price is going to do with the bloke. Bastard’s not going to be able to hide in his cell when the man gets discharged. Kate knows it too.” 

Gaz peaked his head into the room and paused spying two softly embraced individuals holding each other as if they would disappear when their eyes would open. Light pays off your forms, and John grumbles in his sleep before shifting even closer to you and letting out a sigh. He had never looked so peaceful. 

Gaz smirks before letting the door silently slip shut. He turns back to the pair with the trays raising as his shoulders shrug comedically.

“Sleeping.”

“What?” Soap raises a brow, crossing his arms over his chest, “Not ‘gonna wake ‘em up?”

“Do I look like I want to be eviscerated by a certain Captain, MacTavish? I’d quite like to keep my bloody neck, thank you.”

#john price #captain john price #john price x reader #John price x you #johnny soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick #simon ghost riley #kate laswell #cod #cod x reader #cod mw22 #cod x you #MW #MW2 #Call Of Duty MW2 #mw2 2022 #captain price #mw2 x reader #mw2 fanfic

[eriexplosion]

Tech Lives: An Ungodly Long Essay

(AKA: Turns out that my Tech Lives compilation post comment was actually a threat.)

There have been hundreds if not thousands of posts since Plan 99 aired wondering if Tech might have made it after his fall - it's probably been brought up more than any other hanging plot point, even after season 2 scooped up Omega and left us on a massive cliffhanger. Now that season 3 has started, though, Omega and Crosshair are home (for now) but we have received an almost aggressive lack of Tech info. So, I've gathered up some of the stronger Evidence for why Tech might be fashionably late but still on his way back from The Void!

THE LEAD UP

So to start, let's go back to what came before the whole Incident. This will focus mostly on season 2, seeing as that was definitely Tech's season to shine, but with bits about plotlines in season 1. Which brings us to our first bit, that's not really evidence so much as some gentle push-back on a common argument.

Doomed By Character Development?

We've all seen this particular situation before - a character is slated for a tragic death, so just before it happens the writers gives them a little extra relevance to the plot to make sure the audience really feels it when the time comes. The Clone Wars was especially good at this, giving characters like Fives an arc of his own that ended in his tragic death. Season 7 gave us a better look at Jesse, first in the Bad Batch's intro arc and then again through the Siege of Mandalore, all to bring us to the chip activation that led to his ultimate death.

When season 2 started off with one of the two intro episodes spotlighting Tech and our first breather episode of the season also spotlighting him, people started to get worried. So is it fair to say that his spotlight in season 2 was setting him up for a permadeath?

Looking at it, I don't think so, for multiple reasons. For one, Tech didn't just get a spotlight episode, his development dominated a good chunk of the whole damned season, often taking priority over the other characters that wouldn't be dropped into the mists. While giving a little bit of character development to a doomed character can be a good move, giving ALL your development to a doomed character ends up feeling like a good portion of your season was actively pointless.

The Bad Batch is not an open ended show. It seems to have been planned for the three seasons it got, and they would have gone into it knowing they had a set amount of time to work with. Dedicating so much time to developing Tech in preparation for a character death takes away all of their opportunity to develop, well, anything else.

But, along with the amount of time that was dedicated to Tech as a character through season 2, they also didn't develop him in the ways that most often get used for a doomed character. Namely...

That Sure Is A Lot Of Open Plot Lines

And not one of them got tied up. Currently, Tech has two open plot lines to himself, both started in season 2, as well as a key place in the overall show narrative arc. As the overall show narrative arc takes precedence, we'll start with that.

The Bad Batch sets up a few different narrative arcs very early. One is if clones can be more than soldiers - this is the central thing that we see them struggling against from the start, they've been created to be soldiers and don't know much else about how to function in the world. Theoretically this arc can be fulfilled with one or two of them still dying as soldiers, as long as a few of them make it to find a new life for themselves.

The arc that can't be fulfilled without everyone though is the ongoing thread of reuniting the batch. Much of the show is geared towards making the viewer want this specific end result, as soon as they talk about Crosshair, Omega says they'll just have to get him back and complete their family. The end of season 1 teases us with this only to pull it away at the last moment, then season 2 teases us with it again only to yet again pull it away, this time seemingly permanently.

Ending one of your key narrative threads you've been using to draw audiences in only 2/3rds of the way into the show and without ever resolving it... well it would be a choice. If Tech is gone for good then the last time we saw everyone together would be the end of season 1. Rewatches would lack impact because something that was made to seem so vital ended up going nowhere, and the series finale would never quite reach the height that hearing the full batch theme kick in over the team fighting droids together did. It absolutely destroys the central narrative to leave him gone without ever having reunited the family.

And then there's his personal plots.

Let's start with the obvious one. Tech got a whole potential love interest this season and they absolutely did not resolve a damn thing about it.

Again, this takes a trope that we all know - the young army man that's going to go home and finally marry his girl, who has his whole life ahead of him, but dies tragically in his final mission - and seemingly intentionally subverts the beats. Because what makes the trope work is that the plot line is resolved as soon as that young man decides how he's going to move forward. He can't die uncertain of if he's going to marry his girl, he has to make a decision, and the longer we spend on the relationship to his girl the stronger the decision has to be to consider the narrative line resolved and free him up for some tragedy.

Tech/Phee is a tentative little 'will they or won't they' romance. They're flirting, they're feeling each other out, they're seeing if they're compatible. To tie up this narrative line we would have to find out if they are or not, get a yes or a no on the question. Will they or won't they? We simply don't know because the writers didn't put a resolution in.

We do get the traditional pre-mission scene with them, which would normally be when we get the first kiss or perhaps the promise of a date, either of which would have had me digging Tech's grave for him to fall into from the second it happened. Or even a 'we can't do this right now, but maybe some day it will be the right time' which would have been a kind of lukewarm resolution but would have at least represented a decision.

Instead we get a scene that almost aggressively refuses to resolve anything. They have an awkward interaction, but not one that says they won't get together, no promises are made for the future, no decision point is reached, and the plot line is still dangling wide open when Tech falls to his supposed death. If we truly leave it off here, well, what was the Tech/Phee subplot for? Why did we spend precious time on it when it could have been spent on something else, if it was meant to make Tech's death hit harder why did it not go further?

A second subplot with Tech is that he certainly made the most progress on seeing options outside of the Empire - it starts early on in Ruins of War when he meets Romar and gets his eyes opened to the idea of cultures that existed unconnected to the war. Serenno existed before the war and before the separatists, and Romar introduces Tech to that idea of an ongoing culture. He gets a taste of racing in front of a cheering crowd, leans further into his teaching of Omega and gets new insights from her regarding their lives as soldiers, his relationship with Phee picks up right when he finds out that she is interested in the preservation of cultures. It's a quiet little subplot, but Tech was seeing the full scope of what the galaxy contained beyond being a soldier in a war.

But, like the Tech/Phee, it never resolves. He never decides to settle down, he never chooses to stop being a soldier or even openly discusses the idea of what life will look like after. Rescuing Crosshair isn't positioned as a final mission that they have to complete in order to give up their lives as soldiers. Without that decision point being reached, the plot stays open, we never find out what he Would Have Done so we don't get a sense of the future that he would lose by dying, which is what the purpose of these types of plots is for a planned permadeath.

The Kaminoans don't create without purpose and writers working on a three season timeline don't typically write without it either. So if we spent the time on Tech/Phee but Tech is dead before it ever went anywhere, if we spent time on Tech's relationship with being something other than a soldier but he never really pursues it, what is the payoff?

Too Much of a Survivor To Die?

There's also the matter of how they chose to build Tech's character this season. Namely they beefed that man's skills up incredibly high making it intensely unbelievable that he's dead without seeing some sort of concrete proof. Things we know about Tech as of the end of season 2 include:

Incredible pain tolerance - Tech fractures his femur in Ruins of War and seems shockingly unbothered by it. The femur is frequently listed as one of the most painful bones to break. This is not a broken toe the man is hobbling around on, he fractured the strongest bone in the body and kept going through the woods. He physically fought and killed a man with that busted femur.

Lightning fast mental processing - this is of course on display nowhere so much as Faster where he's put up against droids and wins by taking calculated risks that no one else is willing to try.

A cool head in stressful circumstances - this one is hilarious because he outright says it, but Tech does demonstrate time and time again that when it comes down to it, he's able to keep calm no matter the circumstances.

Essentially, we spend the entirety of season 2 setting up why Tech is the perfect person to drop out of the sky and have him survive. He has the ability to keep calm and come up with a plan in seconds and he has the grit to keep moving even if he's grievously injured once he hits the ground. When you set a character up like this, you can still kill them, but you have to work harder to do it convincingly. Leaving Tech not at the moment of death but with probably at least a minute to act in and then not showing us the body is the exact opposite.

We have a moment in The Crossing showing us Tech's precise aim, and it comes up again to brutal effect when he shoots out the connection on the rail car. If moments through the season were used to set up that particular instant of the finale, then we can't discount the numerous scenes demonstrating his survival skills as being irrelevant to his chances.

Plus, looking back at Ruins of War - one of the big moments in the episode is towards the end, where Romar tells Tech, "I'm a survivor. Remember?" The camera then lingers on Tech for a long moment. It's not the kind of action that demonstrates his capabilities as above, but it works to associate the words with Tech in the viewers mind. Romar is a survivor, and Tech is a survivor too. And when you intend to kill someone off, it's kind of an odd choice to spend that whole season setting them up as a survivor.

THE FALL

Which brings us to the scene itself. Plan 99, implied to be one of the last ditch plans that they have. It's absolutely a heartbreaking scene, and one that can be tough to analyze when it's so well done, because it's rough to watch repeatedly. But, it's worth doing, because the scene itself is FULL of questions, some structural others more based in the visual presentation.

What is Plan 99?

Well, that's just it, we don't actually know.

We know what it's implied to be, a self sacrifice plan where one of the batch gives their life for the others to get away. But in show it's never actually defined, leaving the full meaning of Plan 99 up to interpretation. It could be as simple as what it's implied to be, but that brings up questions like 'why not provide any lead up or foreshadowing for it?' and 'does killing yourself actually count as a plan?'

Removing the assumptions from it gives us room to speculate. Is the plan actually that they leave him behind, dead or alive? Hunter ordered them to do so without a plan number in season 1, but he is the sergeant, so plan 99 could easily be something that bypasses his authority - if a batcher calls a plan 99, you go and you don't question his decision. It's certainly closer to a plan if there's something they are supposed to be doing from their end rather than just an announcement of intent.

It's not strictly evidence one way or another, but it is something of note when Tech's entire sacrifice is based around a plan that we're not privy to the details of. TBB has hidden its twists in ambiguity before, so it would not be the first time that it let us assume something only to pull the rug out later. But ambiguity is not the only thing that makes this scene stand out in the raising questions department.

Pacing Goes Out The Window

Generally speaking, a self sacrifice is the climax of an episode. Think Kanan, Hardcase, Gregor, Hevy, etc - Even a minor character sacrificing their life tends to make up the most climactic portion of any given episode, let alone one of the characters from the title squad. It gets to be the big central moment, the big rush of music and feeling, the pinnacle of the viewers attention.

Tech's sacrifice is not. It happens around 5 minutes into the episode, is rapidly moved past with barely a moment to think, and then the actual climax is Omega's capture on Ord Mantell. They even repeat the music when Omega is captured, except much stronger this time, making it clear that this is the emotional crux of the episode, this is the scene that is supposed to stick with you.

The opportunity to make it the climax of an episode was certainly there. The storyline could have been adjusted to put Tech's fall at the end of The Summit, allowing more time in Plan 99 for processing his loss and making it feel final. The pacing choice is one that doesn't allow the viewer to process the loss, only giving us maybe a couple minutes of time with actual emotional reactions before we're barreling off to the next plot point. Why was Tech's death de-emphasized within the episode if it is indeed our last moment with this central character?

Tarkin, Eriadu, & Saw Gerrera

A lot goes into the set-up for Plan 99. We have Tarkin's base on Eriadu as the setting they're working within, going up against Tarkin for the first time since early season 1. This is the big leagues, and something that's come up in multiple interviews is that when going into the den of one of the franchise's big bads we have to have consequences, something to demonstrate that Tarkin is not to be trifled with.

Sounds reasonable enough. Except Tarkin doesn't actually do anything in either of these episodes. The thing that actually threw them off was Saw's planning mixing in with their own.

All Tarkin does upon finding out that the batch is stuck on the rail is order an air strike and ignore that this would kill many of his own men. This is certainly evil, but it's standard Imperial evil. Rampart would have given that order. Hemlock would have given that order. The guy in Tipping Point that we know for 5 minutes before he fried himself would have given that order.

So if the point of this finale was to demonstrate Tarkin's power, then bringing Saw in both complicates the plot and devalues what they're claiming they are trying to show. So is the point to get them to Tantiss? No, because they fail in that. They don't plant the tracker, they're no closer to finding Crosshair than they were before.

By all accounts the point of the whole endeavor is in fact just to drop Tech off a sky rail for reasons unknown and injure Omega to force them to go back to Ord Mantell. These two things could have happened anywhere in any way of course, so why choose Eriadu and why choose to complicate the plot by introducing Saw rather than letting Tarkin handle the job?

They're questions we don't have answers to yet, but they're very hard to get answers to if Tech is dead and completely out of the picture. Having a dead body on Eriadu is fairly useless to the plot, having a living Tech on Eriadu though? That has potential to move them huge leaps forward in a very short amount of time once we bring him back in. Especially given his conversation with Saw prior to everything going downhill - Tech was in favor of gathering intel from the facility rather than destroying it.

And what about Saw, anyway? If he was genuinely there to cause problems and fly away, again, that's a plot wrinkle that isn't needed and took time away from everything else. If he's there because they needed someone to pick Tech up though? There's potential there.

Did Tech's Sacrifice Mean Anything?

In universe, Tech's sacrifice means everything, of course. It's a decision made in the moment to risk everything to save his family. It's a noble deed and one he does without hesitation. But pulling away from that narrow scope of an in universe perspective, what did we accomplish narratively with his fall?

Well... not much actually! They got over the bump in the road that they encountered all of five seconds ago and promptly crashed headfirst into another, different bump in the road. Tech's dramatic sacrifice didn't allow them to escape unharmed, it didn't allow them to find Crosshair, it just allowed them to move a few steps forward, after which Omega is almost killed and then captured, which is a fairly weak reason to sacrifice a whole major character.

But not every character death is exclusively about narrative, sometimes it's about the character arc itself. So does this close out anything for Tech's character development? Again, not really. Tech has always been completely loyal to the squad and would have risked anything for his family. He never had a choice not to fall, it was either just him or the whole team, and he is an endlessly logical actor. The action would have played out the same had it happened in the series premier or the season 1 finale, or any other time in the show. If anything it's a backtrack on his character by putting him solidly back into the soldier box that the show is trying to let the clones grow out of.

Maybe it's not about Tech's character though, maybe it's about everyone else's! Does his death change anyone's trajectory? Again... no, not really. We'll get into season 3's lack of mentioning Tech later, but in the immediate aftermath of his fall, no one's course or actions is majorly changed because of his loss. Hunter wants to go back to Pabu where it's safe, the same thing he wanted to do before they ever left for this mission. Omega puts herself in danger to save her brothers, which has been one of her defining traits since season one. Wrecker is following Hunter's lead, same as he always did. (We get very little of what Echo hopes to do, but the opening of season 3 reveals that they went back to work with Rex, exactly like they were doing before.)

So narratively nothing required him to die, the character's arc isn't completed, and the other characters aren't motivated to change. If Tech dies here, it's the picture of a shock value death. It doesn't complete or inform his character, it doesn't need to narratively happen in order to put Omega on the path to being captured, and thematically it exists just to give the viewer an unnecessary gut-punch when just the failure to rescue Crosshair and the loss of Omega would have been enough.

Framing is Everything

In a death scene there's nothing more powerful than our final shot of a character. The very last we'll ever see of them, the image that will linger in our minds when we think of that character from then on. This is especially important in animation where everything has to go through several iterations before deciding on what that final look will be. You want it to be impactful, you want the audience to have one final connection to the character before they're gone for good.

So why does Tech die with his helmet on?

If there's one thing TBB is good at, it's their expression work, and a death scene is a perfect place to show off their full range, which is why most deaths meant to have a heavy impact occur with faces unobscured. Crosshair loses his helmet and takes Mayday's off so we can see both of their faces as Mayday dies, Slip, Cade, even Clone X and Wilco, all die helmetless. Looking into older series you have Kanan dying without his mask, Fives, Hardcase, Waxer all dying helmetless with one last good look at their faces and expressions.

And while Tech's helmet gives us a good look at his eyes, the rest of his face goes unseen, and Wrecker's face as he watches this happen is completely obscured. We're denied a look at a lot of their expressions as the decision is made and Plan 99 is executed, rendering it less personal than it otherwise could have been. Tech could have lost his helmet in the blast that knocked him from the rail, Wrecker could have had his helmet knocked off at some point to give us a good look at his expression. TBB isn't known for pulling its punches, so why leave our final look at Tech's face back in The Summit and not here?

Then there's the framing choices. We get some absolutely amazing shots of Tech during the fall, from taking the shot to falling backwards towards the cloudy cover - but here's where some interesting choices are made. Rather than letting our last shot of him be a face up shot that keeps eye contact with the camera as he falls, they make the choice to have him flip over, and we hold the shot as the rail car goes down after him, partially obscuring him.

Which means instead of our last glimpse of Tech being something like this.

We end up with something closer to this.

Which, while we all love those Tech crotch shots is somewhat less impactful emotionally. These frames go through multiple departments and get multiple eyes on them before going through final animation, and no one thought that leaving him face up and unobscured until he disappears into the fog would stick more firmly in the viewer's memory?

The Flip Might be Intentional

And I don't just mean out of universe, as every detail of animation is often intentional, but in universe as well. If you look closely at Tech as he falls, he seems to roll his shoulders back in order to begin flipping over. It was a specific enough detail to send me searching for a reason and I found it in instructions on how to survive a long fall - the first thing that you're supposed to do? Get into the arch position like a skydiver to slow and control your fall.

The flip was important enough to not only include but to include the small detail of Tech intentionally flipping himself over into said position. It's not a confirmation but it's an interesting detail, and one that has very few other reasons to exist.

THE AFTERMATH

Image chosen because even thinking he's alive I didn't want to pull from Omega reacting to the fall on Ord Mantell. Looking at her makes me Sad. So the fall has happened, the rail car has rushed forward and crashed, and Omega fades in and out of consciousness until finally waking up on Ord Mantell to the bad news.

"What if he's hurt?"

Omega is our POV character for the show. We may sometimes see things she doesn't, but emotionally she remains the center of the narrative, the character that the target audience will see themselves in. Her ultimate thoughts on a situation are the closest we have to a clear indicator of our intended takeaway.

So it's interesting that the first thing we hear out of her, having heard that Tech 'didn't make it,' is a firm denial. He can't be gone, he might be hurt, he needs them and they need to go back for him. And, despite Hunter continuing to talk with her about it for a bit, we never actually hear Omega explicitly take it back or verbally acknowledge Tech as dead. The closest we get is 'lost' which she also uses for Echo in The Crossing.

Now, here's where the interpretation between the adult and child audience will likely differ. From an adult perspective, this is a reasonable reaction for a child her age. It comes off as very natural that she doesn't want to accept it and that she doesn't have time to really process that it's true before the scene moves on. It makes sense from an in universe perspective.

However, the main audience is still children who actually are Omega's age and who are being presented with her as their window into this world. And their takeaway, seeing that same scene, is likely to be that Omega is correct. They don't know that Tech's dead, just because an adult says it doesn't make it true and just because Hemlock says it DEFINITELY doesn't mean it's true, they have to go back and check.

If they wanted the main audience to think that Tech is dead for sure, they could have had Omega be the one to say that he's gone, with Hunter simply confirming it for her. Alternatively, Omega accepting it when Hunter tells her would also function in the same way - ultimately, as the POV character, if Omega doesn't accept it there's a strong possibility much of the audience won't accept it either, especially without other evidence.

No Body?

And, as we all know, we simply don't have other concrete evidence. Not only are the batch given no time to look for Tech's body or any confirmation that he died, but we get a whole scene with Hemlock and the goggles where he also confirms verbally that he doesn't have a body either. There's very little reason to have him say this outside of putting a bug in the viewer's ear that he might not be gone for good.

Not only do we have that verbal confirmation, but we have multiple places where a body could have been included or implied without adding much to the runtime.

Easiest place would probably be when Omega passes out - there's a trooper's corpse right there in front of her, and it would have been very easy to make that identifiable as Tech. Have one of the boys check his pulse like Crosshair did with Mayday and then be forced to leave after confirming he's dead. Would it require a little bit of fudging the details of how he landed so close to them, sure, but it would have been narratively streamlined and easy.

Have Hemlock bring his helmet rather than his goggles (and damage it in a way clearly incompatible with survival) or confirm that he did find a body but has no use for the goggles.

Put the body in Hemlock's lab when Omega is brought there at the end of the episode. Have a sheet covering him even if you want and just one of his hands hanging out, especially the one with the distinctive light on the back of it. Give us her reaction to that.

These are just the ones that don't involve adding scenes or making major changes - instead, in a franchise known for bringing back everyone and their grandmother especially if there's no body, they chose to leave it extremely vague.

Reused Score

The soundtrack for Tech's sacrifice is fantastic, I don't think anyone can argue that. In fact it's so good that it's used occasionally used as a reason for why he's dead for real. If it's a fakeout, why go so hard on the music?

It almost sounds like a reasonable argument, except that the music isn't even unique to Tech's fall. We get the same motif later in the episode with Omega's capture, and it actually comes in even harder and more impactful there than it did with Tech falling.

Reusing bits of the music has two results. It lessens the impact of hearing it with Tech if it is in fact his Death music, because it makes it clear that he is not the central feeling of the episode but rather, Omega's capture is. As mentioned before, deaths are usually the climax of their own episodes partially to avoid them being upstaged by any other plot points, but here Omega's capture is fully prioritized over the loss of one of our central characters.

The second result is that it changes the meaning of the music. It's no longer meant specifically to underscore a tragic death, but rather a more general one of loss and separation. And if it's simply about that separation, then it no longer requires Tech to be dead to have that same impact. They're apart from each other, and that's painful enough.

SEASON 3 SO FAR

Which of course finally brings us to season 3! We're five episodes in as of the posting of this, so a full 1/3rd of the season down, which gives us a good idea of how they're handling the whole grief aspect of this scenario.

They Aren't!

That's right, we simply have not directly acknowledged or dealt with the whole 'watching your squadmate fall to a presumed horrible death' thing even once in five episodes. Tech has been mentioned by name twice, we've seen his goggles once, and Wrecker makes one sideways reference to him having not made it back.

In universe, there is a several month timeskip and it seems to be implied that the majority of the grief milestones happened in that gap. For example, we don't see Crosshair finding out from Omega, we don't see Omega grieving her brother, we don't see Phee finding out (more on her in a bit) despite her fledgling romance. Months of grieving and processing skipped over and what comes out the other side is single line mentions that go by in seconds.

This is especially apparent after episode 5, where we got something to compare it to. Crosshair has a long, painful moment of grieving with Mayday's helmet when they return to Barton IV. It's deep, personal, and intimate and we take a minute with him gathering up the helmets of Mayday and his men to set them up on the crates the same way that Mayday had honored them.

Mayday is a one episode character that was important to only a single character, Crosshair - Tech is a core member of the team present through two full seasons and shown as close to every member of the squad. Yet the single scene grieving Mayday is longer and more emotionally gripping than every short mention of Tech so far in season 3.

Narrative Grief

Seeing characters grieve their loved ones onscreen is about more than just the characters themselves. It's also part of the viewer experience - through the characters' grief, we're able to process our own grief at the loss. It makes it feel real, it makes it feel personal, and the amount of grieving needs to be proportionate to the character's importance in the story.

This is especially true in a show written for children like The Bad Batch. Kids don't typically have the same experience with death as adults, and a well written main character death within a children's show will need more time and energy spent towards making the loss feel real. We see this with deaths like Kanan's; it wasn't Jedi Night that told the viewer that Kanan was really, truly dead, it was Dume, where the characters mourned him and dealt with the aftermath.

Currently, with Tech, we do see holes in the team that make us miss Tech but they remain completely unaddressed by the characters. We see Tech's goggles, but Hunter isn't looking at them, he's looking at Lula. Omega mentions Tech having taught her all the plans, but without any real sadness on her or Crosshair's part. The closest we get to actually bringing it up are Wrecker saying 'not everyone came back' and Echo mentioning the datapad would be difficult without Tech, and both of those are only seconds long before moving on. They don't serve as any kind of catharsis for the viewer, relying more on gut punch impact and keeping the wound open rather than allowing it to heal. The difference between the treatment of Tech's death and Mayday's just makes it more stark.

How Do You Like Yearning?

Interestingly, though, it strongly resembles the writing team's handling of another situation: Crosshair's departure from the team in season 1 vs Echo's in season 2. The show even drew a lot of flack for the lack of discussion on Crosshair's betrayal, as outside of a couple conversations the matter often went unremarked on. Echo leaving, on the other hand, got a whole episode dedicated to processing the loss immediately after it happened.

So what was the difference? Crosshair's departure is part of a long term plot point. We're supposed to want him back, we're supposed to want the team to talk about him, anything that would ease the tension. The writers on the other hand want that tension to remain until it's time to actually resolve the plot. So we get those slow drips in between bigger encounters, we get opportunities for Crosshair to come home that he doesn't take, and we don't get the catharsis of the team actually talking about any of it. We're left to want and imagine it, using the yearning to keep it on people's minds more than anything.

If Crosshair had been discussed on screen long enough for the characters to actually come to terms with his absence, though, that would have made the plot feel more settled and resolved early on. It might be conversations we want to see, but it doesn't keep the viewer on edge and craving a resolution. Best case scenario we're just not as desperate for Crosshair to come home - worst case scenario we accept that he won't be returning and find the fact that he eventually does to be unrealistic.

Echo on the other hand gets their absence processed immediately, because their absence from the team is not meant to be a huge plot point. It's something the team has to deal with, yes, and the viewer wants to see them again just like Omega does, but Echo returning isn't meant to be a maybe, and it's not supposed to keep the viewer wondering and worrying. It's a when, not an if.

Similarly to Crosshair, Tech has never felt like a resolved plot point. We don't get confirmation on his death, we don't get any long term grieving, and we get drip fed acknowledgements that pry the wound back open. If we actually see the team discuss and come to terms with their grief and loss, the plot point closes, the wound closes and we begin to fully accept a team without Tech in it, which makes it harder to reinsert him into the storyline if he is in fact alive.

If he's truly gone for good, what is the point of denying closure to the audience? We know that they are capable of writing an intense mourning moment that feels completely in character for otherwise emotionally repressed men such as Crosshair, so why not give us that with the team mourning for Tech? A memorial, an intimate moment with the goggles, a short scene of Crosshair finding out about the loss, or anything at all really? Once again it's something that makes sense if he's alive and we're simply not being shown yet, but makes very little sense to not capitalize on if he's dead.

What's to Come

We have ten episodes of season 3 to go, and a lot to cover. Reviews have indicated that Tech is not explicitly brought up in the first eight, so the earliest we could possibly have a survival reveal is in episode 9. Will it actually happen? Maybe, maybe not. Though interestingly episode 9, The Harbinger, is almost exactly one year after Plan 99, just like The Return aired almost one year after The Outpost. Could mean nothing, but they do enjoy their anniversary dates.

One thing we do know for sure is coming up is Phee's inclusion - she's seen in the official trailer, as well as briefly in a recent twitter spot. This is interesting as Phee is, of course, Tech's teased love interest, and her connection to Tech has been emphasized multiple times, including on her Databank entry and the official 'what you need to know about season 3' guide. When she comes onto the scene, it's very likely that more information about Tech will too.

MARKETING, INTERVIEWS, & SOCIAL MEDIA

I wanted to keep this mostly focused on what can be seen within the show itself, but it's impossible to talk about whether or not Tech is alive without pointing to the absolutely bizarre messaging from the cast and crew, as well as the marketing choices surrounding his sacrifice. (Example: the Instagram Mourning Filter they layered over him in the official trailer, as seen above) I won't get quite as detailed here as in the above, but it does have to be mentioned.

Constant Focus

In between the end of season 2 and the posting of the season 3 trailer in late January, there were several posts on various official Star Wars media. The majority of them were about Tech and Plan 99. In fact, I don't think I ever saw anything mentioning the giant 'Omega's been captured' cliffhanger, just Tech. Over and over again.

Once a character is dead, marketing generally stops caring about them. They're forward focused after all, they want you coming back for what's to come not lingering on what won't be relevant again. So why the constant focus on Tech?

And it wasn't just the social media either - a huge portion of the trailers and reels included old footage of him too. For the most part this was from Plan 99 and bringing up his fall again to rip open those old wounds, but in one case they included action footage from The Summit. This was an interesting case, because the majority of people watching wouldn't have recognized it immediately. Fittingly, the entire comment section was full of nothing but 'Was that Tech?' style comments, which they would have known was going to be the case to start with.

So why are we so focused on a man that's supposedly dead? If he's genuinely never going to show up again why keep putting him in? Everything? While not even bringing him up all that often in the show? If he's dead, this is a truly bizarre marketing decision.

Never Say Die

In interviews or in official material. For several months the word 'dead' was never used for Tech anywhere, not in interviews, not in official material, nowhere. It took until January 23rd for all of the databank entries to be updated, and among all of the main cast he's only referred to as 'killed' once, and it's on Hunter's page not even his own. Then, the Friday before the premier, an interview came out referring to him as dead - on the part of the interviewer, not the creators themselves.

Everything else seems to use a variety of euphemisms. His sacrifice, his absence, his loss, he 'plummeted out of sight', he 'fell from a tram car', he did absolutely anything it's possible to do except outright die apparently.

It's an odd choice when there's known controversy over if he's dead or not. The standard operating protocol of course, in a planned comeback, is to refer to them as dead anyway and allow fandom to fuel its own speculation, but with a fandom as devastated as TBB's was, it's quite possible that the odd behavior had to be introduced just to keep speculation going. The only interviews that sound remotely final came out right before the episodes started coming out - if they had done that from the beginning, the chances of people outright refusing to come back to the show likely would have been higher.

Much like the marketing, this is not necessarily proof of anything - but in combination with the multiple odd things in the show itself, it's certainly suspicious. Speaking of suspicious...

What an Odd Thing to Say

The cast and crew themselves have not been skimping on making strange comments when it comes to the Tech situation.

There is of course the well known Joel Aron (lighting director for the series) tweet that came out the day of the Celebrations panel (AKA when the Tech trauma was at an all time high) and in direct reply to a fan that was having a hard time with Tech's death. It's hard to take it as anything but a reference to Tech given the timing, and it was certainly taken as being about Tech in the quote tweets. If it's not about Tech, why tease the fandom with it? And the specification for it being a mid s3 episode as well...

Also from the day of Celebrations, and from the panel itself, we have Michelle Ang saying in front of God and everybody, that Tech "doesn't come back... in this episode, at least." At the time there was a possibility she didn't know and was just leaving it open, but with that only being ten months ago and the extremely long timeframe of animation, it's almost certain that she would have been done with all primary recording by that point. If you know he's not coming back, how do you accidentally imply that he is with no one correcting it?

Dee Bradley Baker, when asked for a farewell message from Tech at a con, came out with "the life of a soldier is fulfilled by fulfilling his mission and supporting his brothers. And this was the end of mine. And that's a good thing." Which was a perfectly serviceable goodbye right up until he said that the end of Tech's (life? soldier's life? mission?) was a good thing.

During an instagram interview we have Deana Kiner, one of the composers, in response to the interviewer talking about the final episode containing a major loss, saying, "It's kind of a loss... It's complicated." The claim on twitter was that this was about Omega, because everyone knows that when someone mentions the major loss in Plan 99 they're definitely talking about Omega.

So is Tech alive? Is Tech dead? We still don't know. But while one or two of the above might be a coincidence, having all of them at once coalesce around this single character death is a lot to chew over. The Bad Batch team has shown willingness to address grief and loss prior, as well as a willingness to show us death onscreen and front and center. So why, with such an important character, sidestep it all in order to keep it vague? Why keep it from sounding final for so long, if the intent the entire time was for him to be dead for good?

We won't know until he either shows back up or the show ends. If Tech's alive, all of the above starts to make sense. If he's dead... well a lot of things will just never quite add up. I feel that this team has shown enough willingness to follow up on their trailing plotlines that they've earned my trust. Fingers crossed for a satisfying resolution for all of us, and for our boy Tech, whatever that resolution may be.

#the bad batch #tbb #tbb tech #the bad batch spoilers #tbb spoilers #the bad batch speculation #this thing is some 7500 words i might have an obsession problem

[roxxie-spirt]

As I said in my last post, I was going to draw laurances all hot n bothered but I also just wanted an excuse to draw void!laurmau because DAWG THEYRE KINDA CUTE 😭😭 Void!aph n Laurances dynamic was so cute and funny like UGH AND THE FACT LAURANCE PROTECTS HER AS IF SHES HIS OWN APHMAU LIKE BRO LOVES AND PROTECTS HER IN ANY UNIVERSE I love Laurances character as much as any aphblr user , that’s all, I love my son anywho lemme keep talking about void paradox the series I wish continued.

I loved the mini series it was a nice break from the post Jess was making at the time ( a lot of myst content ) but also it was just super cool?? Seeing the mod mod world again I do wish she brought back Reese n marsh just cause I loved those two brothers as a kid but not the point. It was just super cool seeing an MCD character in modern times?? Especially with an Aphmau who didn’t know ANYTHING of this character like if it was mystreet Aphmau she would’ve made fun or poked at Laurance since she knew him but this Aphmau hadn’t a clue who he was?? Which omg opened to so much character for Laurance n void! Aphmau!! It didn’t show Casanova Laurance it just showed a guard who thought void!Aph was his and even after the fact he wanted to stay by her , ALSO JUST I KNOW I KEEP BRINGING IT UP BUT THEIR DYNAMICSSS AHHH ITS SO FUNNY !! Laurance being the more serious one out of the two is so unlike him especially where his character development was at?? Ok imma get to some lil hc(?)

Btw! I did draw the two slightly in different styles more of line work n shading IM NOT BEING INCONSISTENT IM BEING SPIDER-MAN

Laurance n void!aph explored eachothers bodies laurance still thinks it was a dream and so when he kisses MCD! Aph he says that was his first kiss, it was in fact not

I’d like to think void!Aph doesn’t just forget about Laurance , but she does look back at the weird medieval guard who kept her safe for those few knights a lot and often chats to Tommy about him

Void Aphmau does talk to Laurance about MCD!Aphmau and she out right tells him to take his chance on her, ofc Laurance tells her he’s waiting for Garroth to tell his feelings but void Aphmau laughs at him straight up and teases if he even likes her if he’s waiting for another man to confess. Laurances get fed up with her comment but he does think about that comment a lot even though he knows she knows nothing about his life .

Laurance when he talks to Tommy can’t help but see Malachi weirdly enough

Laurance out of habit moves void Aphmaus hair out of her face as he does to MCD Aphmau but voidaph is purposely outing her hair in her face

Once when Laurance was watching over void Aph as she slept he lightly grazed his hand on her cheek where MCD!aphmaus mark would be. Tommy called him out for being weird

ok that’s all bye 😇😇

#aphmau #mcd #mcd rewrite #aphverse #roxxie_spirt #aphblr #laurance mcd #laurance zvahl #Laurmau #void paradox #void paradox Laurmau #void paradox Aphmau #mod mod world #aphmau laurance #minecraft diaries laurance #mcd laurance

[xxsugarbonesxx]

this literally took years off my life but please enjoy

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖

tags: smut, lots of fluff, domestic life, pregnancy, oral sex (both male and female receiving) and vaginal sex afab!reader

Miguel had officially retired from the role of Spider-Man 2099 as well as acting leader of the Spider Society, he left quietly. Leaving his position to Jess and just disappearing one day, Jess had his contact info but was only to be used in absolute emergencies. He debated shutting LYLA down or she would go on to be Jess’s assistant, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. She had been with him after everything with Gabriela, he couldn’t just shut her down. Sure she was AI but he did care for her.

So Miguel left in search of any kind of normalcy. He found a cozy little dimension with a low crime rate and an acting spider person. There he could relax and settle down, it took awhile to get him out of his old routine. But he did his best, he got an apartment, and a dog. He had houseplants, he cooked and read more books, he stopped caring so much about the little things. Soon enough, he developed a bit of a dad bod.

His arms and legs are thick with muscle, but now he has a pudgy tummy, love handles and thick cakey ass. Thick black hair bloomed over his firm pecs and stomach, snaking down to his member. He doesn’t cut his hair as much now, instead a clean curly cut, he now has a shaggy almost wolf cut with a streak of gray hair in his curls. He doesn’t shave his face, just trims to his neat black beard to keep from getting too long and thick.

He was taking his pet Pomerian, Fox, out for a walk. This dimension is a lot different from the futuristic Earth-928, set in the 2020’s but void of any pandemic. It’s airy and clean, lots of plant life and diverse people with small business shops lining the sidewalks. It felt like he could finally breathe, it’s quaint and quiet. Him and Fox wandered into a library, he was browsing around for a new cookbook to add to his growing collection. That’s when he met you.

You were on the other side of the library, looking through some romance novels while your daughter was sitting with the other kids for story time. Dressed in a light green tank dress with a plunging neckline white lace lining the neckline and under the bust. Oh that caught his attention, he slowly walked over, pretending to look at the same romance books as you were scanning. He nervously made small talk, he complimented your hair and you asked to pet Fox.

You and Miguel got on great, and even better, he was cool with you having a young daughter. He was thrilled when you gave him your number, thinking this was it. He’d finally get to lead a normal life, meet a girl, settle down, become a father again. And luckily, that was exactly what you were looking for too.Miguel loved your daughter, Luella, she reminded him so much of his Gabriela. He’s been working on being more open about his past and not running away when he was uncomfortable. 

He adored taking you out, treating you to coffee or just going on a walk with you, Luella and Fox. He took you and Luella to a museum once you’ve been dating for two years. You went off to the bathroom and walked back to see Miguel holding Luella on his hip so she could see the penguins waddling in their exhibit. She asked him all sorts of questions and he answered all of them. He looked so much like dad, in his sweater, sweat shorts, high socks with sneakers and snapback, holding Luella’s hand or carrying her when she got tired. He bought her a little penguin stuffy and cooked you and her dinner when you got home.

You two moved in together after three years of dating. Miguel was so happy to be finally living with other people, he really did love taking care of you and your daughter. Whether it was making Luella’s lunches or making you breakfast in bed after a night shift. He really was a dream to live with, he kept his space clean and organized. He liked shopping with you, he loved following you around with a basket in one hand and your hand in the other. When you’d stop to check the nutrition label on the back of something, he’d rest his head on yours. Sighing loudly with his hands on your shoulders, gently kissing the back of your head.

Your first time with him was heavenly, gently laying you down on the plush bed. Your thighs wrapped around his head, he made sure you came at least once before his pants actually came off. He ate you out like he was a starved man and you a five course meal. Flicking your sensitive clit with the tip of his tongue as he pumped his pointer finger into your weeping core, slowly sliding in his middle finger to make you squeal. He lapped up your nectar once you came, licking it up, telling you that it tasted like candy. 

He’d whine in your ear how tight you were, begging to not clench too hard as he grunted. He had you in doggy style, your back arched, face buried in pillows with your ass up. He mindlessly pounded into you, it had been too long since he had sex. His big hands squeeze your waist tight, his claws slipping out to graze but not break your soft skin. He whines in the shell of your ear, a ring of cream wrapped around the base of his thick cock as he bullies deeper into you. He would always make you cum first or you’d both cum together.

After round four, you were spent. His fat cock stretched you out, you laid down on your back on the now dirty sheets. Miguel would be pressing kiss after kiss all over your sweaty body, caressing and running his hands all over you. He’s an after care god, if you’re hungry, he’ll order out. He’s already got the water in the tub running, he changes the sheets as you lay in the warm water, he comes back only to wash your hair and rub your back and shoulders. After eating, he’ll cuddle you, his arms wrapped around you with his legs tangled with yours. Telling you how happy you’ve made him and telling you how much he loves you.

You have a small, chapel wedding, nothing too fancy though Miguel could afford it. But you wanted something small, something with only close family and friends. And he gave you that happily, with Luella as the flower girl and a quiet honeymoon in Italy.

Not that you got to see much of Italy, not when you were bouncing on your husband's fat cock for the majority of your visit. Not that you were gonna complain though. Your hips rose and fell back into the heated water of the hot tub, your hips slapping against his pelvis as he watched the fat over your ass ripple. His hand on your neck with your back to him as you whine, him squeezing your throat softly to tell you to slow down every once in a while. Praising you, only calling you ‘Mrs. O’Hara’ since your wedding.

God, how you adored his touch. His other hand is on your clit, teasing your body. Begging for him to let you cum, he’d tsk and shake his head. Telling you not just yet and to be patient, you held off the best you could. But his big strong hands all over your body made you practically vibrate, this big bear of a man finally yours, you couldn’t help but move faster. Your full tits bouncing, he reached in front of you to take one in his hand. He squeezed the meat of it, his fingertips drifting to your nipple and gently tugging. Making you moan louder and finally cum.

Though he did enjoy such a display, and on the balcony overlooking the city of all places, he did have to take you to the room and teach you a quick lesson in obedience. He made you lay down on your back on the bed, your head resting on the edge of the bed, he stood in front of you. Pumping his cock with his hand, his other hand cupping your cheek, his thumb on your lips. He slapped his now fully erect dick on your cheek, making you giggle. He finally pressed his angry red tip to your plump lips, you slowly opened your mouth, letting him in.

Bent over the bed, he rolled his hips gently at first. Feeding you inch after inch, he took great pleasure watching your tight throat bulge from his length. He pushed in all the way, his happy trail tickling your chin. He fucked your throat, his cock twitching inside you after hearing you gag, thrusting his hips harder to watch your tits bounce and jiggle. You had one hand resting on his thigh, your other on your pussy. Your middle and ring finger teasing your weeping core, your new wedding ring was cold on your folds, making you shiver with delight.

Your tongue slithered over his cock, memorizing each inch and vein. Your eyes roll back and toes curl when you feel his hand cup your soaked pussy, gently kneading your folds as he fucked your throat like a fleshlight. He never lasted long with you, even after years of being with you, he never grew tired of your body, always wanting one more round or brushing his teeth a little longer than usual in the bathroom when you showered. He groaned hard, his voice breaking as ropes of his cum slipped down your throat, warming your belly. The rest of your honeymoon was practically spent in that Airbnb, only leaving for a wine tasting and the white sand beaches. 

Of course it did take long for you to get pregnant, in fact, you found out the week you came back home from your honeymoon. Miguel was over the moon, doting and spoiling you more than usual. As you sat back on the couch, he knelt down in front of you, kissing all over your eight month baby bump. Cooing and talking to the fetus growing in your womb, telling you how he wanted the baby to recognize his voice once they were born.

Just ‘cause you were having his baby didn’t mean he paid any less attention to Luella. He still adored her, adopting her once he proposed. She was excited to have a dad in her life and now a little sibling, he still took her out for things to do. The look of excitement on his face when Luella expressed an interest in soccer, he’d go to all her games and take her to ice cream whether she lost or won. 

The second you went into labor, he dropped everything he was doing at work and rushed to the hospital. He held your hand and kissed your head, telling how strong, brave and beautiful you were as you pushed. No matter how hard you squeezed his hand or yelled or screamed, he didn’t flinch. He held you tight and dried your tears, reassuring you throughout the whole ordeal.

Soon enough the O’Hara unit would be completed. You had given birth to a healthy baby girl, a chubby one too. Miguel was a big man, he’s literally 6 '9 and weighs 310lbs, your baby is gonna be a chub. Not that you were gonna complain, your girl was gorgeous, with soft brown skin and a mess of black hair. She snuggled up to Miguel for some skin on skin time with papa. He cried like a baby seeing her, she was the spitting image of his Gabriela. To her big eyes to her nose. Though, she did have his claws, which made you two order baby mittens so fast.

Miguel was happy. The last six years he wouldn’t trade the world for, no matter if you argued or fought, he wouldn’t be the same man he was if it weren’t for giving everything up as Spider-Man. A job he thought he’d keep forever, he’d imagine dying in the suit before you came along. He couldn’t be happier with his decision though as he put baby Esther down in her crib for a nap.  

#atsv miguel #2099<3 #miguel o'hara #domestic miguel #husband miguel #bad body #smut #fluff #writing #fics #spiderman 2099 #across the spiderverse #miguel spiderverse

[tan1shere]

Motel Whore

Ellie Williams x female reader !

A/n: ahh you guys after awhile its finally hereeee. Sorry for the wait life's been hectic and I'm not doing the best right now :( going through a pretty difficult breakup that's quite honestly tearing me apart but I hope you guys enjoy this!

Summary: You and Ellie started a fwb. But you want more. She doesn't see that nor notice how you've been acting. You're just her. Motel Whore. (Yes this is based off of the song Motel Whore by Nessa Barrett!)

Warnings: smut, angst, just sadness. Ellies a bit of an ass. Jealousy, slightly rapey Ellie if ya squint. We won't pay attention to that cuz we all know she's a sweetheart and wouldn't do that. Suggestive language. Like always MDNI

Masterlist

Pt 2!

It was just one night. Turning into two. Turning into a week. Months. Almost a year and you still don't know how you're here. Doing this with your friend Ellie. You always thought it'd be easy, the whole friend's with benefits thing, just a simple fuck then leave. You had no feelings for eachother. Wrong. It was the complete opposite. You started getting more attached as the weeks went by. But you had agreed to her request. 'No feelings involved' and 'this isn't a forever thing' you and Ellie were both single.

And you had agreed that it was a good idea to do this until you could fill that void. On the first night you two had slept together you had told her you were sick of being lonely and having to get off by yourself. You said it mindlessly just ranting to a friend. Until she came up with the idea. You were getting in too deep and you had no idea what to do about it.

You were currently at your friends, Dinas. To be exact. A mutual friend of you and Ellie. She had no idea about your secret life with her, no one did for that matter. It was hush hush. That was another agreement that you both made at the start. But secretly. You wanted the whole world to know. Why? You honestly couldn't even answer that. Because, you had no clue yourself.

"Hello, earth to Y/n. I'm talking to you babe." She blurts out, snapping you out of your thoughts. "Oh yeah, sorry." You mumble. "What's up, you seem off." You shake your head. "Nothing, I'm fine." You give her a reassuring smile. But knowing how Dina was she didn't buy it one bit. She was going to pry, but knowing you'd tell her eventually she let's it go.

"Right well, I asked if you wanted to go out for dinner on Saturday." You look straight at her. Fuck, you were suppose to be meeting Ellie. You always did on a Saturday. Or whenever one of you needed a good fuck. "Uhmm, can we make it Friday?" You try to negotiate. She furrows her brows. "I'm going out with Jesse on Friday, he has a date planned." You flop on the bed. "You guys are so cute." She laughs at the pout on your lips. "You'll find it. Trust me. It may even be close you never know." You scoff. "Doubt it." She then thinks for a moment. "Sunday could work?" You smile at her. "Sounds like a plan."

It was now Saturday you were just driving to the motel of this time. Ellie would always text you the address of some crappy motel. It was never the same one, but if it was it would've been months since you went. Where you lived there was a shit ton of em around. So you rarely ever had to visit them twice. You get out of your car and go up to the number she texted you. "Room 147." You speak, going to knock on it, guessing she's already there.

She opens it welcoming you in. You follow, immediately being kissed by her, she was desperate, and honestly so were you. You always can't wait to see her on your planned days, even when they aren't you can't wait to be by her. "God I missed you." You let out a giggle. "It was only 2 days ago since we last did this Ellie." You smile at her as she takes her hoodie off. "Yeah. 2 days too long." She continues to kiss you. Making you let out a soft sigh into her mouth. "I want to ruin you angel." She'd always call you that during these moments.

You were quite different from most of your friends, you would dress with whites, baby pinks, golds, just any baby color really. You weren't super girly and childish but you had this aura about you that was ethereal. Honestly angelic. Ellie fed on that. She was the complete opposite. She loved fucking you senseless, ripping you apart so to speak. She adored how soft you were. Although you weren't completely innocent. This was the most you've done with any body. You always would do stuff to yourself. But what Ellie didn't know. Was she was your first.

"Ruin me Els.. please." You needed it. You craved it. And she loved that. She loved having you completely under her control. She moves her incredibly soft lips against your neck, putting your hands in her hair gently tugging at her locks, making her groan against your skin. She leads you to the bed getting ontop of you, starting to move down your now naked body. You were panting, it was getting hotter in the room. Both of your bodies radiating heat, making both of you going mental for one another. "Gunna dick you down sweetheart." And she did, just that.

It was now after and like always she was getting dressed immediately. You were always left sitting there, feeling sorry for yourself. "I've been meeting up with some other girls that I've met recently for a quick fuck and I'm meeting one of them right now." She states as she puts her jeans back on. You felt something brew in your stomach. Was it jealousy, disgust? "Oh, I see, well have fun." She grabs her keys. "If you can't be bothered going home, I booked this room out for the night so you can just stay here if you'd like." You look at the bed sheets contemplating your whole life right now. "Right." She then leaves not uttering another word.

Room 147.

Just for the night.

Said I was heaven.

That's without saying goodbye.

It was now a Wednesday. You had been in your apartment just tidying up a bit you could not stop the thought of Ellie. It was intoxicating. And you couldn't quite tell if that was a bad or good thing. You tried to take your mind off of it, but this was all slowly getting to you. You knew what you signed up for. But at the same time it's like she's doing it on purpose. You needed your brain to just shut up for a quick second. Then you got a stupid. Stupid idea. Thinking itd help.

You shook your head. It shouldn't hurt the way it does. You're not even dating her. But oh how it did. The image of her tattooed hand rubbing up some other girls thigh. It made you want to physically puke. But you needed to stop that feeling. You were both single. You had no rule over her. Which meant neither did she. Maybe you should go out more find someone else. You just shake your head again, waiting to see how later pans out.

Later came round slow. You'd been feeling off all day. You don't know why this would make you feel better because honestly you always felt like shit afterwards. You felt used. Even if you wanted this it just felt worthless, were you wasting your time? Should you just call it quits before it's too late. What if it is too late. You were already at the said motel, sitting on the bed waiting. She then comes through the door, looking like she's in a rush. You furrow your brows at her. "Sorry stayed a bit longer." You just nod. Knowing it was one of the girls she's been doing it with alongside you. "You alright love?" She asks as she takes off her jeans. It felt wrong. This all felt so wrong.

You lie. "Yeah I'm good. Just really bored Els. Needed you." What are you doing. Why hurt yourself like this. She smirks, getting on the bed with you. "Yeah baby? How badly hm." She leans closer to your face inches away. Leaning down to kiss you, you relish in it. She begins taking your clothes off, leaving you in your specifically picked out lingerie. It was red, with lace, and silk. You'd hope that maybe this will get her to notice you as something more. See you in something as special. But oh boy were you. Wrong. Making you feel even more stupid as she takes it off, no comment, no nothing. You felt cold. And not because of the fact you were naked. You felt icy, inside and out. You felt that pukey feeling again.

And just like everytime you two fuck, she was up and about to leave again. "So uhm where are you going?" You ask, knowing the answer but still asking regardless. "One of the other girls." You nod. "Do any of them know about me?" She looks up at you, your figure still on the bed. "No. No one knows about this. And that's what we agreed on right?" You nod, looking at her. "Have fun." Your response was cold. Cold like your body.

Am I just a secret.

You love to hide.

Turn off your location when, you come over late at night.

You were currently out with Dina, doing your usual girly shopping, trying on all sorts of clothes and shoes. "Hey what do you think of these pumps?" She asks. You nod. "Suit you." You say bluntly. You don't particularly like the mood you've acquired over the last few months, but you had yourself to blame for that one. "Ok what is up your ass girl. And you are telling me this time." You sigh. "Nothing Dee I'm just not in a good place right now." You softens her look. "Please just talk to me. I'm worried about you babe." You hated that, you never ever wanted to worry. Or upset anyone, at all. "Promise to talk to you in future." You give her a smile. "You better." She winks at you.

"Right anyways, positive vibes. I saw this cute skirt that was definitely you. Wanna go try it on?" You nod smiling genuinely this time. You continued to do this, going around the stores when you got a text.

You absolutely hated yourself for getting into it. You should've stopped sooner but you just can't. And you still don't know why. You couldn't keep treating yourself like this it's time this ends.

You arrive at the motel that she mentioned. Knocking on the door, quickly getting tugged in. She's immediately kissing you, your lips, your neck. She slides her thumb over your bottom lip. You let out a breath. "Ellie-"

"Shhh. I need to fuck the shit out of you angel. Need it." You just nod, giving consent but not fully in the mood for this. You're so stupid. What is wrong with you, you're so blinded. She takes your clothes off, getting you to lay on the bed, but she thinks for a moment. "Uh uh, ass up." You look right at her. "Bu-" She flips you over, going to grope your ass, your face hiding in the pillow. She attached her strap, without any thought pushing into you rough. And hard. You let out a slight gasp.

"Fuck. I needed this." She mumbles, watching as it goes in and out of you. "Using you as I please." And for the first time in all of this mess, you felt tears, hot well needed tears. You're so thankful she couldn't see your face. But it truly hurt. Usually those words wouldn't get to you. But it's how you've been feeling. Used. Abused. In a mental way. It was hurting. Every little bit of it hurt. This feeling wasn't at all good, you just wanted it to be over. So. You faked your orgasm. And like always it ended with her leaving and not uttering a word. You were still faced down in the pillows pretending you were sleeping. Although you don't think it made much difference. You just couldn't look at her. Not with your makeup stained face. From the tears.

Check in check out.

One night stay, you're out the door.

You treat me, like a motel whore.

#elliewilliams #ellie the last of us #ellie tlou #ellie williams #ellie williams smut #ellie williams the last of us smut #ellie x fem reader #ellie x reader

[mye-chi]

‎    APHVERSE ASK GAME

01. how were you first introduced to aphmau?

02. favorite main character, side-character, ship, and villain?

03. which characters do you think deserve better? which characters do you think deserve less?

04. what are your favorite episodes/scenes?

05. favorite minor character? like barely a fraction of the fandom acknowledges them but you adore them?

06. what are your favorite and least favorite skins?

07. best dynamic in the series? like, whenever these characters are onscreen your brain just explodes?

08. alternatively, what's a dynamic you really want to see in canon?

09. personal bias aside, who do you think is the best written character and why? 

10. what is your ideal ending for the series?

11. do you have a rewrite, character reinterpretations/redesigns, or any aus? if so, is there anything you'd like to talk about or snippets you want to share? 

12. which roleplay, excluding minecraft diaries and mystreet, is your favorite? (my inner demons, mod mod world, meteora valley, etc.)

13. have your sentiments towards any characters/ships changed over time? (for instance, you didn't care for them at all but now you're obsessed with them, or you used to love them but it's faded over time.)

14. if you could choose an opening and ending theme for the series, what would it be?

15. alternatively, if you could choose a theme song/ost for your favorite character, what would it be?

16. favorite blogs, artists, and writers?

17. any headcanons you're attached to?

18. is there anything about the fandom you dislike?

19. which character would you like to cosplay as?

20. you can only change one plotline in the entire canon—what would it be and how would you alter it?

21. have you ever had a crush on any of the characters? (and do you still have one?)

22. who's the character that you most identify with and why?

23. you get to design an official aphmau game! assuming money or time wasn't an issue, what would that look like? (for example, a visual novel, TTRPG, fighting game, etc.)

24. if you could design your own line of merch, assuming money or time wasn't an issue, what would you choose?

25. aphmau got a cafe collaboration! what food/drink do you think your favorite characters would be?

26. you're tasked with writing an official side story/spin-off roleplay (like void paradox, mermaid tale, upside-down story, etc), what would that look like?

27. what's something really interesting that you wished canon decided to explore more? alternatively, what's something interesting that you wished the fandom acknowledged more?

28. if you could ask jess one question about the series and recieve a direct answer, what would it be? 

29. any general unpopular opinions?

30. freebie!

#im open to adding more to the list if anyone has any ideas :3c these were just the first ones that came to mind #i didn't want them to be specific to any rp (like if you were a mys-only fan then it'd be kinda boring to be asked who's your favorite kid) #also if you don't want to open your inbox then you're totally free to just rb with your answers!! world is your oyster!! #( 🍰 ) ⸻ frills thoughts #aphmau #aphverse #aphblr

[br4inr0tx]

headcanons for dating sheriff newlon?

Yes ofc! Since I just watched the movie I have a pretty good grasp on him already, and I’m excited to write for him! I’m from Massachusetts so idk..I kind of resonate with this movie lol.

Tw - MASSIVE THANKSGIVING 2023 MOVIE SPOILERS, manipulation, loss of loved one, cannibalism(?).

Eric Newlon…

• Sheriff Eric Newlon. The good looking, friendly and dependable guy. He loves those who are close to him, and does anything he can to help a person out. He’s honestly, a great guy.

• Though as we all know, he has an intense sense of revenge from a woman he loved very much.

• No matter how you identify he at first would use you as a coping mechanism for Amanda’s death. It might be the smallest thing, like the same name, same laugh, same eyes, same personality..something about you just reminds you of a good time back in his life, and he can’t seem to let it go.

• The guy is manipulative, and it’s easy for him to pull the strings. If you don’t already like him, he can easily make you fall in love and join his side with the snap of his fingers.

• He’s genuinely charming, down-to-earth and caring anyway. Why wouldn’t you want to be with him?

• I’d assume you’d help him get through cases and cope with his loss in return. If he REALLY likes you that might not matter, but if it’s a genuine connection just someone caring about his well being is enough.

• I think Eric would also like someone who’s willing to talk about revenge. He’s bottled his feelings for so long, so someone that is willing to listen to and discuss harsher topics he’d enjoy; mostly for his own comfort

• He showers you in compliments pretty often. Sometimes he even babies you. It’s just a habit he can’t help but indulge in!

• Eric helps through hard times too. Though, watch out if it’s an issue with another person. I can’t guarantee they’ll make it out alive, especially considering how hellbent Eric is on the whole "revenge" gig. (I need a dollar for every time I say revenge.)

• He’s a pretty creative guy as we know. I’m not just talking about kills either. Dates and gifts are very creative and thoughtful, within reason an budget of course. I’d like to think giving gifts is as simple as you’d think either. He’d be the type of boyfriend to hide it in a funny spot or specific area for you to have fun finding.

• So, I’m not sure if this is just an act in the movie to get Jess in his side, but he seems really protective. Not just because he’s a cop either. If anyone talks shit about you he’d be one of the first people to stand up for you even if you don’t need it. Golden Retriever boyfriend mentality.

• Now..considering the more John Carver side of things..

• He wouldn’t kill you, he’d just let you enjoy the show. You’re technically a part of this now.

• Though be weary. Even if he acts nice and does nice things for you, he’s EXTREMELY hostile (pun intended) in his John Carver persona. Don’t do anything funny like escaping if he chases you, he won’t hesitate to hurt you just to put you back in place. Sometimes living with the pain is more harsh then just dying, remember that.

• Even if John Carver is a bit mocking, it’s in no way fake love. He’s simply giving you a happy thanksgiving with a glass of revenge, for the both of you.

• Also, remember how I mentioned he wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone that harms you? Well, they’ll be guests at the table on the livestream! Now everyone’s together, on the day of togetherness.

• Overall, you fill in the void he was missing after Amanda’s passing. That’s not to say he doesn’t appreciate you for you, I’m saying that you keep him from going absolutely insane and killing everyone in Plymouth there and then.

#horror #thanksgiving movie #thanksgiving #Eric Newlon #john carver #John carver killer #headcanons #slasher #slasher headcanons