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cdyssey · 3 years

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Holiday

Summary: Grace and Frankie have a heart-to-heart after 7x03. | AO3 Link

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Grace makes margaritas that night to celebrate Grankiekuh, the new holiday that she and Frankie just made up to celebrate the fact that Frankie doesn’t feel the need to make up holidays to avoid her anymore.

“You just squished our names together and threw the -kuh from Hanukkah at the end,” Grace accuses, chuckling.

Light.

Playful.

Simply exuberant.

Just an hour ago, she was guzzling martinis on the couch with her ex-husband trying to figure out the quickest way to apologize to Frankie for a twenty-year-old mistake.

And now they’re planning a fake holiday together, and everything is somehow right in a world that also features her current husband sleeping in a jail cell.

“You have to admit—it has a certain ring to it,” Frankie hums determinedly. “We could be the new Shefani, the octogenarian Bennifer!”

“Well, don’t expect me to passionately hold your ass on a speedboat anytime soon,” Grace teases as she carefully measures tequila in a cylinder and then pours a little more than the recommended amount just to be safe.

“Nah,” her partner winks conspiratorially. “Just my hand across a candlelit table will do.”

And so they light a scented candle on the dining room table and drink incredibly boozy margaritas and eventually eat Del Tacos takeout that arrives half-an-hour late because the DoorDash driver couldn’t find the beach house. And Frankie laughs about Grace tearing the poor delivery kid a new one. And Grace quietly admires that Frankie still gives the twerp a twenty dollar tip anyway.

“At least he’s got a stronger constitution than Bugs Bunny,” Frankie snorts as she closes the door on yet another shell shocked human being who has encountered the wrath of Grace Hanson.

“That isn’t an impressively tall bar to surmount,” Grace replies, wrapping a fond arm around Frankie’s shoulders.

They talk, they eat, and then they talk some more when all that’s left at the bottom of the brown paper bag are tortilla chip crumbs. They talk a little bit about everything, really—the surprisingly pleasant weather these past few days, Bud’s apparent penis problem, Robert being useless at the dishes, and how delicious Del Tacos is.

And between them, talking about everything is certainly not the same as talking about nothing.

Because even if they’re only talking about the weather or the dishes or the abysmal states of their children’s genitalia, it’s because they enjoy each other’s company enough to implicitly understand that it’s nice to just sit together at the end of a long, hard day and hear each other’s voices.

Because the little things are nice sometimes.

The day-to-day minutiae and routine of living with another person.

Sharing space with them.

Being present.

Being kind.

And in experiencing another’s unadulterated kindness, becoming whole.

When Grace gets salsa on the corner of her pink mouth, Frankie reaches over and thumbs it off with a kind of casual intimacy that was hard won between them, fought for and so lovingly, so painstakingly earned.

They love each other.

They’ve surpassed the point where they constantly have to say it aloud.

I love you, Frankie says when she takes extra care to clean the dishes just the way that Grace prefers—something Robert Hanson never quite learned after forty goddamn years of marriage.

And I love you, Grace replies when she unthinkingly puts Frankie’s phone on charge because she realizes it’s on four percent, and her friend can’t fall asleep until she’s listened to meditative whale noises on YouTube for an hour.

And I love you, Frankie doesn’t say when she extends her palm to Grace and tells her that they should stargaze tonight because “Saturn’s vibin’ in the sky.”

And I love you, Grace replies when she threads their fingers together so snugly that their rings clink and replies—without sarcasm, without judgment, without weight, “Sure.”

And I love you, they tell each other as they slowly stagger their way out onto the deck, Grace assuming the right cushion and Frankie taking the left, arm in arm until the very last moment when it makes more sense for them to let go, to find their own equilibrium as the sea breeze sweeps gentle fingers through their hair.

The sky is star-freckled tonight, blushing purple and inky blue.

In the natural silence that follows, however, the moon and the stars and the supposedly vibin’ planets don’t particularly captivate Grace’s attention for very long, so she finds herself staring at Frankie, who’s staring off into space, her tall features bathed in amber porch light.

Something has shifted in her expression in the few elapsed moments since they’ve been outside, her thin brow furrowed, a frown threatening to tug at her lips where there had once been an easy smile. Her slender hands are clasped below her chin in a gesture that Grace has come to associate with introspective thoughtfulness, tinged with a kind of subtle melancholy that Frankie has always maintained that she detests and tries to consciously avoid.

“Frankie… are you—?

“We only fought for two hours this time,” Frankie interrupts softly, nodding towards the outdoor dining table where the Hanson-Bergsteins had yet another disastrous brunch together. (At least no one broke a bone or got hit with a wiffle bat this time.) “Ha, that’s a new record if I’ve ever heard of one!"

But the joke doesn’t quite reach her eyes, and Grace’s heart sinks somewhere beneath her ribcage. It throbs in her uncomfortably full stomach. She had naively assumed that three margaritas in a piece, the two of them could just skip the part where they rehash the day’s events and openly reflect upon them—but she should have known.

These emotional reckonings are Frankie’s chosen form of healing.

She’s always processed better aloud.

“Fighting with you is the most uninspired pastime I can think of doing these days,” Grace tells her truthfully. “I’d rather resolve our conflicts in five minutes than five hours, so we can catch Jeopardy! together without sitting on the couch in passive aggressive silence… I think we’ve reached a point in our friendship where we can do that… yeah?”

The question comes out a little more vulnerably than she would have liked.

Open-ended and hesitant, it requests an equally honest answer.

And while she knows that Frankie has no qualms about being emotionally honest, Grace also innately understands that she has chronically shied away from honesty about all matters pertaining to herself.

(When she initially told Nick that she wanted to redefine their relationship, she couldn’t have even told herself what the hell she meant either. She supposes she wants to have her cake and eat it, too—to be in a relationship with Nick and go home to Frankie. But maybe that means she doesn’t really love Nick, that she’s just using him for the ample entertainment he provides: the romance, the easy companionship, the sex. And maybe, at the heart of that unsettling hypothesis, she’s just as much of a stone cold bitch as everyone around her seems to think. Her husband is in jail, and she doesn’t lose any sleep about it. In fact, in her queen-sized bed in the beach house she shares with Frankie, she’s slept better than she has in all the many elapsed and miserable weeks since she said, “I do.”)

“Of course!” Frankie exclaims, her brows arching in surprise. “You say tom-ay-to, I say tom-ah-to, and then we kiss and passionately makeup. That’s exactly where we are nowadays.”

“Then why do you still look like a kicked puppy?” Grace asks shrewdly, folding her arms across her chest. “Or like Sol after his supposedly well-trained dog shit in his Birkenstocks.”

“Does being marginally tipsy on tequila count as an acceptable answer?”

“Nope.”

“Fine then and damn,” Frankie sighs, waving a defeated hand around the empty air. “But don’t hold it to me if I’m not making sense, Grace. I’m thinking rabbit trails tonight. And not, like, rabbit trails of criminally-tampered-with poop, but circles and other weird thoughts that don’t seem to be heading anywhere.”

“Hey, I'm not going anywhere—I’ve got all the time in the world to listen,” Grace replies easily, and this is love, too, without ever uttering the word.

Twenty years ago, she did everything short of making up a holiday to not spend a single moment alone in a room with Frankie Bergstein.

And now, she's done everything short of divorcing her husband to ensure that they're never apart.

Frankie's eyes briefly widen in pleasant surprise at this seemingly unexpected gesture, her parenthetically enclosed mouth curving into a gentle smile—tender and sweet.

Lord, she’s beautiful, Grace thinks to herself as Frankie mulls on her next words.

She thinks this at least twice a day and chalks it up to passive jealousy that someone can look so radiant without ever really trying, by just simply being herself.

“Mm, okay... so I was just thinking about how my thing might actually be worse than yours… and you killed my son’s beloved rabbit,” Frankie says bluntly.

And so clearly!

Like she already fully believes it.

Grace blinks rapidly, not entirely computing what she just heard.

“How the hell did you come up with that conclusion?” She asks, nonplussed. “Like you said, I killed your kid’s rabbit and lied about it for some twenty-odd years. You and Sol just played an elaborate game of hooky.”

Frankie looks torn on whether to laugh or shake her head in clear exasperation of Grace not getting it.

“But the ethical jury in the sky isn’t in on me creating a religious holiday just to avoid you,” she protests with a half-smile. “Or even worse, admitting that’s the reason after all these years. I hurt you, Grace, and I don’t wanna hand wave that away just so we can watch Jeopardy! in peace. I want to check in with you and make sure you’re really okay.”

Even after many years of slowly but surely becoming acquainted with Frankie’s uncanny sensitivity to her emotions, somehow, it’s always still a pure shock when Grace is met with the unadulterated and unconditional extent anyway. She’s still unlearning Robert’s idea of emotional care, which largely involved having a stockpile of generic gifts to placate her various moods and whims.

And frankly, she’s not the most empathetic woman of the year herself.

I hurt you, Frankie said candidly and made no attempt to defend herself, to excuse her actions.

I hurt you, she declared, and it was an I love you at the exact same time.

Grace can hardly swallow, her throat a hundred emotions thick.

“Hey now,” she eventually rasps, “don’t go all revisionist on me now. I was so fucking mean to you. We don’t play wiffle ball anymore at waffle-and-wiffle brunches because I hit you with a bat.”

“You told me there was a bee in my hair,” Frankie rubs the back of her head wistfully.

“There totally was,” she grins painfully, “but the bat was a highly unnecessary measure.”

“Grace!” Frankie groans. “Don’t get me sidetracked. I’m trying to be real with you here—I wasn’t a saint by any stretch of the imagination! I could be shitty to you, too.”

But Grace firmly shakes her head at this, her mouth pressed into a thin line, her rebuttal already locked, loaded, and innately known to be true.

“Not as often as I was to you, and rarely did you instigate because I’d already started it,” she insists, venom in her voice, raw and undeniable self-loathing. “If I’d been you dealing with me… God, maybe I’d have needed to make up a holiday, too…”

And even as she says it, the uneasiness in her stomach suddenly solidifies into sharp clarity and even crueler pain as she realizes what’s really been bothering her these past few days—a burgeoning feeling that she’s every bit as “harsh” and “vindictive” as Robert told the FBI lady she could be, even though she’s sworn she’s changed, even though she's wanted to be better.

God knows she's tried to be.

Because of Frankie.

Or maybe even for her.

The two reasons are interchangeable in her mind.

“I… I wasn’t like you, Frankie,” she eventually continues, glancing away so she doesn’t have to face the other’s expression—fearing confirmation of all her awful feelings, monstrously craving pity she’s sure she doesn't deserves. “Hell, I’m still not like you. The fact that my ideal marriage includes my husband being in jail more or less proves that.”

Grace Hanson doesn’t tip confused delivery boys thirty-percent after botched deliveries.

She doesn’t make up fantastical stories about magically disappearing bunnies for her kids so they believe in themselves.

She rarely apologizes for her mistakes.

And she makes a hell of a lot of mistakes.

“Robert called me harsh and often vindictive,” she chuckles humorlessly. “Well, I guess he’s got my number almost better than anyone.”

The ensuing silence following this proclamation stretches long and thin, like a tightrope strung precariously taut, and Grace is about to cave in to the temptation of looking at Frankie again when all of a sudden—

“Bullshit!” Frankie exclaims ferociously. “That’s a whole lot of bullshit, Grace Hanson.”

“Frankie, don’t defend—“

But she quickly reaches over and tightly curls her palm over Grace’s spiny knuckles, demanding her attention and getting it.

In so many years and throughout the span of them, she has been the only one to ever truly earn it.

Grace turns her head and finds Frankie’s oceanic eyes inches away from her face, storm-like in their intensity, piercing all over.

“Robert doesn’t get to use the present tense with you because he doesn’t live with you anymore,” Frankie insists when she knows she has Grace, when Grace can no more look away than a rabbit can actually disappear in a hat. “He doesn’t get to see you the way I do. And let's be honest here, I'm not sure he ever really has."

“And how do you see me?” Grace can barely breathe, only dimly aware that this is yet another needy question, one that can only engender a frighteningly vulnerable response.

Her heartbeat quickens.

She feels the exact striation of Frankie’s finger that is resting on the quarter of a million dollar wedding ring Nick bought for her in Vegas.

In the semi-lit darkness, Frankie’s sharply hewn cheeks feather themselves sunset pink.

Grace blindly assumes it’s the humidity.

“As someone worth discovering,” she murmurs, “and by discovering, understanding that you’re a pretty darn amazing person to love beneath all those expertly erected walls.”

Frankie leans forward then and presses a chaste kiss on Grace’s head, quick and habitual, like she’s done it a hundred times before. Her floral perfume wreathes her like a warm embrace. Beneath the perfume, she smells like acrylic paint and sea breeze and strange but rich incense—complex and earthy and full of so many vibrant notes.

Heat rises to Grace’s face.

This must be the humidity, too.

“Some people don’t get that,” Frankie continues, moving back to her own cushion again, “and that’s their loss. They’ve never had to carve a pretty statue outta stone before, have never had to work on a relationship with you over time.”

“So what you’re saying is that it takes work to love me, huh?” Grace raises a teasing eyebrow, even though she's not exactly sure that this is the appropriate time and place to make a joke. But the alternative to lightly joking is to internalize the words that Frankie just said, to truly contemplate what it means that there's at least one person in this world who'll wait for her—despite her many walls and damn them.

“It takes work to ever love anybody, really,” Frankie shrugs easily.

It’s an unsurprisingly sage take—Frankie’s always been good at emotions and relationships and all of the other important and dauntingly human stuff—but it’s also one that gets Grace to thinking about Nick again, about his kindness and his persistence and about his dedication to wanting to make things to work.

She’s beginning to get an inkling of what it might mean that she doesn’t want to meet him halfway, kind and persistent and dedicated though the man might be.

That if she had to choose again between husband and home, there would be no contest.

There would be no hesitation.

So perhaps there are two people in the world who would wait for her, but of those two, Grace knows there's only one whom she would invite to stay.

“Happy Grankiekuh, Frankie,” Grace says, leaning her head against her best friend’s shoulder. “I like discovering you, too.”

“Well, you should! I’m a fucking delight.”

“Don’t push it.”

“Ha, never.”

But in the end, Frankie intertwines their hands together, and the silence of this action is its own unmistakable and resonant reply.

I love you.

Grace Hanson is loved.

#grace and frankie #frankie bergstein #grace hanson #grace x frankie #s: grace and frankie #reginianwrites #grace and frankie spoilers #gaf spoilers

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because-of-a-friend · 4 years

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Boyfriend!Jeonghan Fluff

MASTERLIST

Hey anon! I hope you like this one! Again, I’m sorry requests are taking so long right now! I’m officially down to one full time job so hopefully I’ll have more time for writing! Jun was requested so the entire series will be done soon! Again, I hope this one is good!

Like Coups

Jeonghan doesn’t even really think about dating for the longest time

Not because he’s stressed

Or because he’s prioritizing anything over it

He just simply doesn’t see the appeal

For him there’s just no reason to put the effort into dating

Sometimes the other boys try to feel sorry for him or try to give him dating advice

And he brushes it off and is like

“No no, you don’t understand: I. Do. Not. Want. To. Date.”

And he’s really fine with it

Doesn’t get jealous when he sees the other boys and their partners

He just tells himself he’ll get there someday

And until then he’s just vibin™

Then one day he’s just lazing around the dorm

“Hyung can you put more clothes on, I have a friend coming over”

“Ughhhh DK why??? Can’t y’all hang out anywhere else?”

“No, we’re meeting here, go put clothes on”

So Jeonghan stumbles up to his room and takes his time throwing on a tshirt and sweatpants

Then he stomps back downstairs working out a plan to politely greet DK’s friend and then make an excuse to slip away so he can go to the studio and take a nap

But then he walks into the room

“Hyung, this is my friend [Y/N].”

Jeonghan stops dead in his tracks

“Oh, uh, hello, I’m Jeonghan”

“Nice to meet you!” you smile brightly at him.

And he gets this weird feeling in his chest

“Nice to meet you too”

Anyways, he decides to stick around and hang out with you and DK for awhile

And he’s just like...

Infatuated™

Later he crawls into DK’s bed

“Dokyeom, do you believe in love at first sight?”

“Are you talking about [Y/N]?”

He shyly nods in response

“Makes sense, you two would be perfect for each other, they’re a homebody just like you”

Jeonghan giggles and little and snuggles into DK

“Hyung, why are you acting like this? It’s kind of scary”

After that DK starts inviting you over more often

Kind of just to throw Jeonghan off and see his reaction

Every time Jeonghan tries to be super suave and casual, but he just looks awkward and shy as he goes “Oh, hey [Y/N], I didn’t know you were coming over”

Then one day, DK invites you over

And as soon as Jeonghan comes down to greet you

He goes “Oh, Woozi just texted that he needs my help at the studio, I have to go. Jeonghan, would you mind entertaining [Y/N]? I would hate for them to have come all this way just to turn around and go back home”

Jeonghan is glaring at DK behind your back bc he knows exactly what DK is doing

“Oh, you don’t have to! There’s a bookshop on this side of town that I like anyways, I can just hang out there!”

“I’ll come with you [Y/N], DK’s right, he was incredibly rude to invite you out here and then abandon you”

Now DK is glaring at him lol

But you and Jeonghan end up going to the bookstore together anyways

He’s really quiet at first, shyly hanging back to watch you peruse through book selections

The light in the bookstore is soft and when it hits you, you sort of glow

Jeonghan wishes he could stare at you looking like that forever

Then you start to notice that he’s quiet

So you grab his hand and pull him closer

“What do you like to read, Hannie?”

“Oh, um...”

He turns away and scratches the back of his head to try and hide his blush

“Oh, is it ok if I call you that?”

“Yeah, I um... I like it”

“Ok... Hannie”

He has to clench his fists to stop himself from squealing

You link your arms and continue on your conversation about reading

When you find a books that piques both of your interests

You sit down in a back corner of the store and read it together

You both actually get incredibly invested

I mean it’s hard not to love the way Jeonghan leans in and stares brightly up at you as you read

Oh and the book is good too

Darkness falls and the bookstore gets ready to close

So you buy it with the promise that you and Jeonghan will finish it someday

“How about Saturday? Over coffee?” he asks with a sudden surge of confidence

“I’d really like that!” you happily agree

So you meet up at this small cafe and work on finishing the book

It’s harder this time, you keep making jokes to each other and getting off track

But you’re both having a great time

“I’m going to go get a refill, do you want anything?”

“No thanks, [Y/N], I’m good right now!”

You get up to go up to the counter

Jeonghan stares around, looking for something to do until you get back

He picks up the book and starts thumbing through it

He flips through the first pages and realizes you’ve already made notes in it

“Wow, they’re fast” he chuckles to himself.

Then he starts reading your notes

“Jeonghan really liked this line”

“This part made both of us laugh really hard”

“Hannie was surprised by this part”

Jeonghan feels his heart start to pound as he reads your scribbles

“Hey Hannie, can I ask you a question?”

He jumps when you appear back at the table

He quickly sets the book down and then feels weird for acting like he got caught stealing or something

“Yeah- um, yeah [Y/N], you can ask me anything!”

“Is this a date?”

“Would you like for it to be?”

You can feel your face heating up as you nod

“Then this is our first date, [Y/N]”

Once you two are official

Jeonghan gets less shy and nervous

Honestly he prefers to take the lead in your actual relationship

Because he wants to make sure you feel comfortable and cared for

If you thought you were able to make Jeonghan nervous when you were just flirting with each other

He’s able to make you 10x more nervous in the actual relationship

He’s such a flirt

Like you’ll literally just be sitting on the couch

And you’ll look up

And he’s just staring at you and biting his lip

And you’re like ???????

Why are you doing this to me?????

As long as he knows you’re comfortable and gets consent

Most physical affection is pretty forward and intimate

It’s just one of the ways he teases you lol

Expect slow kisses down the side of your neck and when you whine, he smiles evilly innocently at you and asks what’s wrong

He knows exactly where to run his fingers softly down your skin to get goosebumps to pop up and your heart racing

And when he massages your scalp.... WHEW

But he seriously thinks you’re the cutest thing ever

So yeah he teases you

But he also loves

Pinching your cheeks

Softly cradling your face in his hands and stroking your cheeks

Cuddling up with you and making you feel safe and warm

All of your dates are super cutesy

Casual

But cutesy

Coffee shop dates

Picnics

Walks in the park

(Mostly y’all stay in)

DK comes down stairs and you two haven’t moved in hours from your position binging tv on the couch

“Yeah this is about right”

“Shut up, Dokyeom”

Both of you enjoy just casually spending time with each other

There’s no pressure for extravagant gestures or gifts

Neither of you really want that kind of relationship

Both of you are on the same page with understanding that you show your love for each other in other ways

Unfortunately he’s not great with actually talking out his feelings either

He prefers actually showing he cares

It’s one of the reasons he teases you so much

He panics when it comes to admitting how much he cares about you and how much you mean to him because going all in is scary and he doesn’t want to mess things up or say anything wrong

So he just replaces it with something surface level and avoids it for as long as possible

Sometimes it’s frustrating

And you try to understand

But it’s also scary to wonder if he feels as deeply for you as you do for him

The straw that breaks the camels back is the night you try to talk deeply to him

And he just kind of shrugs it off

So the two of you don’t really talk to each other for the rest of the night

You actually go to bed early

Later Jeonghan crawls into bed next to you

He pulls you into him and lets you bury your head in his chest

“I love you”

His confession hits you like a ton of bricks

“I know I’m awful at actually saying things and I need to work on it, and I promise I will, but until we get there, just know that through all of it, I love you”

You do get there

It takes him awhile to feel comfortable with deep conversations

But he takes the time to listen to you and work out how to respond with honesty

After being with you he feels like he really blossoms in his connections to his emotions

You inspire him to get more comfortable with being more open and honest and help him understand there’s no reason to be embarrassed about his emotions

You take care of him in a way he didn’t even realize he needed

The boys notice the positive change as well

“I told you, you two are perfect for each other”

“DK, you only said that because we both prefer hanging out at home to going out”

“But I knew, didn’t I?”

*BIG SIGH*

“Yes, DK, I suppose you did”

Your relationship is incredibly pure

It’s based completely on mutual trust and understanding

And even if some forms of communication are challenging for the two of you at first

You always strive to do your best to always be honest with each other so your relationship is strong and healthy

Jeonghan is not the type to date casually

When he dates someone, he’s in it for the long run

You don’t realize it for a long time

But when he starts dating you, he knows he’s found the one

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woulddieforperrytheplatypus · 4 years

Note

My mind was plagued with thoughts of the episode where the kids think Perry laid an egg and the comic where Perry saves a baby platypus from Doof, and that got me thinking: what if Perry was actually a dad to a baby platypus? One possibility is that Perry wouldn't want his child to become an agent at such a young age and would rather have his kid decide if they want to do it when they're older, but I believe that either way, the young platypus would inherit Perry's anthropomorphism.

oh my god I’ve never even thought about Dad!Perry before 🥺 I thought his relationship with the Flynn-Fletcher kids was wholesome but that has some real potential to become the superior relationship

obligatory “read more” to save everyone who doesn’t care how I feel about Dad!Perry

Okay first I gotta ask how we think this would happen. Is it the egg from Perry Lays An Egg that hatches, except it really is a baby platypus and Perry ends up taking it in because no one else can? Or is it Perry taking one of Doof’s platybabies home? Or is it trans!Perry laying his own egg? Or Perry has sex with another platypus (that’s such a weird thought lmao) and somehow he becomes the sole guardian of the egg? As the numero uno “Perry is an asexual demibiromantic platypus” stan, I kinda like the first or second one, but I also feel like the platybaby should be related to him? But at the same time Phineas and Ferb is all about how family don’t end in blood so maybe that’s not important?

Anyways onto Dad!Perry because holy shit I’m excited to explore this

I’m gonna start at the end of the ask by saying that I feel like anthropomorphism isn’t genetically inherited; I feel like it’s something that’s taught. It’s kinda a nature vs nurture type thing so I guess it’s more a psychological debate than anything, but if I had to channel my inner English teacher and draw evidence from “the text” (aka the show), I gotta bring up the koi from Attack of the 50 Foot Sister that were just kinda vibin in the neighbors’ pond at the beginning of the episode and then Monogram had to make them agents to avoid a lawsuit and by the end they were saving Perry’s ass? Which is relevant to literally nothing except that I think any baby animal Perry raises, regardless of whether or not they’re related to him by blood (or even by species), will probably turn the lil baby into an anthropomorphic lil platybaby just because of all the human and human-like influences

And now the elephant in the room (cue OWCA Files Agent E joke): how does OWCA react to the news? Which I guess is really a follow-up question to how OWCA finds out in the first place. I think we can all agree that Perry won’t want to tell them. It’s not like he sees the other agents as friends that he wants to invite to the baby shower. But Monogram would want to know if there’s a new player in the Flynn-Fletcher house not that he knows who lives there now; that’s Carl’s area of expertise. Would he have to tell them? Is there a protocol for that? Especially if it’s just an egg he picks up from The Tree™ in the backyard. That’s basically just getting a new pet, right? And sure, Monogram would want to know, but is Perry legally obligated to tell him is the question.

But Monogram has to find out one way or another, and given that Perry is the best of the best, Monogram is going to want his kid in the club. Perry would 100% say no, too, but I don’t know if it would be because he wants his son (yes it’s a boy platybaby no I don’t know why) to have his own say in his future; I think Perry would consider OWCA too dangerous for his son. I mean, we saw what happened when Phineas, Ferb, and Candace got mixed up in his job: they were almost eaten by a goozim and the tri-state area was almost taken over by an evil dictator. He would definitely want to keep his son out of that scene if he could. At least all the dangers at home are Phineas-and-Ferb-sponsored, and unlike OWCA, they would make sure he didn’t get hurt.

Buuuut Monogram is also a dumbass and doesn’t know how to take no for an answer, so he’d keep pushing. It has to be a well-known fact around OWCA that changing Agent P’s mind about anything is not an easy feat, so maybe when Monogram realized it was a lost cause, he’d try to go around Perry’s back? Maybe while Perry was at work, he’d head to the Flynn-Fletchers’ house (or send Carl again like Undercover Carl) to try to get the platybaby alone? He could explain what OWCA is and that he would make a perfect candidate. I doubt Perry would have told his son about OWCA in any detail yet other than the fact that he works there and that’s where he goes every day, so this would all be new and interesting. And then Perry either comes home when Monogram or Carl is talking to his son about OWCA or his son brings it up himself, and Perry is fuming because he made it very clear that he didn’t want OWCA anywhere near his family.

And now I can’t help but wonder if that would cause bigger problems between him and OWCA? What if that’s his breaking point, and he just flat-out quits because if they can’t respect his very few boundaries, he doesn’t owe them anything? And assuming the platybaby didn’t come from Doof, maybe that’s how they meet? Somehow he finds out that the reason there’s a new agent working his case is that Perry’s out on “permanent paternity leave” or something, and word gets back to Perry somehow (maybe Pinky heard it through the grapevine and told him? idk) that Doof wants to meet him? And Perry’s kinda wary buuuuut at the same time, Doof isn’t his nemesis anymore. If you take OWCA out of the equation, aren’t they just friends?

WAIT A SECOND

IMAGINE HOW NORM WOULD REACT TO SEEING A BABY PLATYPUS

I DON’T KNOW WHY

BUT NORM WOULD ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS BABY PLATYPUS

and Doof would get kinda annoyed because “He came here so I could meet the baby, you know,” and usually that’s enough to convince Norm that he’s doing something wrong, but this time Norm is just like, “But I love him?” And Doof expects Perry to back him up and he probably should but at the same time, his son looks so happy with Norm? Without OWCA’s training, he still has that platypus aspect to his personality that comes from both his animal instinct and how the Flynn-Fletchers treat him, so he’s just kinda snuggled up in Norm’s lap and Norm is just petting him?

And this is probably after he’s shown some human-like features and Doof knows that he’s about as human as Perry, so he asks, “Does he like being pet?” and Perry nods because duh of course he does and Doof just kinda looks at him for a moment and he’s like, “Do you like to be pet?” and Perry just fuckin decks him because no he does not yes he does and Doof just nods like, “Okay, fair enough.”

AND THEN VANESSA WALKS IN???

and she had absolutely no idea this was happening she’s about to go drop her stuff off in her room for the weekend and Norm’s like, “Look at my new friend!” and Vanessa thinks it’s gonna be something stupid but she walks over and sees the baby platypus and she starts freaking out because holy shit Perry is that yours? and obviously she needs to know literally everything there is to know about him because this is her nephew now and she will not take no for an answer.

And I feel like OWCA really wouldn’t like this? I mean, Perry completely severed ties with them over this platybaby, and now he’s bringing his son over to DEI at least twice a week to see his former nemesis? And idk what they would do about it because I don’t think there’s an actual protocol for this, but Monogram is Very Sensitive™ and he won’t stand for this.

Also and I’m totally just spit-balling here but what if, because the platybaby is kinda also being raised by the Doofenshmirtzes (and the Flynn-Fletchers but idk if that would make much of a difference here bc he has to pretend to be a mindless pet around them like his dad), he gets the best of the human and animal experience all in one, without all the shit Perry had to deal with from OWCA? And what if that somehow leads him to be able to speak? I don’t quite know how that would work, mostly because I don’t really know what prevents Perry from speaking, but we already went into that back in May so I’m not gonna go there again lol

okay I’m pretty sure it’s been over two hours since I started working on this ask but I can’t help it because this is literally such a cute idea fjdshflakfa I don’t even know if I’d be content reading this like I feel like this is just something I want to write. I kinda want to see how Phineas and Ferb would treat him, and if they’d treat Perry any differently now that a) he’s a dad and b) there’s a new platypus for them to love. I also want to see how Candace would handle probably falling in love with the platybaby but still getting annoyed by Perry. I really want to see what Vanessa and Norm’s relationship with the platybaby would turn into. Idk so much about the Doof/platybaby relationship though; I feel like I’d be more interested in how this affects the Doof/Perry dynamic instead. Something about Doof makes me think he wouldn’t be as easily swayed by the platybaby as everyone else, but the fact that Perry would now be a dad just like him would probably make him unreasonably happy. And that’s not even touching upon how different life would be for Perry now that he has a son, and he would obviously adore the little guy with his entire being, but, like, he has a son? How is he supposed to deal with that?

also I really should’ve given the platybaby a name to make this more readable and it’s a little too late for that but I hereby decree that his new temporary name until such time as this fic gets written is Horatio (unless y’all wanna hit me up with your platybaby name ideas because I would love to see them?) so welcome to the Dwampyverse, Horatio :,)

#not gonna lie i don't remember what Horatio was up to in Hamlet but I do remember that he was my favorite character in the play lol #look i have an ask #fic idea?#perry the platypus

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vancilocs · 3 years

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Pre annd love for colm and naomi, vastravia and qizare aaand dagon and jame?

thank u phone for lending my laptop ur mobile data

PRE

How did they first meet?

In a forest when Colm was just wandering around and Naomi happened to be wandering in the same area

Vastravia heard whispers of something.... weird in the area and went to investigate only to find a very confused kamos stuck in someone's basement

At work, introduced briefly when the two crews first met one another

What was their first impression of each other?

Fear at first but very soon they were more fascinated by another weirdo in the woods in the middle of the night

Vastravia had never seen anyone like Qizare, she was fascinated. Kiki was more confused and a little scared, but calmed down pretty quick

Completely professional, if Dagon's garish shirt didn't strike Jame as something

Did any of their friends or family want them to get together?

Naomi doesn't really have family or much friends, but she became very liked by the clan otherwise. Mahran was... suspicious of a weird girl wooing her weird son, but his happiness went ahead of that

Nobody had anything negative to say about it, it was odd but nothing wrong with it.

Kristján was happy for Dagon, yes he may have had his own divorce weighing him down and wouldn't be able to spend as much time with his best friend as before, but hey, he's happy, I'm happy.

Who felt romantic feelings first?

Naomi had had more romantic experience, Colm had issues with relationships in general

Vastravia, fell for the goop

Maybe Dagon, he's been married before, he's a bit more forward with these things

Did either of them try to resist their feelings?

Not really, they just took it really slow and got to know each other really well first

Naah

Not really but they also took it slow

If you had told one of them that the other would be their soulmate, what would they think?

Honestly? They'd believe it

No.

Yeah no

What would their lives be like if they had never met?

They'd be chilling in forests and doing their own things

Kiki would hopefully be still vibin in her homeland, enjoying dirt

Working most likely

LOVE

Who said “I love you” first?

Naomi, it's really hard for Colm to say it

Vastravia, to her own utter bafflement

Dagon by half-accident

What are their primary love languages?

Acts of service and limited physical touch

Physical touch, quality time, loving words

Quality time on their own terms, physical touch

Who uses cheesy pick-up lines?

Neither

Remy teaches them to Kiki

Neither

How often do they cuddle/engage in PDA?

If Colm doesn't need reassurance during the day, they usually lay down together at least at the end of the day

They keep it private but cuddles are frequent, Kiki can literally just wrap around Vastravia

They show no PDA but in private they do like to snuggle or lay down together and chill

Who initiates kisses?

Both can

Usually Kiki, she sneaks up on ya

Jame has to wait until Dagon is within reach, free game after that

Who’s the big and little spoon?

They switch based on which one wants to be held that time

Also switch, usually Vastravia is big spoon because she doesn't want to be entirely engulfed for the whole night. Gets sweaty. Also Kiki gets all melty when she falls asleep so it's nicer to be held than to hold

Dagon tends to be big spoon, he's way cuddlier anyways

What are their favorite things to do together?

Gardening and household chores, collecting herbs, alchemy, later on looking after the children

Snuggling, hanging out, watching TV and having some wine

Hanging out, cooking and eating dinner together, watching TV, snuggling

Who’s better at comforting the other?

Naomi is a bit better, she may not have had parent to grow up with but at least she wasn't fucked up in the head by her dad like Colm was (nor stabbed by him)

Vastravia doesn't need as much comfort as much as she needs someone to tell her to relax and help her with that, Kiki is great at that

Honestly, for the longest time if Dagon needed comfort he'd go to Kris. Nothing personal, just that Kris knows Dagon's baggage well and he just doesn't want to divulge all of it to someone else too. But later on he'll accept what comfort Jame can give too

Who’s more protective?

Both are somewhat, but Naomi more about Colm's mental state. He trusts her enough to let her wander around in the forest by herself during new moon, but she won't go if he seems anxious

Kiki more, looking after both Vastravia and their children. Travi has to look after the outer rim as well.

Neither really sees action, so there's not much reason to worry. I don't know about Jame's combat prowess, but Dagon doesn't really have any

Do they prefer verbal or physical affection?

Physical

Physical a bit more

Physical

What kind of nicknames do they call each other?

Cutesy but... still a little off. Like instead of sweetpea it'd be nightshade

Beloved, my love, darling, wife dearest, etc.

Rarely will Dagon use love or dear.

Who remembers the little things?

Naomi has a very good memory, Colm's brain is a little scrambled.

Usually Vastravia. Kiki knows everything about their children though

I think Jame. All that monster energy has melted down Dagon's concentration energy

#mahran b like if i had a piece of gold for every child of mine who found a spouse from a forest i would have two pieces of gold #cmon kaede find yourself a forest spouse #colm has a hard time telling his own mother he loves her bc he also loved his dad and he shanked him #long oc thing #dagon b like we have dated for four years but i've known kris for fifteen and he already knows all abt my divorce #*vastravia voice* behold! my wife #*points towards an oil slick*

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kineticallyanywhere · 4 years

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I'd love to hear those fusion thots :eyes: the pacific rim ones were V good

If you’ve been around this house for a hot minute you might know that fusion aus are My Entire Jam Garden so you might imagine I’ve already put some thought into this and you would imagine right. The following was brainstormed in consort with @aryashi my second brain.

The basis for this au is that fusion is possible in the forgotten realms and is just a thing people there can do. This also applies to sudden interdimensional travelers.

tl;dr I wrote basically a one-shot’s worth of words down there but in short fusion is rad but also there's an unexpected amount of drama. which is basically a summary of the podcast but replace "fusion" with "fatherhood"

(preface: fusion is not a sex metaphor, just like pacific rim. Platonic fusion is normal. Familial fusion is normal. Okay, continue.)

First inter-dad fusion: “I silence his dumb ass with a kiss” except its “I silence his dumb ass by accidentally fusing our bodies and consiousnesses into a single being w h o o p s”

I like to name fusions as something other than their romantic ship name so let’s call him… o h yeah we named all of Henry’s fusions after animals. So this guy is Hare (like Darryl). Hare is pretty stable from the outside, but their internal dialogues clash really hard so they're incredibly slow to make decisions.

Internally, Henry feels like he's crossed Darryls boundaries. They have to hold it, but he lets Darryl take the wheel and all similar mistakes are made. They make it through the thing with the Lance before unfusing. Darryl has no idea what that was and already has a lot of intimacy issues, so he’s not particularly inclined to try that again for funsies. Henry is curious, but there’s a buried part of him that’s making him deeply unsettled by the whole experience. He can barely have a straight thought about it, much less articulate the feeling, so he doesn’t try. He lets it go.

First sons fusion: When the Lord of Chaos throws back his robe, yelling “Dad! !” it’s a GIANT Lark&Sparrow. They’re like trying to fuse two rubies together, you just get a bigger ruby. This changes a bit later, when the twins start to diverge from each other vis a vis Love Wolfism, but basically the Lord of Chaos is an Oak Twin the size of their dad. But still looks 12. It probably actually takes the Love Wolf speech from Henry and their divergent reactions to get them to unfuse.

Second inter-dad fusion: That other time Henry and Darryl smooched while high on drug flowers. It was very unpleasant, they don’t talk about it, they don’t try that again for a while.

They get a book on fusions from the Library that reads almost like a birds and the bees talk and there is minor culture-shock panicking about whether fusion is Like That, but something in Henry is telling him “No. It’s not Like That.” He doesn’t really know why he’s so solid in that belief. He understands that fusion is unique and powerful and a wonderful thing, but something about doing it is just… getting under his skin.

Third inter-dad fusion: Glenn and Ron. I’m not even sure the exact context or anything. Maybe they were just vibin’. All I really know is that I imagine these two occasionally fuse for the weirdest things, like

Fourth inter-dad fusion: also Glon, fishing magic items out of a giant toilet. They needed to be taller.

Glon is… gosh, what the heck is Glon. Performative out the ass, for sure. Down for basically anything. Allowed to wear bootie shorts.

Back up a hot minute though, because first dad-son fusion: almost happens on the Tower of Terry. It comes so close. They’re in that hug, and Ron thinks maybe if they fuse, the magic won’t take TJ. Or even if it takes them both, that’s better than TJ getting taken alone. They don’t have to say “I’m sorry” or “I love you, son” out loud, but before it really takes, Terry gets ripped away. Because Willy can’t have that, can he?

Fifth inter-dad fusion: is Glon again, but the circumstances are way different because Ron just saw the mummy of his wife and Glenn is trying to help him breeze past it and it works until it doesn’t and they fall apart with Ron a crying mess.

Sixth inter-dad fusion buckle up because we’ve reached Ravenloft. Before dad-fusion 6, Henry gets caught in his dad’s claws. He feels something very familiar and rejects it with everything he has, and escapes to grab Glenn. Then he gets hit by Calm Emotions, Glenn reaches up, trying not to fall, and Henry is already super chill about everything all of a sudden, so when Glenn tries to fuse out of panic, Henry goes for it.

Gila—Henry and Glenn—can do actual bard magic. They’re like Opal, in that a single moment of disconnect is enough to snap them apart and finding that disconnect is not difficult. But when the situation is saving their kids and telling their asshole dads to get lost, that’s plenty enough connection to cast an actual magic-ass thunderwave with a guitar and maybe a bit more.

(Barry didn’t like that.)

So another fun thing about adding this factor to cannon is that this lets the dads have glimpses inside each other’s heads. So certain conversations could change a little bit. For example, in the van while they’re driving away from the Ravenloft fight and Henry’s explaining a few things.

Henry: I don't have a lot of memories from that time in my life— Glenn: Not a lot? Try "not any.” Henry: Glenn— Glenn: Dude, none of my business, but your brain was weird. Henry: Glenn. Glenn: Like did the government get to you when you showed up on earth or— Henry: Glenn what the fff—rick are you even saying just shut up Darryl: …

Darryl had noticed, too, but Glenn has other fusion experience to compare with. Henry could catch glimpses and imprints and trains of thought which ground in different points of Darryl/Glenn’s entire life, and Glenn and Ron can do that equally with each other. But a bunch of things for Henry, if you try to backtrack to where the decision comes from it just. Stops. Especially with using magic, which Glenn got to do. And Henry’s thoughts on fusion end dead hard.

(filtering all of this through Freddie’s headcanon that Glenn always figured Henry was from Faerun but was just wildly wrong about all the details is so much fun)

This is the part in the fic series where there’s a one-shot about Henry having a panic attack just outside of the camp at night, and the most he can explain is just that something about seeing his dad again set him off.

And then we get to a lighter turn for first dad-son fusion but for realsies this time: Ron Stampler nat 20s to hug his son and then also is the son. And that dad. And dads are supposed to be inside to do a ritual for a demon cow.

RJ is the sweetest dude. Also if you don’t sit on him he will wander off and do the most extreme version of the first thing that comes to his mind for a problem solution or release from boredom. And he will not tell you about it in advance, so seriously. Sit on him.

So they stand there for a second like "yes... Yes. Yes... Okay. Im... I'm the dad. But I'm the kid? But im. The dad. And all the other dads are also the kid so... Dad... Trumps kid status. And I'm the dad... Cool." and they go in to help with the demon cow.

The kids are flipping out outside.

Henry spots them and drops the cage, almost like he’s Garnet and just spotted Stevonnie. While all the other dad’s are freaking out/fawning/curious, Glenn lifts their glasses and theres four eyes and he drops the glasses and never mentions this again.

Rj: hi um. I'm a dad.... Yeah. So I'm here tooooooo frickin kill a demon cow let's do this Rj: got the good dad vibes comin out of my butt

For realsies though Terry should be outside, so they unfuse for the cow thing and the bbq but then Dennis happens.

Second dad-son fusion: Dennis: are you sure you've got this? Ron: i can do it TJ: he can DO it dad GIVE ME YOUR HAND

RJ’s an arcane trickster and it’s real cool and Dennis looks so jealous ha ha ha and also they separate after the fight and suddenly Terry’s unsettled and needs to talk to Ron for a second because “Hey Dad is Dennis not real????????”

Third dad-son fusion: is way less eventful, but who the heck can say no to more reasons to cry about the Wilsons at the tail end of the Supper Bowl arc?

Fusion is not a replacement for talking, but it is a bit smoother in communicating emotions. It doesn’t happen until the end of their talk, when Darryl’s got his arm around Grant. I don’t think either of them are super attached to this whole fusion thing, (If Grant is, it certainly wasn’t his dad he’d been thinking about trying it with. Maybe one of the other kids… “maybe Terry.”) so they may not even pick a name. Henry certainly cries at least twice as hard, but when they want to just get something to eat and maybe just hang out for a while, nobody pushes.

I think the most important part of this is that it gives Grant a kind of… emotional break. Lets him feel something nice again— like he does in the show, too, but in a way that’s a bit more stable while it lasts. Like the feeling when you’re a kid on a long car ride with your parents, one that ends in getting home late and you’ve fallen asleep and they carry you out of the car.

Good things for Grant Wilson for til forever.

Somewhere in that arc, though, Glenn approaches Henry by themselves. Glenn’s not really a feelings guy, but whatever’s going on in Henry’s head is a problem. It’s a one-up the o-dads have on them, and they can’t afford that right now.

Glenn: so you like... Really don't hardly remember being a kid? Henry: Glenn, I don't want to talk about it Glenn: I bet your dad's gonna wanna talk about it Henry: well... i don't care what he wants Glenn:... You seriously don't know how you got to earth? Henry: [exasperated] the frick are you-- I got to earth like anyone else, Glenn. You know where babies come from, right? Glenn: of course i fucking know where babies come from. A mommy and a daddy love each other very much and then their kid runs away so hard he skips dimensions Henry: wh-- wait you-- do you think I'm an alien? Glenn: obviously Henry: Glenn that's-- [sighs, rubs his face] Glenn this isn't the kind of time for your conspiracies Glenn: hey as far as I'm concerned, a man who sleeps with an axe under his pillow is a fool every night but one. and you shoot poison from your hands and shape shift into bears

Which adds nicely to the slide of heading to Oakveil next

Henry: y'know what. When we leave here, we can get my kids next. Glenn: your interdimensional kids Henry: to prove to you you're being crazy. Again. Glenn: De Nial is a river man, and we left it back on earth

And one more dialogue bite, because…

Glenn: claim your powers latched onto you from this world all you want. But that language you and your dad spoke, didn't come out of the air, it came out of the door in your head

...fusion means the other dads get to learn about the metaphorical brain door.

This brings us into the most recent arc, heading into Oakveil. He and Ron sneak in, and Beary tells Henry he’s home, and pieces start to click together. Henry’s from this world, so he understands why he’s had such a particular view on fusion and that basic cultural understanding. That it’s considered normal. And that it’s even normal for a kid’s first fusion to be with their parent. Their parent who loves them and knows them wants to see them grow.

Bear Ry’Oak is not that.

First O-dad fusion: Henry’s first fusion was with his dad.

I think the worst thing is that, when fused with his dad, Hen doesn't feel like he's not himself. one of the interesting things about the Oaks is that they're kind of all slight alterations on the same traits. Like as gross as it feels to admit, Beary is just Henry but with the condescension turned up to a billion and his high horse is basically an elephant and no self-awareness or care for how others might have different perspectives from him

But Beary is still so overwhelming to Henry that it just flattens pretty much anything that makes Henry, Henry. Specifically the parts that Barry dislikes. like Henry's anger. To directly quote Aryashi: “Beary thinks using fusion for combat is barbaric. obviously fusion is for Conflict Resolution. Fuse with Beary so he can sort out your disagreement with him!”

(and then bathe in bleach)

So Beary finds them in Oakveil and Henry starts panicking and he tries to Handle Henry like he did when Henry was a kid, fusing with him to stomp down on his feelings to cut a panic attack or outburst off at the pass. If Henry's in no place to fight back it usually works, but if Ron's there--literally pressed against Henry's back--to see the fusion coming, maybe he reaches for a fusion, too, and lets Henry's instincts choose which pull to follow, and Henry's instincts choose Ron.

Seventh inter-dad fusion: Wren is suddenly there before Beary can even start his attempt to coach Henry through breathing (his half-effort to help Henry and be able to say that he tried freakin hate him) and is sitting on the ground and the disgusted look Beary gets seeing this. (Fusing with an outsider is something he considers so beneath his son.)

Beary:... Ah. Ronald. Wren, existing, suddenly, and mostly being Ron's processing power as Henry's mental wheels try to slow down to match Ron's pace (cultivated through a childhood of dealing with Willy) rather than amp them both up: uhm... It's just Ron, actually Beary: would you mind... (there's other people around so he can't say "decontaminating") liberating my son. (as if ignoring the role his son had in choosing this fusion over his) Wren: Henry is uh... (me? Not me? Yes me, not up for this, we should go somewhere else that usually works fine, we can just leave and find the others and that'll be fine) he's good. We're good, we're gonna... (looking at the other people who look like Henry and the "not amping each other up” thing is working less and less) Wren: bye

And then they just stand up and fast-walk away

Wren is either chill af and rolling with every punch or the living equivalent of a coke bottle that you popped a whole roll of mentos in and then closed immediately. At this moment, it’s very much the coke bottle side. Beary lets them go because he knows Henry will be back, and they make it just outside of town to where the others have just shown up before they fall apart.

Ron: We found the door! Darryl: what door? Ron: the one in Henry's head! And all the dads know what he's talking about Glenn: did you open it? Henry: no Ron: a little bit Henry(probably now starting that panic attack): the anchors in there Ron: his dad came out of it Darryl: his dad???????? Henry, vulnerability, Oak: I AM FEELING VERY VULNERABLE RIGHT NOW AND I HATE IT [chorus of mumbled sorrys] Ron: oh also Oakvale is Henry's home Darryl: WHAT Glenn: Uh hey anyone gonna pick up the phone cause I FUCKIN CALLED IT Henry: That's not my home! My home is with Mercedes back on Earth! Glenn: Yeah, this is just where you were born. Henry: Glenn I swear to God-- Glenn: Dude lay off, I was agreeing with you! Home's where the heart meds are and all that jazz Darryl: Wait, you have heart meds? At home? When was the last time you took your heart meds? Glenn: Uhh... not since I came here? It's fiiiiiine. Never felt better! Ron: Not to interrupt but Henry's on the ground breathing funny. Glenn, are you sure you don't have any heart meds? Henry: being hugged by both of his sons in a simultaneous way that is not their normal simultaneous way (i.e. the Lord of Chaos way): WHY ARE MY SONS TALLER THAN ME Glenn: I'm more surprised that they're hugging you Lord of Chaos: to assert dominance! Any moment now, we will turn this hug into a suplex!

And that basically brings us to now? I want a Triple Oak Fusion (the King of Chaos) but with how the fight with Beary went I’m not sure where it’ll go. OH YEAH.

Autumn stopped fusing with Hen even when he was a kid because she couldn’t stand to see how much her son craved the approval of that evil man who stole her life away. And whether or not Henry ever fuses with anyone ever again after finding out he’s got Eldritch in him has gotta be up in the air.

And at this point I could easily be convinced that the next inter-dad fusion is Darryl and Glenn, those beautiful idiots. They could be… Denn. Glarryl? We’ll workshop it.

#jakalboy #dndads #aus #fusion aus #dungeons and daddies #me talking #my writing

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athicfa · 3 years

Text

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #112 Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #113 Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #115 Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #116 Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #117 Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #119 Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #123

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #112

guys what the fuck did I just walk into with this cover

Christmas special!

people confusing Felicia for the Black Widow??? okay then AS IF you petty crooks are important enough to get Nat’s attention

Felicia goes hero again and stops a robbery, decided to take the mink coats they were stealing for herself, but then has another change of heart and gives them to homeless ladies to warm themselves. Your honor, I love her.

Peter has lost his fucking mind apparently. Just sitting in his apartment alone on Christmas, only has two cans of *classic* coke in his fridge, props the black suit up in a chair across from him and talks to it like it’s his only friend. Dear God Peter what’s happened to you.

He’s sleeping with a teddy bear MJ gave him though that’s hella cute.

OH MY GOD THE FAN LETTERS AGAIN. “It stinks. Peter David can’t write a script-” and then the reply from the editors is basically a quasi-polite way of saying “yeah what the fuck is up David?? fix your shit” LMAO WHAT

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #113

ANYONE WHO PUTS THEIR HANDS ON AUNT MAY NEEDS TO MEET ME BEHIND THE DENNY’S AT 3:00 WEDNESDAY I’M SICK OF PEOPLE BEING MEAN TO HER

Now people are confusing Felicia for Silver Sable which is somewhat more reasonable. She was on hiatus for a year so people don’t exactly know the Black Cat is back in action to be fair.

“Stunning objects don’t just drop down from on high” to which Felicia says “sometimes we do” as she jumps from the skylight so yeah she’s back to her original chaotically bastardish self and I’m glad.

she’s kicking ass again too it’s about damn time

Aunt May is so precious. A true blessing to the world.

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #115

Felicia’s just vibin’. Living her best life. Becoming a modern day Robin Hood. We love to see it.

In all seriousness, it’s truly a great turnaround for her character. She feels closer to her original characterization before they made her an Awful Bastard out of nowhere for the sake of drama. Even if she’s just showing up in one full-page montage of her escapades per issue at this point (this time it’s her workout regimen), it’s a lot better than what they were feeding us across multiple pages. I’ll take these little character building short appearances over multi-page ooc nonsense any day.

Peter’s having a streak of Bad Luck now and she hasn’t even interacted with him again, she’s just admiring him from afar but even that’s not safe apparently. My poor baby :(

OH MY GOD

they haven’t even ran into each other but he thinks she’s somehow doing this on purpose

“oh my stars, after all this time, he’s still gorgeous” and “I’m sure he rarely thinks about me” meanwhile he thinks she’s trying to hurt him somehow and is going to Doctor Strange to see if she’s causing his bad luck or not oh no I guess I came here to hurt today

“It looks like she hexed me somehow, permanently, to get back at me. I don’t owe her anything. Do what you have to. She can look out for herself.” -Peter. Because Strange says that reversing the hex on him could affect the source of the bad luck in an unpredictable way. And Felicia’s right in the middle of her most dangerous heist to date at the moment. This is making me anxious, and what Peter said was heart-wrenching.

It completely reverses it to where FELICIA is having the bad luck now and this villain dude is now destroying her, meanwhile Peter is monologuing about how upset he is that she cursed him on purpose and that he’s pissed because she could have gotten her killed, meanwhile he’s just done that exact thing to her and on his end it’s on purpose :’)

Peter’s so upset that he asks if Strange can erase Felicia’s memories of him. Strange refuses and tells him to go talk it out with her because he’s being too “hard-hearted”.

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #116

“102 Uses for a Dead Cat” I hate that title so much sdflkj

OOF she’s got a broken nose

Oh she’s definitely concussed too. She’s half conscious mumbling about Peter while this big beefy villain dude talks about how he just broke her nose and how he’s secretly a gentle guy and blah blah whatever idk this guy is weird

Oh no that was gross. Dude tries to take advantage of her while she’s dazed from her obvious concussion, so she kicks the shit out of everyone in the room, as she should.

“Bet you weren’t expecting to sing soprano” YES FUCK EM UP FE FE

Feral Felicia is Best Felicia

Peter’s mulling over whether he should go see her or not because he thinks they’re just gonna argue. Which is fair because he just argued with Aunt May and MJ so poor dude can’t take much more of that today.

She’s patching up at home and Peter shows up. She has NO issue with acknowledging Peter AS Peter, and does so even though he came to her as Spiderman, so hopefully that means the writers have acknowledged how stupid that whole debacle was.

She’s visibly hurt from her fight, broken nose and all, and he wants to know what happened but she keeps dodging the subject. Now he’s fessing up that he had Strange reverse her bad luck powers, she connects the dots in her head that he’s the reason she got trashed by those goons, and she’s PISSED. He wants to know what happened to her so he can help her but she won’t tell him, she’s too upset.

Felicia’s neighbors hear them arguing and they’re just like “ugh HER again” lmfao

“I’ll turn up the radio. I’ll show her what suffering really is.” GOD HER NEIGHBORS KILL ME

she tells him and HE ACCUSES HER OF LYING HOLY FUCK

It’s just because she’s raging at him though and the poor dude is obviously overloaded because this is the third person who was / is close to him that he’s fought with today. So no it’s not right of him to do that but dude I get it.

He leaves. He’s gone for a bit. Felicia’s crying because everything’s going wrong in her life, and just when she thinks it can’t get any worse, Sabretooth shows up and says he’s gonna kill her. Felicia lures him closer so she can ambush him with traps and shit hidden in her aparment. But right before he gets to her, in comes Spidey to the rescue! So wait, did he hang outside her apartment this whole time, or did he leave and come back?

They’re still arguing though because Felicia doesn’t know how to say thank you and firmly believes she could have handled that herself. Honestly, I love her to death, but with her luck powers turned against her, I doubt she could.

Good Guy Peter taking Sabretooth to the hospital because he ripped his own face off

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #117

so Felicia’s about to fight Doctor Strange? Yeah, THAT’S gonna go well.

this storyline has gotten so fucking juicy I love it

no Black Cat suit this time we fight wizards in our street clothes and protective masks to guard our broken noses

she’s breaking in through the window upstairs and figuring out how to bypass the winds just like in my headcanon about her visiting Bats I feel validated skljdf

she can see his astral form and apparently that’s a big deal to Strange (I don’t understand the significance but okay I’ll take it lol)

no fighting he wants to help her but she’s fussy and leaves. She’s having a bit of an existential crisis on the way home, until she figures out that she’s under attack by Foreigner himself, since all of his henchmen and hired assassins failed to take her out. He takes her down pretty quickly. She’s in no state to fight, and he’s a tough foe anyway.

they diagrammed Felicia doing an entire taekwondo 360 spin kick and I greatly appreciate that

he spared her but in return he wants her to help take down spiderman and she agrees so it’s time to cry some more

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #119

MJ complimenting Felicia’s boobs is not what I expected but here we are

I’m not sure how I feel about Felicia becoming a villain. I still don’t think she would EVER actively seek to hurt Peter, even if she’s indebted to this dude for sparing her life and calling off his assassins. But I’m interested to see how this plays out.

Sabretooth is back and hunting Peter and Felicia hasn’t forgotten that he tried to kill her either so she’s instantly out to throw hands with this dude, and she knows Peter’s watching it happen too. So is she actually going to try and hurt Peter later or...?

LMAO POOR SABRETOOTH JUST GOT HIS FACE FIXED AND FIRST THING SHE DID WAS RIP IT UP AGAIN SHE’S BRUTAL

She’s saving his life but he can’t sit by and watch her almost get killed for him AGAIN so of course Peter’s rushing to change into his suit and go help her.

SHE’S GONE FERAL AGAIN. LITERALLY. SHE SCREAMED AND BASHED HIS SKULL INTO THE PAVEMENT. WHAT A LADY.

He fucked up her leg but that’s nothing compared to what she just did to his face so fair game. Peter got there in time to see the last of it. She sees him and winks. That’s it omfg.

She’s hooking up with the foreigner now???? Press X to Doubt.

No but seriously everything feels in character until you realize it’s a ruse to lure Peter in to a sense of security around her again which is so weird. I feel like we’re veering off into ooc territory again which is sad because I was liking everything in this storyline up until this point.

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 1 #123

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENINGGGGGGGGGGGG

First page is Blaze saying that Foreigner hired him to take out both Peter AND Felicia???? But I thought Felicia was on Foreigner’s side now???? And we open with Peter saving unconscious Felicia from a fire?????? I AM CONFUSION

Felicia tearing Keating to shreds for trashing Peter which is great

I hate this suit and I hate this hair it can stay in the trash

her apartment blew up time to hang out with Peter

“We can’t sneak into my apartment while these girls are out here sunbathing” says Peter so Felicia proceeds to scream at the girls and scare them away. Peak Chaotic Bastard Felicia right now.

they’re making Felicia and MJ take digs at each other again because we can’t have nice things

she’s brought Peter to Foreigner now? Willingly? Unintentionally? IDK what’s happening

IS SHE OR IS SHE NOT WORKING WITH FOREIGNER WHAT IS HAPPENING

THEY’RE SHOOTING AT HER TOO IS THIS AN ELABORATE PLOY BECAUSE IT SEEMS SINCERE WHAT IS HAPPENINGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

oh she’s got her claws now that’s neat

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING

okay I’m done for now this is getting too contrived

#[comic commentary]#it started so well #got super juicy #and then completely derailed #sad because I was really enjoying the new storyline with Peter and Felicia accidentally ruining everything for each other #oh well at least they've given me a ton of Feral Bastard Felicia Hardy moments

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onthevirgeofdestruction · 3 years

Text

35 Q’s for Fanfic Writers

From this post

I’m having a shitty, rude alter-y, crap night so I’m just going to answer all of these to distract myself and focus and to not bother anybody just making my own post and putting it under the cut btw, notice to anyone not aware: since I’m moving I won’t likely be updating anything until I’m done doing so.

1. From one to five stars, how would you rate your writing? (No downplaying yourself!) 3/5? Could use more editing and description and can be weirdly paced.

2. Why do you write fanfiction? Because it’s better than focusing on pain 24/7.

3. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works? I don’t seem to have a specific narrative voice that people recognize but I’m pretty proud of mostly organic dialogue.

4. Are there any writers that inspire you? as a rule i never look up to anybody for inspiration but there’s some stuff in my ao3 bookmarks I fawn over.

5. What’s the fic you’re most proud of? Right now, none of them. It changes normally, anyway. If get too proud then I’d get my ass kicked by RSD if someone didn’t like it so it’s safer this way

6. What element of writing do you find comes easily? Dialogue.

7. What element of writing do you struggle with most? Organic description, poetic language kind of stuff. I can paint a scene but I’m not so great with bring out out a feeling with description alone.

8. Which character(s) do you find easiest to write? Janus and Virgil are probably tied. They both have things I struggle with but I don’t have to go back and do much adjusting of language and tone with them. Though admittedly my Virgil is signifigantly more foul-mouthed than canon and I tend to prefer pre-AA feral asshole Virgil.

9. Which character(s) do you find most difficult to write? Patton. I write him the least, so people can probably tell. I love Patton, I really do, but it’s so hard to keep away from fanon Patton.

10. What’s your favorite genre to write for? Angst w/ H/C obviously. Or if you’re talking about regular book genres, Fantasy. I fucking love fantasy world building.

11. Who or what do you find yourself writing about most? Trauma. I blame Daeram. As if Ayri isn’t a giant Angst Demon.

12. Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about. Slopes. I’m really into it. I’ve got three one shots running right now. Patrons can read the first part of the unnamed cat remus one, there’s also a coffeeshop au tropey nonsense one like eglantine & lycoris, but Slopes is addiction angst. Mmmmm. Virgil is addicted to coke and alcohol and will listening to his friends even be in time? Who knows, especially not me, but there’s already over 30k.

13. First fandom you ever wrote for? InuYasha. Or was it Harry Potter? Or shit, The Blue Sword? Fuck, I’ve been writing for a long time, I really have no idea.

14. What’s your favorite fandom to write for? Sanders Sides. The characters are the perfect dynamic for writing since they exist in balance of each other and the popular, easy to project on archetypes featured are incredibly fun to do basically any scenario with.

15. What’s the weirdest fandom you’ve ever written for? Weird storywise? Kingdom Hearts? I can’t even follow the plot anymore. Weird Fandomwise? Sanders Sides. Its simultainiously the fluffiest and angstiest nonsense at the same time.

16. Any guilty pleasure trope(s)? Vampires. Gay ones. Gay Vampires. I also love calm tol and angy smol.

17. A trope you’ll never, ever write for. Any tropes that normalize incredibly toxic behaviour or tropes that are inherantly ableist, but I can’t think of any.

18. Wildest fic you’ve ever written? Incorrigible continues to be complete nonsense.

19. Do you prefer canon-compliant, AUs, or something in-between? AUs. I mean closest I even have is canon-divergence other than a single short.

20. Gen fic or shippy stuff? I like it when there is gay nonsense along with a plot that is treated as more important than the relationship the most. But I like both. There’s more shippy stuff in tss so i read more shipping action by default.

21. Favorite pairing to write for? (platonic or romantic!) Anxceit/Sleepxiety, but in general, give me darksides or give me death/j

22. Do you listen to anything while you write? Almost everything I write has a special playlist I listen to to help me write it, but otherwise I listen to my Nyan playlist, an alter is picking the tunes, or a voidfam playlist. I never have music off. When my internet is down I just listen to the songs I own or Anxiety’s theme on loop.

23. Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas? I’m fine with all of them. I love working with prompts but I tend to deviate. And I’ve never done a challenge since I can’t do deadlines and bad things happen bingo never sent me a card and I applied three times.

24. One-shots or multi-chaptered works? I am generally multi-chaptered stuff, but I’ve been working on a few one-shots lately that are much longer than most one shots.

25. Have you ever daydreamed about side adventures/spin-offs from your fic? Tell us about them! I was originally thinking of doing some little 13-year-old Dreaming!Roman (y’know, the one with a job) shorts but it turns out I just had an alter of that little bastard and that’s why I inexplicably know more about him then I ever even considered. I still might do them after Dreaming is done. But that’s paced so slowly who knows when that might happen. Otherwise I put stuff in my notes and just do shorts of it if I’m like “oh you know what’s cool???” but since I can’t daydream maybe this question doesn’t apply to me.

26. Is there anything you’ve wanted to write, but you’ve been too scared to try? I want to do more autism stuff, and I’ve had it demanded a few times, but I’m scared of being that explict about it for some reason. Possibly because I might be, possibly because I’m scared of doing it wrong even though I’ve accidentally coded multiple characters autistic. I’m scared of explictly tagging them as such, too.

27. What’s the nicest comment you’ve ever received? That I can remember off the top of my head? I’m going with one from @a-genz-with-trauma-and-kins. It really helped me out and was just so kind and literally the best christmas gift I got in 2020.

28. How well do you handle criticism when it comes to your writing? I can handle it alright but Daeram is a little fucking pissbaby about it. Constructive criticism helps people get better, so I appreciate it. I can’t handle critism that is incomplete, though. “i just don’t get it” or “I don’t know I don’t like it” kind of things. If I can’t understand the why to fix it then things get out of control. And then I spiral and RSD for like four days minimum. If it came from an anon or a troll, too, It might not bother me for as long. Things that are just like “this is shit and you should feel bad” just make me laugh. Couldn’t even bother to read it long enough to insult me proper? I don’t care.

29. Have you ever gone outside of your comfort zone for a fic? How did it turn out? I have a few times. Mostly in shorts and prompts, I think. I think they turned out okay. They’re not particularly inspired or anything.

30. Tooth-rotting fluff or merciless angst? Depends on my mood. Am I triggered? give me the fluff. Am I vibin? Angst.

31. Do you have any OCs? Tell us about them! Fuck, fam, no, I can’t, I have so many. I have multiple original stories and some of them have very large casts and like holy fuck. Or do you mean in Sanders Sides fandom? Um, Morgan and Thorn in PD. The lesbian and her himbo dynamic. I love them. They’re dorks. Morgan is strong person with sharp tongue and soft romantic heart and Thorn is just so kind and so dumb and so exciteable he’s like a puppy. They were just filler characters and I got attached to them. Felton even gets redemption for being an ass later in PD, like oof i never intended to include so much OC content, especially for names I just picked randomly.

32. Summarize a random fic of yours in 10 words or less. nope I’m doing all of them because these are fun plea for my new self: 2 gay vampires, 4 humans, 1 braincell dreaming while I wake: trauma child needs therapy and so do you break: big oof, oh dragons, oh why, go virgil go rebuild: virgil is so not okay there’s more virgil to deal painful death: gay teens drink themselves into a new religion stargazing: whoops we didn’t realize people actually cared whole castle: everyone will throw down for kid!patton, even you incorrigible: found family with a shot of psychological horror and crack dangerous instincts: wholesome crime syndacite action slopes: addict gets mugged and thinks that’s just fine with him conflagration: logan avoids everything ever like a champ cat!remus: bored fae shifts gay pining from one person to another caffeine cyptids: caffinated gay panic goes faster than regular gay panic eglantine & lycoris: more tropes than you can toss a shoe at storytime: overpowered virgil also overreacts literally always

33. Is there anything you wish your audience knew about your writing or writing process? an alter and I write together and I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen, what I’m writing about, or even what year it is. I often don’t even remember what I wrote. There’s no outline. I have an idea and I pick things at random for it. There’s just notes and an evil gleam in a demon’s eye. The only reason I know more than readers is because I take a long time to edit and some of these stories have fucking alters up in my head who can tell me things. Daeram tells me nothing. The writing demon supposedly has all this knowledge but I have absolutely no clue because he does not talk to me, he just fronts and slams out 9k in a few hours or we cofront to write and I’m like “oh no she didn’t” while typing

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of. i’m fond of the entire painful death series and I tried to find something I really liked without spoilers in stargazing and I couldn’t so here’s a random thing from incorrigble: “So, what do you do with your friends?” Patton continued on with a megawatt smile. “Grand larceny,” Virgil deadpanned and glared at Patton, who was taken aback. Remy and Andy just broke out laughing while Virgil tentatively sipped his still-too-hot-cocoa.

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want! slopes my dudes slopes i have learned so much about cocaine! like wow! I thought for a minute it was going to end with MCD around 30k but it swtiched from whump to hurt/comfort and I still don’t know if it’s going to be MCD but look at that funky little coke/alcohol addict go, it’s a medical wonder he’s alive! It’s not like there’s what seems to be a little talked about interaction between alcohol and cocaine that causes a toxic chemical to build up in the liver which can result in liver failure and sudden death at basically any moment! Which is part of why it may result in MCD but this time no ghosts! maybe it’ll be h/c with whump elements or maybe it’ll be whump with h/c elements we can’t know for sure

#ayri writes #tw drug mention

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albatris · 4 years

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Hi hello I hope you're doing well and getting read to sn00ze soon, STS! Saturday! Yes! Cause you're an artist and a writer, I was wondering how much the two mediums bleed into each other? Does drawing something out help you visualise it better, or do they not really interact much at all?

hello hi hey there and happy storyteller saturday :D thank you for the question!! I hope ur having a cool day B)

and even though you sent this yesterday you telling me to sn00ze is equally applicable today as it is almost every day of the week so................ yep, I’ll be sure to get onto that at some point. you’re probably going to make a >:c face at me for answering this at 3:06am

anyway! this is an interesting question! and a good one! unfortunately it may not have a very interesting answer?

my initial response was gonna be that they don’t really bleed into each other at all, but then........ nah, they kinda do

(and then about halfway through typing this draft I was like But What About Undertow, and my response became “oh yeah they definitely do”, but I’ll get to that in a bit)

but yeah! I think my writing definitely influences my art! both in the sense that I tend to draw mostly story stuff, ‘cause I like my stories and drawing is fun, but also in terms of like....... inspiration! usually I have a pretty good image of stuff in my head already while I’m writing, n sometimes this image will make me go “hell yeah I vibe with this I wanna draw it”, but the art itself generally turns out nothing like what I envision and usually takes a life of its own ‘cause I’ll just end up drawing whatever looks cool hahahaha

so I get some neat experiments and doodles and weirdness in various art pieces that definitely stemmed from story daydreams, but probably aren’t super related to the story itself in the end :P y’all don’t see much of this stuff ‘cause I mostly just post character drawings lmao

(this is bc I’m most confident with character drawings, and I will fistfight Drawing Backgrounds And Scenes in a wendy’s parking lot any day of the week)

but kinda hopping back up for a sec, one example that IS related to the story is like

drawings I’ve done that are centred in ATDAO’s unreality aren’t actually a super good representation of what the unreality is actually like? or I mean. they could be. they can be! but the drawings are centred around very literal concrete representations of glitchy weirdness

whereas in the story itself (at least to start with) there’s much more a focus on the general looming Hey Something Is Horribly Wrong vibes and, like, the unravelling and bleeding together of senses, the way the narration changes (ie the way your own thought processes slowly start becoming completely foreign to you), n just........ glitchy weirdness, but not glitchy weirdness that you can visually represent, glitchy weirdness that is canonically in the category “you can experience this and have no way to process it because a human mind is not equipped to translate it and your senses have no way of taking it in”

n then I bring the body horror in full force but that’s neither here nor there

existential terror and uncanny valley vibes r hard to draw, y’know? so the drawings mostly just wind up as me having fun with the aesthetic hahaha

but yeah, art stuff stems from story daydreams, it’s very rare that story stuff will stem from art daydreams

character drawings were something I started doing just ‘cause I liked my characters and I was vibin, but they ended up being the one exception in that they DO tend to actively inspire the decisions I make in the story itself, unlike my other art

written descriptions of people are a weak point for me, generally I’ll kinda know at least the key aspects of what folks look like, but the descriptions I come up with on page are always frustratingly vague............. n drawing them out helps me fill in the blanks and give my descriptions a bit more life and personality IMO, ‘cause I mean

there’s little things about people’s appearances that are pretty personal, little quirks or habits they have, etc, that I wouldn’t think of in writing, whereas in art they just crop up naturally

and also sometimes I’ll write a description of a character or have an image of them in my head and I’ll be like Yeah This Is Them but then when I draw them my hands will just make their own decisions

and whatever the hands create is Law and Official Canon as far as I’m concerned, I will always trust the hands over my initial plans when it comes to characters, and they have not failed me so far

and now that I’ve gone on a whole spiel about how (outside of helping me pin down character details) creating art isn’t generally something that inspires a lot of story development or daydreams, it’s time for me to completely contradict that because, like I said earlier: Undertow

this is a WIP that came into existence purely from art inspiration! basically I came up with Aster’s design on the fly because someone was like “it’s genderqueer pride day” and I was like Oh Sick Time To Make A New Genderqueer OC

most of the characters in Undertow were drawn and designed long before I had any clue who they were or what their deal was. the entire premise of Aster as a character was born within like two hours from one silly doodle. then I was like “BUT WHAT IF SHE HAD FRIENDS” so I drew some friends, who ended up being Kit and Meg. n their relationships with each other and the kind of story in which they find themselves all just kind of spiralled out from a series of silly doodles and took on a life of their own :P

I think it’s a different scenario since Undertow exists purely as a vessel for shenanigans and self-indulgent nonsense, so I was feeling a lot less pressure to be grounded and serious, I could just throw things around like “amnesiac clairvoyant delivery driver with an illegal magic crime truck” and “necromancer who doesn’t believe in magic who wants to reanimate a t-rex to honour his dead wife” to see what stuck and I had no need to be like “hm, but is that Realistic, though?”

unrestrained summer fun!

it’s easier for me to let myself daydream in relation to art when there’s none of this pressure, which I think is what separates Undertow from my other projects c:

plus Undertow is the one WIP of mine that I’ve always pictured in a kind of episodic comic format, though I lack the skill set or the patience to pull this off hahaha

as such, most of my development for it comes in the form of messing around with the artistic side of things!! as it should be, I think

anyway that’s enough from me I think, thanks for reading, have a fantastic day, hope you see some cool birds (if you do please tell me about them)

#tracle0 #sts #storyteller saturday #long post

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morphituu · 5 years

Text

Milagro

Chapter 10: “Fight or Flight”

Ch: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9

Nick was ready to rip the electronic payphone from the ground when the line started ringing, so he angrily exhaled, looking over his shoulder. It had taken a great deal of patience and an even greater summoning of what little spanish he could recall to navigate the prompts before even connecting the call, all of which left him ready to rip something to pieces.

He kept thinking Callie had caught onto his curious questions from that morning after eyeing him curiously and vaguely answering his numerous inquiries. If she caught him like this, she’d likely castrate him-

The line clicked.

“Hello?”

“Matuk?” Nick cautiously regarded.

There was hesitation. “Munguz?”

“Hey kid,”

“What’s with the new number?” Matuk queeried, and Nick could hear the chaos of his younger siblings in the background. Of course I catch him in the middle of shit.

“It’s a long story,” he chose to convey in lieu of fitting 2 chaotic days into one breath. “Listen, I need a favor. A big one,”

“Oookay,” Matuk sounded apprehensive.

“Can you come get Callie from the border? We uh… we got mixed up in some weird shit, and I can’t get into details, but she can’t be here. And she needs to be hidden,” Nick leaned against the phone box’s side, his index and thumb rubbing over his tired eyes.

“What border?”

“Mexico,” Nick cringed.

He heard the beginnings of words from the other end, but Matuk faltered before asking, “Hidden? Like hidden hidden?”

“No, like- she can’t be out in public,”

“What did you two do-” Mauk questioned skeptically.

“I promise I’ll tell you eventually but right now I just need to know if you can come get her. She cannot be here in the condition she’s in,” Nick barked out, impatience lining his tone.

“I mean, yeah, yeah I can come get her, but I don’t think she’s gonna stay put for too long, dude,” Matuk sighed, recalling the numerous times he’d been set to work keeping an eye on her after a pregnancy scare early on in her first trimester. Matuk quickly came to learn that when Callie felt crowded, her attitude would grow faster than her irritation, often spitting sour remarks in hopes of backing people off. “Is she gonna come willingly?”

When there was silence, Matuk sputtered low in Orkish.

“I’m not giving her the choice to stay,”

“How am I gonna get her to stay then?” the younger Orc groaned, pulling the phone away to silence his rambunctious siblings.

“Handcuff her to something if you have to, but Matuk, don’t let her out of your sight. She can’t be left alone,”

The noisiness from Matuk’s end faded, and Nick could hear the faint closing of a door. “Do I need to tell Dorghu about this?”

Nick closed his eyes. That thought had crept to the forefront of his mind the night prior as he laid awake, restless and staring at their door or window, but didn’t know how involving the Fogteeth would affect their situation.

“No. Not yet, at least,” Nick decided. It was mostly because he didn’t deem it fit to have any more bodies involved, but Nick also feared for his own life and the ones around him. Dorghu had shot him once over a wand, who’s to say it wouldn’t happen again? “I just need you to come get her,”

“Okay. It’s gonna take a few hours,” Matuk agreed.

“Maybe that’ll be enough time for Callie to burn out after I tell her,” he groaned, pulling his hand down his face.

“Have fun with that. Be there soon,” Matuk was already pulling his boots on when he wiggled the phone back into his palm.

“Thanks.” He mumbled before the line went dead, and he placed the phone back onto its holder. Now that he was faced with having to somehow convince Callie to leave without him- after their discussion from the night before, no less- he didn’t know if he had it in his heart to remain resilient when telling her. He already knew there’d be panic, and sadness, even more betrayal.

But how could he watch her leave knowing there might not be another chance to see her? What if this went on and on, and he wasn’t there to see the birth of his son?

Nick could physically feel his heart clench.

What if there was never the time to see her smiling up at him with Leo in her arms?

That alone was almost enough to leave him breathless, but he couldn’t keep thinking like that. Even if he was never able to hold Leo in his arms or look into Callie’s eyes again, then at least they’d have each other. There was no way he could go on bearing the thought alone that they could be ripped from his grasp at any moment.

Nick’s hands ran over his smooth scalp to the back of his neck as he walked, his feet heavy with dread and heart conflicted.

The desire to snap his eyes open and it all just be a fucking nightmare was crushing.

The selfish desire to keep her near him was just as powerful.

Nick stopped beside a curb, hunkering down to squat, holding his face. Where the decision had been obvious that morning, it was not apparent to Nick until that instant just how much willpower this was going to suck out of him.

“Nick?”

He looked up enough to catch Ward walking towards him with a few bags of groceries at his side, but Nick’s head fell back into his hands.

“What’s up?” Daryl asked, the Orcs dismay obvious once he’d stood. “What happened?”

“Nothing. I got ahold of him,” Nick explained. Daryl understood; Nick had filled him in on his plan while they walked to the market for food to take along with them on their journey. “I just-” Nick exhaled, a hand on his chest, turning away. “I didn’t think-”

“Yo, okay, sit down,” Ward turned him back around, ushering him towards the high curb. “Sit your big ass down, c’mon,” he pushed against his wide shoulders until the Orc sat, struggling to slow his ragged breathing.

“Deep breaths,” Ward instructed calmly, leaving a comforting hand upon his back. He waited with patience as his normally composed friend fought to conquer an episode he’d likely experienced little of his entire life, judging by the way he glanced around them in panic, as if something was causing the assault his mind was the direct cause of.

“First panic attack?” Daryl asked, but Nick was still trembling, counting backwards in his head through the rampaging thoughts that together made a swirling storm of anguish. “Get ready for those when you’re a dad,”

“That’s it, though. What if I don’t get that chance?” Nick choked out, but with his face hidden in his hands, Ward couldn’t see the rampant emotions twisting his face. “All this time it took to get where we are and now I don’t even know if I’ll get to see what my son looks like,”

Daryl nodded, looking out to the street packed with ongoing life, oblivious to their turmoil or the danger that could be lurking around any given corner. He placed the groceries between his feet, leaning forward onto his knees as he looked at the eggs in the bag. It could’ve been any morning he was off buying food for his own wife and daughter.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever see Sophia again,” Daryl said calmly, hooking Nick’s attention enough that he unburied his face from his palms. “At first I worried about Kandomere harassin’ them, but now I can’t stop thinking that I should’ve just gone to dinner with them. We… we’ve been fighting lately. Shit stirs up sometimes, you know? We have months where we vibin’ and everything is perfect, and then we have weeks where we can barely look at each other and fight over stupid, dumb shit. Now I can’t stop thinking…” Ward paused to motion with his hands, as if trying to pull the words from himself. “I can’t stop thinking that she must think I left. That I gave up,”

Nick sat straighter. “You wouldn’t do that,”

“I wouldn’t, but she came home to an empty house after 2 weeks of endless fighting. I keep thinking my little girl must feel abandoned, and I can’t do anything to comfort her this far away,” Daryl’s tone was bleak, much like the absence in his eyes as he stared before himself. “But that’s why I need to get back, that’s my drive,”

Nick’s eyes met his. “That’s why you need to make it back. Forget that Callie would tear you to pieces if you go and get your ass killed,” he nudged Nick, provoking the smallest grin from him. “You owe it to your kid. He can’t go growin’ up without his dad. He’s half a you, and he’s gonna need you. He’ll grow up with questions even Callie can’t answer which is why you need to fight with all you got,”

“What if I still don’t make it back?” Nick wavered, but Daryl shoved him that time.

“Don’t even think about that. Make it home. That boy’s gonna have your blood and last name, but he still needs his father,”

Nick nodded despite still feeling whichever road he decided to venture down would inevitably bring heartache, but with both ends having no known outcome, all he could do was choose one and get walking.

“Cal’s gonna hate me,” he muttered.

“Let her. But in the end, she’s just gon’ be happy to have y’alls life back how it’s supposed to be,”

Daryl was right. “Either make you or break you,” Nick mumbled, and now his partner nodded avidly. “We should head back,”

“Y’alright?” Daryl held his shoulder before he could rise, wary of his stability, but Nick waved him off.

“Better than I’ll be in ten minutes.” Nick grumbled.

The men walked mostly in silence the small trek back to the house, constantly on alert but otherwise blending well into the life around them. TJ was full of tourists as it is, so they looked like any other foreigner.

They arrived at the house sooner than Nick had anticipated, still not knowing how he was going to present this, or more so, how he was going to get her to the border kicking and screaming, because he knew that was the only way she was going.

Tikka and Fero were bickering at the far end of the inner yard once the officers had walked through the heavy door, but neither cared to even try stopping them. Both would agree that they didn’t want anymore of their issues than had already been dropped in their laps, so they moved inside. By the looks of it at passing glance, it was a particularly sour topic. Fero’s head shook with restraint just as Tikka’s hands motioned here and there.

Don’t want any of that.

Nick didn’t find Callie until he peeked into the room they’d been using, and his decision was solidified as soon as he laid eyes on her gripping the bed frame with one hand and other other holding her stomach, an eye pinched shut in discomfort.

More Braxton Hicks.

“Hey,” she ground out.

“Bad one?” he asked, but she disagreed.

“He kicked right into one,” she motioned around her lower stomach, exhaling slowly when it passed. “If I sit down he protests,” Callie labored, swaying side to side. He almost forgot his motive when the desire to run his hands over her moving belly rushed him, but a quick glance at the window like he’d done countless times the night before brought it back.

Nick swallowed, smoothing his shirt down his front.

“I need to talk to you,” he spoke in such a way that sent alarming chills down her spine immediately, so she turned to him, waiting with big eyes full of uncertainty.

“I called Matuk,”

The shift of emotions on her face was immediate, a stiff step back putting distance between them that Nick immediately wanted to close. “No,”

“He said-”

“No,” she interrupted.

“He’d come get you at the border,”

“You swore-” she jabbed her finger towards him as he approached, stepping from his reach. “You promised-”

“I promised I’d keep you two safe,” Nick pleaded, still reaching.

“How are we safe if we’re not with you?” she boomed.

“You can’t be here! You need to be home-”

“There’s no home to go to, Nick! How do you expect me to go and just wait for you? Not knowing what’s going on?” she demanded, pushing his hands away.

His brows arched into a deeper glare, and he mustered every brittle fiber of courage he had. “You’re going home. You have no say this time,”

Now she walked up on him, glaring just as heatedly as he did down at her. “You can’t make me,” was all she hissed before turning heel, heading towards the door.

“What’ll you do if we’re attacked and you go into labor?”

She stopped at the door to shoot him an unamused look. “Seriously?”

Nick crossed the room in a few wide steps, meeting her steadfast form. “What will you do?”

“Push him out. I can handle it,” she jerked her chin in his direction, on the verge of growling at him as he continued to provoke her.

“You’re going to walk around with Leo in your arms after that? On the run, no doctors? A premature baby?”

Now she faltered, picturing a too small bundle of love in her arms, screaming at the top of his lungs… or maybe gasping for air. “I’ll protect him,” she dithered.

“He’s still too small, he needs doctors,”

“I’ll find one,” she blurted out before comprehending how ridiculous that was, and Nick’s twisted expression showed it.

“He’ll cry. They’ll follow his screams and fire at us- at him,” Nick forced out, his own crude words sinking his heart. When her eyes glossed over and her bottom lip quivered, he struggled to keep his composure. “You’ll be putting him in danger,”

Her eyes narrowed, stepping closer, leaning up on her tip-toes. “Don’t you dare put that on me. This, all of this is your fault,” she ground out, shoving against his chest, but Nick’s solid form was unmoving as he grabbed her wrist.

“And now I’m fixing it,”

She tried to yank her arm back, but his grip was mighty, even as she threw some of her weight into it.

“Let me go!” she hollered, but he snatched her other arm as she thrashed and pushed against him. “Nick let me go-”

“You have to leave! Don’t do this, Callie! If it were you-” he blocked a hit, “If it were you in my shoes would you let me stay with Leo?” he yelled over her protests, catching her shoulders. “Would you let that happen?”

Nick wanted to cry. He wanted to fall apart and hold her as she looked up at him with eyes glazed over in fear, and hurt, and… betrayal. Surely he didn’t think of this as that, but that obviously didn’t stop it from crawling it’s way up her frame to take hold of her heart.

“If there’s no other way I can stop this, then I’m not going to drag you two down with me. I need you two safe and alive,” Nick implored.

“I can’t-” she choked, but he shook his head. “Nick I can’t! I can’t do this without you!”

“I’ll be back, I don’t know when but I’ll always come back to you,”

“How can you guarantee that? We could die at any moment- any turn we take, that’s why you’re sending me away! How do you know you’ll come home?” she demanded, following his head when the questions left him searching blindly.

It was true. There was no guarantee he’d come home, but he couldn’t send her off with that.

“What if you don’t come back?”

The desperation in her eyes was painful, the fear shaking her voice. Nick held her sides, his thumbs stroking as he looked down at her stomach.

His face tightened; he almost couldn’t bare to send her away. “Then you’ll always have part of me with you.” But she was already weeping, her fingers curling into his shirt before he could stop tears springing forth to his own eyes.

“No,” she shoved away from him suddenly, hastily wiping her tears from her cheeks and receding into pure fury. “I’m not fucking leaving. I’m not going to leave and sit and stare out the window waiting for you to come home!” she screamed, swiping his hands away.

“Callie-”

“No! I’m not going to let you do this-”

The explosion knocked them both off their feet, and thankfully Callie flung forward right into his arms before they hit the floor.

It left their ears ringing and dust hovering over them. Nick kept her down until enough cleared that he could see the door she’d been standing before had splintered open, some of the wall crumbling and cracked, but it was nothing compared to the completely obliterated hallway that was now an entrance to the outside.

“Are you okay?” he asked quickly, finally moving from over her to help her stand. She nodded, coughing past the dust and smoke while Nick patted her down.

Another resonating explosion that trembled through the ground beneath their feet prompted him to shield her from the door and wall crumbling before him as the chaos ensued outside. Distant, slurred shouts from both Tikka and Fero could be heard, but upon daring a glance down the hall, only more damage befell him.

Callie looked around his shoulder, her heart plummeting when she laid eyes on the home that was the foundation of her greatest childhood memories, now cracked apart, reduced to it’s bones.

“Nick!”

The couple flinched at the voice beside them, but they moved aside just as Ward ran into their room from his own destroyed one, blood carving a path down his face.

“What the fuck is going on?” Nick hissed, the three sheilding their heads when there was another blast.

“He found us-”

There was only a ringing in his ears left after that one.

A blast strong enough to have scattered them about the room, hidden amongst the broken roof and smoke. He shielded his eyes from the debris falling over him, his limbs heavy and vision patchy.

Get up.

Nick groaned; he didn’t want to. His body protested completely. Had he ever felt so fatigued before?

Callie came skidding into his line of sight after staring at the sky through the broken roof, shaking him violently until he lazily looked at her.

His hairless brows furrowed. Why is she bleeding?

She was screaming, that much was obvious. So panicked, yanking at his big body violently as she continued to scream. He tried to stop her, but his eyes were slowly shutting despite the annoying booms around him vibrating harshly through the wooden floors beneath his body.

The dark when he shut his eyes was comforting; it closed out the noise-

His eyes sprung open after a sharp slap whipped across his cheek, and he met Callie’s panicked face again.

“Get the fuck up!” she screamed, pulling on his shoulders.

With the sound returning to his ears brought throbbing to his head and shoulder, and he growled viciously when she pulled on him again into an upright position. He looked- something had driven itself into his shoulder, probably a splinter from the roof. The blood ran warm down his arm, but he looked back to Callie frantically.

“You’re hurt!” he choked, holding her head. Somewhere there was something open, letting blood run freely down the side of her face and neck.

“Get up, we have to go!” she demanded, standing to lean back into her hoisting until he was standing wobbly, trying to steady himself.

“C’mere,” he called, wincing through the weight of the pain ringing through his head, pulling Callie under his arm as they cautiously crept towards the door. “Where’s Daryl?”

“He took off, I don’t know,”

Nick kept her at arms length as he stepped into the cluttered hall, sweeping over anything visible with blurry eyes. He motioned her over, kept behind him as they made their way down, peering cautiously into rooms that were in shambles.

The living room was turned inside out, a wall caved in and water spewing from broken piping, but behind that small fountain was Daryl crouched behind the split table.

“Daryl-”

“Shh!” he hissed, pointing urgently towards the broken windows lining the living room. Cautiously, Nick peered around the corner to look out into the yard.

Where he hoped to see Tikka or Fero was instead a stranger.

An Orc, bearing injuries that bled freely and an aggravated wand in his grasp. He was calm as he canvassed the area despite the heaving breaths Nick could see him taking, and he flinched back from sight just as the intruder turned to face the windows.

Nick pushed Callie into a room, shielding her behind the door as he pressed himself tight to the wall across from her.

Callie held a hand over her own mouth, pinching her eyes shut.

She fought internally to fight the urge to bolt, digging her nails into her palm where her body shook violently.

A heavy step entered the house, and she looked at Nick with wide, terrified eyes.

He mouthed something to her, but she couldn’t decipher it.

A figure running by the window caused her to flinch, her foot shooting out and hitting the door. Nick pulled her away before he even considered if it was heard above the cracking of the house, and shoved her deep into the closet he was beside, closing the door before she could reach for him.

“Makhel! Stop!” a female voice broke through the silence in the living room. “Stop this-”

“Get off!” Nick heard the booming voice of the stranger, than the telltale drop of a body hitting the floor and sliding across the debris. “You wish to stop me now?”

“They have nothing to do with this!” the female voice cried, and there was more shuffling, the grunts of struggling and a recognizable ringing of a wand.

“They helped her-”

“They’re no one!”

A high-pitched shot cracked through lingering dust around them, and silence filled the air again as Nick knelt down, shielded by the door and glancing at the closet Callie was still concealed in.

Another figure came bolting by the window, but there was familiarity in this one.

“Makhel!” That was Tikka, winded, frantic. “No- what’ve you done!?”

“She fed into your deceit-”

“Mahkel-”

“She…” the male’s voice was shaking, heavier breaths following his slurred words. “What did you do to her?”

A crack of thunder broke the air around them, and Nick jerked from the door when a broad body came flying against the door frame, falling to the floor before him.

Gold eyes met each other, and Nick finally was face to face with the rogue Bright; the Orc who was unbridled.

Nick did not flinch, or run, or move in the slightest as he slowly rose before him, their eye contact never breaking despite the wand glowing ominously in his palm. When he was straightened, Nick almost felt like laughing.

He was so fucking young. It pissed him off; what could have happened to this tike to make him so vicious? To literally hunt them like they were game? Killing, destroying- what?

It pulled his lips back over his teeth, growling lowly and shoulders hunching as Makhel fired back his own growl, flashing his impressive tusks. The fury eating away at him was evident just looking at this individual. It burned in his eyes, came off of him in potent waves. If there hadn’t been an active wand in his hand, Nick would’ve lunged by now, the fierce protectiveness shooting to every limb like pins and needles.

Now, they were in a classic Orkish standoff, calculating, waiting, planning, snarly and growls ripping through them like the Earth cracking, but any sound coming through the breaking house was drowned by the pounding in his ears. He was zeroed in, ready to launch forward, all the while comprehending only two words:

Protect Leo.

Familiar thunder cracking around them didn’t make Nick flinch nearly as bad as Makhel, but just as the younger Orc’s head turned towards the door, Nick swung.

It all happened so quickly that by the time they’d landed in the dry, arid trench of a separate town nestled near some snowy mountains, it took a solid minute for Nick to understand what had happened.

Fero had been the one who Carried in, blocking Nick’s hit under his own arm.

When the Elf twisted him to turn towards the closet Callie was reaching desperately from, Nick caught sight of Mikhel reaching for them, jaw opened in a rageful holler, the wand thrusting all too close by Nick’s head. The world fell out beneath them, and in a flurry of flashes and wild colors, he’d been deposited into the dirt and rocks, the white-hot sun shocking him.

His vision was still shaking, his ribs sore from the deep, ragged breaths he was still choking in. Though his vision was tunneled and red, he found Callie quickly, struggling to sit up some feet from him.

“Cal-” he coughed, the pulses in his vision now a painful throb as he struggled to her.

Check your mate. He might’ve defiled her.

He shook his head clear of the intruding thoughts just as he reached her, carefully lifting her despite his arm seizing from the wound in his shoulder.

The slap across his cheek was almost enough to throw him off his footing, but once he realized it was Callie who had smacked him, he steadied, looking at her in horror.

“What the fuck was that!?” she screamed, coming after him again, but he blocked her blow.

“Callie what the-”

“You try to send me away!? Are you fucking kidding me!?” she continued to holler, shoving against his chest and hitting his arms that raised in defense. “What if you would’ve died in that attack and I wasn’t there!?” her voice started to break from her screaming, her hits weakening quickly.

“That’s exactly why I wanted to send you home!” he yelled back, grabbing thrashing arms. “Callie stop!”

“Fuck you! You could’ve died and I’d never be able to say goodbye!” she sobbed, hitting him in rapid succession a few more times before she stepped back from him, breathlessly. “You can’t-” she gasped, stumbling. “You can’t throw yourself away like that,”

Heat collected across Nick’s cheek, but he pushed that ire down. He’d never seen her so… hysterical.

He exhaled, reaching for her. “Callie-”

His reach was pushed away, her head shaking. “You don’t understand,” she breathed while leaning on her knees, head hung.

Blood dripped from the ends of her hair to the sand below her, her breaths as dry as the landscape around them.

“Is Leo-”

“Nick!”

They both turned, finding Ward some ways away, motioning for them to come towards him quickly.

Nick and Callie looked at one another before she stepped away first, struggling to balance over the rocky terrain. He offered his hand, but she withdrew any chance she got, always a few steps ahead of him.

When they came to where Ward, a strange scene unfolded before them.

“Who’s that?” Callie aked, staring at another woman laid in the shade of a low tree, her back turned to them while Tikka spoke softly to her, Fero scrambling to rip open a backpack.

“She was with him,” Ward said, arms crossed and dirty, some scrapes around his face. “With that fuckin’ Orc,”

They looked back. “What happened?”

“He found us,” Tikka looked up, grabbing some of the supplies from the backpack with bloody hands to rip open the packaging. “He casted a spell and it just,” she exhaled sharply, flattening out squares of gauze. “It took us by surprise,”

“He destroyed my parents house,” Callie mumbled, eyes cutting downwards.

“But why is she here?” Nick pressed.

“He fired at her,” Fero shot back, helping Tikka carefully turn Rania. They muffled her cries with a shirt, pushing her thighs down from her stomach when she tried to curl into a ball. A gruesome, gaping hole was blown into her stomach, blood staining the sand beneath her. Tikka’s eyes cut up to Ward.

“You didn’t help,” she ground out, pressing the gauze into her wound despite her cries heightening. Callie flinched.

Ward stuttered. “How-”

“You could’ve called the wand!” she snapped, lifting her hand to switch gauze. “I told you to!”

He tried to form words, his face tight in anger, but the truth was, he’d been scared, downright terrified looking that wildeyed Orc in the eye with a wand in his hand. “I couldn’t…”

“You could have! You’re lucky she got you out of there!” Tikka exclaimed, moving to gently hush Rania when she protested loudly as they continued to press into the wound, trying to stop the bleeding.

“But what the fuck happened?” Nick interrupted.

“He attacked us in the yard first before he started firing on the house,” Tikka explained, pressure resolute against her stomach. “We were split from Ward,”

“I was inside, after the roof caved in over you two,” Ward pointed to Nick and Callie. “I was in the living room n’... and he came in but he didn’t see me until she came runnin’ and he attacked her,”

“She Carried him here, and I followed so he couldn’t call my wand,” Tikka huffed, relieved to see the bleeding was slowing. “Fero was the last to find you two,”

“I came face to face with him,” Nick muttered, recalling those tense moments that were colored red.

Fero turned, nodding towards him. “He got your ear,”

Nick’s brows knit together, and when he moved to touch his ear, he was met with warm blood and intense stinging under his touch.

“He cut your ear,” Callie noted, cringing.

“How bad?” he exclaimed, and flinched when a roll of gauze hit his chest that he fumbled to catch.

“It’s half gone,”

“What!?” he yelled, searching frantically for anything reflective. But when he tried to twitch his ear, it was just… absent. Not even numb, just gone. Carefully he pinched along his ear until he was met with the pads of his own fingers instead of the point of an ear.

Constricted yelps from Rania brought them back to the real dilemma, watching her ball the shirt against her face as Tikka and Fero secured bandaging around her waist, doing their best to keep the sand from her bloody skin.

“Can’t you heal it?” Callie asked, but Tikka shook her head, face sorrowing.

“I can’t heal what another wand inflicts,” she rasped, at last finishing and pulling her ripped, stained shirt back down her stomach, reaching to smooth back her thick hair plastered against face. Now that the shirt was moved, they could see the short tusks and sparse coloring across her dark skin.

Rania grasped her hand shakily, nodding in silent thanks as she struggled to slow her breathing.

“We need to find cover,” Fero interjected gently, Tikka agreeing. “Can you stand?”

Rania looked to Fero in exhaustion, but she nodded determinedly, breathing deep before carefully curling forward with immense difficulty. The elves were there to ease her up as she yelped into a sitting position, a jacket thrown over her shoulders to mask some of the damage done to her by the time she made it to her feet, but Fero still pulled her arm behind his neck.

“Are you all okay?” Tikka asked, packing up the remainder of the back-pack. They all nodded despite their own blood and injuries covering them in various spots. Nothing could match up to a hole blown through the abdomen.

“C’mon then,” Fero jerked his head, slowly pulling Rania along, patient as she fought to take every step.

“Stay off the sidewalks until we find somewhere, I’ll go ahead,” Tikka called to him as she jogged onwards, leaving the others to trail behind him at Rania’s pace.

Nick looked on at Callie worriedly, itching to move her hair aside so he could find the source of the blood spilling down her cheek, but one cold glare from her kept his hands at his sides. She didn’t bother walking beside him, and instead stayed before him, glancing back when she’d stumble over a rock or lose balance.

You didn’t protect her.

Nick pinched his eyes shut, his head hanging as he walked after them. Shut up.

Following the barren dirt road lead them to a series of small houses, barely on their last legs and few inhabited, but the one Tikka chose looked to still have some kind of occupant despite being empty. Fresh fruit was on the battered wooden countertop, and a broom sat in the corner with dirt and dust swept across the concrete floors.

“I’ll take care of them if they come back,” she reassured. Neither knew what ‘taking care of’ entitled, but in all honesty, all of them were too shaken and exhausted to really care.

Rania was dragging her feet by the time Fero, with the help of Ward now, found an old, weathered couch to place her across. The wound had started to bleed again, running the length of her leg and turning her carob skin a few shades lighter. Sweat lined her completely, her wild hair drenched and loose shirt clung to her.

The girl was clearly in agony, her condition obviously worse than before. Vicious trembles racked down her form, and when she’d managed to open her eyes, the blood vessels were burst and staining the whites.

“That needs to be stopped,” Callie commented as she looked on at the soaking of Rania’s shirt. Who ever had been there had thankfully left a basket of clean laundry on the table, including a multitude of wash clothes that Callie scooped up before kneeling by the injured halfling.

“Be careful,” Nick reached for her, but Callie’s glare stopped him.

“What can she do like this?” she snapped, but now Nick had just as sour of an expression to lash back with.

“Are you serious?”

“Both of you shut up,” Tikka cut in, going about removing the soaked gauze.

“Stop-” Rania coughed, but it was too late.

Tikka’s hands withdrew, sitting back on her heels. When she looked at Rania’s pained eyes, swelling with tears, it was evident she’d already known her fate was sealed.

Callie had initially reached to apply pressure, but upon seeing the white, stone like flesh cinching around the wound that was already closing, she too withdrew, looking to Tikka.

“What is- what’s…?” she stuttered, but Tikka only moved to hold Rania’s hand.

The two looked at one another, the acceptance unwanted, but this far gone, there was nothing any of them could do. No doctor could reverse the damage already coursing its way through her body, inflicted by the one that had promised to throw his life down in protection.

“I tried to stop him,” Rania wept, but Tikka shook her head. “Ele se foi- sinto muito,”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Fero kneeled down, his hand placed of theirs.

“Eu poderia ter parado ele naquela noite,”

“No, Rania. Makhel was gone long before that. You’re not responsible for this,” Tikka held her face now, wiping away the tears that slipped down her round cheeks, her once vibrant hazel eyes shiting in depth as the cursed spell rampaged throughout her.

Rania nodded, doing her best to take a deep breath in, but coughed on the exhalation, blood pouring over her tusked lips.

Callie handed her the cloth, helping her lift her hand to her mouth.

Rania looked over the human slowly, her eyes lingering on her stomach. “I’m sorry to you, too,”

Callie’s brows furrowed. “He attacked your home. You’re,” Rania’s hand fell to hang off the couch, fingertips barely grazing her stomach as Nick lunged forward to pull Callie back.

“She won’t do anything!” Tikka barked, but Nick’s actions were resolute, unwilling to release Callie even as she pulled against his hold about her shoulders.

“I am sorry,” Rania craned her neck to look at Nick. “I am sorry,” she exhaled, falling back into a slump, her eyes sliding shut.

“You need to rest,” Tikka urged, speaking to her softly as Fero went about finding more cushions to ease her painful body as much as possible.

Callie at last got herself from under Nick’s hold, glancing back at him. He tried to soften his face, but irritation was starting to prick across his skin. She hadn’t given him any indication to her or Leo’s condition, and he assumed if he asked, even now, she’d give him little in her furious state.

He looked to Rania as Callie followed Ward deeper into the house, and he was surprised to see her looking up at him, barely conscious that was.

Though he tried to care less about the woman who’d been at the side of the Orc who nearly ended all of their lives, he couldn’t help but feel some sympathy.

The man she’d trusted turned on her, for what reason he didn’t know, but it wasn’t only that.

Staring her in the eyes struck a deep chord within him.

What’s to say his own halfling wouldn’t meet a similar fate? He knew how pushed they were to the brinks of society, how many times he'd been called to scenes of suicides to halflings that saw it as their only option left in the last days of their lives.

With a low chuff, he moved away, resilient in his efforts to stay near Callie until she brought down the wall she’d built between them.

Rania’s eyes followed him until he’d left the room, leaving her to look back to Tikka who was wiping around her wound carefully, riding the blood splashed across her skin. The marble coloration was spreading, but the bleeding had stopped, unlike the pain that would continue to increase.

“Is he the Orc?” she asked softly, her voice breaking.

Tikka nodded, a grin barely curling the corner of her mouth. “That’s the one,”

“He reminds me of my father,” she breathed, stiffly adjusting her head against the cushion.

Tikka finished, handing Fero the stained gauze and pulling the quilt thrown over the back of the couch over her, even moving her hair behind her pointed ears before grabbing her hand. “Do they know?”

Rania shook her head slowly, eyes still closed. “I haven’t spoken to them since that week before,”

“Rania,” she waited until her eyes cracked open. “You need to go home,”

“What’s the point? I’ll be dead before they can even make it here,” she forced out, hand raising to cover her face as it pinched. “I don’t want them to know what happened,”

Nick rolled his eyes as their conversation was lost in the distance he put between them, following Callie and Ward to the back of the small house where they’d found clothes and rubbing alcohol in a cramped bathroom.

He felt like an awkward bystander as he watched her go about dividing the cloths up and dousing them with alcohol, even helping Ward with the scrapes across his cheek and arms.

“You need to get looked at too,” Nick piped in, and Ward stepped aside to allow her to move to him, but she didn’t even bat an eye.

“Callie,” Nick tried, but she only glanced at him, tipping the bottle onto the rag again.

“Are you really ignoring me?” the Orc snapped, but the purposeful turn of her shoulders so her back was to him said everything he needed.

Heat flushed across his cheeks, and he was sure a few droplets of blood spewed from his ear with the way his heart kicked into high gear.

“Daryl,” he growled, and Ward was swift in maneuvering between them, happy to tend to himself elsewhere.

He leaned in the doorway, an unmoving wall she knew she had no chance of squeezing past. So at last she turned to him, arms crossed as his and provocation rolling off both of them. He knew she was uncomfortable; she would try but could never hide the slight wincing of her eyes when she’d have a particularly gnarly cramp or stop herself from swaying when her back ached too severely.

Throwing in bodily injuries and exhaustion was only aggravating that.

“What’s hurt?” he asked, but she shrugged.

“Haven’t had a minute to look,” she tilted her head, jaw set.

“Leo?”

“Quiet,”

He sighed. “Can you give me more than that?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

His arms unfolded, taking a menacing step towards her. “Don’t act like you’re not bothered by that just because you’re pissed at me,”

“I have every right to be pissed at you,” she piqued, but a wide step into the bathroom sent her stepping back, flinching when the door slammed heatedly behind him.

“Then be fucking angry, but I’m not going to sit and feel bad when I was trying to keep you two safe!” he yelled, even leaning down to get eye level. “You’re always first to tell me how unwilling you are to put up with any shit that could affect you or Leo and now you’re spinning on me and guilting me into doing the same? Are you fucking kidding me Callie?”

“It’s not the same-”

“You’re right, it’s worse! We have roofs falling on our heads and shots firing everywhere and you have the audacity to turn on me and make me the bad guy for doing what I’m supposed to be doing!” he finished, leaving her pressed tight against the wall, staring up at him with a deep frown and angrily arched brows, tears glazing over her eyes.

“This isn’t my fault-”

“I never said it was!” he boomed, throwing his fist into the wall beside her. She cowered away, pulling her arms to her chest.

He was huffing, watching her as he shifted side to side angrily. “You can do whatever you want, hate me all you need, but don’t put Leo in the center of it. You’d never look at me again if I did that to you Callie, and I sure as hell won’t look at you if you pull that shit again.”

It pissed her off to no end that what he said was true; that she couldn’t battle it.

She’d directed all her anger from their situation onto him knowing full well she would’ve thought to send him to safety if Leo were attached to him. He was doing exactly what she was despite being the one who would’ve stayed behind in the middle of it, all to make sure they were safe. Now she’d gone and effectively pushed her rock into a state of rage, leaving her… alone, it now seemed.

By the time she’d come to this realization, he’d already left the bathroom, slamming the door behind himself again to leave her with her fists balled against her eyes in repressed sobs.

Fuck this- fuck everything about it.

Callie bit another choke of cries back, straightening herself, pushing down everything that hurt across her body.

She stared at the door, clicking her teeth together and wiping her cheeks, collecting some sticky blood along the way. A pitiful whine made it past her lips when she waited and he didn’t come back in.

First instinct when she felt like her world was collapsing was to run to Nick. Where was he now that she’d pushed him away?

Find him.

She was across the narrow bathroom in a few shaking steps, yanking hard against the doorknob- of course he slammed it hard enough to jam- to step into the hallway, searching through the small living room that was empty.

She exhaled, fists curling at her sides and eyes jumping frantically.

“Callie,”

A quick spin found Nick leaned just outside the bathroom door, his temper brought down considerably as he looked on at her in shame.

A small whimper came forth as he pushed off the wall to open his arms just as she’d stumbled into them, pressing her face tight against his chest and her body against him, his hands sweeping across her back, his brawny arms finally locking tightly around her.

Soft sniffles compelled him to wiggle his head down to press kisses against her forehead. “I’m sorry,” she croaked. “You’re right, I wasn’t thinking,”

Nick nodded, resting his cheek where his kisses once did. “It’s over with,” he moved to rest his chin there, looking over the sparse living room, but then uncurled the arm around her neck when her sticky hair reminded him of more pressing matters. “You gotta get looked at,”

“Couple more seconds,” she pleaded, clasping her hands behind him. “You scared the shit outta me at the house,”

Nick leaned back to look at her quizzically as she slid her cheek up to gaze at him. “You passed out. I didn’t think you were gonna wake up,” she frowned.

“How long was I out for?” his brows knit together.

“Couple minutes,”

He chuffed contritely. “What a great father I’ve been so far,”

“Don’t feel too bad. I tried to convince you I could keep a premature baby alive with no doctors,”

She felt his laugh rumble through his chest, prompting her to look up at him again.

Callie’s eyes fluttered shut when he pressed his lips to hers, leaning deeper into his hold when he held her jaw so he could continue to caress her lips sweetly, the last of his bubbling rage falling to his feet.

“How’re y’all makin’ out with a missing ear and hole blown into your head?”

Callie felt Nick’s displeased sigh before he looked behind her to see Ward trudging towards them, still holding her tight against his chest as his partner came to stand beside the two.

“Glad you two made up so I ain’t caught in the middle’a one of those petty fights again,” he sassed, but Callie stared at him defiantly, burrowing her face tighter against Nick as he held around her shoulders. “You okay mamas?”

She nodded, unwillingly pulling from her Orc when Daryl started handing off various medical instruments and bandaging from the worn backpack Tikka had brought along.

“We’ve had all this the entire time?” Nick asked.

“Nah, this is uh… what’s-her-name’s bag,” he explained, grabbing some gauze and tape for himself.

“Rania,” Callie corrected, meeting Nick’s vexed expression. “What?”

“She’s part of the reason we’re here,”

“Then why else would she save you?” Callie pressed Ward, but he was answerless. “Look at her now,”

“Look at us now.” Ward muttered, walking away. She rolled her eyes, returning to the matter at hand.

“Hold still,” she again said, face lined in concentration as she carefully- despite her hands being more unsteady than usual- used the metal tweezers to delicately pick out the debris left in the stab wound in Nick’s shoulder. The worst, which had been a few jagged pieces of rooftop and a piece of wood splintering off of the biggest fragment into his flesh had passed, but every light brush of gauze or the tweezers shot down his arm, causing a hard recoil or loud growl.

“There’s like a little pebble or something,” she winced, but a hard shudder and shake of his head stopped her. “Reached your limit?”

He nodded, exhaling hard when she dropped the tweezers in the sink beside him. “It’s the poking. Makes me nauseous,”

“I’m sorry,” she patted his cheek gently before tearing open more packets of gauze, preparing a makeshift bandage.

Nick was fighting back a growl when he wiped a doused cloth over his clipped ear, his line of sight moving behind Callie and over Rania, still laid across the couch. She hadn’t made a peep since being laid there, but he knew she wasn’t sleeping. Occasionally she’d tilt her head in the direction of a sound, quietly observing the world around her without sight.

Her fragile state didn’t convince Nick, however.

He’d seen a hole blasted through Leila only to rise again and nearly kill him. Bright’s were a race all in their own; underestimating their ability wasn’t something he did lightly.

“Hush,” Callie snapped lowly, smoothing the tape along his skin, silencing his low protests.

“They should have her tied up,”

She glared down at him flatly. “Did you see the hole in her stomach?”

“I’ve seen what Bright’s can bounce back from,” he retorted.

“There’s no bouncing back from a dolo spell,” Tikka walked into the room, carrying with her a few bottles of water and another backpack.

“A what?” Callie asked, changing places with Nick once he’d pulled his shirt back down.

“It’s the deceit spell. It maims, then heals, but the damage is left behind to tear you from the inside out,” she interpreted, glancing at the two. “I can’t believe he used it on her,”

“Can’t be surprised your students use what you teach,” Nick mumbled, grunting when Callie pinched his side. He shrugged, helping her move her sticky hair aside to see the wound across her scalp.

“We don’t teach torture spells. They take time, practice- practice on living subjects,”

Callie hissed when he found the wound, which was actually a small section of her scalp that’d been lifted from her skull. Hesitation stuttered his actions.

“The other Brights,”

The three looked to Rania who’d opened her eyes, still bloodshot and sunken. “I think he practiced on them,” she rasped, shaking her head. “He was as absent as he was involved,”

“That accounts for you too,” Nick commented, enduring a harder smack to his side.

“Knock it off,” Callie ground out.

“No! They’ve been telling us nothing but how dangerous they are and how imperative it is to stop them and now you want me to show mercy? After her little boyfriend tried to kill you? After he killed Pucca?” he grilled, taking turns looking between the girls.

“That was before this,” Tikka tried, but Nick was unshakable as he waved a hand and turned back to Callie.

“How do you know she won’t turn on us?”

For that, Tikka’s silence was his only response.

“What if she leads him to us?” he pressed, and caught Rania arching her neck to glance back at Tikka who’s eyes darted away nervously.

Nick scoffed, shaking his head. “I’m not trusting her until she’s dead or in MTF’s hands.”

He pulled Callie off of the table carefully to lead her away, but she still looked at Rania apologetically before they cut deeper into the house. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, or maybe it was the hormones that opened up avenues of empathy she didn’t know she had, but something in her spoke for Rania’s protection.

It could’ve also been because of her own halfling calling for attention every time her stomach growled.

Tikka hesitated before sorting out the remaining items in hand, her movements uncoordinated.

“They think we’ve found you all this time? On our own?”

Rania’s voice troubled her enough to drop something, but Tikka couldn’t find the words after a few tense seconds passed.

“Does Fero even know you’ve been leading us here since the beginning?”

Now she stopped altogether, turning, but didn’t cross the room to face Rania. “No,”

“Why?”

Tikka fidgeted. “He wouldn’t have stayed with me,”

Saying it out loud shed light on how ridiculous that actually was. The same logic she’d once used to convince herself that was of sound reason wasn’t even traceable across the tracks of her mind once her own foolishness set in, and Rania’s silence only burderened that.

Tikka didn’t have the courage to face the twice betrayal in Rania’s eyes as she rushed past her, choosing to dart through the house to find Fero.

↠

“If we can just get him into the open we’d have the advantage,” Tikka rubbed her eyes, leaning onto her knees towards the fire.

“We’d still have to disarm him,” Nick grumbled, cheek rested against Callie’s head where she leaned into his side.

“That’s Ward,” Tikka pointed to Daryl who was leaned tiredly into his own palm, lifting either leg to keep his feet warm in the icy night. “I can keep his attention but if you don’t call that wand-”

“I know, I know, won’t happen again,” he assured half-heartedly, still picking at the last of his canned food.

“We still need somewhere that has cover,” Fero prodded the fire, tossing in a few leafy branches to keep it lively.

“Cover around here means going into town,” Callie said through her jaw; she had no desire to lift her head, and could barely keep her eyes open as she stared at the flames, wrapped in found jackets and a blanket for good measure, but even with all of that and Nick’s arm around her, the biting cold still found it’s way in.

“At least it’s a barren town,” Fero cracked, unphased by their glares.

“Is it really just as simple as Daryl calling the wand?” Nick asked. “What if he does that thing to get away?”

“Carry? I mean, there’s a possibility. I could stun him beforehand or at least try so he couldn’t sneak off like that,” Tikka rationalized.

“This whole plan is sittin’ on that then,” Daryl miffed.

“A plan is better than no plan,” she fought back, her line of sight cutting to the somewhat house behind him, then to Fero. “Can we take her with?”

Fero’s brow wrinkled. “You know she doesn’t have that long. I’d give her another 24 hours max,”

“We can’t just leave her here alone,”

Callie adjusted herself so her chin rested in her palm. “What happened to her? How did she end up here?” she asked, ignoring Nick’s low groan.

“I told you she was-”

“Attacked, I know, but how did she end up with him?” she pressed.

Tikka smoothed her hands down her thighs to her knees. “They were lovers. In a compound full of Elves I imagine they found great solace in each other,” she explained earnestly.

“Why didn’t he stop with the ones who attacked her?” Ward asked then.

“By then they’d both been beaten into the dirt by everyone at least once, so everyone became a target. His rage isn’t random, it was dormant,” Tikka tossed another twig into the fire, setting loose a small whisp of sparks that crackled loudly.

“How old are they?” Nick asked.

“They’re both 19,” Tikka spoke surely, the same statement having haunted her thoughts before.

Nick scoffed then. “They’re fucking babies,”

“Long past their adolescence where they’re from,” Fero defended, locking eyes with the Orc who had now come to shrug off anything the curly haired Elf said.

Nick still shook his head. “Like it’s the only place with those conditions. I can’t believe we’re running from a fucking child,”

“Not for long. This plan will work,” Tikka tried to say encouragingly between them, but their hearts were void of any hope just as their stomachs were of any decent food. Instead, they looked on to the fire, collecting its warmth when the world around them felt cold and unfamiliar.

She too looked to the flames once again. “It’ll work this time.”

It was silently that they all started to wander back into the small house after the fire had started to dwindle, spitting into low embers that barely kept their hands warm.

Nick reserved the only bed for Callie, hissing his own curses in return when Fero objected, but both women silenced their lovers and moved to separate ends of the house, leaving Ward to stretch across an old, creaking rocking chair he was longer than.

It was also decided upon that night that around the clock watches needed to be kept, and to Nick’s insistence, in the kitchen where Rania still laid, unable to even sit up pointed out by none other than Callie. Even if Tikka and Daryl hadn’t kept up on his persistence, he still trudged into the kitchen to sit at the windows side once Ward had come to wake him for his turn.

He’d almost forgotten they were holed up in an unknown individuals home somewhere deep in the hills of Mexico when he spun groggily from his slumber to face Daryl, and untangling from Callie once realization had set in made it all the harder to come to terms with their situation, again.

Unwillingly he slipped his arm from under her head, his touch running down her side to linger at her hip as he gazed down upon her, sleeping and for a short while oblivious to the danger closing in on them. Nick almost couldn’t summon the willpower to leave her side, even in the cramped bed, when he pulled her hair from her neck and face, grinning when she curled into a tighter ball, her arm draped over her bulging stomach.

I’m sorry. He pulled his hand back into his lap, looking at her silhouette under the moonlight peaking through the lace curtains as he stood. The patterns dripping over her were foreign, but her curves carved deeper into his memory than his own fingerprints.

Nick walked away before he allowed the stunning urge to pick her up and carry her out into the night, to take her anywhere else but where they were until he found his way home overtook him, but that desire burned to animosity, and it showed in his displeased glower when he walked into the kitchen and his eyes drifted over Rania.

It still shook the occasional growl from his lungs when he’d sigh, staring tiredly out the dirty window and over the pitch black landscape, only a dull house light here and there, sometimes the distant call of a coyote.

Nick yawned wide, leaning back in the small chair that creaked beneath his weight. The longer he struggled to keep his eyes open the more he realized how useless this watch was. There wasn’t much of anything Nick could do himself if Makhel came waltzing up again.

He glanced back at Rania. She could’ve already alerted Makhel; he could’ve been on his way.

He growled, crossing his arms.

“You’re right, you know,”

Nick turned in his chair to find Rania looking at him, and now that he was concentrating on her, he could see the pale marbling starting to discolor her hands and across her jaw. He glanced at the living room, but didn’t know why it made him uneasy to speak to her without Tikka present.

“Excuse me?”

“About what you said earlier, being held accountable for this mess,” she rasped, eyes illuminating in the minimal light when the low beams of a car swung by. “I had opportunities to stop him and I didn’t,”

Nick scoffed, swiveling back to face the window to hide the annoyance flickering across his features.

“I was scared. He was all I had,”

“You could have ran,” he blurted before thinking, turning head just enough to make sure his words made it to her.

“That’s easier said than done. Who would’ve believed me?” she asked, but Nick didn’t acknowledge her. She only had the plain of his back and an ear flicking in annoyance. “I know, not even Orcs like talking to halflings,”

“Don’t put that on me. I may not like you but I’m not that low,” he snapped vehemently below his breath, spinning in his seat. “Plus, you’re a hybrid,”

“And you’re expecting a halfling of your own,” she stated, conjuring enough energy to grin at him, and it only grew when his nose crinkled and brows knit together.

Nick continued to glare until her smile dwindled, but she continued to stare back, clearly not unnerved by an Orcs first line of defense: their looks alone.

“Why did you save Daryl?” he came right out with, at last shaking the adamancy in which she gazed at him with. Momentary guilt flushed him; the girl was literally dying and here he was doing his best to make her feel worse about it.

“I understand why Makhel did what he did in the beginning, because I can say that if I’d been forced to simply ignore the attackers that crippled my lover, I’d have done the same. But with every other Bright killed, it went from revenge to drunk off the satisfaction of killing. Somehow, along the way, I let his hand go and let him wander away, and now I can’t find him,” she confessed lowly, her head rolling to the side to hide the tear that skipped down her cheek.

“None of you deserve to have him trying to tear your lives apart, and when I tried-” her voice broke, hands fumbling weakly over her stomach. “I couldn’t allow him to take another life.They were not his to decide upon,”

“Even if it means giving up your own?” Nick dared, looking to her again.

“If mine ending that night could’ve prevented this, I’d gladly hand it over,”

Nick’s face tensed in unease. “You’re too young to be throwing your life away like that,” he said calmer, an heir of combative nature in his tone.

Her shoulder rose as her chin dipped in what he guessed was a weak shrug. “I’ve lived what my life would’ve always had. I’m not destined for great things. I experienced everything I wanted once, and I’m at peace with that,” Rania declared softly, her eyes sliding shut.

Nick studied those words and let silence pass between them for some time, continuing to look beyond the sparse street outside.

Sometimes he thought he’d see shadows shooting by, and would tense, ready to fight, but they’d melt back into the night, completely untraceable. Just like Makhel had been under Kandomere’s watchful eye.

“How did you keep finding them?”

Rania’s eyes cracked open.

“We knew about you weeks through MTF, but she said you two were trailing them for months. You happened to know exactly where we were going when we left LA,” Nick explained, finally unraveling the confusion that had swam circles in his mind.

“There wasn’t much finding as there was following,” Rania simply stated, and Nick’s stomach flipped.

“She left a trail?”

“Like breadcrumbs,”

Nick’s face twisted in disgust. “He was in my house- he found us at Ward’s,” he exhaled.

“We found you in Mexico when she wanted us to,”

He was looking at her in horror, feeling as if all the shadows about him were suddenly the exact shapes of a rogue Bright, ready to cast the next spell directly into the side of his head, then Callie’s, and everyone else's.

“He’ll find us,” Nick stated, definitely, and she nodded slowly.

“She’ll make sure of it,”

When Nick stood suddenly, Rania raised her hand. “Don’t run. She’s traitorous, but she’s also your protection. Makhel knows your scent, knows your wife’s. I will be forever sorry, but let Tikka fall with him, not you.”

Nick was glanced around frantically a few more times before rushing into the living room where he walked into Tikka stood on the other side of the dividing wall, listening and looking up at him in horror.

He burned to throw her against a wall and strangle the life from her… but what Rania said echoed in his mind. She really was their only protection.

Nick choked down a pained whimper, his face a world of hurt.

“Jakoby-”

She flattened against the wall when he pointed threateningly, snarling lowly down at her with bared teeth. Tikka whimpered when he let his fist slam into the wall beside her head in restraint, stomping past her to the back of the house.

She thought of chasing after him and pleading her case, but truth rang louder than reason, and she could only assume that this had been the incident to break his trust in her completely.

“Is there something you want to tell me too?” Fero’s voice floated to her calmly, and she spun to find him stretched across a thin cushioned couch, peeking at her from under his arm draped over his eyes.

Nick had to stop the door from slamming when he reflexively swung it behind himself, but it was still arduous to do anything quietly when all he wanted was to tear the floorboards up and crack furniture over each other.

He paced, hard breaths flaring through his nostrils. The bone deep chill of the night didn’t even bother him anymore. He could’ve fueled a locomotive with the insane measure of fury coming off of him, but there was nowhere to channel it. He had to push it down, contain it. There was no option other than to sit, and wait, and do what he could to keep Callie and Leo safe, and that was the worst of it.

There was absolutely nothing he could do to keep the danger from them that wasn’t the strength he had in his own hands, or the fierce protectiveness in his own heart.

He leaned against his knees, fighting to catch his breath when the thoughts in his head melted together into a screaming tornado.

It was some time before taking a breath felt fulfilling again; like his lungs were capable of holding it in before gasping it out, and soon he found himself sat beside the warped window that distorted everything outside, but he knew he wouldn’t gain even a minutes worth of sleep. Even if he, a mere Orc who was no match against a Bright, could slow Makhel down long enough to give Callie a running start, he’d remain awake to make sure she had that chance.

That in itself plagued him greatly. There was no second thoughts about throwing his life down to spare hers, but to think there was never a chance to see her walk down a church’s isle and claim his last name as her own, or to see how much of himself was in Leo almost brought him to his knees.

He ran his hands from his face to the back of his head, his knee bouncing wildly.

“My bad habits rubbing off on you?”

Callie’s voice washed over him like a warm blanket on a cold night. He found her big eyes next, heavy with sleep and blinking the last of it away as she looked at him.

He could only muster a weak grin, looking down at his hands.

“What’s wrong?” she asked softly, but before he shrugged, there was a long pause, long enough for her to see the torment swimming across his features, even in the darkness of the room. “Tell me,”

He wanted to tell her, he really did, but the cautionary glance he took towards the door prompted her to rise, suppressing a groan as she moved to sit before him on the dresser under the window.

“Tell me baby,” she urged gently, holding his hands.

The devastation in his eyes frightened her.

“Tikka’s been leading him to us all along. Since the beginning… she’s made sure they always knew where they were, and now where we were,” he croaked, dropping his eyes from hers. “He’ll come for us again and he’ll know exactly where because she’ll make sure of it,”

It rose goosebumps along Callie’s arms and neck. “How do you know?”

“Rania,”

“What if she’s-”

“Tikka heard it all. She didn’t deny any of it,” he finalized, and Callie looked down at their hands as he did.

Her thumbs traced the patterns splashed across knuckles.

“I didn’t think it was a coincidence that he kept finding us,” Callie admitted, and Nick nodded.

“I didn’t want to think it was true,” he sighed, looking up as she did. He could see the gravity of realization setting deeper into her mind, but Callie surprisingly remained composed, far better than he had. “Do you know how much I love you?”

Confused flickered across her features.

“If it weren’t for you, I don’t think I ever would’ve smiled again, or laughed,”

She tilted her head. “Nick,”

“I owe you everything. Before I met you I was okay with… I was okay dying at work. The thought of leaving it all behind didn’t bother me much, but you gave me a reason to make it home everyday just as much as one to get up every morning,” he confessed, squeezing her hands when his words clearly unsettled her. “You gave my world color again,”

A gentle push against his chest furrowed his thoughts. “You gotta give yourself more credit than that. I mean I know I’m pretty awesome,” she paused to catch his smirk. “But you were the one who wandered into the store. You walked into my life at just the right time,” she spoke sincerely, stilling his head when he shook in disagreement. “But I expect years and years with you, Nick. I don’t want anything less than forever,”

He fought the tremble in his bottom lip and chin, his eyes pinching shut, falling into her chest when she wound her arms around his neck.

Nick clung to her desperately, his fingers curling into her clothing as he squeezed around her.

“I love him,” he wavered, dropping his cheek to her stomach, his arms sliding down her frame. “I wanted to meet him so badly-” he barely stopped that sob, pressing his face there.

“No, Nick stop, look at me,” she demanded, barely able to hoist him back up to hold his misty cheeks. “Don’t you dare give up yet. I want to meet the son we fought 3 years to make together and I need you there. He needs to know how strong his father is,” she pleaded, smoothing her thumbs over a stray tear across his cheek. “We need you, baby,”

It was weak, and unsure, but Nick nodded, closing his eyes to rest his forehead against hers as she softly calmed him, chasing away the dark clouds raining over him.

“I love you,” she kissed into his lips. “I love you so, so much,”

He cradled her face now, leaving no minute space between their mouths as fell into her spell, moaning softly as she whispered sweet words to him only; ones that he’d come to recognize as a secret only for him, always leading him further into her bounding love.

So when her tongue tentatively poked into his mouth, it didn’t strike him as dangerous or irresponsible to take advantage of what could be their last night together as a couple, or as a family.

His big hands dragged over her curves, her own smoothing down his sides, holding his hips as she sighed into his kisses.

Her starved whimpers shot heat down to every nerve ending of his body when she arched towards his palm that slid down her chest, his open, gasping mouth soon following to lav his tongue over the skin of her throat that craned back.

Callie cried softly into the night when he pulled her by the hair aside to sink his teeth under her jaw, only daring to prick her skin this time knowing no matter what happened, she’d be his forever. Her blood coated his tongue, and she felt the guttural growl rumble through both of them.

Her fingers digging into his arms told him to keep going, as did the urgency of her kisses when she caught his mouth again, ignoring her own coppery blood and pressing as tight as she could against him with her belly in the way.

She didn’t protest when he pulled her from the dresser and spun her, but instead leaned back into his chest, pushing down her own jeans and panties as he buried his face in her hair, her breasts nearly flattening in his tight hold.

Nick groused noisily, a hand skipping down her body to cup her sex, his middle fingers pressing into her soft lips. He drank in that soft sigh, and for a few moments turned her jaw to watch how her plump lips parted in breathless moans as he circled her clit slowly, blessing her hot mouth with featherlight kisses.

She started to loosen in his hold, her hand over his as he touched her only how he knew she adored, almost content with watching her fall apart in his arms.

He pressed his face into her cheek to inhale and taste her skin while he made quick work of pushing down his own jeans until he sprung free.

Callie always knew how to arch her body so she could remain close, and with a hand around her throat and another guiding himself, he pushed into her slick center, both of them moaning as the inches passed until he was seated tight against her cheeks.

Nick chuffed loudly, unable to open his eyes or control the louder moans as he rocked into her, committed to remembering- no, living these last moments like they were their last.

He soaked in her walls tight around him, her soft pleas and whimpers in his name, her chest heaving under his touch as he caressed her entirely.

She worshipped his brawny body against hers, always steadfast and protective, his heavy arm around her ensuring she’d never fall from his grasp.

His hand fell over her mouth when she sobbed, smiling, her cries heightening with his face pressed down against her shoulder and his hips slapping against her ass forcefully, barely muffled by the small room they were in or the thin door that hid their meeting. He growled in her ear, speaking to her in soft Orkish prayers, her name slipping in here and there, whispering her own words of admiration once his hand lifted from her mouth to kiss her firmly.

If he wasn’t staring out the window, he was looking at his fingers making curls with her hair cascaded over her shoulder, sometimes peering down at her when she’d shift at his side. Her cheek slid around his chest when he kissed the top of her head, pressing that much closer to him.

They basked in their afterglow silently, only the soft brushes of their fingertips across the backs of their hands or stolen kisses being the words they needn’t speak.

Nick moved to feel every one of Leo’s kicks, eventually changing place with Callie to rest his head below her bust so he could speak softly to his son and tell him for every kick counted would be a kiss upon his cheek when he finally got to hold him.

He promised him safety in his arms for the entirety of his life, and love to match that, and swore he’d always be the home and comfort he needed in a world not made for them.

When the sun started to cast blue across the horizon, neither had slept, but neither had feel exhaustion.

Callie had returned to Nick’s chest, his arm curled safely behind her as they rested against the headboard, soaking in their last moments of silence, and peace. Neither bothered moving when they started to hear the others move about the rickety home, some light talking between Ward and Tikka.

Nick only squeezed Callie, watching the sun rise quicker than it ever had before.

“It’ll end today,” he spoke, confident in what he said, but not of an outcome either were certain of. “We’re going home today.”

Callie nodded against his chest.

Dead, or alive?

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