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heartpascal · 6 months

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fight the tide

▹— joel miller x platonic!reader

▹— summary: you face the consequences of going to seattle

▹— a/n: hello, this ended up being different to what i had planned. i hope yall enjoy anyway. its very angsty. very sad. at least to me. be careful with what you read. mind the warnings. love you.

▹— warnings: MAJOR TLOU 2 SPOILERS, suicidal ideation, or thinking about dying, almost hoping to die, major character death (referenced), canon-typical violence, eg murder, descriptions of blood / being covered in blood, kinda religious imagery / talks of divinity (no explicit religion mentioned), hints at a possible romance with jesse

▹— taglist: @rhymingtree @sleepygraves @wnstice (everything!) @auggiesolovey @just-kaylaa @evyiione @lemonlaides @fariylixie0915 @faceache111 @randomhoex @canpillowscry @pedropascalsrealgf @star-wars-lover @coolchick333 @soobsdior @rvjaa @sunflowersdrop @definitely-not-a-seagull-i-swear @miss-celestial-being (pedro)

MASTERLIST

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Setting off from Jackson was a distant memory, by now. It was hazed over, an image in your mind that didn’t seem to fit into reality, no matter how you tried it.

The past few weeks didn’t seem real to you, either.

More than once, you had found yourself waiting to wake up. As if all of this could be some sort of bad dream. A nightmare that you couldn’t escape, no matter how many times you pinched and clawed at yourself, trying to figure out how to prove that this wasn’t real.

Because, really, how could it be? This world, this city, it didn’t feel like it could be true. You didn’t feel like you, and this certainly didn’t feel like it was your life. Wherever you looked, the terrain showed the aftermath of a rampage.

Bodies strewn across the ground, puddles of red dripping down curbs, down cars, down buildings, down your hands. It was beneath your fingernails, caked into your hair, drying on your clothes. For a moment, you thought it was yours. It was the only plausible reason for why you were feeling so empty, wasn’t it? The only explanation for why your heart felt as if it would burst at any given moment.

This rampage was an act of such violence, such rage, it seemed unfathomable to you. You couldn’t remember a time where you had felt something so deeply that it presented as destruction. As a massacre.

That was the word for this, too. Massacre. All of these bodies were once people, once held love and life and the ability to hurt and kill others, just as you did. And when you looked closer, when you looked at their guns and their knives, the bows and the arrows, you knew they had been trying to kill you.

It made sense.

You didn’t want it to, but it did.

These people had tried to kill you, had tried to slaughter you, and they had ended up dead for it. It wasn’t the first time that had happened, either. Joel had killed more people than you could count, just for the crime of trying to bring you harm. It made sense that he would do it again.

“Joel?” You called, your voice echoing in the empty surroundings, bouncing off of bodies and weapons, off of the tangible feeling of death that hung in the air.

Your chest was heaving, breath entering and leaving your lungs so rapidly that it didn’t have time to supply the oxygen you so desperately needed. You hadn’t noticed how unsteady your breathing was, until you had spoken, until you had called out for Joel. It made you feel dizzy, all of a sudden, like everything was hitting you all at once.

For a moment, you didn’t notice that he hadn’t answered you.

But his silence lingered, and the only thing you could hear through it was the sound of your own panicking breaths.

That feeling from earlier — the one of your heart, which had been feeling as if it would burst at any given moment, revealed itself as a choked sob. It jumped out of your throat when you opened your mouth to call for Joel again.

Your devastation didn’t register, for more than a moment. Until you remembered why you were here, why there was a gun in your hand, empty of ammunition. When you looked around, you didn't find Joel. Instead, all you found was blood and death and your machete lay on the ground, a dent in the grass, covered in blood and gore.

There was something hanging over your head, something which felt as if it was holding your head underwater. It felt like the water was forcing its way down your throat, into your lungs, filling them up until all you could do was choke, heave on the lack of breath. Your head was exploding, pressure against the sides of your skull, pushing out, out, out, like a fungus was bursting through you. Only the vague feeling of your hand pressing against your head reassured you that you weren’t Infected.

The memories flashed before your eyes, distorting the image of destruction ahead of you, filling your mind with reality. Joel. Cracked skull, insides out. The unrelenting taste of iron on your tongue, your teeth. Getting on a horse in Jackson, and leaving. Fighting your way through Infected, people, even past Tommy. All in your search for vengeance, for Abby.

And all it had led you to was before you, laid out in death.

Did this make you a monster? Was it evil? You’re not sure if you believe in such a thing anymore, but if you did, you think it would look like a woman, braided hair, golf club raised in the air. But there’s this nagging feeling at the base of your skull, asking you, are you better?

You don’t know what it means. Are you better? Than what? Because of this? You want to ask Joel, but when you turn, he’s still there. Still lay out on concrete, skull scattered around the room, blood staining your skin.

It’s all you can think of. It’s all you can see. Even in the bodies around you, the people that you killed, you see a flash of white, a splatter of blood, and it’s all Joel. There’s the imprint of his boot in the grass, the sound of his voice in the wind, but the only heartbeat you can hear is your own.

Your knees press into the grass, and you stain your jeans with blood, but it feels soft. Softer than the concrete in that basement, softer than the frozen dirt in front of his gravestone. It’s welcoming, or something like it, and your heart aches with it.

A sound breaks through the air, pierces through the air that carries Joel’s voice, and it takes you more than a moment of your throat aching to realise it’s you. And there’s disappointment in that, you realise, that the only person here is you. Nobody is here to kill you, and nobody is here to protect you.

The sound coming from you doesn’t sound like your voice, doesn’t have any familiarity to you. It doesn’t convey words, but rather something harsher, something deeper, a sound which traverses language and time. It breaks these barriers, and empties the chest of something ancient, something eternal.

It wavers as time passes, it comes and goes, much like your recognition. Sometimes, you’re here, belting out something that doesn’t fit into words, and then you’re there, screaming out for mercy that never comes. And all you can hear is Joel, and he’s yelling at you, to you, but you can’t tell what he’s saying.

All you can see is his lips spelling something that he couldn’t say, that you couldn’t translate. You want to tell him you love him. You want to scream at him for going down there. You want him to pull you away from these corpses, but he can’t, and neither can you.

No matter how hard you try, there’s nothing you can do to pull yourself up, to overcome that weight that continues to drown you. It presses down on you until your nose is against the grass, and all you can smell is iron and dirt.

You stay there, one palm pressed against the machete that had been resting on the ground, the other gripping the dirt, for what seems like eternity. There’s no escape from it, nowhere you can turn to pull yourself from this mourning, this hell. And you know that nobody is coming to save you.

It sends a chill down your spine — tingling and bringing feeling back to limbs that had long-since turned numb, the realisation that you are going to end up just like Joel.

Here, against the ground, reduced to something less than human.

And — like Joel — there’s no fighting it.

If Abby approached, golf club raised to the heavens, you would accept it. You would welcome it.

Because surely, whatever would be waiting you, it would be better than this. This endless moment of suffering, of pain and grief so deep it encompasses your whole being. You wonder—hope that Joel would be waiting for you.

You feel guilty, a moment later, because you know that Joel deserves to rest—whatever that meant. And you also know that he had never done that, when he was around you. It was selfish to hope for him to be waiting for you, to hope that he would put whatever was awaiting him on hold, all for you.

Joel had been waiting to die for a long, long time.

Ever since Sarah.

And that fact sends a fresh wave of guilt through you, as if you could hold on to any more emotion, because Sarah was his daughter. She was everything he had wanted, since the moment she was born. And he had been waiting to join her. He had waited for Tommy, for Tess, and then for you and Ellie.

Maybe, Sarah sent Abby for him.

Maybe she got tired of waiting for her dad, whilst he feigned dad for two orphans, left alone in the bitter end of the world.

You try to think of her like that. Some sort of angel, a gift sent from Sarah, all to give Joel the mercy of death. To give him the easy way out. Because Joel didn’t have a choice about dying, Abby had made sure of that, so he couldn’t feel an ounce of guilt for leaving you and Ellie and Tommy to pick up the pieces, to carry his body home to an empty house, a dip in the earth.

It made sense to you, somehow.

Abby seemed so… unmovable.

She was like the force of nature. Nothing you, or Joel, or anyone, had done would’ve stopped her from doing what she did.

If you thought of her like this, as something divine, something above yourself, it was easier. It was easier to forgive yourself for failing to stop her, and now, for failing to end her.

But it also makes the guilt so much heavier.

And you don’t know how you can carry it, anymore.

Because if she was that, if she was something like a divine intervention, then you were doing everything that Joel had never wanted, for nothing. This, right here, this explosion of death, this blood, staining your hands, was what Joel had tried to steer you away from.

He didn’t want you to turn out like him.

Angry, burned, covered in blood.

Monstrous.

He was covered in the scent of stale blood, of death so old it had decayed to nothing, to earth and ash and life reborn. He was stained with it. Distorted by it. It had made his vision red, for as long as he could remember.

Joel didn’t want that for you.

Joel didn’t want you to end up here, knelt in the grass, drenched in blood and sweat, in guts and gore and everything wrong with this world.

And there’s even more guilt in that knowledge. You’re disappointing him. You can practically hear his voice ringing through the air, asking you what you were doing, why you were doing it. You could hear him telling you that he’s not worth all of this. It hurts that you can’t tell him otherwise. If he was here, you could have screamed at him, told him he was worth everything. But he’s not.

How do you carry that around with you? How can you? Are you supposed to drag the weight of Joel’s dead body behind you for the rest of your life?

He would tell you to let him go. He would tell you to live your life. But Joel had never really understood just what he meant to you, to everybody. He could never quite grasp the concept that he was loved, that he was one of the reasons you got up in the morning, one of the reasons you always fought to go home.

The problem is—you don’t want to let him go.

Your hand curls around the grass beneath it, sticky with blood, as if you could physically hold on to him. More than anything, you’re worried about losing the memories. If you let go of Joel, if you let his death fade to the back of your mind, would his life follow? Would you start to forget everything he had done for you? Everything he had meant to you?

Would you forget the sound of his laughter? The smile that only appeared on occasions, which lit up his entire face? The hug he greeted you with when you came home after a particularly hard day? The embarrassing talk he gave you about liking people your age? The feeling of having a father?

If you could, you would stay in those memories forever.

A ghost in your own past, haunting the man who had gone somewhere you couldn’t quite bring yourself to follow. You would go through all of that, the good and the bad, all over again, if it meant you could stay with Joel. Because despite everything, all of the things you had lived through, Joel Miller had become your home.

How could he expect you to let go of that? How could you be okay with that? After the life that you had led, you deserved to go home. It was hard not to resent Joel for expecting you to be okay with letting him go—divine intervention or not.

And you know, that if the tables were turned, if it were you who had been buried, if it was Joel who was here right now, he wouldn’t let you go. He would hunt Abby down, and he would make her suffer for what she had done, because Joel Miller was a force of nature, too.

Either way, he would have to find her.

So, shouldn’t you?

You think that you need to know. You have to find out if she’s this unearthly being that you have made her out to be. You need to know if you could’ve stopped her. If Joel could be alive, right here, right now.

There’s something so poetic about it all, you think.

Maybe, if you were in a better headspace, you could’ve figured it out. But really, what use was poetry in this world?

You’re working up the courage, the ability, to move, when you hear the footsteps crunching gravel just behind you. They’re heavy, purposeful, and you realise you’re still weeping, still screaming out for someone who can’t come. You think—hope—that this is Abby, here to put an end to this suffering. To these unending questions.

But there’s a warm hand against your back, a moment later, and no golf club swung at your skull.

“I’ve got ya, kiddo.” A voice says to you, hands grasping your shoulders, the twang of an accent so familiar that you’re reaching out, eyes closed, waiting for the person to reach back. When they do, your eyes open, but it’s not who you thought it was. You hadn’t died on this grass, and Joel wasn’t here to get you. Instead, Tommy stood in his place, his hands cleaner than your own.

When you look around, you wonder if you’re the monster that people will tell their children about. The person who ripped people to shreds, who tore them apart for no reason other than a quest for vengeance, one that wasn’t even fulfilled. Maybe, you think, you will become a cautionary tale. A warning for others. An example of what not to become, even in the apocalypse.

This was senseless. It was a slaughter.

All of these people are dead, and you don’t even know their names. They fought to protect themselves and the people around them, something of a team, maybe even a family, all because you are angry, and you are hurt, and you miss your dad. How many of these people have families at home? Families who will never see them again, because of you.

You know you’re not a divine being.

There was no otherworldly reason for your massacre. There was nobody behind a curtain, choosing your actions. No—there was just you.

What right did you have to decide these people should die? What right did you have to end their lives? Was one man—one dead man—truly worth this? Did he deserve to be the reason for your murderous rampage? Would he have wanted this? Would he be proud?

“C‘mere.” Tommy says, kneeling on the ground beside you, and shifting you until he could hold you tightly in his arms. If you don’t focus so much, if you let your mind wander, this could be Joel. It could be your dad hugging you, staining his clothes with the blood you’re drowning in. They’re similar enough, brothers, that you can imagine it is.

He’s holding you together.

“We need to get you out of here.” Tommy tells you, breaking the illusion you had been hoping to live in forever. You know he’s being patient with you — you can tell with every gust of wind that rustles the grass below you. Each one could bring more people, more bodies, yet Tommy refuses to rush you. Instead, he holds you tightly, like the cracks in your surface may lead to you bursting.

You suppose he’s right to worry.

His brother is dead. Joel is dead. And here he is, holding you in one piece, as if that wind could shatter you.

Selfishly, you don’t want him to be patient, or gentle, or kind. You want Tommy to show you some kind of mercy, to bring you peace of mind, of soul. But he can’t, unless he has some kind of insight that you don’t, unless he has ripped Abby apart and seen the divinity in her creation.

“C’mon,” Jesse says then, appearing out of seemingly nowhere. You hadn’t realised he was even nearby. Didn’t hear him approaching, though that could’ve been because of the unearthly wailing that had surrounded you. “I’m sorry,” He says, hand wiping at your face where it rests against Tommy’s shoulder. “We have to go. We have to go now. I’m sorry.”

And he does sound sorry—god, he sounds more apologetic than you had ever heard him.

You don’t know if he’s sorry for making you get up, for making you face the world again, or if he’s sorry that you’re even here, sorry that Joel is dead. You don’t know which you would prefer. You try to decide, and realise not long after that the two of them had pulled you to your feet, hands gripping you, waiting for you to hold yourself up.

“Jesse,” You choke out, reaching for him, as if seeing him for the first time. His hands are holding your own before you can even get out another word, uncaring of the blood that covers them. He squeezes once, twice, thrice, before he lets go to press his hands to your cheeks, grounding you, almost.

“It’s okay.” He says, and you can see in his eyes that he knows it’s a lie.

He takes your hand, pats your cheek, his forehead against your own for no more than a moment, before he’s letting Tommy take over, letting the man soothe his fatherly instincts. Uncle Tommy. You imagine a life where you would have called him that.

Tommy leads you away.

Away from the bodies, the gore, the guilt, hopefully. He grips onto you the whole way, pulls you along every time you stumble, holds you up whenever you long to fall. All the way until you reach a theatre, where Ellie and Dina have been bunkered, one of them tells you. We’re going home.

You wonder if they’re going to bury you in the ground, beside Joel. Home. You think it sounds nice.

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harmonictechnicality · 1 year

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my heart is my armor for @thefreakandthehair's Spicy Six Spring Challenge (mwah mwah!) | *ao3 link here*

Eddie doesn’t understand Steve’s sudden interest in having a garage sale. Everything that they own is junk disguised as furniture. None of it is worth looking at, let alone buying.

Besides, they don’t even have a garage. They’re still slumming it in this dingy duplex, too broke to afford decent cutlery.

“A garage sale with no garage is just false advertisement, babe.” Eddie flops onto his stomach, hears the boxsprings of their shitty mattress groan underneath him.

“We need to do some spring cleaning anyways.” Steve sinks his nails into Eddie’s hair, scratches at his roots the way Eddie likes it best. It’s all mindless now, physical affection. Five months ago, both of them would’ve been scared shitless to behave this way. Now, it’s easy.

Routine bliss.

“Might as well make a few extra dollars out of it.” Steve adds.

Eddie scoffs. Flattens his face into the mattress, ignores the questionable dude smell. “What the fuck is spring cleaning anyways?”

“Just a thing. Always has been.”

“Hmph.”

Spring cleaning sounds like a tradition that rich assholes invented as an excuse to throw away the winter jackets they never even wore - never even took the tags off of. Eddie can just imagine a gaggle of housewives, swishing their wine and speaking in some fake transatlantic accent: ‘Oh sweet darling lambchop, it’s not wasteful. It’s simply a bit of spring cleaning.’

“I never agreed to do spring cleaning.” Eddie says.

“You never agree to do cleaning, period.”

“That’s not true. I did the laundry last month.”

Which isn’t a lie. Eddie did three (two) loads of laundry after Steve refused to go anywhere near it. Claims that the final straw was seeing some sort of mutated rodent emerging from their hamper.

“Oh that?” Eddie had fished his brain for a plausible explanation. “That was just a mouse or a rat or a… miniature possum. Something like that.” At the time, he phrased the whole thing like the weirdest multiple choice quiz - the most suitable answer being Something Like That.

“Whatever.” Steve snorts, likely recalling that same night. He turns off the lamp, lets the dark bleed into the room, swallowing the light.

They both inch into the middle of the bed, where it’s naturally starting to dip at the center. All of their belongings are used, including this mattress. If money weren’t an issue, they would invest in a new one.

Or not. Eddie kind of likes that it sags in the middle, where they always meet. Like it’s giving in, shaping itself around the weight of their relationship.

The thought makes him smile, a stupidly smitten grin at his stupidly pretty boyfriend.

“What?” Steve pokes a finger at the corner of Eddie’s mouth.

“Nothing.” He catches Steve’s finger, pretends to gnaw it off his hand till Steve laughs. Best fucking sound, even better in their bed.

Christ, he’s so in love. Wants a megaphone to scream about how in love he is with Steve Harrington. Wants to call a local radio station and request the sappiest love songs imaginable. Wants to be able to just say it, then never stop saying it.

That feels colossal though. Like the playfulness will fizzle out or the blissful routine will rupture.

So he just says it in other ways, like tonight.

“Okay, fine. You win.” Which is a direct translation to those three important words, because Eddie hates losing. One of his top ten least favorite things in this world is losing.

He folds Steve’s fingers into a fist, kisses over every knuckle. Looks up to see Steve blinking slowly, half-asleep. Looks happy.

And damn, that makes it all worth it, right? Losing so Steve can win. That makes it tolerable, almost enjoyable, for a soft expression like that.

“I’ll do the non-garage garage sale.”

Steve yawns, nuzzles into his side of the pillow. “I knew you would.”

Eddie complains the entire time they clean. Makes the biggest fuss, stomps from room to room. Their place is small, sure. Yet somehow, they generate enough dust and dirt to fill multiple trash bags. Which means multiple trips to the dumpster.

Fuck Spring for making cleanliness a seasonal personality trait.

It’s late into the afternoon when they finally take a break. Both of them are pretty disgusting, so they sit on the front steps of the duplex.

“Quit scowling, you big baby.” Steve passes a glass of water to Eddie. Takes a long chug from his own glass, throwing his head back to get more down.

No human being has the right to look this sexy without proper legal representation. But Steve wears dirt and sweat like an accessory. Makes the grime so damn rugged, utterly hot.

Yeah. Eddie finally can relate to all the women that drool over erotica novel covers. Fully gets the appeal.

“So, find anything worth selling?” Steve asks.

“As a matter of fact, yeah. I did.”

Eddie reaches to his side and grabs a black binder: Steve’s baseball card collection. An extensive one at that.

He smooths over the plastic cover, fluttering his lashes up at Steve, who seems to be seconds away from hulking out over the suggestion.

“Oh fuck that, man!” Steve yanks the binder from Eddie’s hand. “I’ve had those since I was a kid!”

“Which is exactly why it’s time to retire them. Give them a new home. One that’s not a brothel for cockroaches.”

Really, Eddie gets far too much pleasure out of this. Watching people squirm under the uncomfortable magnifying glass of his sense of humor.

Steve cracks his neck to one side and snarls.

Ha. Perfect. Eddie has dwindled him down to nonverbal replies. Just caveman actions that are equally as sexy as the dirt and sweat.

But Steve throws a curveball, too quick to catch. He slips into the house and returns with one of Eddie’s favorite cups. “And what about these, huh? What about your dorky Star Wars glasses?”

Okay, ouch. This game is not funny anymore. Totally bypassed Humor and went straight to Dire territory.

Han may have shot first, but Steve Harrington is aiming where it hurts. Cutting him deep (deeper than that very unlucky tauntaun…).

“These are collectibles, Steven. Collectibles!” Eddie exaggerates every syllable, first-grade teacher style. “I spent two years tracking down the complete Empire Strikes Back set. Still missing three from Return of the Jedi, but whatever. Progress is progress.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is, these are valuable.”

“Like, worth a lot of money?”

“No. You know what I mean…” Eddie stands. He carefully grabs the glass from Steve and holds it up to the sun.

All the designs are just as vibrant as the day he found them. Him and Wayne had searched almost a dozen Burger Kings before he found this design - the scene on Endor. Eddie will never forget that day.

“The memories.” He finally answers. “These are sentimental and shit.”

Steve hums, nodding. “They mean something to you.”

“Precisely.”

“Noted.” He takes the cup back inside. There’s silence for another minute before Steve lurks around the door, saying:

“Then I guess we’ll have to sell one of your guitars instead.”

Oh shit.

Another direct hit to Eddie’s blackened heart.

“You little fucker!” He chases Steve all around the kitchen and into their bedroom. Wrestles him down on their saggy bed, instantly dirtying up again.

They end up with a decent amount of items to sell that Saturday morning. Duplicate records and cassettes, a few kitchen gadgets from Steve’s grandma, and some trinkets that Robin kindly donated. A hodgepodge of treasures, that’s what Steve keeps saying.

He’s so proud of their three tables of junk. Hodgepodge treasures, whatever. Just keeps rearranging things and straightening them out. Concentrating so hard that his eyebrows crease together. Adorably focused. Eddie loves when he gets like this. If they weren’t in a conservative small town in broad daylight, he’d kiss Steve’s twisted-up lips, make him relax a little.

“I…” Eddie starts, quickly tripping on his own tongue. Stumbles over that dumb fucking word. Four letters should not hold the power of an entire emotion, goddamnit.

He scoots out of his lawn chair, stretching upward. “I think I’ll go pester the lemonade stand across the street. Haggle the price down to a penny or something.”

Steve huffs out a laugh. “You get more bizarre every day, Munson.”

“So does the economy, Harrington.”

The lemonade stand is an immediate mistake. A little girl peers up at Eddie, eyes starting to swell with tears. Maybe the clouds are casting a big, scary shadow over him, making him look twice as evil.

Or maybe he severely underestimated how badass his look really is, who fucking knows.

He dives right into his haggling-monologue, when the girl points to his latest Iron Maiden patch on his vest. Asks in the thinnest voice who the ‘skeleton man’ is.

And look, Eddie doesn’t mess around when it comes to educating this fine nation’s youth. So he answers honestly:

“Eddie the Head. A vessel for soul-sucking metal.”

The answer is probably what makes her run. But it’s definitely the voice that opens up the floodgates.

Anyways, he’s not just gonna let all this freshly-squeezed goodness go to waste. That would be a shame. A travesty, even.

So he helps himself to two full cups of lemonade. Makes a quick escape before the kid’s parents bring pitchforks.

Eddie sneaks up behind Steve, whispers nervously in his ear. “Well… there’s good news and there’s bad news.”

“What did you do?” Steve doesn’t miss a beat.

“I got the lemonade for free.” He hops up on the table, waves the proof around with a big, cheesy grin. Still no reaction from Steve, so what the hell? Might as well get all the information out there.

“Bad news is, I made the pigtailed kid cry.”

“Dude!”

“It’s not my fault!” Eddie is suddenly very defensive. “She asked who this ‘skeleton man’ on my vest is and I couldn’t lie.”

“You lie about shit all the time.”

“Not about history, Steve! Get your head out of your perfectly-shaped ass.”

Steve puts his hand over Eddie’s mouth, gesturing to the nearby shoppers. Not that Eddie is overly concerned about what the elderly couple can hear from this distance. And he assumes that the suspender-wearing dude admiring the Barry Manilo record, would probably agree on his Ass Opinions.

However, Steve is shrinking further into his chair from Eddie’s commentary. Grunting something unintelligible but mostly likely explicit.

“Here.” Eddie determines that the safest solution is to back down. Ease off until Steve’s complexion returns to normal colors. “You can have the lemonade that isn’t diluted with the tears of a child.”

Steve laughs into the cup and takes a long swig. Chases it with an exaggerated ‘aaah’ like all of those airbrushed models do in the commercials.

Eddie is just so damn crazy about this guy. Would drink a thousand tear-soaked beverages for Steve if it meant getting to experience every day just like this. With a smile like that.

“How is it?” Steve asks.

“Tastes like citrus and fear.” Eddie responds proudly with a wink.

There’s a pause before they both erupt into laughter. Steve slapping Eddie’s knee rather than his own. Eddie snorting like a sitcom dweeb. He’s laughing so hard that he almost misses Steve uttering the most incredible sentence:

“God, I love you.”

Says it just like that. Clear as water. Easier than oxygen. Like he has told Eddie that very phrase a thousand times before.

And Eddie… Eddie can’t locate a single word in his brain. His access to language is padlocked after hearing that. Experiencing that.

All he can do is move. Move away from the table. Move behind the clothing rack full of used jackets. Move his arms outward, pulling Steve along with him.

He kisses Steve before he does something stupid like scream or flail around. If he’s going to open his big mouth, it’s going to be against Steve’s lips. Licking the drops of lemon clean off his mouth. Pushing his linen-soft hair back and holding it between his fingers.

They’re obscured by clothes and scarves, but it’s risky. Too risky to linger into a deeper kiss like Eddie craves to do. So he lets go of this moment and ducks into the house to catch his breath.

The rest of the day goes by at hyper speed, too fast to notice details. Not that anything could possibly top hearing Steve say what he said. It’s tattooed deep into everything Eddie hears, permanently inked in his mind.

Once they head back inside, Steve flicks through the wad of cash, counting their profit. It’s not much, merely pocket change - but certainly more than either of them expected. Eddie chalks up the surprising amount to Steve's charm and short-shorts. The yummiest eye-candy of the whole damn neighborhood.

“We should save up for a trip.” Steve suggests.

Eddie raises his brows. “A trip?”

“A vacation. You know, get away from this shithole town for a weekend.” The more he talks, the more Steve’s face glows. Fucking shines with daydreams. “A change of scenery might be nice.”

Eddie holds back the urge to remind Steve that he’s the best scenery in the solar system. He already gushes too much, too often. It’s bound to scare Steve off at some point.

So he simply kisses Steve’s shoulder instead, agreeing with a soft hum.

He starts to fall asleep while listening to Steve name all the places they should travel to. The last one he remembers is Boston.

“Boston would be fucking awesome, right?”

Eddie nods. Drifts off.

Thinks that anywhere with Steve Harrington would be fucking awesome.

Eddie heads up north for a couple of weeks to help Wayne move into his new place. Since Hawkins was previously sliced apart like pizza, Wayne wisely decided to retire early. Used his government hush-money in the most predictable way he could.

“All I need, son, is an empty mind and lake full of fish.” And that’s exactly what he gets. A one-story house near the top of Lake Michigan. Has one hell of a view too.

They head out to the private dock to chat and fish. Except Eddie isn’t too keen on jabbing sharp metal into a water-dweller’s mouth, so he keeps Wayne company on the dock. Lends an ear for all of his stories.

“Shame that Steve couldn’t make it.” Wayne waits to bring him up till they start packing up for the evening.

“Yeah. It is.” Eddie agrees. Misses him already. “Next time though.”

During his last weekend with Wayne, a package arrives on the front porch. It’s addressed to Eddie, which is strange. The only people that know he’s here are his boyfriend, his bandmates, and his boss. More than likely, Steve probably told their crew of demon-destroyers too, but still…

Why would anyone bother to send him a package if he’s driving back home in three days? Doesn’t add up.

He cuts into the cardboard, practically ruins the box. Inside, there’s an absurd amount of tissue paper. It’s stuffed in every corner, overflowing at the top, just a sea of noisy paper.

“Whatcha got there?” Wayne peers over his shoulder.

“Not sure yet.” Eddie sifts through the noise. Digging around more carefully now because he takes notice of the ‘Fragile’ labels on every side of the box.

He pulls out one of the overly-wrapped items, begins removing it from the tissue paper. After twirling through a few layers, he realizes exactly what it is.

Glass. Colorful designs. Fits in the palm of his hand.

The Star Wars cups. The last three Star Wars cups that had been missing from Eddie’s collection.

“No fucking way.”

“Watch it.” Wayne warns.

“It’s a warranted response, I promise.” Eddie hands the pristine Darth Vader glass over to Wayne. “Look!”

Wayne examines it for a while before letting out a long whistle. “Well I’ll be damned. Haven’t you been looking for these since-”

“1983.” Eddie answers. He gently picks up each glass, thumbs over the artwork to feel the tiny ridges of paint.

They’re in perfect condition too, more than perfect. No chips, no blemishes, no smudgy fingerprints (except for Eddie’s now). He has to place them back into the box because his hands are shaking with excitement. Smooths his palms against his jeans, head shaking in disbelief.

“That romantic asshole.” Eddie grumbles. “Couldn’t just wait to give me these once I get back home.”

Wayne cuts him a vicious side-eye, one that makes Eddie’s spine shiver. He's received this look many times throughout his childhood, even more in his teenage years. It’s Wayne’s signature stare before he calls Eddie out on his bullshit.

Apparently, it still has the same effect on him too. Works like witchcraft.

Wayne looks over the gifts, then back up at Eddie. His edge melts away, turns into something softer. Kinder.

“You know… some things can’t wait, son.”

With that, the tension in Eddie’s spine unravels. His chest inflates, warming up a few extra degrees. His whole body knows exactly what he needs to do - the thing that can’t wait another second.

The phone only rings through one time.

“This is Steve.” That voice. Hits like a homemade remedy.

“Hey, it’s Eddie.” His nails are tapping next to the phone speaker, rapid and impatient. “Listen, I just got your package and-”

“Oh, god.” Steve sounds pained all of a sudden. “Was it too much? Is it gonna be too difficult to transport back home? I know it would’ve just been easier to wait, except-”

“I love you.”

There it is. The words that can’t wait. The phrase that demands power.

“You… what?”

“I love you. Just, so much.” Eddie feels lighter, weight lifting from his lungs each time he says it. “And I couldn’t wait another second to tell you. So, yeah. Really, really in love with you, Steve.”

All Eddie can hear is Steve’s breath. Just as rapid as his nails tapping.

“Wow… um.” Steve clears his throat, but the sound comes out small. Strained. “Do you mind if I call you right back?”

Not the response Eddie was expecting. “Oh. Uh.”

“Just - hold on a sec.”

And the line clicks dead.

After the third hour of organizing pans in the kitchen, the only room close enough to launch himself at the phone if it were to ring, Eddie accepts defeat. Retreats to the guest bedroom, contemplating what the fuck went wrong.

He groans into the bedspread, claws at his hair till it’s a fucking jungle. Frizzed out beyond repair, just like his nerves.

“That’s enough moping.” Wayne knocks at the door, creaking it open. “We’re going down to the lake.”

There’s no point in arguing with him. The man is the human embodiment of Stubborn - more so than Eddie, which speaks volumes.

Besides, moping in a different location won’t make him any less pathetic.

Wayne is a master in the art of distraction. Doesn’t waste any time before telling Eddie all about the local gossip he overhears downtown. He quickly transitions into asking Eddie questions about his job. Continues this pattern till the sun falls into the horizon. Not allowing Eddie’s mind the chance to jump to conclusions until they get back to the house. To the phone.

The phone that’s still not ringing.

Wayne nudges Eddie’s arm. “Wanna give him a call?”

Yes. Desperately yes.

“Maybe. Gonna go change first.”

Eddie opens the door to the guest bedroom, and his lungs slingshot out of his chest.

Steve is there. Sitting on the bed. Looking at him with that knockout smile and slightly tired eyes.

“Hi.” He sits up a little straighter. Gives Eddie the tiniest wave.

“You’re… you-”

“Caught the first flight out here.” Steve cuts him off. “Had to.”

“How?”

“The vacation cash jar.”

No no no.

Eddie’s throat feels swollen with that realization. Knows just how fucking much that potential trip to Boston meant to Steve.

“But-”

“Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not, I’m not.” Eddie spits out. Needs to swallow this barrier of emotion in his throat so he can form an actual sentence, for christ’s sake. “Fuck. You just… have no idea how much I love you.”

Steve perks up even straighter, seems fully awake now. His smile creeps up to one side of his face, outright mischievous. He tilts his head to the side and holds an arm out, reaching for Eddie.

“Get over here and show me then.”

In one fluid motion, Eddie lands on the bed, draped in Steve’s arms. They kiss and cling to each other as if they might float off somewhere. It’s all too good, too delicious. Just can’t get enough of how Steve tastes, needs to savor it after not having him around for ten days.

Being under the covers, kissing wildly, is becoming dangerous. And if Wayne weren’t in the room directly across from them, Eddie would have Steve in unspeakable positions by now. Steve tugs multiple times at the zipper on Eddie’s jeans. Causes physical damage to Eddie’s horny soul to pull Steve's hand away.

They stay like this instead. Leisure, molasses kisses. Knotted fingers and tangled legs. Closer than skin.

Steve lifts up onto his elbow, swipes Eddie’s bangs off of his forehead to make room for another place to kiss. “Can’t believe it took a few dorky cups to make you realize you were in love with me,” he says, lips still smushed in that spot before backing away.

Eddie flips onto his back with a heavy sigh. No way he can look at Steve’s face while admitting this outloud. “I’ve loved you since the day you fed me a curly fry that you had twisted around your pinky.”

“That was the moment?”

“That was the moment.”

He can hear the smile in Steve’s voice. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Never gonna dodge that ‘freak’ reputation, am I?”

“Not a chance.”

The sky is dusted with stars that night. Not the kind of night sky they ever get to see in Hawkins. Steve marvels at them, mentions that he’s never seen so many at once, not even through a window.

“We could go outside?” Eddie offers. “See even more, if you want.”

“Fuck that.” Steve burrows his nose into Eddie’s neck. “Too comfy.”

Eddie agrees with a laugh. “It’s a good bed, isn’t it?”

“Ours is better.”

It’s not, it’s really not. Their bed is rotting, the oldest relic of their home.

But it bends with them, forms to their bodies perfectly.

And since this bed has yet to learn their language, Eddie takes the lead.

“You’re right.” He curls himself around Steve. Leans in closer and Steve follows. “Ours is definitely better.”

Even miles away from home, they somehow always manage to meet in the middle.

#steddie #steddie fic #steve harrington #eddie munson #lexsspringfanworkschallenge #I hope y'all like this one :)#it's still snarky but also cozy #and I definitely went overboard on the Star Wars jokes at one point #but yeah please enjoy this spring fic 💕

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noyzinerd · 2 years

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The new trailer certainly creates a window to make a plausible explanation for why Stiles isn't there.

I can imagine Scott yelling to bring together the WHOLE pack, because "We're gonna need everyone for this!"

Lydia, being the logically more objective one, chimes in that he's the only one who's seen inside of that thing. If they have any chance of defeating the Nogitsune again, they have to call Stiles.

The sheriff is quiet, but his hand is shaking at his side. The idea of that thing being anywhere near his son makes him sick and cold on the inside. Sheriff Stilinski was there for the night terrors, the fall out, he watched his boy lose his grasp on reality, carried him over to his bed after Stiles fell asleep at his desk after trying to stay awake for days. As much as it feels like he's already zipping his son into a bodybag, he knows they're right. They're right and he's outnumbered here.

Derek watches as the sheriff pulls out his private civilian phone with loose, trembling fingers. Right as he hesitantly starts to dial the number, Derek reaches out and snatches the phone.

"You can't call him."

Surprised, Sheriff Stilinski turns to him and asks "Why not?"

Looking the man dead in the eye, Derek simply says, "Because your phone is broken," and snaps the phone in half.

The whole room is shocked silent.

A moment passes before a teary, absolutely grateful smile spreads across the sheriff's face. "Yeah. I guess it is." And just like that, he leaves, because, well, it can't be helped.

An hour later, and the pack are watching back and forth, like a tennis match, as Scott and Derek continue to argue.

"You're being selfish!"

"I don't care. This town has taken enough from him already. I'm not going to watch as that thing taps him dry." While everyone had been busy grieving Allison, Derek had watched as Stiles forced himself to 'suck it up' and get better, jamming misaligned pieces together and duct taping over the jagged edges, because the pack needed him. He'd been running on empty for so long, looking out for the pack, there was never any room for him to absorb his own trauma before being thrown into some new bullshit. It's time someone finally looked out for Stiles.

As Lydia goes to pull out her own phone, a sweet, still mostly confused, but endearingly well-meaning, Eli immediately swipes Lydia's phone from her hands and smashes it on the ground before looking over at his father for approval, his head cocked to the side with an expression that reads 'Yes? Eli do good?'

Eli's face lights up at Derek's proud smile. If the kid had had a tail, it would have been wagging.

Derek turns back to Scott, undeterred. "Besides, don't you remember how powerful the Nogitsune was when it had Stiles? How do you know that isn't its plan? To lure Stiles to Beacon Hills. You'd be giving it what it wants by bringing him back here."

Scott grits his teeth and clenches his fists, but he concedes.

"Fine." Scott says, "But we should at least tell him about this."

"No! You know how he is. He'll want to get involved. That self-sacrificing asshole will find some way to get himself killed. And facing Allison again after-...You can't. We don't know why she's here or if she's another Nogitsune trick. I'm not putting him in a situation where he might have to kill her."

Stiles could be mad at him later. Derek would gladly take the brunt of that blame. At least there would be a Stiles alive to yell at him, so it didn't matter. As long as he had something to say about it, Derek was never letting Stiles step foot back in this hellhole.

#Sterek #teen wolf #derek hale #stiles stilinski #mieczysław stiles stilinski #tyler hoechlin #dylan o'brien #2022 teen wolf movie #Best boy Eli #eli hale #Proud papa Derek

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nervouspearl · 7 months

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So um...maybe I went a little unhigned after watching episode 2.07 and wrote a whole piece about how it could make sense for Siuan to believe that Moiraine (and Lan?) have turned to the dark?

First of all, I should preface this by saying that I don’t 100% believe that this is what happened, or that this is the thought progress Siuan went through, but it seems at least plausible? Many have suggested that seeing Moiraine channel is what made Siuan believe that she could be a darkfriend, and that would explain Siuan enforcing the sacred oath despite Moiraine's pleas, but it didn’t sit right with me as the only explanation because Moiraine never directly told her that she was stilled, and therefore did not directly lie to Siuan about it.

But taking a few steps back and looking at the whole episode, and even the previous episode, and considering the possibility that the seed of doubt had been sown in Siuan from the moment Lan told her Moiraine had been stilled for months, it started to make more sense to me how the episode could unfold the way it did. Maybe I’m giving more credit to the writers than what they deserve and this is not what really happened at all, but it was an interesting thought experiment to go through.

Now, starting from episode 6. Siuan has been corresponding with Moiraine for 6 months after the Eye of the World, and not once has Moiraine even hinted at being stilled. Lan then appears out of the blue one night to stop her carriage, telling her that Moiraine has been stilled ever since taking Rand to the Eye of the World.

Now, that simply does not compute for Siuan. Her and Moiraine keep secrets from everyone else but never from each other. For 20 years they have shared this mission and the Moiraine she knows would not keep something so big from her, or so she had thought.

So what does mean for Siuan? Either Moiraine has been stilled for six months and she hasn’t said anything to Siuan about it, or something even more sinister happened at the Eye of the World and the Dark One somehow got to Moiraine.

For the first time in her life, Siuan has to seriously doubt Moiraine, and by extension she also has to doubt Lan: because why is Lan the one to tell her that Moiraine has been stilled? If it’s a lie, of course it makes sense to send Lan to tell it, because if Moiraine herself was caught in a lie, it would immediately be obvious that she has broken the three oaths.

And so Siuan arrives in Cairhien, with 14 Aes Sedai in tow, because she doesn’t know what she is dealing with and whether she is entering a trap or not. She needs to see Moiraine, alone, to determine where they stand, but she can’t go there without reinforcements and a back-up plan.

It’s telling that she doesn’t disclose to the other Aes Sedai why they are there. As she tells Liandrin: “We’ll have to wait and see.” Even Siuan isn’t sure at this point what she will need the 14 Aes Sedai for, if for anything other than show. It will depend on her meeting with Moiraine.

Then she meets Moiraine, and immediately opens with “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me you’d been stilled?” because that’s what it all boils down to.

She desperately wants to believe Moiraine and needs to hear her explain why she has not communicated this monumental thing to her before, but she finds Moiraine distant and defensive. They are alone but Moiraine isn’t talking to her. She is avoiding answering anything and is in fact countering Siuan’s questions with questions of her own (an effective way to avoid having to lie) and no matter how closely Siuan is looking (and she is looking very closely) she cannot glean the answers from Moiraine that she’s looking for.

As a last resort, she approaches Moiraine and tries to directly appeal to the love they share, the mission they share together and Moiraine visibly flinches under her touch before surrendering to it.

The change that has happened in Siuan's expression by the end of the “interview” is noticeable:

She still may not fully believe that Moiraine has pledged herself to the Dark, because that would be a huge leap, but it’s an option she now has to take very seriously and act accordingly.

Next she has to meet Rand. She is in no mood to have a real conversation with him, nor give him a pep talk like she did to Nynaeve and Egwene. She just needs to find out what she can and learn if Moiraine has actually held any part of their deal and taught him how to channel - the answer: she has not. Rand is completely useless and unprepared, which happens to be hugely convenient for the Dark One.

Siuan now knows what she must do: the Dragon Reborn must be separated from Moiraine, for the sake of the mission, if there is any chance that Moiraine is now a darkfriend (and maybe for Moiraine’s sake as well, because maybe things are not as bad as they seem and there is still something that can be salvaged) and at the moment, the best action Siuan can see before her is to fall on Tower protocol, especially, as Siuan has found during her interview with Rand, the Dragon Reborn is still weak and easy to control. They had tried their way and it now seems to have cost her Moiraine. What else is there to do now but try the other approach?

When Moiraine enters the room again, Siuan meets her, not as her lover, but as the Amyrlin: cold and detached.

When Moiraine asks “have you forgotten that day” it clearly affects Siuan. She has not forgotten. But has Moiraine?

“Of course I’ve not forgotten, but YOU were supposed to be with him”

Now, it’s unclear to me if Moiraine is imprisoned with Rand, or if she is there with him by her own will, but clearly she is at least under surveillance. Leane tells Verin not to let Moiraine get close to her, implying that Moiraine is now considered a threat. Presumably these are instructions from Siuan.

Things are already bad, but they are about to get worse, and confirm Siuan’s worst fears which she still might not have fully allowed herself to believe.

Lanfear is on the loose, and Moiraine and Rand escape. Verin seems to be in on it too. The person that Moiraine recently spent several months with. (I’m not sure if Siuan knows that's where Moiraine was, but since she and Moiraine did correspond during those months, I assume Siuan was aware of her whereabouts.) It doesn’t look good.

Siuan rushes to find Moiraine and Rand because it’s now of paramount importance that they don’t leave the town together. The best case scenario remains that Moiraine has simply lost her mind due to being stilled, but the worst case, and now a seemingly very possible scenario, is that she could be worse than that. But still, Siuan has not let go of all hope and she goes alone to deal with the woman she loves - to try one more time to either reason with her or stop her by force.

She finds her at the waygate and arrives just in time to see that it’s Moiraine - the supposedly stilled Moiraine - who has opened it. Whatever hope she was still clinging onto is gone.

“You lied to me about being stilled.”

Moiraine denies it but what value do her words have anymore if she has pledged herself to the Dark and broken her oaths? And she looks utterly unhinged too. This is not her Moiraine.

But also Siuan can’t play her hand and directly accuse her of being a darkfriend because what good would that do? If she is a darkfriend she can lie, so her words are worth nothing.

But there is another oath that Moiraine has made directly to Siuan. Maybe that’s been broken too, but it’s all Siuan has now.

Moiraine is begging her not to, and it’s almost enough to break Siuan’s resolve, but she can’t know anymore what Moiraine’s motivation is. Is she begging her not to enforce the oath because it’s wrong, or because it would reveal that she is no longer bound by it, or maybe there is even a possibility that she still is bound by this oath because her deal with the dark one only included freeing her from the three oaths of the Aes Sedai, and now being commanded by Siuan would simply prevent her from taking the Dragon Reborn to Ishamael?

Siuan's command works and it hurts her more than anything to watch Moiraine being moved against her will by a force she cannot resist, but maybe there’s also some relief in seeing that the oath is still in place. Maybe, just maybe, Moiraine has not turned to dark after all?

When Siuan looks at Moiraine after the deed is done, she sees her Moiraine again and she is beyond sorry for what she has just done. There is a fleeting moment where things could have been said and misunderstandings cleared, but it's too short. There is not time, because Lanfear appears before any of those things can happen.

Siuan doesn’t have any answers yet, but one thing she knows is that she’s not going to let Lanfear go unopposed. It was a valid effort but completely useless. Siuan gets tossed aside as easily as she herself had just knocked out Lan.

Now, I don’t know how Siuan interprets the last things she sees before passing out, whether she believes now that Moiraine remains true to the mission and can appreciate the fact that Moiraine having managed to win Rand’s trust is a good thing. She is awake to see Lanfear about to attack Moiraine, and to see Rand stand between them, which should suggest that Moiraine and Lanfear are not working together, but then Moiraine does go with her to the ways, so it’s open for interpretation I guess, but that doesn’t really matter in the sense that it’s something that must be dealt with later. What matters more is what Siuan believes up until the moment she forces Moiraine to close the gate.

If this is what happened, it kind of makes sense to me. But I guess only time will tell what the real story is.

#siuaraine #siuanraine #moiraine x siuan #siuan sanche #moiraine damodred #wot show spoilers #wot season 2 #wot s2 spoilers

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anistarrose · 20 days

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The possible explanations for why the fuck Barry could've felt the need to open that scene with "are you afraid?" have been analyzed by this fandom for basically ever since the Red Robe identity reveal, and a lot of people have brought up good theories that I've adopted bits and pieces of from each. But one thing that I haven't actually seen proposed as a factor is this:

Talking to Tres Horny Boys through the facade of the faceless "Red Robe" might've just been Barry's backup plan. Plan A was, quite possibly, to sneak Junior's ichor out of Lucretia's private quarters, be able to actually inoculate THB, and actually have them recognize him. (A proper reunion, with no cryptic warnings. With no dancing around static — just Barry and Tres Horny Boys, actually trusting each other innately.)

Why do I think this is plausible? Let me clarify the timeline a little: at the start of the Petals arc, before THB leave the Bureau, all is normal with their soon to be ex-roommate Pringles/Robbie (Ep. 18). Upon return, THB are informed that at some point during their (overnight, so 24 hour-ish?) absence, Pringles was thrown in the brig (Ep. 28).

It's eventually revealed by Pringles and Barry, in The Suffering Game and Reunion Tour respectively, that Barry possessed Pringles to do "reconnaissance" on the Bureau, specifically on where to find the second Voidfish (ie, Lucretia's private office, which is where Pringles "woke up" and was "arrested summarily").

I will note that Barry describes this as just recon — implying information gathering, and not necessarily a Voidfish ichor heist. However, this was an explanation he gave through a recorded message in the coin, where he was likely choosing his words carefully to confuse THB the least amount possible. And moreover... I just find it hard to believe that Barry wouldn't let himself hope, leading up to and during this infiltration, that he could make it out with the ichor he so desperately needed.

After all, Barry may be Going Through It during the podcast, but he definitely knows that as much as he needs information, it's going to be a lot harder to pull off his eventual heist if Lucretia catches him in the act, and winds up knowing that he has that information. Barry also chose to make his infiltration attempt while the Bureau was distracted, monitoring the Gaia Sash — in a lot of ways, this might've seemed not like not just his first chance at the ichor, but also his best chance at it.

Barry's both an incredibly determined and opportunistic, calculating guy. I don't think Barry would've left Pringles' body unless/until he was absolutely cornered; no hope left of getting out with the ichor this time. He wouldn't pass up a chance to restore his family's memories — because of his deep, deep emotional and practical stakes in restoring those memories, first and foremost — but he even feels kinda bad about possessing Pringles (calling it "unfortunate collateral damage"), and would certainly prefer for his unsavory tactics to be, you know, worth it.

So when Barry fails? When he comes away from his mission he's no doubt been planning for weeks, waiting intently and single-mindedly for his chance with the right Relic-based distraction — and it turns out he has information, but no ichor, to show for it? When he fails, Barry's left on the back foot.

He'd dared to hope it might turn out better than this. He'd dared to hope this might be a turning point, and the world might remain in danger, but at least he'd have his family back. He'd dared to hope he might be able to speak to them, in his right mind, with his memories, and be recognized for the first time in a decade.

So when none of that comes to fruition? When he knows his boys won't recognize him yet, no matter what he does? Yet he still needs them on his side? He still needs them to be prepared for the horrors coming?

Well, he just fucking improvises.

"Are you afraid?"

#taz #taz balance #taz balance spoilers #barry bluejeans #taz meta #this is actually a conclusion i reached while working on a fic recently!#but this topic is buried right in the middle of mostly non-barry pov; so it deserved its own post for visibility #disclaimer that i don't actually think griffin intended this explicitly - but i think it's a very powerful read on barry's character #and writing-wise barry's motivations were spun together on the fly so much anyways that i think i'm allowed to extrapolate #what was griffin doing if not extrapolating from his own previous writing choices anyways? (i'm so glad he did. i love barry)#long post

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raayllum · 2 months

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We don't appreciate Soren's batshit evolving view of Rayla (and Rayllum enough) tbh.

Think about it: you're Soren. Your dad and sister tell you the princes you were sworn to protect got kidnapped by a Moonshadow elf (some of whom you just fought, killed, and watched your fellow crownguard be killed by). You never met her and never saw the encounter in the dungeons that Claudia did, so you have no reason to doubt this. Then your dad gives you a mission that curdles your stomach and you find yourself more than half hoping that elf has just killed the boys because that means you don't have to dirty your hands and have plausible deniability of your own and your dad's involvement in all of this.

Then you find the Moonshadow elf and she's young. Younger than you. Asleep; it feels wrong. But then it's a trick and she's got the momentary upper hand! She's talented. She's sarcastic(?) and pretty. She's dead meat—

Then Callum runs in, in front of your raised sword, and defends her. He says she's his friend. He says she's a good elf. (How can that be possible?) He says you have to learn to put aside your differences. Your brain is breaking. You assume nothing will change in the morning. And then the weirdest thing is that the elf has the same reaction to your sister and Callum flirting as you do, a big ugh. What's up with that?

You speculate about Moonshadow madness and lie about the king, and the elf gives you an Intense Look that, unfortunately, is not because she's hot and talented, but because she's suspicious. She looks after Ezran like he's her own little brother. When she tricks you guys, again, it's just her on the ground and the princes safely on the stupid moon bird.

Then you don't see her again until it's raining, and she's shown up seemingly of nowhere to save this dumb monstrous dragon. She can't cut the chains and she's outnumbered. An easy prize. Claudia tells you not to kill her because she might be useful. You haven't really made up your mind about it when—

Callum is there in the rain, following after her like a good loyal knight of his own. Callum does dark magic. You wonder if this was the plan all along or not, since the elf doesn't look happy about it. In her your periphery you see her run to him anyway once the dragon is freed. Then it smashes you into the rocks, and everything gets fuzzy.

You don't see her again until at least a week and a half later at the Storm Spire. Ezran calls for both of them (are they always a package deal) and they come running. They exchange wary looks as you give explanations. You can hear their voices, dimly, in the queen's antechamber while you play a game of chase with Ezran and the Dragon Prince. Callum looks to her when you ask to speak and she gives you an eye-roll of permission. Her name is Rayla. She thinks you're more than just a big dump lump (compliment). And maybe you wonder if she's a little more than a friend to Callum as she takes his hand and squeezes, watching Ezran fly off into the night. Maybe you don't.

But they're not holding hands when you find them the next morning so it's fine to interrupt, and you don't know for sure they're a thing until everything is said and done—until you learn that not only is Callum more than over your sister, he flung himself off the top of that tall tall mountain to catch Rayla without even knowing the spell would work.

It's intense and overwhelming to the point you might worry about it if she didn't also look at him like he hung the stars, holding hands in front of the Dragon Queen—on the way back home to Katolis. Ezran gives you pieces of whatever Callum's told him, that Rayla needs a new home. That she got banished.

Every time you're with her at the castle it's a group activity, like sparring or dinner. She doesn't open up easily, even if she's softer—more awkward. You learn that her people like dancing and not much else. Ez and Callum are both very protective of her, Callum especially. She sleeps in a lot. She seems lost. You come along to the Moon Nexus because your king is going, and when Rayla finally asks to talk with you one-on-one, it's because she's chasing answers about your father, and an elf you think she might consider family.

You help Callum and Allen rebuild the Moon Nexus. You don't know what it's for till she's under the water (you don't know that she's scared of water) and Callum is kneeling at the shoreline like he's going to lose his mind with every second that she doesn't surface. The weird Moon lady says your mind will be shattered, that you can be stuck there between life and death forever. Ezran helps Callum dive beneath the waves anyway. It's one of the longest hours of your life, waiting there—because Rayla was brave enough to do what you couldn't, in looking after the boys, and you still have so much to make up for with Callum (plus, Opeli will kill you if you don't come back with the crown prince).

Finally, as the sky begins ever so slightly to lighten, you help drag them out of the water. Callum embraces her—"I couldn't lose you"—like he's never going to let go. Rayla hugs him back just as tight before she kisses him sweetly. You think you'll have to try and entertain Ez tomorrow to give them some privacy, a bit, for Callum's birthday tomorrow.

Rayla is gone in the morning. You don't even hear about what happened from him; Ezran tells you, eyes rimmed in red. Gone without a trace in the middle of the night, leaving only a letter and promises of love behind.

Something bristles inside you; at least your mother had the decency to say goodbye.

Callum is miserable on the way back to Katolis. He doesn't sleep. He doesn't eat. He lasts three weeks before he gets angry, and you never knew his temper could be that bad. He goes off to Xadia to search guided by his wings, and brought back by the cold every few weeks or so, continually empty handed. Opeli grounds him (literally); his mood worsens as snow thickens.

You take the brunt of his anger without complaint, because you is also smirking and good with a sword and worried about Viren, and because Callum took the brunt of your projection and resentment and jealousy for years. You can handle a few months.

It is not just a few months. Callum gets worse, and then, slowly, after the first anniversary of her being gone, he gets better. It means less shouting, but also less of him—he spends more hours locked away in your father's old study, throwing more and more of himself into magic. You remind yourself that it's okay. It's just primal magic.

(Surely, Callum got rid of your father's old dark magic books. Why would he keep them?)

Another year passes. You're upset at Rayla for leaving, for how much she upset both the boys, for how miserable Callum has been. At the same time, you want her to return, not only for their happiness, but for your peace of mind, because if she does, it'll either be with her mission successful and your family vanquished for good, or because there was nothing to find. She might even have information about Claudia.

Then she does show up, and Callum can barely look at her. He brings the mirror to the Storm Spire. When he falls, Rayla catches him. When he retreats to the Pinnacle, she follows, and you interrupt. You protest in the Drakewood, because your father told you that you had to carry burdens alone and that never did anyone good, and Callum lays down distance that feels strange and exclusionary. When Rayla is standoffish amongst the trees, you critique her—over your younger brother figure, but also over the dragon. You don't know how she's become so changed (how she could leave the same way your mother did).

The next time you see her, she's radiantly happy you're alive and gone just as quickly. Then Callum pulls her from the rubble after one heart wrenching moment, because Callum when she was just gone was rough enough, but a Callum when she's dead is awful to imagine, and—

You watch him forgive her in every way that matters. He stays with her at the castle even as you go off with Ezran and Corvus to do important dragon stuff, and holds her hand as they climb out of the water. He gets madder than you've ever seen him when Finnegrin torments her. You watch him do the impossible first hand to save her life.

You watch him offer to get out of the water, to delay the mission, when she's too scared to. (You didn't even know she was scared of water.) You embrace both of them when everything is said and done, once Callum has nearly fallen over in his haste to just hold her hand.

You still, at the end of the day, don't know Rayla that well—bits and pieces to construct a fragmented but real view of someone who's bold and beautiful and brave and kind, but snarky and judgemental and prone to leaving, too. Balanced, even if it's not deep.

But Callum's love for her? It's as deep as the ocean, and that's kinda what matters most.

#sorayla #katolis boys #this is my roman empire #text post #mine #this got away from me but listen #soren's last interaction with rayla loosely being callum (awkwardly) turning her down #immediately like 2.5 days Max later being #callum weeping and hugging her and probably treating her exactly how he does in 5x01 #IMMEDIATELY post 4x09 is. too funny to pass up #soren's emotional whiplash im a believer

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screamingcrows · 15 days

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Sohreh's demise

It's always struck me as being odd how Sohreh dying is described in the Zandik's legacy note collection.

Read more of my depression fuelled 4pm after working 10 hours thoughts below lmao

Firstly, there's the description of the attack on the group by the killing machine. From Sumeru Investigation Team's Note we get "...We buried Dastur Sohreh and sent the wounded back." Which must mean that Sohreh was either alive during the attack on the group, or the attack happened just after Sohreh passed. Combined with the Ragged Attendance Record which states "...Dastur Sohreh of Amurta has been critically injured under the attack of Rishboland Tigers. In need of first aid..." This puts the tiger attack before the accident, how much time is unclear. (It also makes me wonder what it was Zandik did that is mentioned as the third reprimand, since him being suggesting to bring the ruin machine back happens afterwards). Another option is that they use the tiger thing to cover up what it actually was. The ruin hunter (the flying ones) has a spinning attack and a sharp pointed arm, that could have caused the lacerations implied to have killed Sohreh? I'm continuing with the theory of two separate attacks because I don't have the brainpower to process both options right now, remind me to come back to it.

Now, it strikes me as weird that they'd send the wounded back after the killing machine incident, but didn't send Sohreh back after the tiger attack. This makes me think that they must've happened very close together time-wise, although not too close since they had time to make a note for Sohreh needing first aid. I'm aware that the living cannot carry their dead with them, but them burying her tells me that everyone in attendance for this expedition (or at the very least the sage since he would've had the highest rank) must've found satisfactory explanation for how she passed. Otherwise he should've had the corpse brought back to the matra or whoever does autopsies in Sumeru.

Good, okay. But an autopsy was performed later. Yes and no, the body was dug up and examined but it is referred to as a dissection. It's clearly not an official document used for anything in the Akademiya. If it was, why would it be found outside if Port Ormos? And they would've hopefully used 'autopsy' and not dissection. A dissection is usually more of an open up and look for anything out of the ordinary sort of deal, and it's considered somewhat disrespectful to use for human subjects (even if it would technically be correct). To know where her body was, it must've been someone on the expedition or getting help from someone who attended. I don't believe it would make sense for anyone but Zandik himself to dig her up and keep it a secret.

He finds a fatal injury, a wound on her throat but can't determine a cause of death (a fractured hyoid isn't necessarily fatal, and I'm relatively certain strangulation wouldn't leave a wound. Bruises and fractures sure) Maybe someone tried to stop the bleeding from the wound on her throat and crushed the bone in the process? Like people sometimes break ribs doing cpr.

I know there's a prevalent theory that he killed Sohreh because she learned something she shouldn't and he needed to silence her. But based on the time frame gauged above, she would've had time to communicate that something was wrong.

I don't think Zandik killed Sohreh. If he did, why would he go back to investigate? And why in the first place does he go back to investigate when he was likely there for the tiger attack and certainly for the ruin machine attack? I honestly don't know. Sheer curiosity, while plausible, seems unlikely to me just because of the amount of work and risk involved in pulling something like that when you're probably already under the Matra's watchful eye. I'll continue to stew over what he could be looking for with that dissection...

#im so sorry that i never have the will to organise my thoughts #suffer with me #dottore #il dottore #genshin impact #genshin #sohreh #zandik #dottore speculation #crow with a brain

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thepastisalreadywritten · 1 month

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It was always going to end this way. The truth about Catherine Middleton’s absence is far less funny, whimsical, or salacious than the endless memes and conspiracy theories suggested.

In a video recorded and broadcast by the BBC, the princess says she has cancer and that she had retreated from the public eye to deal with her condition, while attempting to shield her children from the spotlight.

Instead, she had to contend with the internet giggling about whether she’d had a Brazilian butt lift.

My colleague Helen Lewis summed it up succinctly this afternoon: “I Hope You All Feel Terrible Now.”

What is there to learn from such a sad situation? The internet is made up of people, yet its architecture abstracts this basic truth.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, at the center of this months-long story was essentially “a sea of people having fun online because it is unclear whether a famous person is well or not.”

Underneath the memes was always something a little bit gross and indefensible.

Perhaps humans are just wired this way — to gawk and gossip.

There’s nothing new about hounding a member of the royal family or invading the privacy of a celebrity to sell tabloids or go viral.

You don’t even have to be a scold about it: Famous people are wealthy and beloved at least in part because they’re fun to talk about.

Exactly what we do and don’t know about their internal lives is part of the allure — the discourse comes with the territory to a degree.

But Catherine Middleton, of course, is a human too.

During this saga, I kept thinking about the reappraisal of Britney Spears in 2021, as well as the backlash toward past media and tabloid coverage of her rise.

A New York Times documentary dredged up old coverage of Spears from the mid-aughts, showing a young woman clearly in distress, being picked apart by glossy magazines.

Her suffering became entertainment. The response to this film was swift.

Some of the people and institutions that had shamelessly delighted in her pain backtracked: Glamour publicly apologized to the pop star on its Instagram account, noting, “We are all to blame for what happened to Britney Spears.”

Contrast the Spears reckoning with the Middleton drama and, if you’re being generous, you can see some of that newfound attitude in the media.

I was struck by Lewis’s observation that “Britain’s tabloid papers have shown remarkable restraint” throughout this mess.

Progress, perhaps, but what’s also telling is that they didn’t really need to do the dirty work: Random people on the internet were doing it for them.

They recklessly speculated, memed, and used their amateur sleuthing and networked faux expertise to concoct elaborate, semi-plausible explanations for her absence.

Was Catherine’s face actually Photoshopped from a Vogue spread? It wasn’t, but the conspiratorial tweet got 51.1 million views anyhow.

Missing from much of the discourse was the idea that its main character was a person who was likely struggling.

In essence, the internet democratized the tabloid experience, turning the rest of us into paparazzi and addled editors workshopping headlines and cover images — not to sell magazines but to amass some kind of fleeting online popularity.

In my least charitable moments, I see this toxic dynamic as the lasting legacy of social media — a giant, metrics-infused experiment in connectivity that has had a flattening, pernicious effect.

In 2021, I interviewed Elle Hunt, a journalist who’d tweeted an innocuous opinion about horror movies one evening and woke up to find she was trending on Twitter, her feeds choked with thousands of furious replies and threats.

When I asked her to describe the experience of becoming Twitter’s main character for the day, she summed it up thusly:

“You’re repurposed as fodder for content generation in a way that’s just so dehumanizing.”

Three years later, these words resonate even stronger.

What Hunt described to me then as “a platform failure,” feels to me now like a learned behavior of the internet, where people, famous and not, are repurposed as fodder for content generation. The cycle repeats itself endlessly.

This afternoon, the memes about Middleton shifted — from jokes about her whereabouts to jokes about how awful it was that everyone had been making fun of a cancer patient.

Feeling bad about the memes tweets immediately became a meme unto themselves.

Despite the tone shift, the reason for these posts is the same: They’re a way to take a person and repurpose their life for entertainment and engagement.

If this sounds exhausting and depressing, it’s because it is.

But the internet is also too big to be one thing. Clicking through social media this afternoon, I saw dozens of heartfelt testimonials, apologies, and well-wishes for the princess.

For a moment, from my perspective, it felt like watching a collective of people come to their senses.

A recognition, perhaps, of the humanity of the person at the center of the maelstrom.

Then, only a few seconds later, I saw a different post. It was a screenshot from the blockchain platform Solana, where users can create their own cryptographic tokens for others to invest in.

The name of the token in the screenshot is “kate wif cancer,” and its logo is a still of the princess sitting on a bench, taken from this afternoon’s video.

The coin’s market cap briefly surpassed $120,000. Only six minutes later, the price had cratered — the result of a standard memecoin sell off.

An awful thing happened. Some people made a joke about it. Other people made some money. And then everyone moved on.

NOTE: Edited

#Princess of Wales #Catherine Princess of Wales #Catherine Middleton #Kate Middleton #British Royal Family #cancer #chemotherapy #internet #memes #fake news #disinformation #misinformation #platform failure #social media

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dragonagitator · 6 months

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I started out just wanting to write a "Modern Girl in Faerun" author self-insert fanfic of BG3 in the tradition of all the "Modern Girl in Thedas" fanfics I've enjoyed over the years in the Dragon Age fandom. You know, someone who has played the game gets transported to the world of the game and uses her foreknowledge of events to steer for the best ending and pursue her favorite romance, yadda yadda yadda.

And then I thought, oh, I should also write a sequel from Gale's perspective that runs parallel to the first story that's about him trying to figure out if she's just crazy or what.

I decided that while my MGIF character will be successful in using her foreknowledge of events to achieve the best or even better outcomes for the main events of the game, it would be hilarious if that same foreknowledge of events also led to her inadvertently flubbing every single scripted romance progression scene with Gale so that it ends up being an even slower burn than canon.

Meanwhile, most of the companions (including Gale) don't believe her story about how they're fictional characters in an interactive story she's played as a game because there are so many other plausible in-world explanations for why someone would have her foreknowledge of events. So Gale thinks she's mentally unwell, and he struggles with the ethics of pursuing a romantic relationship with someone whose interest in him is at least partially predicated on (what he believes to be) delusions.

It works out in the end, but Gale's perspective of what the fuck is going on is so divergent from hers that it would be a fundamentally different narrative.

And then as I was researching Forgotten Realms lore for the first set of stories, I realized it would be hilarious if I wrote a post-canon sequel about Gale and the MCIF trying to plan their wedding in Waterdeep while the events of the D&D modules Dragon Heist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage are unfolding in the background.

And then while I was researching stuff for that, I learned that it's Forgotten Realms canon that Elminster knows about Earth, has a portal to Ed Greenwood's house, and regularly visits Ed and few other D&D authors to give them more lore to write about.

So then I realize that while the Elminster we meet during BG3 is actually a Simulacrum and thus wouldn't be privy to anything Elminster didn't think it needed to know for its mission, presumably the real Elminster would show up for Gale's wedding. So if Gale happened to mention his new wife's unfortunate "delusions" to Elminster, Elminster could rock Gale's world by confirming no she's been right all along. Thank you, Elminster, for the best gift a bride could ever receive: the opportunity to say "I TOLD YOU SO!" to her husband. Lol.

And then I thought if Elminster has a portal to Ed's house in Toronto, what if Gale and the MCIF eventually used that portal to flee to Earth for some reason? Either to escape the reach of Mystra, or maybe because their child has a condition that's treatable on Earth but not with Faerun magic/medicine ala Outlander?

Then we could have another story in the series that's a reversal of the first story's trope -- a "Faerun Character in Modern Earth" story of Gale going through culture shock while also losing his connection to the Weave and thus losing all his wizard powers AGAIN. Mmmm angsty.

This is my first time writing fanfic, I've only written a fraction of the first story so far, and I've already come up with at least three sequels I need to write too.

What.

The.

Fuck.

I now fully understand what fanfic authors mean when they cry about "the plot bunnies are multiplying."

#it's a lovely morning in faerun and i am a horrible author self insert #i need to take my plot bunnies to the vet and have them sterilized because this is ridiculous #BG3 #baldur's gate 3 #forgotten realms #gale #gale bg3 #bg3 gale #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #elminster #elminster bg3 #bg3 elminster #modern character in faerun #modern girl in faerun #writing fanfic

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maehemthemisfit · 1 year

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Single Father Sanzu

Let's be honest, he probably hates his kid. At least in the beginning.

A not so one night stand— more on and off if anything. But like all things in his life, his "relationship" became shambles and he didn't care to call anymore, forgetting his little fling in the past with alcoholic remedies to soothe whatever was going on in his head.

He was in for a very rude awakening 13 months later, a knock on his door from the very person he supposedly knocked up, letter tucked along with the infant with written obscenities and a rushed explanation and topped off with a 'Sincerely fuck you,' at the end.

Jeez, yeah this wasn't the best way to find out he had a child in the world.

Sanzu woke up one morning, and as usual, he was descending from the euphoria of all the mini tablets he consumed the other night, sluggishly rubbing away at his throbbing headache while getting ready for the long day that awaited him, unknowing of what it would offer. In his cave of seclusion, he rested in the quietness that encircled him, finding the muted ambience to be a taste of tranquility before he'd have to eventually arrive at the bustling headquarters of bonten.

No blood. No violence. No past or future there to remind him how terrible things were. Only him and the soundlessness of his home.

Unfortunately, it seems faith had other plans.

The calm silence that he'd previously took comfort in shattered upon hearing a knock at his door, eyebrows scrunching at the thought of Ran showing up again to bother him. It was way too early for this, and his headache didn't seem to be getting any better. Whatever it was would have to be a life threatening emergency or Mikey in need of him, otherwise someone was leaving this building with a broken leg.

Sanzu eventually paced his way to the door, his gun locked and loaded in case it was an ambush, but as he peeped through the hole in the door, he saw nothing. Blinking, he cautiously opened the door, looking around to find the halls vacant of any life or remnants that someone was there.

Was he fucking hallucinating? A very plausible guess, but he didn't feel high enough for that.

Scratching his head, he almost missed the bubble of noise that echoed beside his legs, confused eyes shooting down to see a carrier set at the foot of his door, gun pointed before realizing just what the hell he was looking at.

His eyes widened, face contorting into a scowl as his voice cracked the moment he spoke, "What the absolute fuck?!"

Dug this up in my drafts... how we rockin with father sanzu?

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robininthelabyrinth · 11 months

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Delight in Misery - Chapter 12

A/N: Someone reminded me that they really did want to see where this one went, so I went and dug up it up again. Here's one more chapter, at least, and we'll see if I can continue to bring it to a close or if I'll just post the rest of my outline.

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

“This is the most humiliating moment in my life,” Jiang Cheng said.

Lan Wangji considered it for a moment, then said, “I agree.”

Jiang Cheng glared at him.

“I meant that it is my most humiliating moment, as well,” Lan Wangji clarified, and the glare disappeared, Jiang Cheng letting his head fall back on the ground with a thump.

“I can’t believe this,” he muttered, staring blankly at the sky. “I really just can’t believe this.”

Lan Wangji sighed.

And the day had started out so promisingly, too.

Or at least Lan Wangji had allowed himself to be deceived into thinking it was going promisingly – and that, he supposed, was the problem. He really ought to have learned by now that nothing with Jiang Cheng ever went easily.

Jiang Cheng had stormed away after their conversation with Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen, refusing to even listen to Lan Wangji’s explanations about why they needed to help them with Wen Ning – Lan Wangji had several, all perfectly plausible, that he’d been planning to use, and had planned to only use the real one (that Wen Ning was someone that Wei Wuxian had cared deeply for and would probably want them to help) as a last resort, but he hadn’t gotten to use any of them. Instead, when he’d knocked on Jiang Cheng’s door, he’d been met with a shout that went along the lines that Jiang Cheng had already understood the necessity of helping Wen Ning and accepted it and agreed with it so there was no need to pester him, which had thoroughly cut off most of the rebuttals Lan Wangji would have made.

Lan Wangji had debated making his way in regardless – Jiang Cheng would never actually block the door from him – but ultimately concluded that it was probably one of those times when Jiang Cheng just needed time to cool off. It wasn’t worth pushing him, not when they had guests…not when his temper was so uncertain, as it always was on matters relating to Wei Wuxian.

In the morning, he decided. He’d talk to him in the morning.

He hadn’t gotten the chance.

The moment he stepped out of his room the next morning he discovered that Jiang Cheng had already kicked into a frenzy of activity, which meant he probably hadn’t slept more than a shichen or two. The entire endeavor would be cloaked as a common night-hunt to try to deceive Xue Yang into not realizing that he was their real target, and he’d already pulled together all the things that needed to be arranged for that proposed night-hunt, including several teams that would be sent out to hide the direction they were really going. By the time Lan Wangji caught up with him, Jiang Cheng was already pushing Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen to identify some towns near the area Xue Yang had last been seen and where they’d found Wen Ning.

He’d also pushed them to agree to start to set out as soon as possible, and unsurprisingly they’d agreed.

Lan Wangji thought there might be a little time to talk when Xiao Xingchen had bowed out to go fetch Wen Ning, but apparently they’d kept him quite close as they were back in almost no time at all, not enough time to coax any sort of real discussion out of Jiang Cheng, who was at the moment pretending Lan Wangji didn’t exist – and then, once Wen Ning arrived, even Lan Wangji didn’t have much desire to speak.

Wen Ning was dressed in ragged clothing, his hair hung loose and limp on his shoulders, his limbs bound with chains – his eyes were pure white and his veins raised and black, an inhuman snarl on his lips of the sort that had graced that mindless corpse filled with rage. It was probably what he’d been like all that time ago on the Burial Mounds, before Wei Wuxian had managed to get his consciousness back…it was as if Wei Wuxian had never done anything to him, never returned him to himself, never helped him.

Lan Wangji had barely been able to look at him before.

But all of that jealousy had suddenly seemed useless and petty.

Of course, Jiang Cheng could have spelled his name with the characters for petty and jealous. He hadn’t had any such issues with Wen Ning’s wretched appearance, or at least he hadn’t seemed to – he’d just dealt with the matter practically, ordering his most trusted subordinates to put Wen Ning into a warded storeroom for safekeeping. It happened to be the same one that they used to interrogate demonic cultivators, though Lan Wangji suspected it wasn’t entirely a coincidence.

(He’d been briefly distracted by rolling his eyes in fond amusement at how predictable Jiang Cheng was sometimes, and when he next focused Jiang Cheng had already bound Wen Ning into an array to restrict his movement and posted guards all around.)

“Are you sure about this?” Xiao Xingchen asked anxiously, his eyes drifting over Wen Ning.

“Very sure,” Jiang Cheng said harshly, seemingly cold and careless, the way that had led so many outsiders to misunderstand him in all these years. “Stopping Xue Yang is the priority. Once he’s dead, we’ll help you figure out how to fix up Wen Ning, as agreed.”

But then he hesitated briefly.

“…why didn’t you try taking out the nails?”

That was Jiang Cheng in a nutshell, Lan Wangji reflected. Harsh and prickly on the outside, soft on the inside.

“We didn’t dare,” Song Zichen replied solemnly. “For fear of side effects.”

Jiang Cheng nodded, accepting it, then waved his hand and ordered Jiang Meimei to watch over the children while they went out night-hunting. Lan Wangji had known, of course, that Jiang Cheng could be brutally efficient, but it was still a pleasure to see the Lotus Pier in set into swift and efficient motion: goodbyes were said to the children, work was handed over to the proper places, a delegation of trusted disciples capable of handling themselves selected and prepared, and then they were ready for an immediate departure.

There’d been no time to fret or worry, for Jiang Cheng to torment himself with doubts and self-blame – or so Lan Wangji had thought. Even after they’d arrived to the area Xiao Xingchen had indicated, he was just as efficient, assigning everyone into pairs like he would for a normal night-hunt, sending Xiao Xingcheng and Song Zichen one way and taking Lan Wangji along with him in another…

Lan Wangji thought that Jiang Cheng was handling this whole business remarkably well.

That belief had lasted right up until the pit.

They’d been walking down one of the more obscure paths between the various towns, looking for any trace of a demonic cultivator or any other sign that Xue Yang might have passed this way or that, and there had unexpectedly been a trap laid right in the middle of the path, a gigantic pit opening up under their feet.

Not that such a trap was much of a threat to a cultivator, of course. Lan Wangji had leapt up at once, easily evading it, but for whatever reason, Jiang Cheng had not, falling in with the rocks and the dirt.

Lan Wangji waited, but Jiang Cheng didn’t get out, either.

So he went in after him.

Jiang Cheng was lying on his back and staring up at the sky. He appeared unharmed.

Lan Wangji walked over and looked down at him. After a moment, he extended a foot and prodded at Jiang Cheng’s leg with his toe.

“What,” Jiang Cheng said, sounding irritable.

“I was only wondering when your legs had stopped working,” Lan Wangji said.

Jiang Cheng snorted and turned his head away.

“After all, if they were working, you could have jumped out, rather than fall in.” Lan Wangji glanced around the pit they were in. It was impressively deep – the rim of the pit was at least twice his height – but that was absolutely nothing to a cultivator. “You could in fact jump out now.”

“Maybe I don’t want to.”

Ah, Lan Wangji thought to himself, I see how it is.

He really should have expected something like this.

He swept his sleeves back and sat down, settling his clothing around him in a comfortable manner, and reflected to himself that this was probably going to take a while for Jiang Cheng to get over himself.

Not that Lan Wangji wouldn’t help, of course.

“Would you like to talk about it?” he asked in his most irritatingly solicitous manner.

“Fuck off.”

As expected.

Lan Wangji had long since figured Jiang Cheng out. When bad things happened, Jiang Cheng generally started by getting angry and trying to solve the problem, often violently. When it turned out that the problem wasn’t something that could be solved straightforwardly, he would scream and shout as if he could vent out all his emotions, never causing real damage beyond the most superficial insults that anyone who knew him could easily ignore. Eventually, the storm would pass, and things would resolve themselves one way or the other.

Lan Wangji had, by now, years of experience in dealing with this type of Jiang Cheng.

For matters relating to his parents or sister or Wei Wuxian, though, he’d found that Jiang Cheng had a far less tenable set of reactions. He would turn his violent anger inwards, his mind growing unstable with guilt and self-hatred squeezed into an irrational hatred of everything around him, his never easy temperament worsened by many degrees; he would blame himself for everything, tormenting himself with questions that would never be answered, castigating himself for things that were not and could not have been his fault. If not prevented or distracted, he could even start harming himself through too much work and too little sleep, as if he thought he could simply will himself into having enough strength to never let anyone he loved down ever again.

That was the present Jiang Cheng.

“I thought you’d decided to stop doing this,” Lan Wangji said after a little while had passed without any developments. “On account of not wanting to show the children a bad example.”

“Fuck off.”

In fact, Jiang Cheng had gotten far better these past few years. If Lan Wangji were being honest, they had helped each other get better, dragging each other kicking and screaming down the path towards wellness. No longer did Lan Wangji have to sit by, unable to do anything, as the smell of blood and bile drifted through the wall that separated their rooms, and the days that he classified as Jiang Cheng’s good days – even very good days – were by now far outnumbering the occasional bad ones.

Lan Wangji himself had been getting better, too. Jiang Cheng no longer had to make uncalled for and very pointed comments about unhealthy coping mechanisms, whether alcohol or seclusion or playing guqin until his fingers were raw and bleeding, staying awake to avoid the nightmares or retreating into a stony silence that worried everyone around him – it had taken a series of extremely vicious fights that involved throwing the word ‘hypocrite’ around to make Lan Wangji sore enough to truly rededicate himself to regulating his conduct.

After all, he was a Lan, however differently situated and distanced he’d gotten from the Cloud Recesses. What was the point of wearing his forehead ribbon if he couldn’t exercise self-discipline?

Certainly he could exercise it better than Jiang Cheng.

Lan Wangji meditated on a time on the idea that perhaps Jiang Cheng was his punishment for arrogance.

(Perhaps competitive spite was not quite the behavioral motivator that his ancestors would have preferred, but for a while, it was all Lan Wangji had had. And then, somehow, implausibly, despite himself, it had actually started to work, which was…Lan Wangji was not thinking about that.)

After a long while, Jiang Cheng finally said, “It’s not that bad, actually. It’s just – a lot, that’s all.”

“Mm.”

“…what’s that supposed to mean?” Jiang Cheng eyed him sidelong. “That was a very meaningful ‘mm’.”

“Mm.” Lan Wangji deliberately used the same inflection and tone, not varying it one iota.

“I will kick you.”

Lan Wangji rolled his eyes at him until Jiang Cheng seemed to be seriously considering following through on his promise. At that point, Lan Wangji decided to take pity – as much to avoid a footprint on his robes as for Jiang Cheng’s benefit.

“You are experiencing negative emotions in connection with Wen Ning’s reappearance, and your attempt to vent by murdering Xue Yang has been impeded on account of not being able to find him immediately,” he said, his voice carefully monotone and disinterested. It wouldn’t do to show Jiang Cheng that he was emotionally involved in this conversation. “You have accordingly given up on life.”

There were a few more moments of silence.

“…stop knowing me so well. And I haven’t given up on life, I’m just – resting. For a moment. That’s all.”

Lan Wangji pointedly ignored him, repressing the smile that wanted to come to his lips. The fact that Jiang Cheng was talking was, in fact, a good sign, and an indication that he wasn’t doing as bad as all that; he hadn’t lost his reason or become unstable, he wasn’t lashing out, he hadn’t kicked into an unreasonable spiral of self-blame.

Anyway, it wasn’t as if Lan Wangji didn’t have similarly conflicted feelings about Wen Ning that he could use a little more time to work through – and besides, he reasoned, Xue Yang had been on the run for years. He’d be hard to track down, hard to corner, hard to catch.

A short break wouldn’t impede them.

Of course, it was barely any time after he’d thought that when someone came out of the woods near the path they were on and shouted, “Hey, you in there! Fellow strangers! Is something the matter? Do you need help?”

Lan Wangji suppressed a sigh, even as Jiang Cheng twitched, rather violently. Probably he was abruptly becoming aware of how humiliating it would be for cultivators of their status to be found sitting in the bottom of a ditch.

Lan Wangji was also not especially looking forward to that.

He opened his mouth to respond, but unexpectedly, before he could, Jiang Cheng reached out and grabbed his arm, fingers squeezing so tightly that it was almost painful.

Lan Wangji glanced at him, seeking an explanation, but Jiang Cheng shook his head in negation.

“You’re both powerful cultivators, so if everything was all right, you could just jump out,” the person standing above them continued.

Lan Wangji turned his glance at Jiang Cheng into a meaningfully pointed look instead, only to get a crude gesture in return.

Well, at least Jiang Cheng was feeling more like himself.

“I noticed you haven’t jumped out, though, and you haven’t moved for a while…did someone seal your spiritual energy? Is the pit actually a trapping array? Is that why you can’t get out?”

Lan Wangji could feel his eyebrows going up slightly in surprise: clearly, the person who had found them was also a cultivator, apparently, and a clever one, too, to think of valid explanations for their (non-existent) plight.

The part of him that had been assisting Jiang Cheng in running the Lotus Pier for years now immediately thought of recruitment. Much of the current Jiang sect was made up of former rogue cultivators having accepted positions as guest disciples or even been adopted in, yet their ranks were still smaller than the other Great Sects. They could use all the clever cultivators they could find.

Lan Wangji glanced up and saw the face peering down at them from the edge of the pit: his first impression was of shining black eyes and a radiant smile with adorable little tiger teeth that reminded him a little of Mo Xuanyu. The face was handsome, with a high nose bridge and thin red lips, the chin a little pointy in a way that made his whole face seem full of gleeful mischief when he grinned.

It was a nice smile, Lan Wangji thought, cheerful and carefree, and felt a nostalgic tug on his heart.

Even the cultivator’s voice was pleasant enough – light and lively, as if he was at any point on the verge of laughing at some joke as he kept chattering on and on, hypothesizing about reasons they might not be able to get out of the pit, as if he were trying to fill the silence alone. There were a few instances in which he seemed to be attempting to disguise his voice, only to forget a moment later and resume his regular voice, but then he was a little younger than they were; he might just be trying to seem older than he was. They’d certainly encountered rogue cultivators like that before.

“…but I suppose it doesn’t really matter what the reason is! You two just hold on, all right? I’ll go find a rope!”

The face disappeared before Lan Wangji could signal to him that all was well.

Clever, insightful, and resourceful.

“Promising,” Lan Wangji remarked to Jiang Cheng. Naturally he wouldn’t extend an offer of recruitment without approval from the master of the Lotus Pier, especially when Jiang Cheng was there to give it, but Jiang Cheng usually agreed with his assessment –

“You are joking,” Jiang Cheng hissed, and Lan Wangji blinked, surprised at the intensity and venom in his tone. “That was Xue Yang!”

Lan Wangji’s eyes widened. He hadn’t seen Xue Yang before: he had been in seclusion when all of that had happened, though of course he’d heard all about it later from Jiang Cheng. But everyone had been very clear about how ruthless and inhuman and wicked Xue Yang was, how his eyes were full of disdain towards all living things, how his aura was chilling and offensive.

Nothing at all like the young man that he’d seen just now.

“Impossible.”

“Not impossible. Listen, I was at his first trial – I remember what he looked like. There’s no doubt about it. He’s even missing his little finger!”

That did seem conclusive.

“It seems Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen were right to think he was here,” Lan Wangji observed, and put his hand on Bichen. “Why hasn’t he recognized us and fled, though? He must know that no person from a righteous sect would be willing to tolerate his existence.”

“I was lying flat, he probably couldn’t see me,” Jiang Cheng said. “And you’re wearing the wrong color for a Lan.”

Lan Wangji was in fact wearing one of the sets of robes he used for night-hunts around the Lotus Pier. It had seemed wrong, somehow, to allow the merits of his actions to be ascribed to the Lan sect – only his forehead ribbon remained the same, and the style he had long ago grown accustomed to, but the colors were wholly different. The result was something neither quite of the Cloud Recesses nor of the Lotus Pier…yes, he could see how a cultivator with a weaker golden core might not have identified him.

“It could still be a trap,” he pointed out. “Xue Yang did not escape from his captors so many times out of luck. From what you have told me, he is extremely clever, and extremely dangerous. You remember what he nearly did at the Baixue Temple.”

“Of course I remember. I told you about it myself!” Jiang Cheng frowned, then groaned. “I suppose there’s nothing for it. We’ll have to play along for the moment, since it seems that he genuinely thinks our spiritual energy has been locked away. We hide our faces so he doesn’t see, climb up whatever rope he gets us, and when we get up top, attack before he has a chance to put his own plans into action.”

Lan Wangji nodded. “You attack from the front with Zidian, I will come from the side with Bichen; dodging one will lead him into the path of the other. If we are lucky, we can cut off his head before he can summon any fierce corpse to come to his aid.”

It was an approach they’d used with especially vicious demonic cultivators before with success.

“It’s a plan, then.” A pause. “There’s only one problem.”

Lan Wangji raised his eyebrows.

“For this plan to work, we’re going to have to let ourselves get rescued – by Xue Yang.”

Lan Wangji felt his lips purse as if he’d just bitten into a lemon.

“This is the most humiliating moment in my life,” Jiang Cheng announced.

Lan Wangji shook his head but agreed.

Luckily it wasn’t very much later that he heard Xue Yang’s footsteps. Not long after that, the man himself reappeared, still chattering like a monkey – apparently he’d found rope in an old woodcutter’s hut – and then they had to listen to the entire process of him trying to find an appropriately strong tree to tie the rope to, since he didn’t want to risk using his own strength in the event whatever had affected them unexpectedly spread to him.

Lan Wangji spent the time watching Jiang Cheng’s face, which was going through a journey involving at least three epic poems and one war-song that involved self-incineration or possibly honorable suicide.

“All right, update, good news, I finally found a big old one, definitely won’t snap at the first push the way the last one did. This time it’s really going to work. I’m going to throw in the rope now, all right? Stand ready!”

A rope dropped in.

It was helpfully knotted at the end, presumably in case the spiritual suppression that Xue Yang had decided was afflicting them was also affecting their muscles and they needed something to grab onto.

It was very considerate, if utterly unnecessary.

Still, there wasn’t anything for it. Kindness to strangers, if that was what this was rather than some sort of especially clever trap, could not erase all of Xue Yang’s former crimes. They had all agreed: he had to die. They couldn’t even reverse their original position on killing him on sight and try to push for a trial now – a trial was too risky. Xue Yang had escaped too many times before, using the kindness of others as an opportunity to continue to wreck havoc, and Lan Wangji was unwilling to see any more innocent lives be harmed by him.

It did seem a bit of a pity, though. Xue Yang didn’t seem nearly as bad as the stories said…

No, this wasn’t Wei Wuxian all over again. This was different. There were eyewitnesses to Xue Yang’s crimes, which were far more malicious and cruel than anything that had been attributed to Wei Wuxian, and Xue Yang had even admitted to them, swearing that he would continue to act wretchedly.

There was no going back.

Lan Wangji reached out to take the knotted rope in his hand.

Jiang Cheng snatched it away before he could.

Lan Wangji frowned at him, but Jiang Cheng didn’t notice; he was too busy staring at the rope with a slightly wild-eyed expression, like a cat that had just seen a snake.

“Hey, you down there! Did you see the rope? Have you’ve got it now?” The rope jerked a little, meeting resistance from Jiang Cheng’s hands. “Good, I see you have! Now climb up!”

Lan Wangji waited, but Jiang Cheng didn’t move.

Lan Wangji waited more.

“…are you having problems climbing up?” Xue Yang asked. “Do you need me to come pick you up? I could probably manage to carry you in my arms one at a time –”

Lan Wangji had his pride. There was allowing himself to be rescued by the enemy to obtain an advantage in the upcoming battle, and then there was allowing himself to be carried out by a mass-murderer. Intending on forestalling the unthinkable, he reached out and gave Jiang Cheng a firm shove in the shoulder, knocking him sideways and, hopefully, out of his daze.

Jiang Cheng hissed at him like an upset chicken – Lan Wangji owned waterfowl now and was in a position to testify as to the similarity – then turned back to stare at the rope.

“Kuizhou isn’t near the ocean, right?” he asked, voice pitched low. “Or any major river?”

“Not as far as I’m aware, no,” Lan Wangji said slowly, puzzled by the utterly bizarre question. “Why –”

Jiang Cheng was on his feet and leaping out of the pit before he could finish the question, precisely as they’d already agreed they would not do, as it would immediately give away any surprise advantage they might already have.

Lan Wangji gritted his teeth, reminded himself that he actually liked Jiang Cheng most of the time, and leapt up after him.

“What’s this?” Jiang Cheng said, shaking the knot at Xue Yang’s face. “Tell me, what’s this?”

“A…rope?” Xue Yang said hesitantly, his eyes wide as saucer plates – presumably at seeing the great and terrible Sandu Shengshou miraculously appear right in front of him – and for once Lan Wangji’s sympathies were entirely with him. He knew Jiang Cheng very well, better, or so he thought, than anyone else currently yet living, and yet he had no idea what was going through his mind right now.

“Xue Yang,” Lan Wangji said, deciding he was done with this conversation and drawing Bichen. “It’s over.”

“It’s…Lan..? Wait, what are you even wearing – oh shit!”

Xue Yang hopped back, ducking under away from Bichen’s first sweep. Normally, this was when Jiang Cheng would whip out Zidian to tangle in the demonic culivator’s legs, but Jiang Cheng still seemed possessed by whatever had gotten into him; he didn’t do anything.

At any rate, it didn’t matter. From over Xue Yang’s head, Lan Wangji could see Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen cresting the horizon, each one on their sword and shooting toward Xue Yang with grim expressions.

Even if Xue Yang summoned corpses now, it would all be over soon.

“Xue Yang!” Song Zichen called, and Xue Yang turned to look. “Your crimes end today!”

Xue Yang took a step back, but Xiao Xingchen was faster – he was already leaping down, Shuanghua leaping up to his hand in a single graceful movement. His white robes swirled around him, and Lan Wangji was immediately reminded that the cultivation world called him “the bright moon and the gentle breeze”, accompanying Song Zichen’s “distant snow and cold frost”.

His strike was sure and true, perfectly aimed. Xue Yang’s hand dropped to his waist, reaching for Jiangzai, but it would be too late, the attack somehow taking him by surprise despite everything –

The ringing sound of metal on metal was nearly deafening, and Lan Wangji stared in shock: Shuanghua’s beautiful strike had been blocked by Sandu.

By Jiang Cheng.

“What are you doing?” Xiao Xingchen exclaimed, startled, and Lan Wangji wanted to ask the same question.

“Don’t hurt him!” Jiang Cheng shouted back, his teeth pulled back in a snarl. “Don’t you dare!”

Lan Wangji stared at him, wondering if Jiang Cheng’s grief and instability had suddenly driven him utterly mad. Why would he defend Xue Yang, of all people?

It wasn’t the first time Jiang Cheng had acted irregularly or irrationally, of course. Demonic cultivators were always a sensitive spot for him, convinced as he was that Wei Wuxian would one day come back, but those episodes only happened when one of the demonic cultivators they found did something that was too familiar, too reminiscent. That sort of thing only happened during a bad day, a bad time, and Jiang Cheng hadn’t seemed that bad.

He’d been talking, even making jokes. He hadn’t seemed near to the point of mental collapse.

Lan Wangji hadn’t expected such an outburst to happen here, given that Xue Yang had never reminded Jiang Cheng of Wei Wuxian before – and anyway what could have been the trigger? The smiling? The chattering? The improbable rescue?

“He’s been affected by something,” Song Zichen deduced, his voice cold as ever. He was flanking Xiao Xingchen, planning to duck around Jiang Cheng’s defense to skewer Xue Yang, who seemed to be having some trouble maneuvering his own sword for some reason, the blade either refusing to cooperate or his muscles seemingly not answering to the actions he wanted. “Hanguang-jun, restrain Jiang Wanyin. We will help him once Xue Yang has been eliminated.”

Jiang Cheng affected? But with what? What could possibly do –

“Lan Wangji, help me!” Jiang Cheng howled, throwing himself forward against Xiao Xingchen, who he had so admired only a few days earlier, against Wei Wuxian’s martial uncle.

The behavior was truly very uncharacteristic of him, completely unlike him.

Lan Wangji drew Bichen, moving forward –

And blocked Song Zichen’s sword with his own.

“You know what you’re doing,” Lan Wangji told Jiang Cheng, meaning you had better and also I trust you, don’t let me down.

Jiang Cheng shot him a look of desperate gratitude. “Don’t let him get away,” he shouted, and for a moment Lan Wangji thought he meant Song Zichen before realizing he probably meant Xue Yang – where had Xue Yang gone? He’d been there only a moment or so before –

Dividing one’s attention during a fight was never a good idea, and it was even less a good idea when the opponent was as skilled as Song Zichen. In that moment, Song Zichen feinted and brought his sword in, Lan Wangji turning to meet him, but he knew he would be too late –

“Hey! Leave him alone!”

Xue Yang had managed to get his sword out, and now threw himself out of the bushes to try to defend Lan Wangji. It was rather a beautiful move, too, seamlessly interrupting the flow of Song Zichen’s attack while also leaving Lan Wangji enough room to complete his own parry and start a counterattack – it was so well done that Lan Wangji briefly had the illusion that they had fought together before, familiar with each other’s moves.

“Sect Leader Jiang – Hanguang-jun – what are you doing?” Xiao Xingchen asked, utterly bewildered, and Lan Wangji had to admit he felt the same. “Why is he defending you? Why are you defending him? This is Xue Yang!”

“He’s not Xue Yang,” Jiang Cheng snarled. “He’s Wei Wuxian. And I’m going to kill him myself!”

…oh, Lan Wangji thought. I see.

This again.

#mdzs #jiang cheng #lan wangji #wei wuxian #xiao xingchen #song lan #my fic #my fics #delight in misery #it has been literally a year and a half since I updated this #I did not mean for that to happen #I hope that updating it makes someone happy at least #assuming anyone remembers anything that was happening in this fic

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ohabigailhowcouldyou · 6 months

Text

Candy... ~pt 2: Honey~

♡♡♡

Read part 1 first

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There was no moment for Vinny to get Ricky alone again for the rest of the day, and by the time they trooped onto the stage that night, Vinny's nerves felt taught, like guitar strings about to snap the second someone strummed them.

He tried to divert the tension into the music, letting the familiar beats of his drum kit carry him from song to song. But by the time Werewolf started, he knew it was in vain. Every so often until then he'd catch Ricky's eyes on him, blue and hot as gas flames, and something low in his belly would clench, like a hunger pang.

Then the second verse of Werewolf started, and for a second Ricky looked back at him, then pointedly nodded at Chris. Vinny's heart skipped a beat, as did the hit he'd meant to land on his snare drum. Ricky's smirk let him know the other man had noticed his fumble and he swallowed heavily, just barely recovering in time to look forward and witness, yet again, Chris displaying his feral side that had twitter in such a state. Vinny tried not to look. Tried and failed to keep his eyes off Chris' ass and thighs, his profile as he turned to do his dance with the Cherrybombs. And when, after the song, Chris grinned at him while drinking water, Vinny could feel the blush staining his cheeks just as painfully as he could feel that same tightening in his belly that Ricky could trigger. He didn't smile back, and could see the concern on Chris' face before he had to turn back and address the audience.

For the rest of the set, Vinny kept his head down, feeling unreasonably angry and humiliated. After everything, why would Ricky point his attention back to Chris, if not to mock him? Didn't this afternoon mean anything to Ricky after all? Had he misread disappointment at losing out on head as something deeper? The questions spun through Vinny's mind in a dizzy spiral with no end in sight.

They finished the set, and Vinny all but ran off stage, trying to get the hell away from his bandmates and his own thoughts. Unfortunately there weren't many places to escape to, backstage of the venue. He ended up outside, in the walkway between the venue and their fleet of buses and trailers. He leaned against a trailer, outside of the pool of light from the stage door, hoping he'd stay hidden for at least a little while. He shivered, the air was freezing on his sweaty, painted skin. He picked at a spot on his arm where the black paint was starting to flake off. Maybe on their next tour he'd stop covering his skin. Ricky didn't anymore, nor did Chris. At that thought, Vinny's frown deepened.

It was there, scratching the paint off his arm with a scowl on his face, that he was found, much sooner that he'd hoped.

"Vin, there you are! I've been looking - Jesus, Vinny, you're gonna get fucking hypothermia!"

It was Chris, ducking down so his worried expression was eye-level with Vinny. He was so close that Vinny could see the little specks of glitter that had migrated from his eyelids to his cheekbones during the show.

"I'm fine," Vinny tried to tell him, but the words were hampered by the fact that his teeth were chattering so hard. He hadn't noticed quite how cold he was until now, when he realized the pain in his limbs wasn't solely from drumming.

"Vin, what's going on?" Chris' voice was gentle, and his warm hands gripped Vinny's upper arms tugging him away from the trailer and closer to Chris' hoodie-covered frame.

Vinny tried to shrug. "I just needed some air. The pyro and shit was cooking me alive in there. I hadn't noticed how cold it is." He wanted to think he'd given a plausible explanation, despite the fact that he'd started to shiver uncontrollably.

"C'mere," Chris mumbled, tugging Vinny against him and wrapping him in his arms. Vinny didn't bother trying to resist the hug, or, a few seconds later, Chris tucking him under one arm to lead him back into the venue.

"Did something happen with you and Ricky?" Chris asked, voice low, as they walked back into the venue. "After... Uh, what I interrupted."

"No," Vinny muttered. Chris' bodyheat was sinking into his skin, calming the shivers a little bit. He didn't try to pull away, though, even as they passed crew and venue staff on the way to their green room. "I mean... well... nevermind."

"You know you can tell me anything, right? I won't judge you."

Vinny sighed. If Ricky was going to try and humiliate him, Vinny may as well rob him of the ammunition.

"Before what you walked in on happened, Ricky had grabbed my phone to get me to give him back the damn candy bar. But he saw a video I was watching, and kinda threatened to use it against me, I guess, if I didn't give him... uh... what he wanted. But then we started making out, and I thought we were on the same page, or whatever. But now, I'm not so sure. I think that I misread him."

Chris was frowning, eyes dark with concern as he looked at Vinny. "Use it against you, how? And for a candy bar? Seems a bit drastic."

"Not the candy bar. He said he wanted a blowjob, actually. I thought he was just kidding, trying to piss me off. But then... Everything else happened, and I thought we were both into it, more than just stress relief, or whatever, I don't know. But tonight, he... I think he might have been more serious about the threat than I thought. Not necessarily trying to get me to really do anything sexual, I mean, he's not a creep. But to get back at me for getting the upper hand earlier, maybe."

"And how would he do that?" Chris prompted after patiently listening to Vinny's rambling explanation.

"Tell you what I was watching, I guess," Vinny mumbled, with a shrug, looking up to see they'd reached their green room. He could hear familiar voices behind the half-open door.

Chris obviously had more questions, but he gave Vinny a little shake, pausing before entering the room. "Why don't you take advantage of the showers here? Get warmed up. You're still shivering."

Vinny nodded, then turned to Chris, saying in a rush; "It wasn't anything gross. It was a video of you, actually. I guess I'd rather tell you myself, than have him do it."

Then, face burning with embarrassment and eyes stinging with sudden tears, Vinny stepped out from under Chris' arm and into the green room. He caught Ricky looking at him from the corner of his eye, but he didn't stop or acknowledge the other man as he grabbed his bag and made his way to the bathroom.

The showers were individual cubicles and he gratefully locked himself inside of one. He scrubbed the paint and sweat from his skin under the mercifully hot water, then dried off and pulled on sweatpants and a hoodie. He felt better, body temperature back to normal and a bit of the weight off his chest after talking to Chris. He was pretty sure he could finish out the last few days on the road without having a mental breakdown, even. Pretty sure. At least until he opened the cubicle door to find Chris waiting for him.

He was leaning back against the sink, face clear of the remnants of his makeup, expression carefully neutral. Vinny could see his own face reflected in the large mirror behind Chris, the small frown above his red rimmed eyes, the way he was pressing his lips together, muscles in his jaw twitching.

"I talked to Ricky," Chris said, without preamble. His voice betraying even less that his face.

"Yeah?" Vin tried hard to be casual, rubbing his damp towel over his dripping hair.

"I have a question."

Vinny slumped back against the partition between cubicles, letting his bag drop to the floor at his feet, still halfheartedly trying to dry his curls. He made a motion with his chin, to indicate that Chris can ask his question.

The older man tucked his hands into his pants pockets, eyes dropping down to the middle distance between them.

"The video... was that just, general interest in guys that you're exploring? Or was it more specifically... me?"

"That's two questions," Vin mumbled, then kept talking before Chris could reply. "I've been exploring my general interest in guys since highschool, so..." He shrugged, looking down at the damp towel in his hands.

"But... What about Ricky, then?"

Vin scrunched the towel into a ball, squeezing the damp material until his knuckles turned white. "It's possible to find multiple people attractive at the same time."

There was a soft sound as Chris shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Yeah. I guess it is." There was amusement in his voice and Vinny looked up to see a small smile on Chris' face. He was still not looking at Vinny, keeping his eyes on the cracked tiles between them. "I guess it is," he repeated, quietly, like he was sharing some joke with himself.

"So, if we're done here," Vinny cleared his throat, twisting the much abused towel between his hands, as if to wring water from it, before tossing it over his shoulder.

"Wait, I just -", Chris took a step forward, one hand outstretched to halt Vinny's escape. His smile had faded, dark eyes meeting Vin's for the first time. "I wanted to say... God, I don't know. That I don't mind?"

"Cool," Vinny's voice was small. He bent forward to lift up his bag, but Chris' tattooed hand grabbed his before he could reach it. He jerked upright, to find Chris had closed the distance between them to step into Vinny's personal space, closer even that he'd been outside by the bus. Looking up, Vinny could have counted the taller man's eyelashes, except that Chris cupped his cheeks and pressed his lips to Vin's with exquisite softness and Vin lost the ability to form any coherent thought. The kiss was warm and chaste and Vin breathed a small sigh against Chris' lips, one hand reaching up to curl into the soft fabric of the Beetlejuice hoodie Chris was wearing.

Chris slid his palm down over Vinny's chest, to curl around his waist. He kept the kiss unhurried, even as Vin's lips parted for him to explore further, curling his tongue against Vinny's in a slow, teasing promise of things to come. Vinny heard himself moan, low in his throat, as he moved up onto his tiptoes, pressing closer against Chris' warmth.

Pulling away from Vinny's lips, Chris trailed kisses across his jaw, pausing to give his earlobe a kitten lick that had Vinny's skin erupting in goosebumps.

"God, Vin," Chris' voice was husky in his ear, "do you have any idea what I'd like to do to you?" More kisses trailed across his jaw, then down to the side of his throat, where Chris trailed the very tip of his tongue over Vinny's pulse point.

"Please," Vinny breathed, high and needy, one hand in a deathgrip around Chris' hoodie, the other coming up to tug at the short purple strands of Chris' hair.

Chris made a sound, somewhere between a groan and a laugh, and pressed his lips to Vinny's again, the kiss hungrier than before. He slid both large hands down over Vinny's back to cup his ass, grinding their hips together in a movement that had both of them gasping into each other's mouths. Chris rolled his hips, the same slow, deliberate movements he'd made on stage, only now it was for Vinny's benefit alone. Each languid thrust undid a little more of Vinny's inhibition, until he was rutting back against Chris, moans falling from his parted lips, their open mouths no longer kissing so much as sharing uneven breaths.

"Fuck," the expletive sounded torn from Chris' throat, and without warning he fell to his knees in front of Vinny, eyes dark as he looked up to ask, "May I?"

Vinny couldn't form a coherent thought, much less words, at the sight of Chris on his knees for him. He did his best to nod, hands trembling as ran his fingers lightly through Chris' short hair, being careful not to tug, however much he might have wanted to. Chris pulled at the waistband of Vinny's sweatpants, making a quiet sound of approval at the fact that there was no underwear in his way, as he wrapped long fingers around Vinny's hard length. Vinny had always been fine with how perfectly average his cock was, didn't spend his life obsessing over it like some guys seemed to. So, the effect the sight of Chris' large hand dwarfing him had was unexpected, making his breath catch in his throat, a curl of hot shame forming in his belly. Except, instead of putting him off, the humiliation only turned him on even more. His grip tightened on the purple hair, wordlessly urging Chris on. Vinny's breath was coming in short sharp gasps and he didn't think he'd last long enough for Chris to even begin stoking his cock properly, but somehow he managed to keep control of himself, even as Chris leaned in to lick at the precum leaking from his tip. He moaned at that, letting his head fall back for only a second, before looking down again, not wanting to miss a single second of the sight of Chris stretching his full lips around Vinny's cock.

It was an embarrassingly short time before Vinny felt the familiar tightening of his impending orgasm. He tugged harder on Chris' hair, to try and pull him away.

"I'm gonna... Please, Chris, I'm gonna cum... I'm -" the words were interspersed with little moans as Chris just swallowed him down even deeper, the head of Vinny's cock hitting the back of his throat.

Vinny couldn't hold back any longer, a keening moan escaping his lips as he came so hard he could see stars behind his tightly shut eyelids. Chris didn't pull away until he'd gotten every last drop from Vinny, given his softening cock slow little licks until Vinny jerked away, painfully oversensitive. He pulled up Vinny's sweats before rising to his feet, letting Vinny pull him in for a lazily, fuck-drunk kiss.

It took a few seconds for the thought of returning the favor to even occur in Vinny's scrambled brain, and he reached for Chris' waistband, wanting to touch, to reciprocate, but Chris caughts his wrists. He pulled away from the kiss to look up at the other man. Chris gave a small smile and shook his head.

"We need to get back to the bus, we're gonna be missed soon."

"But," Vinny started, and was silenced with a quick kiss.

"It's fine," Chris said. "Come on, let's go."

And with a last press of his lips to Vinny's, Chris turned and walked away, hands burrowing into his pockets, leaving Vinny behind, confused and disappointed.

#band fanfiction #miw #miw band #miw fanfic #miw fic #motionless in white #motionless in white fic #band rpf #chris motionless #ricky olson #vinny mauro #vinny x chris #vinny mauro x chris motionless #band fic #bandom #real person fiction #motionless in white fanfiction #miw fanfiction

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