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the-witty-pen-name · 3 years

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Deadbeat Pt. 6

Lee Bodecker x F!Reader

18+ ONLY

Warnings: age gap (reader is 21), fluff, angst, smut, dirty talk, semi-public sex, cursing, abandonment, toxic parent, violence, toxic siblings, infatuation, cheating/divorce, insecurity, mild housewife kink, mentions of prostitution, mentions of alcohol, corrupt official, fake relationship, jealousy

Word Count: 3.5k

Summary: You work at the bar at the edge of town, the Sheriff is going through a divorce and needs to rent a room.

A/N: I’m terrible at writing summaries and I’m so sorry about that! I don’t think I would consider this a dark!fic, but it does cover a lot of themes, and topics that are darker than I usually write about- but I think that comes with the territory of writing about Lee Bodecker. I’ll make sure to update the warnings for each chapter and do not read if you are underage. I also ignored canon for this one.

Thank you all so much for reading and sharing my work. Everyone whose reached out and told me how much they love the story really makes my day, oh my gosh!! I love you all so much, I’m so thankful.

This is unedited, and I missed anything I should include as a warning let me know! I hope you all enjoy!

Part One // Part Two // Part Three // Part Four // Part Five

Tags and Requests are OPEN

send me an ask or message to be added to the taglist! I think I got everybody who has asked to be added, but to make sure it doesn’t get lost, sending me a message or an ask will make it easier to keep track! Thank you!!! The support has been overwhelming for my first fic I’m so happy you all are enjoying it!

He turns onto your street and as you get closer to your house, there’s a car out front you don’t recognize.

“You expecting somebody?” Arvin asks.

“Nope,” you say seeing a figure sitting on the front porch swing- unable to make out who it is.

Pulling up to the house the figure is a man, but you still can’t distinguish any features as Arvin continues to drive down the dirt road. You’re incredibly nervous and your mind is racing wondering who it would be. You were scared.

“Hey, it’s alright,” Arvin says, noticing as you fidget in your seat. He takes your hand to comfort you, now driving with one hand on the wheel. He parks his truck at the side of the house. It’s Henry Curtis- that damned reporter. Shit, you think to yourself, he doesn’t know that you lied to him at the bar.

“Who is that?” Arvin asks, staring daggers at the man as he flips a page in the newspaper he was reading while he waits on the front porch. You hide your face behind Arvin, leaning back so Mr. Curtis can’t see who is in the passenger seat.

“He’s this reporter that’s been trying to write a story about my mom,” you explain quickly, “He came into the bar the night before trying to talk to me but I lied and said I wasn’t me. He must have gotten the address somehow- he knows the Sheriff lives here… Maybe he’s trying to dig up something.”

“Is there something-?”

“No! Of course not,” you lie, and it makes you feel terrible. It makes you feel so guilty lying to Arvin but you weren’t ready to tell him anything. “Like everyone else in this town, he’s probably heard all the rumors and things people are saying about me and he’s gonna try to use that.”

“What should we do? It’s not like he’s seeing you with Sheriff Bodecker… you’re with me.”

“Wait- Arvin, that’s it,” you say in a hushed voiced. You peer over his shoulder to see if the reporter was getting suspicious.

“What’s it?” he asks with an eyebrow raised.

“Pretend to be my boyfriend?” You ask hurriedly. “If he thinks I’m single he’s gonna keep hounding me. But if I’m in a relationship, he’s got no reason to keep pursuing the dead-end story and maybe he’ll leave me alone.”

Arvin looks at you, and sighs heavily as he thinks about it. He knows it’s pointless because he knows he’s never going to be able to say no to you. Besides, it’s just a one-time rouse, just so this guy doesn’t bother you again. Arvin feels obligated to say yes, hoping this somehow could make his actions in the past up to you.

“Okay,” he says, forcing a small smile. “I’ll follow your lead.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” you exclaim, giving him a brief hug.

He gets out of the car first, tipping his baseball cap to the man on the porch, before coming around and helping you out of the truck. He keeps his arm around your waist, and holds you close to his side as he walked. Christ, he’s missed this.

“Afternoon,” Curtis greets, putting down his newspaper, and leaving it on the swing. “Henry Curtis. I’m a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch.” He comes down the front steps, as Arvin grabs your groceries from the back of the truck. He walks over to the car and extends his hand to both of you, matching his introduction with a firm handshake. He tilts his head, looking at you, immediately recognizing you from the bar. You’re quick on your feet, and good at putting on an act. You spoke quickly before he got the chance to accuse anything.

“I remember you Mr. Curtis,” you say with a smile. You come off as a little shy. “I wasn’t very truthful to you when we first met and I’m sorry about that,” you say. “But I was scared when you came in asking for me,” you explain, “Strange man comes in, asking for me by name without introducing himself first. Would scare any gal, I hope you understand.”

Arvin holds back a laugh at how thick you are laying it on. You were putting on a Southern belle persona, and it wasn’t like you at all. He admired how quick you were on your feet. It amazed him actually how smoothly you were able to pull it off. “I’m (Y/N) (Y/L/N),” you say, introducing yourself properly. “This is my boyfriend Arvin Russell.” His heart tugs a little, but he ignores it the best he can.

“I suppose I understand,” Curtis says, looking the two of you over. “I think that I came on a little too strong when I first introduced myself. I apologize. It’s nice to meet you both.”

“Good to know ya, Mr. Curtis,” Arvin nods, bringing your groceries up to your front porch as Mr. Curtis asks you more questions.

“I hate to intrude,” Curtis begins and you hold back a scoff, “But I had been told by some people you too had called it quits before the Sheriff moved in- a Ms. Perry, I think. When I was just asking around for a way to get in touch, her and another woman told me more than I was asking.”

“Oh of course, Mr. Curtis,” you chuckle. “They would have been right, but we’ve gotten back together since then. You’re in on the news before Ms. Perry it sounds like.”

“Ah, we’ll I’m happy to hear you both are happy,” he clears his throat. He wasn’t anticipating this and this new information has thrown off his hunch about the situation.

“That’s mighty kind of you,” you smile, resting your arm on Arvin’s shoulder when he returns to your side.

“How long has it been?” he asks curiously. You look up at Arvin, biting your lip playing dumb trying to remember.

“About two weeks, I think,” you finalize, “Maybe three. I mean we’d been together since we both got out of high school so it’s more like we’ve done been together for four years.”

“And you both don’t mind the living situation, not to pry in something that isn’t my business, but an unmarried woman renting out a room to a man is very peculiar,” he insinuates, and Arvin wraps his arm around your waist.

“I have no reason to not trust her,” Arvin says, coming to your defense, and you genuinely smile, even though you know it’s not true. It hurts, but you know it’s just for now. Keeping your relationship with Lee a secret was your idea after all, and you thought keeping it a secret would be easier. But now you’re here lying to one of the only people in town you care about.

“I’d be more worried about the Sheriff,” Curtis counters with a laugh. “Well, I came here to talk to Ms. (Y/L/N) about her mother.”

“I didn’t lie to you when I said I didn’t know anything,” you interject. “Honest, I don’t. I wish I knew more. I’m worried sick thinking about my brother and if he’s okay- but I haven’t heard about either of them. They haven’t reached out since they moved out.”

“I believe you,” he said sympathetically, “Sheriff Bodecker let me read the statement you gave at the station. And I’m sorry you are going through this.”

“I don’t know how’d I’d make it through without Arvin,” you say, looking up at him. He leans down and kisses your temple quickly.

“I should be going, I suppose,” he says, “I’ll be in town for a little while longer, so I hope to see you too around. Please, call me if you hear something.” The man hands you both a business card, and then goes to his car, and pulling away, not even bothering to grab the newspaper he left on the front porch.

“What a sleaze,” you shudder, moving away from Arvin’s embrace.

“He seemed nice enough,” Arvin shrugs, “But I guess that’s an act he puts on.”

“He’s trouble, Arvin,” you insist. He nods, trusting you. You both stand awkwardly for a few moments. You were wishing you could tell him and come clean. It felt horrible keeping this secret from him, he didn’t deserve to be a pawn covering up this scheme of yours without knowing. You would tell him, you decided you would, but you needed to wait for the right time.

“I really appreciate you helping me,” you say, cutting across the silence.

“Of course,” he says, putting his hands in his pockets. “I guess I should get going. I need to pick up Lenora at the cemetery.”

“Okay,” you nod, “See you later?”

“I’m always here,” he chuckles. You turn around and bring your bags inside as Arvin drives away. The whole interaction with Curtis made you incredibly uncomfortable, and you just wanted nothing more than to just see Lee.

You put the groceries away quickly, and then needed to change out these clothes. You headed up to your bedroom, and changed into a more comfortable outfit. You felt a little gross, like there was a layer of something on your skin, even though you were fine. It was like the residue of the lie you told Arvin was still crawling on your skin. You kept reminding yourself that it was only temporary.

“It’s okay to be selfish sometimes, sweetheart,” Lee said, pulling you in close later that night as you were telling him about how you felt towards lying to Arvin. He appreciated how honest you were, and he often wished he was more like you.

However, he also couldn’t help the jealousy that was bubbling up inside him. Thinking about Arvin touching you, even if you had been his first- the visual made his jaw lock. It wasn’t that it was just Arvin- any man touching you would send him into a jealous frenzy. He wasn’t worried about you. He really truly trusted you, but he didn’t for a second trust the Russell boy when it came to you.

You rested your head on his shoulder and rested your palm on his chest as he pulled the blanket up for the two of you. He laid on his back, you cuddled up close to his side. He had one arm wrapped securely around you and the other rested bent behind his head.

“I just hate keeping secrets,” you mumble and it makes him sigh. He now combatted with his own guilt. He was torn between telling you about his involvements around town, like Leroy Brown, or telling you about how he’s been covering for his sister. He wants out, and he just wants to protect you. His main concern about keeping that part of his life under wraps isn’t even about reelection anymore, it’s about keeping you safe. Brown couldn’t know about you; it would put you in danger. He just needed time to get out of the whole mess and then he’d confess everything to you, even if the fear of losing you stayed at the forefront of his mind.

“It’s not forever, sweetheart,” he whispers, rubbing circles on your back comfortingly. “We won’t have to keep ourselves locked away in this house forever,” he chuckles, “even though I love it.” His words make you blush and you swat his chest playfully. “What? I do,” he grins, “I love just being home with you. It’s like the rest of the world don’t even exist when it’s just you and me.”

“When that reporter leaves, everything will get better,” you affirm. “I thought keeping us a secret would be easier,” you admit, drawing aimless shapes over his white t-shirt.

“I can’t wait to show you off,” he mumbles, nuzzling closer to you. “Just show the whole world you’re my girl.”

“You did get pretty lucky,” you chuckle, closing your eyes.

“I know I did,” he hums in agreement, pulling you into his chest.

You got the call the next day letting you know you got the job. You quit your bartending job immediately, you’re so excited that you forget all about the stress you were battling with the previous night. You felt like you were walking on air. Things were looking up for the most part. You had secured a stable job, you were going to start making more money, you had Lee- you felt good. It was definitely a calm before the storm.

You’re worries for now floated to the back of your mind and you allowed yourself to just be happy for yourself. You got something, and it was all your own. You worked hard and you did this. You’d start this next phase of your life Monday morning and you couldn’t wait. You wanted to just speed through the weekend. Well, speed through the rest of Thursday, Friday, Saturday- enjoy your date with Lee, and then speed through Sunday.

You had butterflies. You felt silly that the idea of going on a date with Lee made you feel this way but you were really excited. It made you feel like this relationship was normal, and much more doable than you were thinking it would be. The age gap, living together, so many things made you worry constantly about other people and their opinions. Being stuck in that small town really would affect your confidence and self-esteem. You’re strong, and most of the time things that petty don’t affect you, but the consistency of it all is draining.

Now you both are sitting in the front of Lee’s car, not the cruiser- his ’55 Dodge he hardly drove. He kept his car, but because he was always working, it mostly sat in your garage. He’d offer you the keys, leaving them hanging up in the kitchen for you to take whenever you wanted, but something about the town seeing you driving his car was daunting. You knew people would talk regardless of what you did, but you didn’t like to add fuel to the flame when you could avoid it.

Sitting in the bench seat, with your eyes glued to the movie that played on the screen, you kept stealing glances at Lee. He looked nice out of uniform- much more relaxed and like he wasn’t hiding behind some front he felt he needed to live up to the badge. His leather jacket was secured around your shoulders, and you decide to slid over to him. Your actions snap him out of his thoughts and he smirks, pulling his arm around you and pulling you in close to his side.

It was a dark night, you couldn’t see in to the cars surrounding you, even though you were parked towards the back of the lot of cars anyways. The window was rolled down just enough to have the speaker clipped in place, and the breeze was a little chilly. He pressed his lips to the top of your head, giving you a quick kiss while you got comfortable and then you both turned back to the movie.

Lee couldn’t focus on the movie in front of him if he wanted to. It was just like how he felt like that night awhile back when you’d fallen asleep on the couch together. This time though, he shouldn’t be nervous. You were there and his girl. But now he felt nervous like he was a teenager again or something- and you’re there wrapped up in his arms, and the smell of your shampoo is amazing, and he’s just so wrapped up in thoughts of you, he couldn’t even tell you the name of the movie playing, or who was in it, or what it was even about. Then, you rested your hand on his leg and he thought he was going to combust.

“Lee,” you whisper in his ear and he feels a shiver run down his whole spine, “Are you paying attention?”

“Y-yeah,” he says, sitting up a little straighter and you scoff.

“What’s the movie called?” you ask with a smirk, rubbing his leg gently. He fumbles over his words trying to stall.

“I don’t know,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair nervously.

“Me neither,” you giggle, and he let’s out a long breath of relief. You lean up to whisper in his ear, your hand rubbing over the bulge in his pants. “I can’t think about anything but moving to the backseat,” you whisper. He groans as a response and then pulls you into a kiss, tangling his hand in your hair. You teasingly bit his lip, pulling away from the kiss. He pouts at the separation as you quickly kick off your shoes and then climb over the bench seat to the back, accidentally (or maybe on purpose) giving him a view of your panties that you wore under your skirt.

“You’re killing me, doll,” he moans, quickly following your lead, smacking your ass playfully. You yelp in response and laugh as he climbs over the bench seat and crawls on top of you.

He scoops you up in his arms so he can seat stretched out on the backseat and you maneuver so you’re straddling his waist, your miniskirt riding up around your waist. His tongue tangles with yours and his hands grab at the flesh of your upper thighs. Your hands move down his chest to his torso to his belt, fumbling to undo the buckle and then his fly.

“Fuck,” he moans, when he pulls away from the kiss and his hands move to rub your back under your top. You move to pulls his jacket off of you and he holds your wrists gently to stop you. “Keep it on, sugar,” he murmurs, and then dips down to kiss and bit at your neck. You moan as he kisses from your neck downward as he partially unbuttons your shirt, opening it just enough to reveal your bra.

As your hands run through his hair, he pulls back from your skin to kiss your lips frantically again. His hand travels down and pushes his pants and boxers down enough to free his cock, and he swiftly moves your panties to the side. “Please, Lee,” you whine impatiently, and he smirks, feeling your arousal.

“You’re so wet, baby girl,” he chuckles, teasing your entrance and you moan. He loves ever reaction you give him.

“You want me to ride you Sheriff?” you ask lowly batting your lashes. He rests his head back and he has a firm grip on your hips.

“Please, honey,” he says, almost in a whimper. It felt good, it felt really good seeing him under you like this. You smile, leaning down and kissing his neck as you slide yourself onto his length. You take a sharp intake of breath, adjusting as it stretches you and Lee moans. You’re thankful the windows are fogged, and the movie is still playing, but there was something thrilling about this nonetheless. No one would see you if they looked over anyways, and no one would be paying attention to your car.

“You’re so big,” you praise as you begin to move yourself up and down. Lee peppers kisses on exposed part of your breast and moves his hands down to squeeze your ass as you ride him.

“Fuck you’re so perfect, sweetheart, you feel so good,” he moans, his hands helping to move you up and down on him.

His praises just encourage you to quicken your pace and he still helps guide you. Not breaking your rhythm together, he moves one hand to pull out his wallet from his pocket while the other moves to rest on the small of your back as you continue to bounce on him.

“One second, sweetheart,” he mumbles against your lips. “Lay down on the seat for me.”

You nod and follow his instructions. You watch as he pulls a condom from his wallet, quickly unwrapping it and slipping it on. Once he secures it, he bends down connecting his lips with yours again.

“You’re stunning,” he praises, taking off your panties. He takes a minute to just take in how you look- your hair sprawled out as you rest your back on the seat, your chest rising and falling breathing heavy with anticipation, your neck covered in marks he’s left behind and your skirt pushed up around your waist, and you’re wearing his jacket. “Goddamn perfect,” he declares, kissing you one more time before guiding himself into you.

His thrusts are a little sloppy, this new position makes the limited space much more obvious, but it doesn’t matter. You both are close and pressed up against each other, and both of you know you’re close. He can feel as you tighten around him and you can feel every time, he’s hitting the spots inside you perfectly.

“Lee, I’m so close,” you moan, your arms wrapping around his neck, and he moves faster, this time the car rocks a little, making you laugh.

“Fuck, you’re so tight, sugar,” he grunts, “so perfect.”

You throw your head back as you feel your release, and at the sensation he shortly follows.

“Fuck, Lee,” you moan, feeling your orgasm rip through you.

“Fuck, I love you, sugar,” he groans, as he rides out his orgasm. He pulls out, resting his forehead on yours, panting heavily.

“You what?” You ask breathless, your eyes widening at the confession.

PART SEVEN

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boognish-worshipper · 3 years

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Midnight City AU

this is an au where the main characters are all young adults!! (or millennials ig? they’re in their 20s basically) i gave a rundown of what’s what on a diff post,, i’m also splitting it up into diff chapters,, so this is gonna take a looooong time to finish. i’m posting this before i nitpick my writing to the max

it’s basically a lot of references to that point in time, artists, pop culture etc. all the chapters are named after songs from that era (including the name of this au bc i love midnight city and what better way to describe LS ‼️), and the lyrics r usually connected to what the chapter’s about, or about a character dynamic :D i hope this isn’t too cheesy, or sounds off ig. any typos in this were probably over looked bc i constantly reread my writing and rearrange stuff and make sure it sounds good 🥳 hope y’all enjoy !!! i’m also including a tag to find the chapters under :)

//Chapter 1: Crimewave

Trevor would never, ever admit it, but he had fallen into the category known as “post-hipster”. This was a strange era that began culminating, taking LS by storm. Whether he liked it or not, he could never avoid it. Even if he swore up and down he wasn’t like them, it was practically a paradox. Saying he wasn’t like them just made him a branched off version of the thing he denounced. Each aesthetic that was churned out as the 2010s rolled in were tied to a style, a sound, and Trevor couldn’t care less. It’s not like people liked what he liked. He didn’t belong to anything in particular, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t like them. If anything, he just became another obscure genre in the mix.

One of his favorite music groups was a Canadian duo called Crystal Castles. He enjoyed a good number of their songs, developing an interest for electropunk and pop punk. There was something unique about the sound, and it made Trevor feel special, like he discovered some sort of hidden treasure. He was into pop punk groups like Paramore too, but it was something about them that was just different. People knew Paramore. He often lingered around Sterling Lake, where other post-irony hipsters and classic hipsters resided, careful not to fully associate with them. After all, he apparently despised them, even though he participated in their strange… “culture”. If you could even call it that. From time to time he would find himself discussing his favorite artists with whatever semi-normal person was there, making a couple friends himself who weren’t the snooty kind he’d grown used to.

They all loved talking about how exceptional their taste in music was, a wide variety of people hanging around with their own cliques. Some liked Fall Out Boy, while others liked Blink-182, and then there were the weirdos who liked groups like Radiohead. Most of those guys were whiny, proclaiming how misunderstood they were. He knew maybe one Radiohead song at most (he definitely, definitely never cried to “Creep” and even if he did, so what) but never found himself willingly getting into their music. Then you had the nosedivr crowd, which consisted of mostly girls, and the occasional hipster guy that defected. Their taste was.. alright. Consisted of artists like Lana Del Ray and Marina and the Diamonds, who were their idols. He found almost everyone there besides the few friends he made kind of edgy, and not in the cool way. But he figured all hipsters and guys like them were kind of uncool. Don’t even get him started on those other indie rock types. God. He still came back as often as he could though, establishing some kind of routine. Most people there avoided him anyway, which he preferred. He had enough troubles with them in the past. There was one day he grew tired of the people gawking at him, and he launched a hipster right into the lake. So yeah, nobody within their right mind so much as looked in his direction. That was just how he rolled.

Today, he sat on a nearby bench in Sterling Lake’s park, watching some ducks float on water. His usual friends had been there too, seeing his clowncore buddy Wade with his cousin Floyd. Wade was extremely different than the pretentious fucks around them. He had a shit ton of piercings, and ICP was his favorite music group. Floyd on the other hand, fit right in. Almost too much, like it was something he was forced to do. But he did genuinely enjoy Weezer, of all things you could enjoy. Wade started waving at Trevor, while Floyd hid behind him. All he did was awkwardly wave back, turning his attention back to the lake. He liked Wade, but the clown stuff he wore sometimes spooked him. He didn’t pay much mind to his relative. Looking back across the water, he saw someone new, observing the area. Some dude a little above the average height, hands in his pockets walking around. He seemed a bit lost, and Trevor figured he should help if he was. After all, what was this guy doing here? New people didn’t show up often.

“Hey bud, you lost or something?”

“Oh uh, nah not really. I’m just looking for this girl I met a while ago, said she hangs out around here?”

“What she look like? I’m here pretty often.”

“Uhh kinda short, dark brownish hair? Wears fishnet stockings, high waisted shorts or whatever those grunge people are into.”

“Let me guess, she into the Neighborhood?”

“How’d you know?”

“Yeah, that’s Amanda, she’s a bit of a regular. Not too fond of me I must say.”

“How come?”

“She’s just petty towards me.” He said with a shrug. He didn’t feel like relaying his encounters with her if the guy was dating her or something.

“Oh… well d’ya think you could help me find her? I don’t really know anybody else here. I could actually use the help, since you know her.”

“Eh sure, why not.”

It’s not like he had anything better to do. The two began to walk around the park, gravel and dirt crunching beneath their feet.

“So.. what’s this place about?” The strange guy asked.

“Hm? Oh, it’s just one of those places the hipster folks meet up I guess. Don’t understand it much myself, nor do I really like them.”

“Then why do you come here?”

“Dunno. It’s relatively peaceful, those freaks keep to themselves.”

The man, who was only a smidge shorter than Trevor, glared up at him.

“Hey man, don’t call my girl a freak.”

“Ehh I don’t really count her in with the generic skinny jean wearing hipsters. More of a.. what is it called.. nosedivr type. Whatever that stupid website’s called. Why do you think she dresses like that?”

“Huh.. Never really thought to ask her.”

As he thought about the stuff Amanda wore, he took note of how the man next to him was dressed. He sported an olive jacket with a black turtle neck, and a plain pair of jeans. He wore beat up black converse to top it off, and a pair of Rimmers sunglasses sat upon his head. He looked simple, yet distinguished with the way he presented himself, hair neatly combed back. He figured the two would look nice standing next to one another. They would’ve made an attractive couple, if they weren’t dating already, the kind that turns heads. Trevor wasn’t like them. He wore a black beanie over his mullet, and his favorite pair of red Dix sunglasses rested on the bridge of his nose. The rest of his fit looked disheveled. He had thrown on a wrinkled top, solid black with little surf boards and cars along the bottom- he was a sucker for Hawaiian shirts. His pants were tan colored but had some bleach stains, with old combat boots on his feet.

“Yeah, we may not like each other but I don’t really consider her a freak like those guys.”

He jutted a thumb in the direction of a circle of guys huddled around a phone. The man holding the phone had strawberry blonde hair and a clean outfit on. An expensive looking outfit.

“Who are they?”

“The people here I absolutely cannot fucking stand. The genuine hipsters.”

“Oh.. and you’re..?”

“I’m my own kind. I’m not like these losers, all uppity and shit.”

“Right. Gotcha.”

They walked around a bit more before finding the group Amanda was with. She sat on a bench, chatting with a few girls who dressed similarly to her. All of them had black incorporated into their style. She herself had a black jumper on, tucked neatly into the front of her jean shorts. Just like the guy described, she had fishnets on under them, skater shoes to match. Loose braids fell on her shoulders, and a small black choker was wrapped around her neck.

“Oh, there he is now! Babe! Over here!”

She narrowed her eyes upon seeing Trevor standing next to him.

“Hello, Trevor.” She huffed.

“Relax, I was helping your boyfriend or whatever look for you.”

Her face softened slightly, but still kept a small glare in his direction. She pressed her lips together tight before replying.

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Yup.”

The man turned to face Trevor, sticking out a hand.

“Hey, thanks for showing me around. Trevor, is it?”

“Don’t wear it out.”

He shook his hand, noticing how soft it was. It was in stark contrast to his own, which was rough and calloused.

“Name’s Michael. I’ll see you around most likely? Thanks again.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Amanda huffed again, nudging Michael’s shoulder.

“Let’s go hun, Bean Machine closes soon!”

“I’m comin’ I’m comin’!”

The two sauntered off, hand in hand. Trevor stood dumbly, watching them walk away. He was right. They did look good together. He wondered if he would actually see this Michael again, kicking a rock. He went back to the bench he originally sat at, putting his earbuds in, listening to some Crystal Castles again to pass the time. The beat thumped in his ears, and all he could think was how much better this shit was compared to that club music shit that played on every radio station in a 5 foot radius. He sat there, scrolling through his own secret nosedivr account, reblogging some photo of a lit cigarette. Right before a hand touched his shoulder causing him to jump.

“What the fuck- Oh. Ron.”

Ron was another friend of Trevor’s, a guy he had met outside one of the iFruit stores talking about how “they’re tapping the phones they sell in there!” and all that conspiracy nonsense. He was a paranoid guy, but Trevor kind of liked that about him. Those were the kind of freaks he liked. He was shorter than Trevor, sort of frail in stature. He wore a bright red windbreaker over a faded tourist tee that read “I went to Liberty City and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!”, along with khaki colored cargo shorts. It didn’t help that he wore some goofy looking bucket hat, and socks with sandals. He dressed like someone’s middle aged father.

“Trevor! Have you seen Wade around anywhere?”

“Last I checked, he was with Floyd.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Uh no, but my best bet is they went to that vinyl shop Floyd’s girlfriend works at.”

“Will ya come with me to find him?”

“Now why the fuck would I do that? What do you need him for?”

“Well I- I uh- um..”

“I uh! I uh! Spit it out Ron!”

“It’s about the Merryweather Night Club.”

Merryweather was a big organization that had a wide range of private clubs all over the country, and complimentary body guards to suit. They were all expensive as fuck, and anywhere they settled jacked up the prices of everything else. A lot of neighborhoods became gentrified as a result, and people actually considered it a good thing. What a fucking joke. Trevor of course couldn’t stand it. He hated bullies, and Merryweather was no exception. He’d been wanting to dismantle the club since they settled in LS, seeing as they only amplified the fake feel of the city. Let’s just say he’s gotten into more than a few scuffles with the club. And let’s just say it ended with someone getting stabbed as a result. The guy had it coming to him anyway. Between bouncers and the clubbers, they didn’t like Trevor or his kind loitering around the joint. It didn’t stop him from plotting some sort of revenge though. Ron per usual was on board, his reason being Merryweather’s violent history that had been swept under the rug. They were rather forceful relocating people who had lived in certain neighborhoods for years, Ron being one of their victims. Wade only decided to tag along because he wanted to be included.

“Ah fuck, what’d those bastards do now?”

“They’re throwing some big party!”

“…What fucking for?”

“All I know some guy’s coming to visit, somebody they labeled important and he’s-“

“Woah woah woah wait, Ron. Who?”

“Steve Haines.” He breathed out, careful not to be overheard.

Trevor’s eyes widened, his gaze shooting over to the posse he had poked fun of before. Steve was talking to the group, all of them doing that fake laugh they always did. God, even their humor was pretentious.

“Those fucking hipsters!” He hissed.

“I abhor them, you know that-“

“I know. I know. But, that Weston guy’s gonna be there with him-“

“Weston? Devin Weston?”

If Trevor hated hipsters, then he utterly loathed rich daddy’s money boys like Devin Weston. He had only gotten that stupid fucking night club because his father paid Don Percival enough money to let Devin do whatever he pleased with the Merryweather body guards. It was an elitist club, and they only allowed the best of the best in there.

“What the fuck’s going on there?”

“Something to do with those guys he hangs out with. I think they’re doing something major, expansion maybe-”

“And him and Devin are working together or..?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear much after that, that’s why I wanted to grab you and Wade and-”

“Then let’s fucking go get him, Ron!”

The two rushed out of there, heading for the vinyl store to look for Wade. Trevor knew a shit storm was coming, and he absolutely couldn’t wait.

//the next chapter’s gonna be longer i promise lolz

#gta v #grand theft auto v #michael de santa #trevor philips #young trikey #franklin clinton #lamar davis #lester crest #amanda de santa #steve haines #midnight city au

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gisachi · 4 years

Note

Aaah hi ! Can I please request 45 or 14 of the shinran prompt ? 💓

Hi, thanks for the request! 🧡 Sorry it took a while! Hoping you don’t mind that I combined your asks since I’ll be doing #45 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Admittedly, the only scenario I can think of for this prompt is another semi(?)-nsfw so I hope you’re ok with that! Again, it went longer than I expected, so it may sound a bit rushed at the end because I had to cut it short lmao, but I do hope you still enjoy reading!

45. Kisses exchanged as they move around, hitting the edges of tables or nearly tripping over things on the floor before making it to the sofa, or bed. (1,878 words, slightly nsfw)

His girlfriend doesn’t wait for the hotel room door to close shut.

Using her weight to pin him to the cold, concrete wall, she drives her lips against his in what seems like the boldest, the roughest, the most brazen she’s ever done in her entire life.

She’s never one to initiate; it’s always him. So the moment this happens, he doesn’t push her away, and instead embraces her closer, surrendering himself to the thrill.

He feels her body rock against his, outlined by her gown— oh, that long, sexy red satin gown, elegantly tailored to a slim fit that it hugs every prominent curve of her body, neckline plunging so low it exposes a generous amount of her cleavage;

That gown poking the corner of his eyes as she sat beside him quietly the whole duration of the TMPD awarding ceremony, her noiseless presence a stark contrast to her breathtaking aura that screams ever so loudly, catching the attention of everyone in the grand ballroom, men and women, even those on distant tables;

That same gown that’s causing all his willpower to dissipate as he tried to display the straightest face he could ever make while he waited, impatiently, for his name to be announced just so they could get this over with, for deep down his animalistic tendencies thrive from the dangerous thought of slamming her down their table and stripping her bare... right then and there.

It’s funny, now that he thinks about it. The modesty they displayed in that event — how she respectfully thanked the courteous gentlemen assisting her there while he interacted with other fellow distinguished guests; how he politely shook hands with his women fans and willingly gave them his autographs and selfies as they exited the venue — all gone the moment they step in the hotel elevator, her arms loop around his firmly as if she’s honestly intending for her chest to choke his arms. The smile they’ve been projecting replaced by tightly shut, parched lips, curses restrained behind teeth, breathing warm and fervid, tension palpable…

It’s not just him. He feels it.

Inside the elevator where many people other than them gather, they mutually relish this energy.

This raw, titillating energy, swirling in the air between them, so apparent yet so undetected.

They reach their floor and they step out, and Shinichi knows. His plan of ending the night with a romantic champagne session with her on their balcony under the stars? Not gonna happen now. Something else will. Not in any way how he expects but perhaps... how he prefers.

Very much so.

He would’ve wanted to do this to her first, shove her against the wall and all, and though he's not complaining that it resulted the other way around, as to why she initiated this rash, unprecedented act, he wants to know.

“Ran…” he groans, nails digging into her hips while her lips assault his neck, leaving trails of red lipstick from the underside of his ear down his collarbone. “What’s... with you... tonight?”

“No,” her hands yank the collar of his fine black shirt underneath his elaborately masculine, padded coat, “what’s with you tonight, Shinichi?” She kisses him again, rougher and harder than before, and while he thoroughly enjoys her doing this, a clear answer is what he needs and this isn’t exactly it.

“Wha- uh, fuck,” he tries to speak coherently in between their kisses, but her hands quickly travelling down his chest to the front of his pants make it difficult to do so, “What did I, ah- do…?”

“You,” she breathes heavily, “in that suit,” he feels a hand unclasp the metal buckle of his belt, “in these slacks,” and watches her throw the belt in the open. “I’m quite... annoyed.”

“Annoyed?” He speaks in fragments, “Of who...” throwing his words in between their hungry kisses, “...of me?” She shakes her head.

“Mm, then who?”

She separates from his lips bitterly, looks at him with dark, impassioned eyes, so uncharacteristic of the gentle Ran he has ever known his whole life. Not that he’s complaining.

Did she drink? No. Was she in a bad mood prior to this? No.

Another possibility crosses his mind.

“...Of the fangirls?”

She sucks sharp breaths of air, face somewhat glowering.

Is she...jealous?

Ran grabs a fistful of his hair, pulls his head down to meet her stare.

“You can’t just put your arms around them for a selfie in that tux...” her eyes flicker to the lapels of his jacket and the half unbuttoned shirt, his lean, glorious chest beneath it teasing her, and further down, his black trousers, prim and ironed, now without the belt and now loose enough to shove a hand in...then back his eyes, unconsciously biting her lower lip in the process, “without letting me see you alone first.”

Oh. Scratch that.

Is she massively turned on by him in an all-black formal suit…

so much so that she wants him all to herself?

Yes.

Holy shit, yes.

He spots their reflection on the full-length mirror across them — his lips smeared with her cherry red lipstick, hair he’s gelled so carefully now a disheveled mess as her fingers wind roughly onto it. Her backless gown does his eyes favor, allowing him to freely marvel at the sharp curves of her shoulder blades, her lithe spine, her arched back, and all he can think about now is how much he wants to mark them later with his nails, with his teeth...

Lips pulling into a naughty smirk, he decides to up the heat by a notch.

“Yeah?” He squeezes her ass fondly, preventing himself from salivating like a wild beast as he sees from the reflection how soft and supple her cheeks are under his hands. “What about you then?”

Ran audibly gasps as his hand lowers to her thigh, lifting it a few inches so that it slips between the high slits of her gown. He makes just enough room between his legs to slide it in, pressing their lower bodies closer until she’s aware of the visible strain in his trousers.

“That dress,” he grunts, his other hand hiking to her waist, gripping her so possessively he might’ve bruised her, “is so perfect on you it frustrates me.”

His tongue languidly traces the inside of her lower lip before nibbling it so hard he tastes blood. She whimpers, so he soothes it with a soft lick and a gentle suck.

He’ll apologize to her after, not now when his carnal drive is at its strongest.

Parting her lips with his thumb, he sighs into her lungs.

“...mind me taking it off?”

She moans from his words alone.

Heart thundering to a frenzied rhythm, she pins him back to the wall and reclaims his lips, and he can only surmise that that’s her way of saying yes.

Yes. Take everything away.

Her fingers twine his hair, playing and swirling around it the same way her tongue does with his. Tilting his head, he indulges himself deep in her, reaching and tasting every corner of her, and he feels her throat vibrate from a soft groan that echoes so deliciously in his mouth. Without breaking the kiss, his other arm joins the other on her waist, coaxing her to step her feet back, to move, and she almost trips on her stilettos, which she finds no more need for as she awkwardly removes them one at a time, all while he guides her blindly to the inside portion of the hotel room.

She hits and bumps every wall as they sort their way through, and he doesn’t want her to get hurt so he turns them around, offering his back as the first line of defense against the unfamiliar setup of the room. Dragging her with him, they totter to the nearest flat surface he can sense, unmindful of the chairs and random furniture his legs inadvertently bump into as he moves. And when he does feel the edge of some kind of counter touch his lower back, he lifts her up and hoists her there, almost toppling over the complimentary drinks and champagne glasses placed above it.

They break off the kiss and stare each other down, outrageous heat in their expressions apparent. He takes this time to shrug off his expensive suit soiled with sweat and drops it to the floor, leaving him with his disheveled black button-downs, looking more informal now than it is formal. His arms cage her body to the minibar counter while her hands secure her weight, one overlapping his right hand and the other on his right shoulder. One leg wraps around his hip, making sure her dress doesn’t rip due to overstretching.

“You know, I…” he pants, voice low and husky, “I was so close to stabbing some colleagues in the eyes.”

“Really now?” she replies, thumb caressing the underside of his right hand, heel digging into his calves.

“Yeah...” his pupils wander to where the neckline of her gown dives, to the teasing slit that reveals her silky thigh. “No one else’s supposed to look at you like this,” he returns his gaze to her, and, like a cat cornering a mouse, hoods his eyes and licks his lips. “Only me.”

Ran’s heart rate skyrockets, chest feels like combusting as her boyfriend scans her entire being with pure, unadulterated lust. She tightens her leg around him before surging into his lips once more, and he moans, loud.

Loud, raspy. Guttural.

Hot.

If that doesn’t make her damp the first time, then she’ll just make him do it again.

Not a problem. They have the whole night.

She squirms her way out from where his hands trap her, descending the minibar. He honestly would’ve wanted her there longer but her comfort is more important. On tiptoes they twirl to the direction of the king-size bed, skipping over the lump of coat on the floor. Their lips mold hotly, all while he works his way out his shoes, kicking them somewhere far. Her dress is such a bother; it’s impossible not to step on its length while they get it on— all the more reason for him to make haste to the bed just so he can finally take that whole thing off of her body.

Only when the back of her knees hit the edge of the bed does she speak again.

“Shinichi...everything under this,” she flits down her gown, then back his face, her blue irises glinting like firelight, “is for your eyes only.”

In the middle of his high, Shinichi cannot help but soften his expression at his girlfriend’s honest-to-goodness statement.

She bites her lip, giggles. “So better promise me the same.”

“Of course.” He kisses her softly. “All you see in front of you,” he leans down, traces the shape of her collarbone with his lips, “are all yours.”

He cannot see her face but he’s sure of how red she’s gotten. Not sparing any more time, he lets their intermingled bodies collapse to the bed, he on top, she beautifully sprawled under.

“Now will you show me?” His right hand hikes the slit of her gown, going under it, “What’s for my eyes alone?”

#shinran #fanfic #kiss prompts #honestly wanting to make em do this all the way but #i decide not to so i’ll leave the rest to your imagination ahsksdhak!!#sorry for grammar lapses and typos!#for a moment i forgot how to write smut so a quarter of this is probably word vomit hadhksgs #but i just needed to do it bc #ShinRan making out in formal attire? 😩👌🏼#hope you like this!

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haberdashing · 4 years

Text

No Puppet Strings Can Hold Me Down (9/?)

The Magnus Archives fanfic. An AU that diverges from canon between episodes 159 and 160, in which Peter Lukas’ statement that “he got you” takes on a different meaning.

on AO3

Breakfast... dinner... brinner was quiet and uneventful, after that. It would be easy to assume that it was meant to be a comfortable silence, that they had said all the things that really mattered back in the Lonely, but was that really true, or was there more to it than that? Jon thought it was the latter. Or perhaps Jon simply hoped it was the latter, hoped that this silence might be a sign that Martin knew more than he was sharing and didn’t much care to make small talk with Jonah Magnus regardless of whose body he was wearing. It was hard to tell for sure.

After they both were done, though, the silence got heavier. There was no clear activity for them to do next, after all. There was only them, them and an unkempt but cozy safehouse and time that needed to be spent within it or around it until they needed food or sleep once more.

Jon had dreamed of a life filled with nothing but leisure time like that, once.

Jon had dreamed of an awful lot of things that seemed to be coming true now in the worst way possible, like his subconscious had gotten hold of a monkey’s paw and milked it for all it was worth.

Martin was the one to finally break the silence between them. “Are you good now?”

Jon felt his face wrinkle and contort in a semblance of confusion. “That’s an awfully broad question. What do you mean?”

Martin hesitated, blinking a few times before responding. “I just meant, er...” His voice trailed off a bit as he looked pointedly at one of the stray piles of newly-brought belongings strewn across the place, though what made that particular pile special Jon couldn’t tell at a glance. “You’re not still hungry?”

“Martin, we just ate.”

“Not- not that kind of hungry.” Another semi-furtive glance directed towards the same pile of unorganized necessities. “Just, you know, I brought them along for you and all, but I don’t know how often you, well, need one-”

Jon put together the pieces a moment before Martin made his meaning even more plain, though Jonah just raised his eyebrow in response.

“The, the statements. Do you need to go read a statement, Jon?”

Even though he knew he had no control over the actual response to Martin’s question, Jon thought about what his response would be just the same. He’d started to practically take the statement reading for granted, these past few months, which probably wasn’t a great sign in hindsight; honestly, he’d grown better at tending to that need than making sure he ate actual food, if only because he’d learned the hard way what happened when that sort of hunger went unchecked. Now that he thought about it, though, he felt fine, at least physically. No hunger, no weakness, none of the symptoms he’d once mistaken for an illness before he’d known better.

Had it just not been long enough since the last statement for it to set in, or was his current situation enough to override that need, at least for the time being?

Jon’s train of thought was unexpectedly derailed by the sound of his own voice speaking up.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

“Alright, well, they’re all ready for you. Got a bunch over there-” Martin waved a hand in the direction of the pile he’d been staring at before. “-though I didn’t look too close at what I was grabbing, they might be ones you’ve read already, or, or even fake ones, I don’t know-”

“I’m sure it will be just fine. Thank you, Martin.” Jon felt his lips curl into a smile he didn’t really feel.

“Don’t mention it. Just, er, while you’re busy with that...” Martin scratched the back of his neck nervously. “Mind if I take a nap?”

A brief moment of hesitation, in which Martin’s face grew more and more pink by the second.

“Not that I don’t like hearing you monologue, but I figure hey, if the bed’s not being used...”

“Oh, of course. Go right ahead.”

“Thanks.”

Martin went off to curl up in the bed, and Jon hoped that he slept well, that maybe they could keep making arrangements like this so Martin could at least spend some time sleeping somewhere more comfortable and height-appropriate than the sofa.

Jon couldn’t tell if Jonah was looking for something specific in the statements, but he did glance at a couple before deciding on one and pulling it out from the stack, giving Jon a bit of a paper cut in the process, though he knew from experience the sting wouldn’t last and the cut would likely be gone in minutes if not seconds. A small blessing, there, one minor upside of an otherwise horrible situation. Lose your humanity, heal faster from paper cuts. Not Jon’s idea of an ideal trade-off.

“Statement of Isaac Kaufmann, regarding the aftermath of an attempted mugging. Original statement given August 13th, 2009. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Statement begins...”

It was a bizarre feeling for Jon, reading out loud a statement without being drawn into it, going through the motions without any of the emotions he usually associated with the act. He felt bad for the guy, sure, but that was just basic human sympathy (or basic inhuman sympathy perhaps), not literally feeling everything this Mr. Kaufmann felt upon almost being mugged and surviving only by way of encountering something stranger and no less dangerous than the man who had tried to mug him initially. Jon had wondered from time to time how odd his reading statements must look from an outside perspective; now, it seemed, he was as close to getting an answer to that question as he was likely ever to get.

The words pouring out of his mouth sounded like a passable imitation of his usual statement voice, at least, and if Jonah faltered once or twice, well, Martin wasn’t exactly hanging on his every word, napping as he was in the cabin’s lone bed...

Though that gave Jon an idea.

Jon couldn’t do much now, but he could still Know things--he’d learned that already, had done it without even trying to back in the car.

When he’d tried too hard to Know what Peter Lukas was planning some time ago, he’d made himself sick, even blacked out for a moment afterwards before getting what had to be the supernatural equivalent of the world’s worst hangover.

What would happen, then, if he tried to Know what Jonah Magnus was planning now?

At best, he’d get some answers, know exactly what was in store for him, though Jon wasn’t holding his breath on getting the best possible outcome here; life never seemed to be that generous towards him.

Maybe it’d do to his body what it’d done before, disorientate him, weaken him, and weakening him meant weakening Jonah Magnus now, so that was a price Jon was very much willing to pay.

At worst... well. Not much could be worse than the present scenario. Worst case would likely be his attempt at Knowing failing utterly, and Jon still would know nothing and Jonah Magnus would still be running around unhindered in his body, and it still wouldn’t actually be any worse than if he hadn’t tried at all.

Jon didn’t hesitate.

What is Jonah Magnus’ plan?

The information poured into Jon’s mind all at once.

Ignaz Semmelweis, the first doctor to successfully prevent most postpartum infections by encouraging doctors to wash their hands, was roundly ignored by his contemporaries and died in obscurity. The tallest body Jonah Magnus has ever inhabited, one by the name of Mark Matthews, stood at six feet, three inches tall. The Admiral has a half-sister that lives nine blocks away from Georgie’s flat. Hydrophobia is a historic name for the disease of rabies due to late-stage symptoms in which the infected person cannot swallow liquids, cannot quench their thirst, and shows fear or panic when presented with liquids to drink. Liz Culvert, who dated Elias Bouchard when both were attending uni, wrote a short poem about Elias’ eyes while they were dating. The rhyme “Red touch yellow, kills a fellow; red touch black, friend of Jack” does successfully distinguish between venomous coral snakes and nonvenomous scarlet king snakes, but is only entirely accurate when applied to snake species native to the southeastern United States...

The information keeps coming rapid-fire, the details of each seemingly-random factoid soon blurring together in Jon’s mind, his senses overpowered by the sheer weight of Knowledge within his head. The world faded away, replaced by static and words, and still the information kept coming and there was nothing he could do about it-

The next thing Jon knew (lower-case), he was sprawled out on the floor, head pounding, back smarting, every part of him hurting like hell--still unable to move a muscle of his own accord, though he did give it a try just in case--and the only good thing Jon could think of was that Jonah Magnus must be feeling this pain as acutely as he was.

If he had actually learned anything about Jonah Magnus’ current plans it was lost to him now, a drop within a sea of more or less useless information, a needle buried deep within a haystack.

Did Jonah Magnus feel as disoriented as Jon did? The only way to know for sure was to engage him in conversation, Jon supposed, but... he’d rather pass on that, thanks, especially since that’d probably manage to make his headache even worse somehow.

His hands were shaking as he sat up, though, and as Jon wasn’t the one controlling them, wasn’t the one in charge of their shaking or lack thereof, he figured that meant his little stunt must have had some effect on his mental captor.

“Jon?”

Jon looked over as Martin rushed over to his side. Jon had assumed that Martin wouldn’t have noticed any results of what he’d done, that he’d be too lost in sleep to wake up for something so relatively minor, but evidently that assumption had been a faulty one.

“Jon, what happened? Are you alright?”

Jon tried not to read too much into the questions Martin asked, tried not to search them for even the slightest signs of understanding, but to no avail. He’d thought that he’d given up on false, useless hope already, and yet...

“I’m fine, don’t worry. Just a... a bit of a dizzy spell, I suppose.”

“Do you know what brought it on? You didn’t hit your head on the way down, did you?”

“I don’t believe so, no. And... hard to say. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

As Martin looked down at Jon, a hint of a smile crept onto his face. “No, no, I couldn’t sleep anyway. Wasn’t your doing. Now, d’you need a hand up?”

“Er...”

“Sounds like a yes to me.”

Martin extended his hand, and Jonah took it for him, and Martin was still cold to the touch but his manner was still warm as anything, and it didn’t matter what temperature his hand was, just that it was big and soft and embracing Jon’s own hand in turn, supporting him both physically and metaphorically a-

Don’t try to pull that little stunt again.

And Jon’s train of thought was disrupted in the most awkward of fashions by Jonah Magnus’ butting in just before Martin released his grip as Jon stood upright once more.

His arms were still shaking, though, and Jon doubted that Jonah was putting that on for show, not when his head still ached from too much knowledge filling it all at once.

So he could do something, then. He could do at least one thing that would affect the world around him, not just the worlds within his own mind. Granted, that thing was basically eldritch self-sabotage, but it was something at least. That had to be a good sign. That had to be better than nothing.

And if Jonah Magnus was warning him against it, that meant that Jon now had some form of leverage against him, something he could threaten Jonah with that was clearer and more tangible than any of Jonah’s own vague yet ominous threats.

Jonah said something to Martin, but Jon didn’t hear it, busy as he was laughing to himself, hoping that his laughter would be loud enough for Jonah Magnus to hear.

#tma #tma au #tma fic #tma fanfic #the magnus archives #the magnus archives au #the magnus archives fic #the magnus archives fanfic #personal #my writing

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soyforramen · 5 years

Text

They all wanted her to be something she wasn’t.

It wasn’t hard to see, not when the entire institute was in the national spotlight, and her thrust into the middle of it. After the bad publicity surrounding The Brotherhood and Apocalypse, Ororo needed some way to show the world that mutants weren’t a threat on their own. She needed to prove that not all mutants wanted to take over the world.

But with Scott and Jean gone, she was left standing in the spotlight alone. She needed someone to show how normal mutants could be. And who was more wholesome than a couple who stayed together, who loved each other without being able to communicate it through touch?

Rogue and Bobby were the natural successors to Scott and Jean’s public image. From all outward appearances they were deeply in love, partners in public and private. They’d found love in a hopeless world. And it wasn’t long before they were being groomed for leadership, him in the field, her in a public-facing role.

After all, his mutation was useful in a fight and in recon. Hers was defensive, plain and simple. And who had a need for a mutation such as hers with all the side effects that came with it?

Ororo had done the math and discovered that Rogue was better suited to stand strong against the public onslaught. They’d gain more sympathy for the cause if Rogue was at the front. A girl with a mutation no one want for themselves or their children. She was a girl who couldn’t touch. A girl who could kill just by touching someone. A tragedy that would break Shakespeare’s heart.

That was why after she’d graduated high school along with her peers, she’d been the one ushered into an administrative role. Enrollment, contact with donors, invitations to private fundraisers. She was no longer allowed into the field, her training sessions ending with Logan’s disappearance. It was expected that she juggle this full time job along with her class load at NYU, her major chosen for her in furtherance of the school’s mission.

Meanwhile, Bobby was traveling the world to put out fires in the name of mutant equality. The only expectation put upon him was to be Ororo’s second in command in the field.

It was enough to make a girl scream. She’d dreamed of more than this. More than being a secretary, more than being someone else’s mouthpiece, more than being someone’s girlfriend, more than having to force a smile when all she wanted to do was scream.

She still hadn’t seen the Grand Canyon, or the Eiffel Tower, or the Rocky Mountains.

Everyday she played her part. She stood in front of cameras, microphones, and plead for peace and equality. She kept up her grades, joined extracurriculars, and stood by Bobby’s side. Because despite their mutations, they were still able to live a semi-normal life. They’d stood together against homicidal maniacs, narcissists, and politicians. He was willing to stay together despite her mutation and she… well that was the problem, wasn’t it?

Why was she even still here? Together, with him?

There’d always been rumors. She’d ignored them at first, ignored John’s warnings, ignored Jubilee’s pointed looks. He’d been discreet enough the rumors dissolved on their own. Hangouts, and hugging, and talking, and long glances had been dismissed as paranoia, jealousy. And besides, they’d said under their breath when they thought they were alone, could you blame him if he had?

It was all swept under the rug as easily as her own feelings about it. Even when he and Kitty stopped speaking one day. Even when he’d go out late at night and come home two days later. Even when…

Before he at least loved her enough to hide it. Now he didn’t seem to care. And the longer they were together, neither did she.

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. To be thrown over so easy hurt her pride. Her ego. Her sense of self. He’d done what she’d always feared, sought solace and comfort in someone else because she couldn’t give him what he wanted. Because he was too afraid to try.

Behind closed doors he didn’t try to act like her boyfriend anymore. They were still friends, but only that.

The flame between them had long ago died out between his cold lips and her cold heart.

It would have been easy enough to have kept on like this forever. Bobby chasing other girls while she lied to herself. It was a contented life, even if it wasn’t a happy one.

Then he had to destroy it all by proposing to her in front of the whole institute.

He knew she hated this type of public confrontation. They’d never talked about marriage. They’d never broached the subject of the future.

And yet. Perhaps she should have seen this coming. They’d been together six, almost seven years now.

It was silent in the foyer as they watched for her response. No one blinked an eye when Kitty stormed out of the room.

It wasn’t the first time Rogue wished they could switch places.

She’d said the only thing she could with that many people watching. And now Bobby was pushing for a spring wedding. He wanted the symbolic renewal of hope, a tribute to those who’d died. The wedding was supposed to stand for everything but their relationship. He and Ororo had already begun the planning long before he’d asked.

The only input she was asked for was what type of flowers should be on the alter. When her response didn’t come quick enough, they’d chosen peace lilies and irises. Peace and hope for the future.

Rogue had always wanted oleander and magnolias.

That day wasn’t the first time she’d wanted to up and run from this ‘perfect’ life. And it wasn’t the first time she’d run away. Because that was what she did when she was unsettled. Anxious. Lonely. It was what she was good at.

Running.

Just like she had when Bobby wanted to take a ‘break’ from their relationship. He’d found Betsy, she’d found Montana. Just like when Logan disappeared and nobody could speak his name, she disappeared to Mexico and spoke the name of everyone she’d met. Just like when Bobby had asked for her hand in marriage, she’d run to the boot of Italy,

And when it became public knowledge that Bobby was stepping out on her with a teacher from a sister institute, Rogue ran to Escape.

For the first time she ran towards the problem. To find Bobby. She knew he was here. He’d left his phone on the bed while he went to work out, unlocked and open to her message. All it took was a glance for Rogue to see who, when and where he was supposed to be that night.

Maybe Bobby wanted to escape too.

It didn’t take long to pack what little she owned. Her mother’s ring, Logan’s dog tags, and the clothes she’d brought to the institute where barely enough to fill her purse. Everything else she’d left behind. The rest of it wasn’t hers anyway. Not really. It was either a gift from someone now dead or gone, or purchased with the institute’s money.

She’d left a note and Bobby’s ring behind. He wouldn’t need a reason, but Ororo would. She owed her that much at least.

No one noticed as she left through the front door. Everyone knew her by name, but no one cared to know her. Those who did were long gone, graduated and out living their own lives away from this place.

On the way to the club, she keyed in John’s number, desperate to hear from him. An apology was on the tip of her tongue, a need to tell him how badly she’d missed him. He’d never pick up, though. Not with her number attached to the call. She wondered for the thousandth time whether she’d made the right choice with Bobby.

When she arrived, she found Escape to be a club like any other. Loud music, bright strobe light, dark corners, and free-flowing liquor. It’s only distinguishing feature was a sign on the door that said ‘Mutants Welcome.’ Money was still money in places like this, no matter who spent it.

A couple jostled her on their way to the dance floor, and she moved around the edges of the room. Her eyes scanned the floor, sweat beaded between her shoulders.

She used to love clubbing. The driving bass, the churn of strangers, the limbo where life outside meant nothing. It was so easy to lose herself to the music.

Bobby never wanted to go. He claimed to hate the crowds and the loud music.

Turned out he just hated going to clubs with her.

There, on the dance floor. Strong, sweet, tender, cheating Bobby. His arms were wrapped around a lithe blonde woman who barely wore much besides snow white stilettos. Hands on bare skin, arms pulled her tights, lips traced the curve of her collarbone.

His movements held all the unspoken promises he’d never given Rogue.

Her heart broke and mended all over again.

A man suddenly at her side broke her reverie. She ignored his proffered drink.

“Hey, sweetheart, I’m Benny. What’s you name?”

“Not interested,” she snapped, her eyes never leaving Bobby and the woman he was wound around.

The man cursed at her and wandered off to his next target.

The sound must have caught Bobby’s attention because he turned and caught her eye. It took a moment for his confusion to turn to panic. He whispered something to the blonde and fought against the crowd to reach her.

Rogue shook her head, a signal that he shouldn’t bother, and left through a side door.

She should be feeling pain, betrayal, heartbreak. Something to show she cared. Instead, she felt light enough to fly. The future, her future, without Bobby, without the institute, without the X-Men lay ahead of her.

Nerves drove her to run towards the street, exuberance kept her from standing still.

“Lookin’ for somethin’, cher?”

She turned to find a man smoking at the entrance of the club, leaned up against the brick wall. He looked like something out of a bad 80’s film. Long tousled hair that draped his face, held back by a knitted cap. Dark shades and a leather jacket.

‘Freedom,’ she thought.

“I’m a mutant,” she said. It was the first thing she’d learned would fend off any unwanted attention. And if that didn’t, an explanation of her mutation would.

The man only tipped his head forward to look at her over his glass. Coals of ember against infinity.

“S’funny. So am I.”

“Rogue,” Bobby’s voice echoed through the alley behind her. “Rogue!”

“Do you want to get out of her?” she asked, breathless and wound up and ready to run.

She’d taken a cab here, and there was none to be found. By the time she ran to the end of the street, Bobby would find her. She chewed on her lip and silently begged him to answer.

The man raised an eyebrow as Bobby’s voice grew closer.

Just when she was ready to turn tail and run, the man reached towards her, a snake quick enough to bite, and tucker her under his arm. The world went black around her and she reached up to find he’d tugged his cap over her hair.

She ducked her head into his jacket when Bobby came around the corner. He passed them, still calling her name. Whether the ruse worked or whether Bobby ignored her didn’t matter. What mattered now was that she was free for the first time in her life.

Gravity couldn’t hold her down, not with this bubble rising in her chest ready to burst her into a million pieces. Giddiness brought with it it’s own high, one that even that reality of her situation couldn’t touch. All that could be sorted out later, for now she was her own woman for the first time in years.

Wrapped up in her own joy, she’d forgotten the man next to her.

“Guessin’ you changed your mind,” the man asked.

She turned, expecting to find disappointment that she’d asked as a cover, anger she didn’t really want him. Instead she only found a smile. Laughter danced at the edge of his lips.

It was contagious, his smile, so she returned it ten-fold. She shook her head. Tonight, she didn’t want to go anywhere with anyone. Tonight was hers and hers alone.

Rogue handed him his cap back and slipped back into the club. The music threaded through her blood, thrummed through her veins. She’d didn’t know where she’d go from here, but tonight she’d keep dancing on her own.

#and now for something completely different #flash fiction #rogue xmen #x-men movies #future fic #breaking up isn't always hard to do #i don't know where these little pieces keep popping out from #but i'm not complaining #loosely based on robyn's dancing on my own #because i love that version

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missnighttigress · 6 years

Text

Happy’s Orders

Characters: Steve Rogers, Captain America, Iron Man, Iron Woman, Tony Stark, Fem!Tony Stark, Toni Stark

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Toni Stark, Steve Rogers x Tony Stark, Steve Rogers x Fem!Tony Stark, Stony, Stoni

Word Count: 3,072

Summary: Happy Hogan has some advice for his billionaire boss Toni Stark after a sour meeting with the Avengers who remain after the snap from the Infinity Gauntlet. The advice concerns a certain Captain America, who is still at odds with Toni. Will the scorned Iron Woman heed Happy’s advice, and take advantage of the opportunity presented to her?

Warnings: Avengers: Infinity War Spoilers, slight swearing, angst

A/N: This is actually a little snippet from something I’m working on, a very lengthy and angsty fic after Infinity War between Toni and Steve. I hope you enjoy! If you could please let me know what you think, I would appreciate it. It will help improve the bigger work as a whole!

AO3 Link

“Having a meeting this soon after the culling was a fabulous idea, Toni,” the billionaire hissed at herself as she locked the door to her suite at the Avengers compound. “Yeah, because everyone was going to have a level head, right?”

“Things didn’t go so well, I take it?”

Happy’s voice startled her, causing her to jump a bit. She hadn’t been expecting him to be in her suite, or to have heard her complaining. “What gave it away, Captain Obvious?” she snarked, glaring across the room to where Happy had turned around in the chair he had been occupying. “No. Spangles and I were at each other’s throats before I adjourned it.”

“Again?” He folded up the paper he had been reading and rose to his feet to face her. “Y’know, nothing is going to get solved or move on until you two just kiss and make up already.”

Her face had already been heated from the argument with Steve in the meeting, but that idea of pressing her lips to the Captain’s made her blush further. She only hoped Happy couldn’t distinguish the difference. “Ah, yes. One heavy make-out session and boom! Everything will be hunky dory. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“It’s a figure of speech.” He cocked his head to the side. “What the hell even happened?”

Her shoulders rolled in a shrug, bunching up the sleeves of her wine-colored blouse along with them. “He doesn’t think I have my priorities straight, and he’s still angry at me over signing the damn Accords.”

There was a pause as Happy took what Toni said into consideration before he piped up, “You know, Toni, he’s wrong.”

Her chocolate eyes watched him warily. She knew a smart ass response was coming.

“Neither one of you have your priorities straight.”

And there it was. “Who’s side are you even on, Benedict Arnold?” she snarled.

“Haven’t I always been on yours, or at least most of the time? You both have your priorities misconstrued. You’re both trying to fix the house and lay brick without the mortar, the glue.”

He advanced over to where Toni was standing near the door as he prepared to leave. “He was your level head and you were his right hand. You two need to figure things out on how to become whole together again before starting on the path to fixing everything. You can’t always run before learning how to walk.”

With that, he was out the door, leaving Toni with only her thoughts and an unlocked door

Over the course of the next few days, Toni found ways to busy herself around her suite and the lab, shutting herself off from the rest of the group. After the argument with Steve and then the conversation with Happy, she felt it best to just keep to herself. Maybe that would give her a chance to reflect on things with the super soldier.

In a way, she was correct. Her mind kept drifting to the baby-blue-eyed blond. She thought about their initial introduction, how terse and abrasive they were to each other before they finally began to mesh after the death of Agent Coulson. Her recollection showed her the night Ultron broke out of the lab, the moments right before when the team had been drinking together and she and Steve were flashing flirty glances at each other. At least, Toni thought they were flirty. Then again, given her former playgirl title, she could have completely misread everything.

Even if she did misread everything, she was helpless as an attraction blossomed for Steve. He worried about everyone on the team, but paid special attention to her, something she wasn’t necessarily used to. He’d make sure her bruises were all tended to, that she ate after really rough missions. He put in a lot of effort to show he was there for her…

Until suddenly, he wasn’t.

That was why it was heart-wrenching when he chose Barnes over her, when they fought in that Siberian compound. It was like she didn’t even exist to him anymore. He elected not to tell her about her parents just to keep his old pal around. She could forgive him for not signing the Sokovia Accords. She even admitted that the document was a mistake, though her heart was initially in the right place. The abandonment and secret-keeping issues, however...those were going to be harder to forgive, even with his stupid letter.

Those memories played out in her brain every day, along with thinking about what Happy had told her. She and Steve were essentially the glue that held the team together. If they weren’t at odds, maybe they would have all been able to stop Thanos together.

Maybe then Pepper and that spider kid, Peter Parker, would have still been around.

It was late one night when Toni was having all these thoughts again, and they were just agitating the billionaire more. In an effort to distract herself, she figured it was time to finally bite the bullet and write the official public relations statement on the culling.

She sat cross-legged on her enormous king bed, laptop on her calves while three semi-transparent screens hovered in front of her face. One was for referencing previous press releases Pepper made, one was for accessing the Associated Press stylebook so little to no editing had to be done for the papers, and one was for news streams. As much as she didn’t want to relive the tragedy, the streams would help her think of material.

She nearly detached herself from everything outside of her bedroom until a loud knocking was heard on the front door to her suite.

“Miss Stark, you have a visitor,” F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice trilled into her bedroom.

Toni snorted. “Thanks for the newsflash. Who is it?”

“It’s Captain Rogers requesting entrance, Miss.”

Toni’s heart did a massive flip in her body. “Steve? I’m surprised he’s even here.”

“I don’t see why, Miss. Captain Rogers has been on property since landing from Wakanda. In fact, several times this week surveillance has captured him pacing by your suite door.”

He stayed? That was rather shocking to the billionaire. She thought for sure after their argument he would have went all nomad again and disappeared into the night. Another thunderous rap on her door broke her from her thoughts. “And I thought I was impatient.”

“Shall I get the door, Miss?”

Long, caramel brown tendrils shuddered as Toni shook her head, slithering off her bed and padding across the room and into the hall. “I’ll welcome our guest, F.R.I.D.A.Y. Thank you.”

She reached the door in no time, her lithe fingers curling around the deadbolt before she glanced down at her wardrobe. Donning black sleeping shorts and her favorite AC/DC t-shirt, she wasn’t exactly dressed to impress. Oh well. Her suite, her rules.

Flicking the deadbolt, she yanked on the door handle to get the door open. Once she did, her breath caught in her throat.There stood Steve, his blond locks looking disheveled, his eyes baggy. He wasn’t dressed to the nines either by any means, wearing loose gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt. But damn it if those baby blues weren’t still jaw-dropping and heart-stopping. His beard twitched ever so slightly in a sign of a slight smirk. “Hey there, Toni,” he drawled, voice low.

“Hey yourself,” she breathed.

Eyes locked on one another, neither one of them moved for a tense moment. It was Steve who broke it first, nodding his head toward the living room. “Can I, uh, come in?”

Toni shook her head to break herself from her thoughts before hurriedly opening the door wider to welcome him in. “Yeah, come on in. If we’re gonna argue, I rather it be behind closed doors anyway. Less embarrassing.”

He sighed as he sauntered in, pacing around her large black sectional before taking a seat on the chaise lounge. “I didn’t come here to argue, Toni. Trust me.”

Closing and locking the door, she couldn’t help but snort in amusement. “That’s kind of hard to do, all things considered.”

The super soldier sighed in irritation, but he chose to ignore her little quip. His eyes locked on her again before he chuckled. “You know, you can come in. This is your suite after all.”

She was being a rude host, it was true. Her bare feet padded across the light silver carpet to the white chair beside the sectional, where she sat at the very edge. “I’m surprised you’re even here, Capsicle. I was certain after the meeting a few days ago you were going to vanish again.”

His brow furrowed. “Do you really think me a lesser man? You think I just run away from my problems?”

A scoff ripped from her throat. “Is that what I am, Steve? A problem?”

“Right now, you sure as hell aren’t being a solution. I can sure tell you that.”

There was a terse moment of silence between them as they glared at each other. Toni really caught a look at Steve’s face. The word “exhausted” didn’t even seem to cover it.

“You haven’t been sleeping, have you?”

“You haven’t either.” He leaned back, calloused hand reaching around to rub his neck. “It’s difficult to think about sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I lose all of them again. I see Vision, Wanda, T’challa…”

“Barnes.”

His gaze shifted back to her as his best friend’s name fell like acid from her lips. Apparently, she wasn’t done arguing just yet. He braced himself for whatever verbal lashing she had in store for him.

None came. Instead, her palms rubbed together as she fidgeted in her seat. “I know what you mean,” she muttered, voice barely above a whisper, “I saw quite a few people disappear myself. Hell...I even lost the kid.” Just thinking about Peter made her swallow thickly.

She could feel Steve watching her, waiting for her to explode, either into tears or a ball of rage. Instead, she rose to her feet and began pacing in front of him. “I don’t...I don’t really want to think about it. Yet it’s all I’ve been thinking about all night, trying to write this stupid press release. I just...I want to find a way to reverse it, to bring them all back or just find that bastard and blow his brains out, something!”

Steve sighed from the chaise lounge before pushing himself to his feet, closing a bit of the distance between him and the Iron Woman. “Toni.”

The way he said her name made her attention snap to him.

“The only way we are going to fix this, or move on from it...is if we fix this.” A finger gestured between them. “Us.”

She snorted in response. “How can we fix this, Steve? Huh? Do you know?”

“If this is about the Accords-”

“Fuck the Accords!” she seethed. “I made a mistake with those fucking things and I’ve already admitted it. No. This isn’t about the Accords. This is about the other choices you made, specifically the choices you made with Barnes.”

He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, are we not past that already? I said I was sorry, Toni!” He watched as her chest heaved in anger, and he lowered his voice to try to get her to calm down as well. “I’m sorry. I just...I didn’t want to lose my best friend again.”

Her arms snaked over her chest. “Your best friend? You’re so stupidly loyal, Steve, it’s not even funny.”

“Hey, I am loyal,” he growled, “I came when you called, after all. And you were nowhere to be found. You weren’t on the battlefield at Wakanda.”

She braced herself for a lashing, a questioning of where her loyalty was since she hadn’t be there. Instead of harshness and abrasiveness, Steve’s features softened. One of his massive hands came out and brushed against her elbow gingerly, coaxing her to stand down. Her arms fell to her side.

“You weren’t there,” he reiterated, “And I was terrified, Toni. That was the last communication I had from you and you weren’t there when I saw everyone else disappear. I assumed the worst. I assumed that I lost you again, in a way that hurt worse than losing you over Bucky.”

She blinked in confusion. What was he saying, that he thought she was already dead and mourned? “What?”

His hand slid into her right, his other hand taking her left. His body was hot, on fire it felt like to her. Maybe that was just her, and the arguing made her hands clammy. She couldn’t tell. “It wasn’t easy to hurt you. I knew I would lose you, and I’ve ached over that choice every day. Bucky even gave me hell over it.”

Was that supposed to clear everything up? She was just even more confused. She kept her mouth shut, hoping he would elaborate more.

“I didn’t want to lose my best friend. I was too busy thinking about my past and my connections. Losing Peggy kind of put me in that mindset. It took Bucky to show me that I lost a possible future. And then when I didn’t see you at the battlefield, I thought that possible future was absolutely gone for good.”

She leaned up on her tiptoes so that she was nearly eye-level with the Captain, squinting into his eyes. “Are you drunk, Steve? Because you sure as hell sound like one. You’re all over the place tonight, man. A possible future? How? We were never an item.”

His shoulders slumped. “I’m sleep-deprived, Toni. Gimme a break.” He cocked his head to the side and gave her a sad smile. “And...just because we weren’t an item at the time doesn’t mean I’ve never entertained the idea of being one.”

“What?” She felt like a parrot at this point, repeating the same question. She cleared her throat, trying to find her words. “Okay, wait a minute here. You were literally just jumping down my fucking throat, and now you’re telling me you’ve ‘entertained the idea’ of being with me?”

“Ugh!” he roared in frustration, stepping away from the billionaire. “Why is everything so complicated with you?” He ran his hands through his hair, eyes locking with hers. “I’m trying to fix this because I just...I can’t do this anymore, Toni. Not with you.”

She rocked back on her heels, lips pursed as she considered what he said. “Y’know…” she drawled, “If Rhodey or Pepper were in Barnes’ position and I were in yours...I probably would have made the same call. I can understand why you did.”

A look of relief flashed across the super soldier’s features momentarily.

“I’ve entertained being an item as well, Steve,” she mumbled, chewing on her lower lip. She started in on another thought, “When my parents died, specifically my mother...I felt abandoned. Yeah, sure, other people took care of me most of my life, but my parents were still there, even if my father wasn’t Father of the Year material.”

Steve got to say his peace, so he just nodded in response as Toni spoke hers.

“I learned how to handle it. I buried myself in M.I.T, lab work, trying to carry on Dad’s legacy. In a way, it made me who I am today. It made me Iron Woman. I turned out okay with that situation, and I’ve rather kept myself guarded to make sure that didn’t happen again. Then a certain baby-blue-eyed captain made an appearance into my life, and that all went to shit.”

His brows shot up in response, but he remained silent.

She swallowed hard before speaking again. “I let my guard down, let you in. Maybe it’s my fault for not acting first. Maybe not. But when you chose Barnes over me...chose my parents’ killer over me...I felt abandoned all over again.”

“Toni…”

Tears were stinging her eyes, ones she had been holding back for years, and they were threatening to spill over. “Maybe...maybe I should thank Barnes, if we are able to reverse this. Either that, or punch him in his stupid ass face. If he hadn’t been brainwashed, I wouldn’t have become Iron Woman and chances are, I wouldn’t have met you.”

Steve took a giant step toward Toni and closed the gap, hands coming up and cupping her cheeks, brushing underneath her eyes to catch the tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should’ve told you. I was a man out of time trying to relive the glory days, and I didn’t see what was right in front of me.”

Toni merely sniffled in response.

“We have a chance to fix this now. I have a second chance to make things right. I want that chance, Toni.”

She clicked her tongue, trying not to get swept off her feet, keeping her guard up. “If Barnes were here-”

“No. No. Don’t you do that. Don’t think about what might be if things were different. That’s not fair.” His forehead pressed against hers. “We have a second chance here, Toni. Please.”

Her knees were buckling, her reserve fading. She wanted to be angry. She wanted to be furious, to push him away because he betrayed her, abandoned her. The harsh reality of it was, though, she would have made the same calls. He was right; they had this second chance in front of them, and if she didn’t take it, she would end up kicking herself later on.

She blinked away the tears, eyes focused on Steve’s in front of her. Her delicate fingers reached up and framed his face, bringing him closer. She hesitated a moment, though, second guessing if she wanted to take the chance.

The decision was made for her, though, when Steve’s lips pressed against hers gingerly. When he pulled away to study her, she closed the distance and kissed him again with more ferocity, more hunger. Steve never faltered, never pulled away. Rather, his muscular arms slithered down to her waist and tugged her in a tight embrace.

When they finally broke apart to catch their breath, Toni chuckled softly. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., advise all visitors tonight and into tomorrow morning that I am not to be disturbed.”

“Any particular reason, Miss Stark?”

“I’m following Happy’s orders.”

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somevirtualnolife · 6 years

Text

An (Unfortunate) Night Out On The Town (Pt. 2)

2368 Words Part 1 here

Rating: T Pairing: Hawke x Cullen Rutherford Summary: Cullen just wanted a stress-free night off. So why is he babysitting a drunken Hawke? Author’s Notes: And here’s Part 2. Happy reading~!

“Here’s a question,”

“What is it this time, Hawke?”

The walk up to Hightown was easy enough, at first. But then she went from dead-weight Hawke back to excitable Hawke, and tried to scramble off his shoulders a few times, yelling about waking up Aveline and challenging Isabela to another drink-off. Whenever he’d tell her no, she’d of course, complain and come up with (utterly terrible) ways to try an distract him so she could wander off his shoulder. They all failed of course. Eventually, it seemed that she realized she was far weaker than Cullen, and just decided to talk his ear off, asking inane questions or rambling about some ridiculous topic or about, how amazing Fenris is. He could sort-of see why Isabela wanted to just leave her in Lowtown.

“Is your hair naturally curly or do you do something with it?”

“… It’s naturally curly,”

“Peh. I knew it. Anders said you probably style it to be that way, but I knew your locks were natural,” she let out a bit of a drunken laugh and started to blabber about hair to which Cullen just shook his head with no response. The woman had paragraph of nonsense for every subject.

“By the way,” she said, lifting her head up slightly. “Have you been looking at by bottom this whole time?”

“What? Maker’s Breath, of course not!”

“I’m just asking. It is right there,”

And of course, as soon as she said that, now he couldn’t help but look. Why was she like this? He would turn her to face the other way, but he felt she would use that opportunity to scream in his ear.

“It is not right there- Look, I’m putting you down,” he said settling her down on her feet in front of him, only to have her sway and stumble into him, placing her hands on his chest.

“Wow,” she said, not moving her hands. “Andstraste’s knickers, you are fit,”

“Is this just a thing that women in Kirkwall do, or is it just the women in your company?” had they never felt muscles before? It was all quite embarrassing.

“You know who else is fit?”

“You’re probably gonna say Fenris-”

“Fenris,” she sighed dreamily, which gave Cullen some time to reposition the young woman so that she was leaning on his side, her arm over his shoulder. The elf was the only consistent and semi-coherent topic this whole evening. It was also the only time she could sort of get her distracted enough to follow him. Let her fantasize about her dream-boy enough that she wouldn’t realize that she was being brought home. He had to admit, he was a little surprised. The handful of times he met Fenris, he certainly seemed like an… unexpected match for Hawke. By no means a bad fellow. He could picture the elf with many other women, easily. Just not for someone as upbeat and chatty as her.

“You seem quite taken by him,” he said, steadying her a bit more before walking again.

“Maybe I am. Taken by him and we’ve not even kissed yet,” she let out another dreamy sigh. Cullen was really seeing all sides of her tonight. The one good thing about this evening, he supposed. He always knew Hawke was idealistic, but being a hopeless romantic was a new one. It was entertaining in it’s own way.

“He’s clever, and handsome, and strong, and caring and just so…”

“Broody?”

“Why does everyone say that?” she slurred her sentence a bit, sounding annoyed. “But yes, maybe a bit. But in an alluring way. Not like you. You’re just grumpy. One of the grumpiest men I’ve known in my life. Cullen Grumpleford is what you are,” she muttered a few other plays on his last name and giggled to herself, clearly thinking she was so clever.

“You have such a way with words, Aerianne Hawke,” he said, rather flatly. “Really know how to compliment the man who is making sure you don’t die in a ditch tonight,”

“I did say you were fit, didn’t I?” she lifted her head from his shoulder, looking annoyed. “Besides, we all know you’re incapable of taking a compliment,”

“That’s- not true,”

“I’ll give an example. Cullen, you are insufferably annoying templar who is married to his work and doesn’t know how to have fun,”

“This is your idea of a compliment?”

“But you are honest. Sometimes you even show them compassion, and it’s a shame you don’t do that more. And meh… you’re not too shabby to look at. Actually, you’re very good to look at. I’m surprised you haven’t been scooped up by someone yet. Oh! I know just the girl for you-”

Cullen felt his throat tighten a bit. Right- he really shouldn’t be daring drunk Hawke to do anything. She would more than happily oblige.

“Alright, that’s enough,”

“See? Can’t take a compliment,” she went and laid her head back down on his shoulder. “I’d also like to say that you’re not great at giving them either, so,” she stuck out her tongue and gave made a farting noise.

Oh, it was going to be like this, was it? Cullen may get nervous around pretty girls, but this was Hawke. Well, okay, she was pretty but she was also incredibly annoying, which negated her attractiveness. Also, she was so incredibly drunk that she hopefully wouldn’t remember the details of this evening.

“Hawke, you are equally insufferable and you are incredibly unrealistic about the dangers of magic. Your antics are half the reason of my paperwork. And you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. But…” he finally let out a sigh. “You have a big heart. I don’t know how you see the good in everything, but you do. I guess that’s not a bad thing,”

Cullen could feel the young woman squeeze him with what little strength she had left. “Aw, I received a compliment from you! A Cullpliment. Ha! I did it again. What are you groaning for? That one was good! Oh Maker, I feel like I’m going to throw up again,” she quickly let go of him and stumbled towards one of the many bushes on the side of the road.

For once, Cullen couldn’t help but chuckle. This whole evening was ridiculous. The first time they’ve spoken to each other outside of work, and this was how it had to go. Why wouldn’t it? She was Aerieanne Hawke after all. Why would anything be normal with her?

Eventually, she recovered again and the two found themselves in front of the Hawke estate and thankfully, it seemed that her mother was still awake when Cullen knocked on the door.

“Oh! Knight-captain Rutherford. This is quite the surprise,” Leandra said, looking rather surprised as she saw the templar and her daughter. “I hope everything is alright?”

“Everything’s fine, madam. Just making sure your daughter got home safely,” he said with a polite nod. “She just had a little too much fun tonight. You may want to keep a bucket beside her bed,”

The older woman let out a sigh of relief. “Well, I do hope Aerieanne didn’t give you too much trouble,”

Trying to run off, nearly throwing up on him, talking his ear off, copping a feel of his muscles, insulting him a few times…

“She was no trouble,” he finally said as Hawke left his side and (with some difficulty), turned to face him.

“I would give you a kiss on the cheek for your good deeds, knight-captain, but I am vaguely aware of the amount of times I threw up along the way,” Well, at least she was sobering up enough to distinguish some inappropriate behaviour.

Instead, she then firmly wrapped her hands around the templar, hugging him firmly. It was unexpected, but it wasn’t necessarily unwanted. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help but stiffen up a bit, not sure how to respond.

“Are you going to be okay? Heading back home so late? We do have a spare guest room,” Leandra asked as she guided her stumbling daughter back in the house.

“It’s fine. It won’t take me too long to get back down to the docks,” It would, but he not as long as him coming up all the way here with an inebriated rogue. Leandra’s hospitality was lovely, but he would just feel odd staying here the night, even if he had a valid explanation to give to Meredith.

Actually, nevermind. Telling Meredith or anyone else about spending the night solo with a mage supporter seemed like an ill-advised idea.

“Well, thank you again for bringing my daughter home safely,” she said with another smile. “And I hope you stay safe as well, knight-captain,”

“Thank you, Ms. Hawke. Sorry for keeping you up,”

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

Sleep had been cut short that night, but it wasn’t particularly unusual for him to a little sleep-deprived. Cullen still managed to get to work on time (in comparison to his men who were clearly still regretting the night before), and actually be productive. Drills, paperwork, dealing with disruptions in the circle. It was a usual day for him.

Later on, there was a soft knock on his office door, before it slowly opened.

“Hawke,” he said, putting down his quill. “This is a surprise,” Normally it wouldn’t be, but considering that there were no new reports on mages coming through, and she had a rather difficult night, he didn’t expect to see her for a least a few weeks.

“Knight-captain,” she said a little hoarsely. Although the rogue looked quite well dressed and done up, there were rather dark circles around her eyes, her skin had a slight tint of green to it. Certainly the face of a woman who would probably think twice about her choice of drink for the next several months.

“You look…”

“Don’t,” she hissed, closing the door behind her.

“…I was going to say alive,” he tried to hide the satisfied smile on his face. For once, the woman who complained about his serious attitude, was now in a more miserable mood than him. “I’m surprised that you’re not still in bed, puking into a bucket,”

“That is what I want to be doing, and that is what I intend to do after I’m done here,” she rubbed her temple and let out a deep sigh.

“My mother wanted to thank you for bringing me home last night. She felt bad that you had to get all the way back to the barracks, so… here,” Aerianne rubbed the back of her neck, looking a little embarrassed as she pulled out a small container and placed it on his desk. It was a ceramic bowl, warm and giving off a delicious scent into the air.

“Fereldan-style ram stew. I mentioned you were from Honnleath, so she thought that you might also be a little homesick,”

“You didn’t lace this with anything, did you?” he couldn’t help but ask. Anything that could put him in as miserable a condition as she currently was.

“I assure you, I was in no condition to plot against you this morning, as much as I considered it,”

Cullen had to admit, this was not what he had expected at all. He mostly helped her because deep down, as much as annoying and insufferable as she could be, he couldn’t just leave her there on the street. Even that seemed a little cruel. “Be sure to give your mother my appreciation, then,” Although barracks food wasn’t the worst, it certainly couldn’t compare to a proper home-cooked meal. Let alone by someone who actually lived in Fereldan.

“I also… may need to apologize,” Aerieanne turned away, trying to hide the pink forming on her face. “I do remember a few things from last night. Specifically almost throwing-up on you, I might have accidentally hit you a few times from trying to crawl off your shoulders. And the umm, sort of groping of…”

“My chest?” he said, finishing her sentence. “Ah yes. I believe you called me very fit,” It was incredibly embarrassing last night, but seeing Hawke looking even more uncomfortable about the situation now, it made him feel more confident. He had a code of ethics, but he was no priest. Maker’s Breath if he was going to be the better person about this. For once, he had something to throw back at her whenever she started getting a little too annoying. “As fit as… who was it now? Oh right, as fit as Fenris. You certainly had lots to say about him,”

The young woman let out a groan and covered her face. “Why did I have to bump into you of all people, last night?”

“Maybe don’t try to outdrink a pirate next time,” he said, picking up his quill again and going back to signing a few papers. “Look, its fine. We all do stupid things when we’re drunk. I’ll admit, I didn’t expect you to behave like a like some sort of mix between a toddler and boy-crazed teenager, but it doesn’t change my opinion of you,”

The rogue looked up from her hands and looked at the templar suspiciously. Right, they both shared their fair share of opinions of each other last night.

“You’re still Aerianne Hawke, the biggest nuisance in all of Kirkwall. Think of last night only cementing that fact in,” If it was somehow possible, Hawke somehow managed to look both more annoyed, but also very relieved.

“Your mother, however, is an absolute delight,” he’d be lying if he didn’t miss Feralden at least a little bit, including some of the small comforts. “Hard to believe you’re related,”

“Well, it’s hard to believe that you’re… ugh,” she covered her mouth, clearly trying to keep whatever she ate earlier, down. The retort would have to wait. She slowly stood up and made her way back towards the door.

“You just wait until I’m feeling better, Rutherford,” she said bitterly with one last glare. “Then you’ll be sorry,”

Cullen quirked a brow and smiled a bit before going back to his paperwork as ran through the door and shut it behind her.

“Always a pleasure, Hawke,”

#da:2 fanfic #dragon age fanfiction #hawke x cullen #cullen rutherford #dragon age 2 #dragon age #rogue hawke

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intoxicatedeuphoria · 7 years

Text

Translation: RoyAi Fireworks Event (FMA: Prince of the Dawn)

Hiiiii~!! I’m back with my rough translations of anything Royai. This time I chose the fireworks event from the Prince of the Dawn Wii game because I swear this game (along with Daughter of the Dusk) was made so that fans can have a go at some RoyAi (and EdWin, etc.) interactions. What’s really nice about these two games is they are both completely voiced so you can hear the characters speak the lines. You can hear Riza and Roy call each other by their first names.

There’s a mini dating sim part where you have to talk to the character you want to spend the fireworks show with. It’s adorable, but the damn game isn’t in English yet so I watched the playthrough by kaji on Nico Nico Douga instead. I swear, the guy is amazing and his voice-over comments are hilarious (plus he’s a RoyAi junkie, too!). He also did Fullmetal Alchemist: To the Promised Day, which is the source of the semi-canon RoyAi information I partially translated here.

The events in the game happens a few weeks (or months?) after Team Mustang was split up and Riza became the Führer’s aide. This part of the game is set in the Armstrong Mansion where a party was thrown in honor of the Aerugonian prince, Claudio, who was visiting Amestris. Please note that the events here may not be canon, but really, who cares? We all need more RoyAi in our lives anyway.

Please credit/mention my blog when you use the translation for your works. Thanks <3

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD + POSSIBLE SPOILERS

LEGEND: (thoughts) *reactions/actions* [my notes/comments] H - Riza M - Roy E - Edward

PART I

ROY APPROACHES RIZA WHILE SHE IS ON GUARD DUTY

M: （This corridor close to the master room where the prince is staying must be considerably guarded.）

H: *salutes, reports to Roy* There is no abnormality.

M: You’re not in uniform. Are you on patrol? Being the Führer’s aide sure is troublesome.

H: This is also one of my duties.

M: [Roy has 2 options on how to proceed.] 1.Leave without disturbing her. 2. Chat with her.

[The player chose 1 in the playthrough.]

M: I see. I was bothering you.

H: *blushes* Thank you very much for going through the trouble to talk to me… colonel. [literal translation was “call out to me”]

PART II

RIZA TALKS TO ROY AND ED AT THE PARTY

H: (The interior of the house is so spacious. It mostly appears that the Armstrong family is a distinguished clan that has produced a great number of generals.）

H: *approaches Roy and Edward* Colonel?

M: *surprised* ...oh, it’s the lieutenant!

M: *sparkling and grinning, attempts to flirt with her* I was wondering where the lady was. She’s too beautiful, I’m speechless! [literal translation: “my voice is not coming out.” He was basically using flowery words.]

H: [Riza has 2 options for her response.] 1. Please stop kidding. 2. Ehh...?

[The player chose 2 in the playthrough.]

H: ...

M: ... lieutenant? Are you alright?

M: *sweatdrops, realizes his flirtation was bad/not working* Since the lieutenant is not there to keep me in line, I get into trouble because there’s no one to stop me.

H: I hope the replacement [adjutant] arrives soon.

M: *runs his fingers through his hair, sweatdrops miserably* W-why did it [i.e. his attempt at flirting] go this way? [Roy’s devastated that things went downhill so quickly.]

H: *turns to Edward*

E: *blushing* Lieutenant, there’s something different about you.

H: Because of the party, I guess?

E: *still blushing* It’s the adult charm, if I may say so myself. [I’m not so sure about this line, but basically, Ed is complimenting Riza about being an adult/grown-up.]

H: [Riza has 2 options for her response.] 1. Thank you! 2. How about Winry?

[The player chose 2 in the playthrough.]

H: Have you seen Winry? Since it was all so sudden, I had to lend her my old dress. [OMG, Winry’s revealing/sexy, pink dress was once Riza’s!!!!]

E: *crosses his arms* You know what they say. “Anyone can look good with the right clothes” applies to her. [Ed uses a Japanese adage here: clothes on a packhorse driver and he alludes to Winry rudely, it kinda pissed me off.]

H: Youth has its own charm, you see. Of course, this applies to you, too...

E: *blushes and scratches his head* What were you like when you were younger, Lieutenant?

H: It’s a secret! *Ed is disappointed*

E: *sweatdrops* Somehow... when I start imagining, it comes up blank.

H: *laughs*

PART III

ROY AND RIZA’S RENDEZVOUS AT THE GARDEN

M: *moves to the garden*（I would like to get some fresh air for a bit.）

H: *pleasantly surprised* Oh, colonel!

M: Fancy meeting you in a nice place.

M: [Roy has 2 options for his next line.] 1. Are you admiring the flowers? 2. Are you on patrol duty?

[The player chose 1 in the playthrough.]

M: It’s a beautiful garden.

H: *nods* It is.

H: *looks up* The stars are also pretty.

M: You can barely see the stars with all the lampposts in Central’s busy streets.

H: *nods* That’s true. As a person from the countryside, I feel much calmer here. [remember: Riza grew up in the East, away from the hustle and bustle of the capital.]

*Riza blushes + pink power up effect activates, which means Roy chose the correct response*

M: Indeed.

FINALE

ROYAI FIREWORKS WATCHING EVENT

*Riza approaches Roy who is standing on the balcony

*He notices and turns towards her*

M: *crosses his arms* How’s the Führer’s aide doing?

H: *shakes her head* Today’s working hours have ended already.

M: *nods* I see.

M: *looks at the fireworks, being all emo* Even my flames can be so beautiful and be blooming like this from time to time.

[My translation in this part does not make sense, so I’m hoping someone who knows more Japanese can help with the following lines]

H: *turns to him* またひとつ、口説きの手口を増やすおつもりですか。*concerned/troubled expression on her face* [”Is this another one of your wooing/begging tricks/modus operandi?” Totally not sure about this translation. SEND HELP PLEASE!]

M: *extends his hand in resignation?* そう、からむな。[lit. trans.: “I see. Don’t link/relate/connect it.” The verb is in imperative form, I think?]

H: *shakes her head* からんでなど、いませんよ。[lit. trans.: “To link and whatnot, it does not exist” OR “to relate, etc., I’m not doing it.” Again, I’m not sure.]

*They both turn to look at the fireworks, standing side by side.*

M: ...

M: Is there something [bothering you]?

H: What do you mean?

M: *puts a hand on his hip* For example, a command you don’t want to follow—

H: *turns away from him abruptly* I cannot answer you.

M: *shoulders slump* I figured.

M: That’s fine, though. As a soldier, you should guard your secrets.

M: *crosses his arms* [says this as a command] But remember, you— *hesitates, then scratches his head*

M: *turns to her with a determined expression* It is my mission to protect my subordinates.

H: *suddenly blushes after hearing, then nods* Yes, sir.

They face each other and smile.

OMG! How adorably awkward can these two get?! I was laughing so hard at the part where Roy’s flirting went miserably wrong. His reaction was epic. And it’s both amusing and frustrating how they’re both hiding behind the veneer of duty and professionalism T__T

TL/N: I decided not to translate the lines literally because some of the nuances of the Japanese language do not have counterparts in English. I also added the proper subjects and objects to the sentences because in the original dialogues, the characters usually don’t mention them ( and this drives me crazy sometimes).

#royai #riza hawkeye #roy mustang #edward elric #fullmetal alchemist #FMA #fullmetal alchemist: prince of dawn #FMA game #FMA translation #my translations

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almostafantasia · 7 years

Text

sail with me to someplace new

clexa pirate au | chapter 1/13

Summary: When Clarke learns that her father’s trading ship has been attacked by pirates, she sets out on a daring rescue mission. The only problems – Jake could be being held prisoner anywhere in the Caribbean and Clarke has never sailed a ship before. To help save her father’s life, Clarke attempts to enlist the help of the notorious Captain Lexa Woods, a fearsome pirate who is just as broody and mysterious as she is unwilling to offer her assistance.

Read on AO3.

Secrets.

The town of Nassau feeds off them. With sailors of every kind passing through the port every day and the pirate population rumoured to outnumber everybody else, the town drips with corruption and delinquency, and with that comes the secrets.

Clarke Griffin trades in them. Her mother runs a very respectable medical practice from their cottage using medicines and equipment acquired through not so respectable methods. Being the daughter of the best doctor in town means that Clarke is a familiar face to many, which has its share of advantages. The people in Nassau love to gossip as much as they love to drink – who is sleeping with who, who is working on which ship, who has stolen what from somebody else – and Clarke hears it all. She trades gossip for more gossip, then trades those secrets for tangible goods; medicines, herbs, ointments, even gold. It always amazes Clarke what some people are willing to exchange for the right piece of information.

Abby Griffin turns a blind eye to what her daughter gets up to around town. As long as Clarke helps her with the patients a few mornings each week and returns home safely each night, Abby pays very little attention to how Clarke acquires the supplies she needs to keep the medical practice in business, particularly with Clarke’s father away for often months at a time working on a trading ship bring imported goods into the Caribbean.

Besides, Clarke trading secrets for medicinal supplies is hardly the most scandalous or illegal thing happening in a town inhabited by so many pirates.

Having lived in Nassau since the age of three, Clarke knows the streets of the little town as well as anybody could, the web of wide dirt paths and hidden alleyways ingrained in her memory as clearly as if she were holding a map of the streets in her hand. The walk from the apothecary by the docks to her own house a little further inland is not far – she made the outward journey earlier in the day in just a few minutes, thanks to the shortcut behind the old tavern – but it feels much longer on the way back home with the new cargo in her arms. The wooden box is awkward to carry, splintered edges digging harsh grooves into the soft skin of Clarke’s hands where she holds it up and the muscles in her upper arms screaming out in pain under its heavy weight, a reminder that she is not as strong as the young lad who packed the box up for her to take home with her.

She makes the final turn onto the familiar road upon which the small cottage she lives in with her mother is situated, scuffing up a cloud of dust in her hurry to get home before her arms give out completely under the weight of the box.

“Mother!”

With her lack of available hands to knock, Clarke settles for shouting through the oak door and giving it two hard kicks with the tip of her leather boots.

“Mother, it’s me! Can you let me in? I’m about to drop all the medicine!”

Clarke hears a flurry of activity on the other side of the door and it swings open within seconds to reveal Clarke’s mother, sleeves rolled up to the elbows and wisps of graying hair escaping from the hastily made bun on top of her head. It’s clear that she’s in the middle of something, or at least that might register with Clarke if the muscles in her arms weren’t crying out for her to relieve them of their heavy load.

Clarke pushes past her mother, ignoring the cry of protest as she rushes straight into the room on her immediate right, which her mother uses as a treatment room for patients.

Where she is met with the surprising (and, if Clarke is being completely frank, not entirely pleasant) sight of a bare man’s chest, scattered with dark wiry hair and where a horrible gash just beneath his collar bone is oozing a nasty mixture of blood and some other sticky fluid.

“Oh,” Clarke gapes, suddenly forgetting her desperation to drop the box in her arms as the sheer amount of unexpectedly naked male skin on show startles her into stillness. “Oh, I am so sorry.”

The man, who is perched on the edge of the large wooden table in the centre of the room that Abby Griffin uses to treat her patients, wearing nothing but a loose pair of dark brown britches, seems unaffected by Clarke’s sudden clattering entrance to the room.

“Clarke, what have I told you about not entering this room without my say so?” Abby scolds her as she enters the room behind Clarke. “I could have been operating on somebody for all you knew!”

“Sorry,” Clarke mumbles, still determinedly avoiding staring at the shirtless man sitting on the table in the centre of the room as she places the crate down on the counter against the far wall of the room, the bottles within clinking as she does so, “but this box is heavy. I had to put it down or I would have dropped it.”

“I’m so sorry, Marcus,” Abby says to the man, and Clarke turns their way enough to watch as her mother dips her fingers into a pot of salve and starts rubbing it on the wound on the man’s chest. “Clarke, do you remember Marcus Kane?”

Clarke lets her eyes flicker up to the man’s face, meeting his dark eyes with her own and making a feeble attempt to return his warm smile as if she hasn’t just walked in on him in a state of semi-undress.

“Hello,” she says to him.

“Captain Kane works for the same trading company as your father,” Abby explains, dabbing the lower end of the cut with a warm washcloth that has the captain hissing in pain, and then smoothing over the area with the salve on her fingers. “He’s an old friend of Jake’s. He visited us many times when you were a child.”

Captain Kane’s face is familiar to Clarke, though she can say with a fair degree of certainty that it has been quite a few years since she has seen it before, and there are more lines around his eyes, more gray in his hair, than she recalls from the last time she saw him.

“You’ve grown up since I last saw you,” Marcus confirms Clarke’s thoughts. “You were just a girl, I think, causing your parents all kinds of trouble with the boy from across the road. What’s his name again? Thelonius’ son.”

“Wells,” Clarke answers for him.

“That’s it,” Marcus nods in recollection. “Quite the pair, you two. Are you still friends?”

Replying with a nod, Clarke then adds, “But we don’t see each other as much anymore. He’s busy working for his father and I help mother with the patients in here.”

Clarke’s eyes drop to the scar on Marcus’ upper chest again, this time allowing herself to examine it more closely. It’s a pretty long gash that stretches from near his shoulder to the centre of his breastbone, lying almost parallel to his clavicle. It doesn’t look particularly deep, but the blood that is caked into the hair on his upper chest makes it look no less vicious, most likely a brutal swipe of a sharp blade cutting through the skin.

“A swordfight?” Clarks hazards a guess.

“Pirates,” Marcus nods, the muscles in his forehead tensing into a bitter frown.

Clarke’s eyes widen in surprise at the word. It’s impossible to live in a town like Nassau and not be aware of the pirates, but they can be so difficult to distinguish from the normal honest sailors that Clarke tends to just lump them into one big group, along with the non-seafaring drunkards who live in the town. She knows a lot about the pirates who pass through Nassau and the dangerous and crooked lives that they lead, which is exactly why she tries her best to stay out of whatever trouble they might be causing next, unwilling to allow herself to be a victim in their next heinous plot.

“They attacked your ship?” Clarke gasps.

“No, nothing like that,” Marcus replies. “I tried to intervene in a fight in a tavern and one of them pulled out a knife.”

“That’s why I tell you to stay away from places like that,” Abby interjects, giving Clarke a stern look.

“I do,” insists Clarke.

It’s only a little bit of a lie. There’s only one inn that Clarke goes to, a fairly quiet one that is much further inland than the taverns that tend to be frequented by the rowdier sailors, and she doesn’t go to it very often either.

“That’s not what Raven has been telling me,” Abby comments, quirking a single eyebrow at her daughter.

Clarke blushes furiously and, not for the first time, mentally curses the fact that her best friend is one of her mother’s patients.

“And you seriously believe Raven over me?”

Abby crosses the room and opens a door on a wooden cabinet, pulling out a small box, from inside which she takes a sharp needle and some thread. As she makes her way back over to Marcus, she sends a smile Clarke’s way, warm and gentle and with the tiniest hint of an amused smirk threatening to pull at the very corners of her lips.

“I’m not angry, Clarke. I was young once.” For the briefest of moments, Clarke wrinkles her nose up in disgust at the thought of a teenage Abby running around the town getting up to the kind of things that Clarke does, but then Abby continues with much more solemnity, “I just worry about you more when your father is away.”

“He’ll be back soon though,” Clarke reminds her, her voice full of hopeful optimism that Jake will in fact return from his travels sooner rather than later.

There is a moment of silence as Abby frowns in concentration, splashing some alcohol over a fresh cloth and dabbing it across the cut on Marcus’ chest, then makes the first stitch to seal the wound. Marcus grimaces visibly, but makes no sound.

“I know,” Abby agrees with her daughter, continuing with a neat row of dark stitches that contrast against the pale skin of Marcus’ chest, “and then I can go back to worrying that both of you will wake up drunk in an alleyway with no recollection of the previous night.”

Rolling her eyes once more, Clarke says, “That happened to Raven and not to me.”

“I know, sweetheart. I’m just teasing.”

Finishing up Marcus’ stitches, Abby cuts the thread with a pair of sharp silver scissors, placing the needle away to the side to be sterilised and smiling at Marcus.

“There, all done,” she tells him. Her mothering tone returning, she adds sternly, “And the same goes for you – stay out of trouble! No more trying to play the hero. You won’t be so lucky next time.”

Marcus bows his head slightly in shame as he reaches for his still-bloodstained shirt, slipping his arms into the sleeves and buttoning it up from the bottom. He leaves the top couple of buttons, the shirt hanging open enough to display part of his chest, and he casually rolls the sleeves up to his elbows before placing his tricorne hat on his head.

Returning her attention to Clarke, Abby says, “Thank you for your help this morning. You’re free to do whatever you want this afternoon.”

Trying not to seem too eager to get out of her mother’s company and out into the town, Clarke says, “I told Raven I’d see her later. I’ll be with her if you need me.”

“Stay safe,” Abby warns her, as Clarke makes her way towards the door.

Clarke’s default reaction is to roll her eyes she forgets to wait until she is out of Abby’s sight before doing so, earning herself a scolding glare from her mother.

“I mean it, Clarke. There are some dangerous people out there. You need to be careful.”

Clarke takes a deep breath, then plasters a fake smile of obedience onto her face, before responding dutifully, “Yes, mother.”

Pressing a quick kiss to Abby’s cheek, Clarke hurries out of the room and through the front door to go and find her best friend.

Raven is as predictable as the cycle of the sun and the moon and Clarke finds her, just as expected, tinkering with a boat down in the shipyard. She seems to sense Clarke’s approach more than she hears it, looking up from the long plank of wood she’s midway through sawing in half and shooting Clarke her signature smirk.

“Griffin.”

“You told my mother that we went to the tavern?”

It’s not the question that Clarke ever intended to open with, but with the conversation with her mother still fresh in her mind, it’s what ends up coming out of her mouth.

“Sorry, but your mother has a certain charm that I find it very difficult to lie to,” Ravens answers with a shrug, as she starts moving the saw back and forward in even strokes through the coarse wood once more. Raven lifts her head slightly, her brown eyes lit up with mischief, and then adds, “That, and I can’t be held accountable for anything that I do or say after taking morphine.”

Clarke perches herself on the edge of a bench near to Raven’s work station, where the shadow of the boat provides a welcome respite from the unrelenting heat of the afternoon Caribbean sun.

“Well, we may have only been to that inn a few times, but my mother probably thinks I’m an alcoholic.”

“There was that one time that you…” Raven starts unhelpfully.

“Yes, thank you, Raven,” Clarke is quick to interrupt, having been friends with Raven for long enough to know exactly where her best friend is heading with that sentence.

“I mean,” Raven screws up her face in disgust, “he wasn’t even that attractive…”

“Thank you, Raven,” Clarke repeats through clenched teeth, flushing in shame at the memory of the night in question. Definitely not one of her finest moments.

As the saw in Raven’s hand finally makes its way through the entirety of the wood, one end of the neatly sawed plank drops to the deck with a clatter.

“Please don’t deny me of this one thing,” Raven grins wickedly. “It’s the only shit I have to hold against you.”

Raven tucks the shorter of the two halves of the plank beneath her arm and hauls herself up onto the stepladder beside the boat as best as she can with only one working leg. Clarke worries for a moment that Raven won’t be able to balance up there and gets ready to dart forwards and catch her, but Raven manages to support most of her weight on her good leg, using the wooden peg at the foot of the other as a prop to keep her stable.

“Can you pass me that hammer, please?”

Clarke’s eyes dance across Raven’s untidy workstation, where tools of all shapes and sizes lie haphazardly scattered in a mess that makes Clarke wonder how Raven ever manages to get any work done at all, let alone earn herself the reputation as one of the finest shipwrights in a town inhabited by sailors.

“Which one?”

Clarke can almost hear the way that Raven rolls her eyes in her tone as she answers, “One that looks like a hammer.”

Selecting a heavy tool from the crate at the foot of Raven’s stepladder, Clarke extends her arm to pass it up to her best friend. She watches as Raven pulls a couple of iron nails out of a pouch on the leather utility belt slung low on her hips, then starts to hammer the plank of wood in place over a hole in the side of the boat.

“Whose boat is this?” Clarke asks Raven, raising her voice so as to be heard over the rhythmic sound of the hammer hitting the head of the nail.

“That guy,” Raven replies, taking a couple of seconds out from hammering the nail to point over her shoulder with her thumb.

Clarke follows the direction of Raven’s thumb and her eyes fall on a burly guy with tattoos covering parts of his exposed skin and hair cut close to his scalp. He’s an intimidating figure, his eyebrows furrowed as he stares at the two girls near his boat and his muscled arms folded across his chest, and it’s a wonder that Clarke didn’t notice his presence before. Clarke gives him a meek wave, which he doesn’t return, and then turns her attention back to Raven.

“Wow,” says Clarke. “I hope you know what you’re doing because he looks like he’ll skin you alive if you put even one nail out of place.”

Raven stops what she’s doing and turns to give Clarke a look; one eyebrow quirked ever so slightly, the rest of her face impassive except for a glare in her eyes that looks like it could bore a hole right through Clarke’s skull.

“Have I ever made a mistake before?”

“I’d say that Kyle Wick was a pretty big mistake…”

Raven gives her mother of all scowls and Clarke worries for just a moment that the heavy tool in Raven’s hand is going to find a new home for itself embedded in Clarke’s head, until Raven’s gaze turns into a squint focused on something far behind Clarke.

“What’s tha- … oh my god, I think it’s a body!”

Clarke’s head snaps around in the blink of an eye and she has no trouble spotting the dark person-shaped mass lying motionless on the pale sand in the distance.

Before she has time to even consider what she is doing, Clarke is running towards the body, the small heels of her leather boots getting awkwardly stuck in the sand with each stride that she takes and her long skirt swishing around her ankles. She hears a clatter behind her but doesn’t think to check that Raven is okay. (Raven has survived much worse than stumbling off a two-foot high stepladder, Clarke reasons, while this girl lying in the sand is quite clearly unconscious and could be in desperate need of urgent medical care, if she isn’t already dead.)

She’s about halfway there when she hears somebody coming up behind her, and she is briefly confused about who this person might be – the rhythmic thud of one heavy footstep after another, gradually getting louder as the mysterious person catches up with her, means that it can’t be Raven, who would need nothing short of a miracle to be able to chase after her on only one good leg. Clarke’s question is quickly answered, however, when the sailor who owns the boat that Raven is fixing overtakes Clarke on her left, his stride much larger than her own and his thick arms pumping fast as he shoots past Clarke.

He reaches the girl long before Clarke does, and by the time that Clarke finally reaches them, out of breath and a little sweaty, the sailor has already rolled the girl onto her back and has his ear against her chest, checking for her heartbeat.

“Is she breathing?” Clarke wheezes, bringing one hand up to her hip to clutch at the ache in her side as she drops to her knees on the sand next to the unconscious girl.

“Only just,” the man replies gruffly. “She needs warming up. I can make her up a bed on my ship.”

Clarke dismisses his suggestion at once with a shake of her head.

“She needs immediate medical attention,” Clarke insists. “My mother is a doctor. We live five minutes away. If you can carry her, I can show you the way.”

The man hesitates for just a moment, his dark eyes fixed on Clarke as he assesses her words, but when he glances back down to the barely breathing girl on the sand between them, he makes his decision and gives Clarke a curt nod. He sweeps the girl up into his arms almost effortlessly, draping one of her arms around his neck as he cradles her against his chest like a small child, then looks at Clarke expectantly.

“Let’s go,” Clarke says decisively. She looks up at the sailor as they begin their journey off the beach and onto the boardwalk that lines the docks. “I’m Clarke, by the way. Clarke Griffin.”

The man grunts out a single word in response.

“Lincoln.”

#clexa #clexa fanfic #clarke griffin #commander lexa #pirate au #swmtsn #almostafantasia

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aaroncutler · 7 years

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Sunrise as Comedy [by David Kalat]

June 11th: The following text was written by film critic and historian David Kalat on the occasion of this year’s F.W. Murnau retrospective at the Brazilian festival Olhar de Cinema. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans screens in the festival June 11th and 12th. More information about the retrospective can be found in English at http://olhardecinema.com.br/2017/en/2017/retrospective-f-w-murnau/ and http://olhardecinema.com.br/2017/en/screenings-2/#.retrospective, and in Portuguese at http://olhardecinema.com.br/2017/2017/olhar-retrospectivo-f-w-murnau/ and http://olhardecinema.com.br/2017/filmes/#.olhar-retrospectivo.

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Sunrise is the dictionary definition of a classic film. It won (for all intents and purposes) the first ever Academy Award, has been placed on the National Registry, and was the first silent film put out on Blu-Ray. It routinely places in “Best Of” lists, it’s a picture whose artistry is intended to be accessible to mass audiences. It is conventionally beautiful, conventionally narrative, conventionally stirring. It needs no apologies or excuses, it’s just excellent in every way.

But did you know it was a comedy?

Consider the basic premise: Sunrise presents a sexy, vampish “Woman of the City” who invades a rural idyll where her very presence corrupts a naïve young man. In order to pursue this temptress, the young man comes to believe his only escape from his existing small-town romance is to kill his girl, which he utterly fails to accomplish, and thereby sets in motion the plot developments of the rest of the film.

Just six months before Sunrise hit theaters, American audiences saw the exact same plot in Harry Langdon’s comedy Long Pants!

In this context, it’s worth remembering that Langdon’s film crossed enough taboos (or do I mean tabus?) that some audiences didn’t find it funny at all. Meanwhile, Murnau does pitch Sunrise like a comedy, and its contents are not very much distinguishable from what constituted comedies of the same period. For example, Sunrise’s main characters go on a date to a carnival, where they run into money problems and an out-of-control animal (see Harold Lloyd’s Speedy), and the film climaxes with a catastrophic storm (see Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr.)

The young man (George O’Brien) rows out to the middle of the lake with his trusting wife (Janet Gaynor) where he intends to drown her. But when push comes to shove, as it were, he loses his resolve and rows mindlessly to the opposite shore, where they board a trolley car. And in one of the most astonishing sequences in all of cinema, the shell-shocked couple gather their wits as they are transported from what might as well be a medieval village straight out of Nosferatu through a forest to an industrial patch and finally arriving in a futuristic Metropolis, all in the span of a couple of minutes. There is no such trolley ride anywhere in the world—this thing might as well be a time machine.

The transformation is absolute. The opening scenes take place in a silent movie world of exaggerated gestures and portentous symbolism. But the city reveals more naturalistic acting, more observational in tone. And the city scenes are obsessed with the details of the setting—the cars, the clothes, the architecture, the store fronts, the people-watching, the traffic.

Dramas do not often get bogged down in such observational fascination with their setting. Although it happens sometimes (as with the semi-documentary approach of Billy Wilder’s People on Sunday, or perhaps Robert Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture), this is a technique more familiar from comedies, where the observational detail is part of establishing the ironic commentary. Think Jacques Tati’s Playtime, or Chaplin’s City Lights, or Jean Renoir’s Boudou Saved From Drowning, or just about anything by Harold Lloyd.

Murnau introduces two outsiders into this cityscape—scraggly, haggard refugees from a horror film who have stumbled into this world in a state of high emotional dudgeon and will encounter it as if they are visitors from another planet. Again, the parallel is to a comedy’s structure, with the outsider hero(es) providing for a commentary on the world around them. Charlie Chaplin rarely stumbled into any of his adventures after a botched murder attempt, but all Murnau has done is to provide a context for his protagonists’ alienation where someone like Chaplin uses his costume as a shortcut to the same ends. Like Boudou or Mr. Hulot, George and Janet are outsiders invading this space. We will witness its familiar contours through their eyes.

Setting in a film in the juxtaposition of old versus new has been a central recurring feature of many important comedies (Steamboat Bill, Jr., Mon Oncle, Modern Times, Yoyo) and also specifically places Sunrise squarely in the zeitgeist of late 1920s comedy.

For example, consider what happens once George and Janet arrive in the city. They proceed to stumble from one episodic set-piece to another. In one of these, they crash a wedding ceremony and are overwhelmed by the moment (wedding vows take on an eerie significance when juxtaposed with trying to kill your wife). George breaks down, begs for forgiveness, and the two stagger into the street in a romantic haze. In another transformation of setting not unlike the trollycar ride that brought them here in the first place, they lose track of where they are and see themselves in the fields of home—until car horns bring them back to reality. And what ensues? Slapstick havoc in the middle of traffic, that’s what—a punchline, just like you’d expect. Traffic-based gags abound in comedies of this era. The scene emphasizes the modern tribulation of city streets packed with noisy cars going every which way.

Observations on the comic aspects of traffic are fundamentally the stuff of movie comedy. Thanks to the coincidence of the age of movies and the age of cars, there wouldn’t have been much to say about traffic prior to the dawn of film. It doesn’t really belong in any other medium. Paintings can’t capture the movement well; theatrical performances can hardly stage this indoors; no one would write a book about traffic because it isn’t a literary subject--but 1920s comedians put such material into movies all the time.

Pointedly, Sunrise does not view this transformation from rural life to modernity as a bad thing. It seems to be tilting that way in its early scenes, the way the evil vamp is called “Woman of the City,” as if her corruption is connected to her sophistication. Once George and Janet arrive in that city, however, what they find is wonder, fun, and welcoming strangers. The city folk are sometimes a little perplexed by the two rubes, but never in a mean way—and no matter what George and Janet do or misunderstand or break, they are greeted by smiles and tolerance.

Sunrise shows how the new world, threatening as it is to the old, doesn’t have to lead exclusively to corruption—it is possible to navigate your way through this modern world and still come out morally whole. As such, Sunrise is about hope in the face of wrenching change.

As it happens, 1920s screen comedy was itself undergoing a wrenching change, metamorphosing from silent physical slapstick to a new talkie genre of romantic comedy. The solo comedians of slapstick’s Golden Age had to make way for a new breed of female stars, who took equal footing with their male costars. The end product of that transformation would be the screwball comedy, whose genre conventions presuppose flirtation as a form of combat, or vice versa. The stars of 1930s romantic comedies “meet cute” and engage in reel after reel of open combat, before discovering that hate is just a variation on love; you have to really care for somebody deeply to want to fight them that badly. Fists give way to embraces and the former opponents end up in each other’s arms.

This is, you may note, the template of Sunrise—in which the couple starts off as opposed to one another as humanly possible, and end up as tightly allied as conceivable.

Sunrise is not just structured like a comedy, it is absolutely jam-packed with comedy actors. Janet Gaynor, the female lead, was a fairly inexperienced young actress whose resume before showing up here largely consisted of comedy work—Laurel and Hardy’s 45 Minutes From Hollywood, Syd Chaplin’s Oh What a Nurse, Clara Bow’s The Plastic Age, Charley Chase’s All Wet, and various and sundry Hal Roach one-offs.

Once she and her hubby/attempted murderer George O’Brien make their way into the city, they spend the rest of the film encountering comic actors: Ralph Sipperly, the Barber, came from Fox’s own comedy shorts division. Jane Winton, the Manicure Girl, came from such comedies as Footloose Widows, Why Girls Go Back Home, and Millionaires. Then there are the Obtrusive Gentleman (Arthur Housman) and the Obliging Gentleman (Eddie Boland). Both Housman and Boland were small-time comedy stars who were brand names in their own right, having top-lined their own respective series of comedy shorts.

On top of all the comic actors, there are actual jokes: the wedding reception mistaking the peasant couple for the bride and groom, the business at the photographer’s and the headless statue, the comic misunderstandings at the salon, and a drunken pig!

This is a “silent film” in that no dialogue is spoken, but it has a synchronized soundtrack that includes sound effects and music, and sure enough the various slapstick punchlines get their little “boing!” and “wah-wah” music cues just like you’d expect.

Murnau’s allegiance with the world of comedy continued in the follow-up feature to Sunrise, City Girl (whose title, a riff on “Woman of the City,” signals from the outset its agenda vis a vis Sunrise). City Girl opens with a scene in which a rube on a train unwisely reveals a fat bankroll and his own unwary attitude towards his money, rendering him an easy mark for the attention of a grafter. And once again we find Murnau pulling plot points from the films of Harry Langdon—in this case, the short Lucky Stars.

Murnau stuffed the cast of City Girl with comedy veterans, too: Eddie Boland is back (briefly); Guinn “Big Boy” Williams was a regular supporting actor in silent and talkie comedies (including the brilliant Ladies Night in a Turkish Bath with Jimmy Finlayson); David Torrence earned his slapstick comedy credentials a few years after working with Murnau, in the Laurel and Hardy film Bonnie Scotland; and Richard Alexander was on the front end of what would prove to be a wildly varied career that included Harry Langdon’s See America Thirst, as well as Laurel and Hardy’s Them Thar Hills and Babes In Toyland.

Finding such comedy references in a Murnau film may be jarring to those who think of him only in terms of Nosferatu and other grim fables. That may be a sizeable contingent, I realize. It is generally the tendency of critics who write about Murnau’s films to identify the comic elements as something imposed on Murnau against his wishes by the studio in an effort to Americanize and popularize his films.

The primary English language text on Murnau is Lotte Eisner’s The Haunted Screen — the very title of which signals its preoccupations and prejudices when it comes to Murnau. And so in her fealty to those prejudices, Eisner skips over, dismisses, or otherwise brushes under the rug any of Murnau’s works that don’t fit the bill.

Lotte Eisner suggests that all these tawdry jokes were inserted into Sunrise by Fox gag men and Murnau was obliged to go along with them. Hey, but wait a minute–Sunrise was famously made without studio interference, and even after his falling out with Fox, Murnau never said that Sunrise was anything other than a work of total creative freedom. You can’t have your cake and eat it too—you can’t say Murnau had total creative freedom but he also had to tolerate jokes inserted into the script against his will. If Sunrise was Murnau’s vision, his vision was prone to flirt with comedy.

Now might be the time to note, ahem, that The Last Laugh has its own comic elements, in which a bleak story comes to a tragic end, and then reboots itself as a comedy for its final reel—inspiring the English language title.

For that matter, Murnau made The Finances of the Grand Duke, a mild action-comedy about a master thief that in many ways anticipates similar lighthearted fare along the lines of Arsène Lupin or To Catch a Thief or a fair chunk of Steven Soderbergh’s back catalog.

The magic of Murnau is that his genius was not limited to vampires and demons—the man was also gifted with a deft comic touch. Sunrise is Murnau’s comedy masterpiece.

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twilighteve-writes · 7 years

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Of Seas, of Streams, of Falling Rain, of Naval Hurricane

Summary: “I should tell the others,” he whispered to himself, like he did every morning since he got the ability, despite knowing that this day-cycle would probably end the way other day-cycles did. Namely, with him not saying anything about this. The timing was just never right. Lance gets water/ice powers. He wants to tell the others, but either he has the worst timing in the universe ever, or Fate just likes to fuck with him. To be completely honest, he's leaning to the latter.

Inspired by this post by @lovelylangst.

My first Voltron fic, I hope I did okay. This got far longer than I first intended, so reading it from AO3 or FF.net may be easier for the eyes. If you choose to read this in tumblr, it’s under the cut.

He held his hand out, staring at the astral glow that shone gently like dancing fireflies. Without having to look at the mirror, he knew that his eyes shone the same glow – which he found out when he tested this out in front of a mirror, to be completely honest – blue, soft, otherworldly and yet not.

A tug from deep within him, and water appeared, flowing upwards and snaking along his arm in a stream. It was odd, how he could control this so easily by now, but considering he’d been practicing pretty much nonstop for about two months he probably shouldn’t be too surprised. Like always, he idly wondered where the water came from, as it seemed a bit of a stretch to assume it appeared out of nowhere. As usual, he pushed the thought aside to marvel at the ability.

With a sigh, Lance let go of the control he held over the stream, and it dropped for a fraction of a tick before vanishing without trace.

“I should tell the others,” he whispered to himself, like he did every morning since he got the ability, despite knowing that this day-cycle would probably end the way other day-cycles did. Namely, with him not saying anything about this.

The timing was just never right.

The Paladins had been trying hard, so hard, but things had been difficult. Everything was hard. Shiro had been missing for some time and there was no sign of him ever returning, no matter how hard the rest of the team had been trying.

But the universe didn’t wait for certain individuals. Chaos reigned still, as ten thousand years of oppression and destruction laughed in their faces for their feeble attempt to fix it all.

There was no way those ten thousand years could be undone in so little time.

Two weeks into Shiro’s disappearance, the team received a distress signal from a planet not too far away from where they were. Naturally, they rushed to help. It was a small planet, inhabited by humanoid aliens that looked solid yet liquid at the same time.

(Lance was trying to hard not to call them slime people. It was accurate, yes, but it made him feel as though they were low-tier monsters in a fantasy game. They were not low-tier monster in a fantasy game.)

They were lucky, to be completely honest. The Galra fleet that attacked the planet was a small one, and they would be able to defeat it without having to form Voltron. However, a few ships had managed to land on the planet, so Lance quickly announced that he was landing, too, to prevent disaster. Keith barely got to give him the go-ahead before he shot away.

The planet, as it turned out, was an… interesting one. It was equal parts land and water, the two elements working in tandem and creating water canals both on and under ground that Lance immediately used as his personal highway, making use of Blue’s increased power and agility in water to spring attacks at the Galra soldiers and drones, easily laying waste on the enemies without damaging the city.

But then the decidedly small fleet whipped out a decidedly humongous laser cannon and aimed it to the shiny, sparkly earth-and-ice castle at the epicenter of the city. With no time to counter the shot the cannon sent, Lance was forced to take the brunt of the attack using Blue’s body. Fortunately, it worked, and the damage on the city was decidedly minimal, and Blue managed to fire a shot into the cannon’s muzzle and damaged it instantly. Unfortunately, the attack put Blue out of commission, so Lance had to go out and fought the Galra soldiers on his own, without Blue’s comforting support buzzing at the back of his head and empowering his moves.

The battle passed in a blur of cries, screams, whizzing shots, laser blasts finding home on the Galra’s temples, foreheads, chests, necks,… And suddenly he was keenly aware that there was no longer any Galra around, that his whole body was shaking with exhaustion and adrenaline crash, that the natives of the planet were approaching him carefully, showing placating gestures and coaxing him to lower his bayard.

“It’s alright,” one of them said, their voice an interesting mix between popping bubbles and soft whispers. “All the Galra are gone. It’s alright.”

Lance wasn’t ashamed to say that he fell flat on his face as relief flooded through his veins.

The rest of the team then landed on the planet, and the aliens brought them to the castle, where Allura both berated and commended Lance on his actions in the whole operations. “To immediately notice how the Galra had gone to the planet on a moment’s notice and immediately take action to counter it is something I’d feel very proud in,” she had said, tone pleased yet exasperated at the same time. “However, Lance, please do remember to take your own safety into account as well.”

Lance had nodded and hummed along, though most of the lecture went over his head. The exhaustion was hard to plow through. The aliens – the Neranese – provided them with food, water, and helped heal their relatively minor injuries. It was only hours later, after a period of rest, that Lance felt enough like himself again to actually pay attention to the Neranese and began flirting. He didn’t see any features that really distinguished the male and female Neranese, so he went screw it and just flirted with absolutely everyone.

Including the prince. Oops?

But then said prince pulled him aside, wishing to speak with him privately. So… score?

The whole thing had a serious and heavy vibes permeating the atmosphere though, so Lance wasn’t entirely sure if this was truly a good thing or not.

“I want to thank you personally,” said the prince once they were alone. “You risked your Lion and your life to protect my people. It means a lot to us.” His voice was the same bubble-popping-and-whispers that the Neranese sounded like, but his was a little smoother, less of bubbles popping and more of ocean foam subsiding, like the soft caress of the softest baby bird’s feather.

Lance laughed softly and shook his head. “It’s nothing, Your Highness. I’d hate to see you and the rest of the planet hurt. Besides, it isn’t just me. All of my friends fought the battle too.”

The prince hummed. “Nevertheless, it was you who personally fought down here, abandoning the safety your Lion provides to protect us, and made your last stand to defend the castle. Let me present you a gift in the name of my people, Paladin.”

“I, ah. It’s very generous of you, but really…” Lance squirmed, not wholly sure how to refuse.

“Please, Paladin. I insist.” The prince gave what must have been a form of Neranese smile, and Lance crumbled. How could a race that was pretty much a human-shaped semi-translucent blob look so adorable?

The prince extended his hands and gestured for Lance’s, so he put his hands in the prince’s, silently marveling at how Neranese body felt like cool water yet solid enough to hold and left no wet trail behind.

“We would give the same gifts to the other Paladins, but only your quintessence is compatible to ours,” the prince began as soft bluish glow began to envelope their hands. “We have heard of the stories of old, of Voltron the warrior that defended the universe, and the five lions and formed it. We have heard how each lion holds the quintessence of certain elements and how their paladins’ mirrored theirs. We have heard of the Blue Lion, the Guardian of Water, and know that us Neranese share an affinity with the Blue Lion and its paladin, even long before we’ve seen them.”

Lance stared at the prince quizzically, noticing that his eyes were a shade of blue-green that reminded him of the Earth’s ocean, gleaming and sparkling brilliantly under the shine of the summer sun. “Um…”

The prince continued as though Lance never said anything. “With time, a paladin’s bond with their Lion strengthens, and along with that the paladin would be able to reach deep into their quintessence and used the elements they are closest with as they wish. You, Blue Paladin… you are of water and ice, and you are very close to being able to use them. However, it would be difficult. I wish to give you a push – a boost, if you will – so you will be able to wield your powers safely and efficiently, and so you could be granted access of it a bit more quickly.”

“Wait, hold on, time out!” Lance winced back, though he didn’t pull his hands away. “What do you mean, safely and efficiently? Granted access? I don’t understand, like, seventy percent of what you’re telling me.”

“You will be able to hold elemental powers, but for someone who does not know how to control it or is not familiar with it, it could be dangerous,” the prince explained. “You will be able to wield it, but without knowledge over water and ice it could endanger you and the people around you. I am merely giving you the instinctual information my people has over water and ice so the danger would be minimalized.” He gave that smile again. “It is a safety measure, if you will.”

Lance wanted to ask more, but a sudden sharpness in the glow on their hands stopped him, as the words died and was replaced by a surprised gasp. The flow of light climbed up in abstract patterns, swirling and waving in a manner that reminded Lance of ocean waves, of river streams in meadows, of falling rain in hills, of whirlpools in a naval hurricane. The glow wrapped around him in a cocoon, filling his mind with the secrets of the sea and infusing his skin with the knowledge of how to wield it. Around him, it felt as though the flow had turned into the true Earthen ocean, swirling around him in a current that both made him feel safe and wary, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the view. He wanted to imprint the luminescent illusory sea into his mind, as he knew its beauty wasn’t eternal, and it could be gone in a blink. It was ethereal, yes. Yet it was also ephemeral.

As quickly as it appeared, the light receded into itself, clinging to Lance’s skin and seemingly sunk into him before vanishing completely. As it did, waves of exhaustion suddenly crashed into him, and Lance swayed a little before catching himself, blinking rapidly and shaking his head. “Whoa.”

“I should have warned you of that. The transferal could result in extreme fatigue on the receiver’s end,” the prince said apologetically, staring at him in concern. When he spoke again, his voice held more pop, laced with worry. “Do you feel alright, Paladin?”

“I think I’m okay,” Lance answered with a nod and immediately contradicted himself when he stumbled, feeling as though everything was suddenly upside-down. “Okay, I take that back.”

“Perhaps it is best if you rest,” the prince advised, gently leading him back to the room that had somehow transformed into the Paladins’ and the Alteans’ communal bedroom, as they dropped before they could be escorted into their private quarters.

“Probably, yeah,” Lance’s words were already slurring, and part of him was already halfway to the dreamland. If he had been more awake, he’d feel embarrassed that the prince of a planet he’d just helped save was pretty much carrying him to bed, but he was more interested in actually being asleep to care.

The next morning, he was the last to wake, and Allura was already speaking with the king and queen of the planet to work on possible alliance. The prince didn’t talk to Lance again, too preoccupied by his own duties to spend time with the Paladins. At times, Lance would feel a tug deep within him, or a tingle on his fingertips. Nothing happened.

What the Neranese prince had given him slipped his mind.

When Lance realized that he really could control water and ice, his first reaction was to smile wide, wide, because maybe with this he could be more helpful in combat, maybe he wouldn’t have to rely on long-ranged weapon so much, maybe he could actually do well in hand-to-hand combat.

The second reaction was, more or less, Holy Quiznak I need to tell the others but how.

He wanted to tell the others, very much so. Something like this could help so much in their battles, it could change the way they create plans since the advantages and disadvantages of the power could be game changing.

But should he really? Everyone was so focused on other things, and he wouldn’t want to break their focus. There was so much they were doing. Liberating planets, making diplomatic connections, maintaining the connections, generally protecting the universe. Being on alert to look for Shiro and the Holts, jumping to action with each new hints and clues of their whereabouts were and coming back deflated when they couldn’t find them yet. Him telling something like this could very easily break that focus, creating ripples in the calm routine and they’d have to seek a new pattern that fit his new variable into account.

It could take too long. It could put someone in danger.

He couldn’t take that risk.

He should, though. The risk could be worth the results. He knew how powerful water and ice could be when used properly. It could potentially save so many, but only after he could use it properly.

With that in mind, Lance started to train. It was hard to control, at first. He tended to let loose too much energy that a snowflake ended up being a huge icicle, or too little that a flood ended up a measly trickle. But Lance was patient. He trained, again and again, over and over, until he could manipulate his quintessence as easily as he could breathe, until he could summon a tiny little drop of water or the angriest of blizzards as easily as he could smirk. A part of him knew immediately that without the Neranese prince’s gift he wouldn’t be able to do all this so easily, so quickly, and he mentally sent his thanks to the Neranese.

Then, and only then, did he feel comfortable enough to try telling the others.

His chance came in a strategic meeting as they planned their moves to free another colonized planet. It was yet another planet rich with water quintessence, its surface littered with marshes, puddles, and seas. The Galra had built a sort of base above the water level and had the natives of the planet work for them, mining minerals deep under the mud. The inhabitants’ eel-like slick bodies could easily dig deep to mine the minerals, which was apparently one of the most important materials to build ion cannons.

“We need to sneak in, go to the control room, and make sure all the drones are incapacitated before we could proceed to the next phase,” Allura had said. “This Galra base is a little outdated, given that the drones are still controlled from the control room, unlike the newer drones that work on autopilot. If we could put the drones out of the equation, we’d save so much trouble and energy freeing this planet.”

Lance’s eyes swept through the holographic maps that showed them the planet’s surface. He could sense his eyes lighting up when he realized how much water was on the surface and how he could use it to his advantage. “Princess, if I may?” he cut in excitedly. “What about we just draw all drones out to the open instead, near the mud plains? It’s closer to where we’d be landing, and it looks like it provides enough cover for us all to dart around. I mean, it’ll save us the trouble of sneaking into the control room, considering the amount of security cameras it has, and there’s only one officer in charge, so we could probably wipe them all out easily.”

Allura sighed tiredly. “We have considered this, Lance. While it is a nice plan, it is not sound. There are too many Galra drones in the area, and you four fighting them all by yourselves would tire you out before the actual fight.”

“No, no, the thing is I can probably wipe them all out by myself,” Lance bounced on his heels excitedly. “So if the drones are out of commission – “

“Wait, hold on,” Allura cut him off. “Are you saying that you would fight the Galra in the planet? All by yourself?” It was easy to catch the disbelief in Allura’s voice.

Lance drew back a little. “Um, I know it sounds really far-fetched, but seriously, I can deal with all of them at once. Probably. Do you remember the Neranese? Well, the prince gave me – “

Allura held up a hand. “Lance, this is an important mission, and while I appreciate your bravery and confidence I cannot rely on probabilities to run it. And please, do try to be more serious. I understand that you like to play the hero and have your moment of glory, but at your current abilities facing off so many drones at once would be suicide.”

Lance winced, but he wasn’t willing to let this go just yet. “But Princess, really. I can face them all! I can now control – “

“Lance,” Allura huffed in annoyance, and Lance stopped talking at once. “I don’t want to lose another Paladin. We need a solid plan for this mission to be successful. Have I made myself clear?”

With a frown, Lance stepped back and nodded. It was easy to see that his input wasn’t wanted. “Crystal, Princess,” he said, even though he still wanted to argue with the plan.

“Good,” Allura nodded and casted her gaze on the holographic maps once again. “Now, perhaps it would be best if Keith and Pidge could check the perimeter for us…”

Okay, so Allura didn’t listen to him. That was fine, it was his own fault that he said something like that in the middle of important strategic meeting anyway. He’d be skeptical too if someone suddenly said they could wipe out a fleet of Galra drones. He should have picked a better time for it.

So he turned to his main man, Hunk. Hunk was an amazing listener. He could count on Hunk to hear him out and maybe help him relay the information to the rest of the team.

“Hunk, can I talk to you for just a second?” Lance had asked the Yellow Paladin a few days after the last mission with the eel-like aliens.

“Huh?” Hunk looked up from the batch of cookies that he was pulling out of the oven and met his eyes. “Yeah, sure, buddy. What’s up?” he asked as he continued his motions to get the cookies out and started to cool them, looking like he was just half-listening. He’d been baking more of them lately – probably a coping mechanism from the stress they were all under.

It was a good thing that he did, though. These days, it was one of the only things that actually brought the rest of the team together, other than training, combat, and after training or after combat wind down, unlike the times when they all just hung out together in the lounge with Shiro.

“Well, you remember the strategic meeting a few days ago, right? When I said I could probably wipe out all the Galra drones?” Lance began nervously, fidgeting a little.

“Yeah?”

“Well, the thing is… the reason I said that was because I can kinda sorta control water and ice, and – “

His words were cut off when Pidge stumbled into the kitchen, glasses askew and a wild look in her eyes. No doubt she’d been messing around with more Altean tech, as was her usual activity which doubled in intensity since Shiro’s disappearance. “I smell peanut butter cookies!” she declared, casting her gaze around, looking like a hungry animal. “Dibs!”

“Pidge, you can’t eat them just yet,” Hunk huffed, the importance of Lance’s words swept over by the enthusiasm Pidge showed. “They’re still too hot.”

“Who’s just called dibs on Hunk’s cookies?” Keith’s voice suddenly rang out as he dashed into the kitchen, all sweaty and messy, probably stopping his training because heard Pidge running about and wanted to know what was happening. “No one can call dibs on Hunk’s cookies. First comes first served!”

Lance had long since realized that with all this commotion about cookies, he wouldn’t be able to tell Hunk anything, so instead he decided to join the fray about the food. “Well, Mullet, if we go by that logic then I have the rights to eat Hunk’s cookies, like, right now!” He reached for the cookies and was immediately slapped with Hunk’s spatula, while the Red and Green Paladins rushed forward with shrieks of protest, practically fighting for the cookies. Not surprising, given Hunk’s cookies were to die for.

It was only later, after the whole cookie fiasco was over and everything had been eaten that Lance remembered he didn’t get to tell Hunk anything. He glanced over at his friend, but seeing that Hunk was tiredly tidying up the kitchen, Lance decided it wasn’t the time to push his problems on his friend and opted to help him clean up so Hunk could rest soon. He could always tell him another time.

He never got to tell him, though.

The third time he tried to tell the team was when they were all lounging together after a gruesome practice session, resting. Keith had looked particularly worse off, with black circling his eyes, indicating his lack of sleep and mounting stress.

“Dude, you need to rest more,” Hunk told Keith in distressed voice. “Your body can’t hold it any longer. How much sleep do you get a day?”

“Enough,” Keith replied, a little too quickly. At Hunk’s glare, he sighed and admitted, “Not enough.”

“You can’t just go on without rest, Keith!” Hunk protested, the same distress in his voice. “Just… rest, will you?”

“I can’t just go and rest when we still haven’t gotten Shiro back yet,” Keith shook his head, even though his voice went quieter with each word as exhaustion bled into his tone.

“We can’t have you falling over from fatigue either, Keith,” Pidge returned.

“I’m just trying to be better, okay?” Keith sighed. “Besides, Allura and I were talking a while ago, and she mentioned something about our bonds to our Lions not being strong enough to unlock the ability to manipulate the elemental quintessence we should be able to control.”

Other times, Lance would have zeroed in on the Allura and I were talking part, but the elemental quintessence part piqued his interest. “Controlling quintessence?”

“Yeah, basically she said that if our bond with our Lions is strong enough we’ll be able to use the elements they’re associated with without having to be piloting them,” Keith explained. “That could be useful. I really want to grill people’s faces off. It’s faster than hacking them with a sword.”

“Yeah, that kind of ability sure would come in handy,” Lance grinned. “Let’s see how fast you’ll be able to use yours, Keithy Boy.”

Keith snorted. “I’m sure I’ll master it before you do, Lance,” he said almost playfully, a teasing edge in his voice, and a little… underestimating? Which was kind of insulting, to be completely honest, but it was an improvement from his previous fatigue-laden speech.

But he didn’t let it get to him, because he knew he had the edge in this. The giddy excitement from victory filled Lance’s lungs, and his grin grew wider. “Ha, joke’s on you! I can do it really well already!“

“Yeah, right,” Keith scoffed good-naturedly, and Lance knew he didn’t mean to offend him because Keith literally didn’t know, but it stung.

“No, seriously. I can – “

Maybe Lance just wasn’t destined to tell the team. The first time, Allura cut him off because he was stupid enough to try to drop the info in the middle of a strategic meeting. The second time, it was it because of cookies. He was hoping for a third time’s a charm kind of thing going on, but when was Lance ever that lucky? No, instead of being able to let the words out, he was cut off by the alarm suddenly blaring violently, indicating that a battle was up ahead. That fight was easily won, and when the other Paladins chose to go to their rooms to rest, Lance went to the training room to vent.

Training to vent. Ugh, Lance felt like Keith, and they were supposed to be, like, opposite of each other.

Nevertheless, Lance was frustrated that he was interrupted every time he wanted to say something that could be important to his friends, and he wanted to vent. So he did.

After he set so that twenty drones would attack him at once, Lance put a stance and readied himself. Quickly, one by one, the white Altean battle drones dropped and made their way towards him. He took a deep breath and concentrated, feeling that now-familiar tug deep within him. Soft blue glow immediately enveloped his hands, and he slashed at the air. Ice immediately formed, trapping several drones in its freezing clutch.

More came, and Lance stomped powerfully. More ice formed, starting from the point where his foot connected to the floor and quickly grew in size and sharpness to pierce the oncoming drones. He knew more were coming, and he snarled wordlessly, extending his hands and lifting it up like a puppeteer. Water appeared out of nowhere, filling the room in a swirling current much like a whirlpool with Lance standing perfectly dry in the middle of all of it. Mentally, he pushed, and all the drones hit the wall with enough force for him to hear them crack despite the dampening quality of water. Now convinced that he had defeated them all, Lance let his hands drop to his sides. The water sloshed, almost touching and drowning him before vanishing to thin air.

He stood there alone, surrounded by piles of dripping wet drones, staring at the water thinly layering the floor. He sighed, still feeling restless and wondering if he should have another go at this when a voice reached his ears.

“…Lance?”

Lance suck in a sharp breath, going rigid in record time. After a moment, he licked his lips and turned around, forcing a stiff smile on his face. “…Hi, Coran.”

The Altean gazed around the room, mouth hanging open in surprise. “You… can manipulate the elemental quintessence already?”

Lance winced. “Um. Yes?”

Coran’s eyes found his. “Do the others know about this?”

Lance felt his shoulders sag and shook his head. “Not yet.”

Coran frowned. “Lance, my boy… you need to tell them.”

“I’m going to!” Lance assured him instantly. “I’ve been wanting to. But things always come up, and the others are always focused on so many more important things. I don’t want to bother them.”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t bother them, Lance,” Coran assured. “In fact, what do you humans say? No time like the present? Let’s tell them now!”

“Wait, Coran, don’t!” Lance immediately latched to Coran’s arm to keep him from dashing off. “They’re all resting! Don’t disturb them!” He let go of Coran and stepped back a little. “I’ll tell them myself. In the morning, probably. Maybe. I dunno.” Seeds of doubt suddenly sprung within him, and he was suddenly unsure of his decision. “I mean, I still don’t want to make them all unfocused because of this announcement… and, you know, the whole unlocking new powers the closer you are to your Lion thing. I don’t want to make the others feel like their bond is weak.”

“But Lance, to be close enough to your Lion to be able to do this is could motivate the others to get to your level,” Coran argued. “A little bit of competition could be what we need for this team to be better. You should know that. You declare Keith as your rival all the time!”

Lance laughed. “This isn’t all me, Coran. I’m not… I didn’t unlock this ability myself. It’s more like it was given to me.”

Confusion and curiosity immediately shone in Coran’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

Lance blinked, considered, and ended up spilling everything to Coran even though he initially didn’t want to. He was easily his second most trusted person in the ship, the first being Hunk, so he wasn’t surprised to hear his words flowing easily, starting with the Neranese prince giving his the knowledge over water and ice thing, to how he trained as well as he could to the point that he could use water and ice as easily as summoning his bayard, to his frustration that the universe seemed to be against him telling the team.

Coran listened intently, nodding and humming in response but never once disrupting Lance’s flow. At one point, he had moved to envelope Lance’s hands in his, and the younger man nearly cried. When was the last time he even got comforted? When was the last time touches were a way to relay a message, something along the lines of I care for you and I want to help you however I can? Sure, he shared casual bumps and claps and nudges with the other Paladins, but never like this, and never as much as he hoped he could get. Ever since Shiro was gone, it all decreased to the point that Lance longed for it.

“Lance…” Coran began softly after Lance had finished talking, squeezing the Paladin’s hands gently, “From what I understand, the ability is solely yours. It’s not something the Neranese gave to you. The only thing they gave you was knowledge over water, and that helped, but this control? This ability to use the elements as you please? It’s your own.”

Lance gave a noncommittal noise, not agreeing yet not disagreeing, either.

Coran sighed. “Should I tell them in your place? It’s best to tell them as quickly as possible, my boy. Maybe this could help.”

Lance shook his head. “I appreciate it, Coran, but I have to tell them myself,” he explained. “I hope tomorrow I’ll be able to do it, but seriously, I need to tell them myself.”

“I wouldn’t mind helping a little,” Coran offered. “I can herd them into the lounge and keep them from running away.”

A small laugh escaped Lance’s lips before he could stop it. “Coran, they’re not sheep.”

Confusion made its way into Coran’s eyes. “Sheep?” he repeated.

“A kind of farm animal humans keep around,” Lance explained vaguely. “Thanks a lot for the offer, Coran, but I’d rather tell them without having to lock them up in a room so they’d stay around and listen to me. I’m sure things will work out, one way or another.”

Coran offered another smile, gave another squeeze, and finally left after he made sure Lance would rest. Apparently, he had checked on him after realizing he hadn’t returned to his quarters to sleep like the rest of the team and was in the training room instead of his more usual spots, like the observation deck.

Lance had grinned as he watched the Altean go. Ah, Coran, the kind, understanding, generally pretty much awesome guy, rivaled only by his ridiculously pure bro Hunk. What did he do to deserve people like them in his life?

Lance had seriously considered telling the team the next morning, he really did. But again, fate seemed to choose that specific time to fuck with his life decisions, for just as he opened his mouth to announce what he could do, Pidge barged into the dining room.

“Pidge? What’s wrong?” Hunk asked in confusion.

Pidge was panting, apparently having ran from wherever she had been bunkering in – she’d been harder and harder to find lately. She repositioned her askew glasses and took a deep breath, announcing urgently, “I know where Shiro is.”

Chaos reigned immediately.

The Galra ship was large, larger than most ships they’d have to fight or infiltrate before. It wasn’t particularly strange, since this ship was one of the prison ships, combined with the Druids’ kind-of-laboratory-but-not-really.

And Shiro was there, no doubt being experimented on by creepy Druids. In fact, Lance wouldn’t be surprised if Haggar herself was the one spearheading the experiment, given how she had declared the Champion as hers. Her little experiment, her best creation, her Champion. Which only emphasized the creepiness of the whole thing, and totally drove home how completely batshit insane and also incredibly, absolutely terrifying she could be. The nope nope factor she exuded from every orifice of her body was enough to drive a whole city running around like headless chickens, in Lance’s opinion.

Before going into the prison, the team had discussed their plan of action and decided that the best way to find out where Shiro was kept was to bang a drone upside the head, drag it into some corner, and had Pidge hack into it to retrieve info. If that plan was a no-go, their plan B was to sneak into the control room, also to retrieve info. With intel successfully gathered, they’d have easier time busting Shiro out, as well as the other prisoners. If that was impossible to do, their plan was to, essentially, let all hell break loose. And by hell, Lance meant prisoners. But that plan was unfavorable because the idea of letting all hell break loose was to have absolute chaos everywhere, and if they couldn’t find Shiro anywhere then chaos wouldn’t have helped them.

But apparently fate didn’t want to just fuck with Lance but all of the Voltron team, because that was exactly what happened. The best part was that they didn’t even have Shiro yet when all hell broke loose.

“What the hell happened?” Keith’s voice crackled through the comm, filled to the brim with confusion and maybe a touch of annoyance.

“Nooo idea,” Hunk sounded helpless, and Lance could feel his trepidation from the Paladin bond shared by the team. “What do we do? The Galra is beginning to shoot things. I don’t want to be shot!”

“From the security footage, it looks like someone decided they’re through being a prisoner and kind of just attacked while being transported to the experimentation wing,” Pidge’s voice sounded calm, but Lance could detect a hint of nervousness and admiration underneath it. “You go, four-armed muscle man of an alien dude.”

“Keith, what do we do?” Hunk asked again, and this time the pushing urgency in his voice spiked higher.

“Uhhh.” As usual, Keith’s initial answer was as eloquent as a fish gasping on land. “Try to direct as many of them as possible to an escape pod and have them go to the Castle? Is that alright, Allura?”

“That is absolutely fine,” Allura answered.

“What about Shiro?” Lance interjected. “Shouldn’t we try to find him?”

“I’ve been trying to hack into the database for a while, so I should find out where – got it!” Pidge yelled in triumph. “I know where he is. I’ll send the data to you guys.”

Immediately, the ship’s blueprint data showed itself in the protective glass of Lance’s helmet. He scanned the blueprint and sucked in a sharp breath. “I’m close to where he is. I should be able to get him.”

“I’m close to him too,” Keith announced. “I’ll go with Lance to make sure we can all get back safely… and just in case Shiro can’t really move around. Pidge and Hunk, try to get the prisoners to the pods.”

“On it,” Pidge answered at the same time as Hunk shouted, “Gotcha.”

“Looks like we’re doing this together, then, Mullet Man,” Lance remarked as he flitted through the throng of prisoners to where Shiro was, absently noting Keith’s position. “How’s the traffic on your end?”

“If you mean the prisoners, it’s kind of bad,” Keith answered. “Lots of people running about aimlessly. Hey, you guys! I’m the Red Paladin of Voltron! I need you to go to the pods and head to the white spaceship you’ll see outside. Go, now!”

Oh yeah, Lance was supposed to tell the prisoners too. He cleared his throat to grab the attention of several prisoners around him and bellowed, “Attention, ladies and gentlemen! Blue Paladin of Voltron speaking. If it’s not too much trouble for you, I need you all to go to the pods and head to the white space castle-ship thing outside. We can help you out.”

“How do we know if we could trust you?” a pink-skinned alien with three eyes and no nose asked warily.

Lance gasped dramatically. “Why, excuse you. Is the cool white and blue armor and the cool looking rifle-bayard not proof enough to you?” At the alien’s glare, he shrugged. “Eh, alright, I know I don’t have much of a proof aside from my words. But I assume people would want to get away from the Druids’ experiments, and I can assure you that we in the castle can help you guys.”

The alien’s gaze on him lingered for a moment before they called out to the rest, “Escape pod, people. Now.”

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Lance grinned cheerily before continuing his trek to Shiro’s cell.

Or. Not a cell. More like the Druid’s experimentation wing, to be completely honest. When Lance walked past the door leading to it, he had to freeze in his steps for a moment, staring at the sight in front of him with awe and dread mixing into one.

The hall was lit with the purplish light that seemed to be a constant theme with all the Galra ships. Tubes about the same size as the healing pods, reaching to the ceiling, lined the walls like pillars in a castle. Each of the tubes was filled to the brim with clear liquid, and some of them had specimens in them – humanoid aliens, weird little things that could probably count as space insects, pieces of gems, reddish in color. Lance gulped as he glanced at them and walked past, unsure if he could rescue the people in the tubes, or even if he should.

The hall as well as the map he was following led him to another room, circular in shape, where another tube stood in the middle. It was bigger than the other tubes lining the wall of the room, and within it was a familiar face. Shiro.

Lance’s breath caught. For a moment, he found himself unable to speak before he found his voice again and announced over the comm, “I found Shiro.”

“I’m on my way. I’ll get there in just a bit,” Keith’s voice carried over from the comm.

“Roger that. He’s inside some kind of weird giant test tube. I’ll look for a way to get him out.”

When the comm link fell silent, Lance pursed his lips and stared at Shiro. The Black Paladin curled into himself like a fetus in the test tube, looking almost like he was peacefully asleep if not for the cables and wires that poked into his skin in various places. The cables and wires extended into the floor and the ceiling, going to who knew where. A frown made its way into Lance’s face as he wondered if those would be hard to get rid of later.

In front of the test tube was a big table full of buttons, switches, and other things Lance wasn’t sure what to call. The table reminded Lance of some kind of sound system control table, or that table in the old Disney movie – Inside Out? Lance didn’t even know. At the very center of the table was a handprint reading machine, not unlike the ones needed to open the doors in the Galra ships, and Lance knew his best chance to get Shiro to safety was to wait until Keith came and had him open the tube for them.

It didn’t take long until Keith came barging into the room, bayard gripped at the ready, staring at Shiro with horror in his eyes. Lance, who had long since deactivated his bayard, immediately waved Keith over. “I saw this fingerprint machine thingy here, so I figured the tube could open up if you put your hand on it.”

Keith shook himself out of his shock and came over to Lance. “I… yeah. Yeah, sorry. Where is it again?”

“There,” Lance pointed at the screen with clawed Galra hand on it.

Keith immediately went over and put his hand on the pad. The hopes that the tube would open up for them was lost when nothing happened.

Keith pursed his lips. “We need Pidge,” he declared, and Lance nodded.

“Hey, Pidge? You there?” Lance asked over the comm link, hoping that the little tech gremlin was available to help them.

“Yeah, what is it?” Pidge’s voice came over immediately.

“We found Shiro, but he’s put in this weird testing tube machine thing, and we can’t do anything to open it up. Can you do it from your end?” Keith’s voice was thick with anxious need to get Shiro. He seemed seconds away from taking his sword to hack up the tube until it broke, but he reined himself back. They didn’t know what was in the tube, what was the liquid that held Shiro afloat. They didn’t know what it would do to them, and what it would do to Shiro.

“I need you to plug into the machine so I can work my magic, and then we’ll see what I can do.”

“Right,” Keith nodded and started looking for a way in. Lance joined immediately, finding a way to plug in, as Pidge put it, the way she did when they infiltrated that hidden Galra base right before Allura was taken.

“Alright, I’m going to need some time on this because it turns out to be a pretty complex system,” Pidge announced, “but I’ll be as quick as I can.”

“That’s all I ask, Pidge,” Keith nodded.

A few ticks passed, and Lance started tapping his foot on the floor to help with the jittery nervousness. As the constant tap-tap-tap became increasingly louder, Keith threw him annoyed look and hissed, “Would you stop that and be silent?”

“I can’t help it, I’m too tense!” Lance hissed back.

“Try not to make too much noise, someone might hear – “

As if on cue, the door to the far left of them whizzed open. They both turned, bayard at the ready and high on alert, and both froze for a moment when they realized who was standing at the door.

It was Haggar. It was the head witch herself.

“This day keeps getting better and better,” Lance muttered to himself.

“Shut up, don’t jinx us all,” Keith hissed once more.

“I see you are here to take my Champion,” Haggar spoke aloud, and the two Paladins tensed up again. “You should know by now that I will not let anyone take what is mine.”

Lance scrunched up his nose. Haggar was like, five percent Altean, five percent magic, ten percent evil, and eighty percent NOPE, and it was moments like this that drove that fact home. Saying Shiro was hers? Just nope.

“Shiro isn’t yours,” Keith denied heatedly at once, and Lance nodded approvingly by his side. Yes, yes, Keith, tell her. You go, man.

“I gave him everything that made him strong. He is as good as mine.” And there was that nope again.

“He’s still going to be strong even without you,” Lance declared. “He’s already strong even without that Galra arm. Stop saying he’s yours, because he’s not. Shiro belongs to no one but himself.”

Haggar gave a bark of laughter that made Lance jolt despite himself. “He is marked. That arm is proof that he belongs to the Galra empire. Nothing you can do to take him will change that fact.”

Keith’s eyes narrowed. “We’ll just have to see about that.”

“I’ve got it!” Pidge’s voice rang in the comm link, and Lance had never felt so much relief at hearing her voice. On cue, the mysterious liquid in the tube Shiro was in started to drain down, and then he was dangling by all the cables that stuck into his skin. Then they, too, one by one in quick succession detached, and all of a sudden Shiro was a crumpled heap at the floor of the tube. With a hiss, the tube opened, and both Keith and Lance were immediately at Shiro’s sides, pulling him out of the offending machinery. They both frowned at the blood that oozed from each and every spot the cables had poked Shiro’s body. Looked like he had to spend more time in the healing pod after this.

“So you would take my Champion after all?” Haggar’s voice rang quietly in the room, and Lance could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand. There was something in Haggar’s voice that hand changed, shifted somehow.

“He wasn’t yours to begin with,” Keith challenged the witch immediately.

“He is mine!” Purple lighting gathered in Haggar’s fingers and struck everywhere as she threw her arms up before slashing them down. The other tubes started cracking and breaking with loud shattering noise, and the liquid inside flooded the room immediately. The aliens inside pulled at the cables before standing upright, eyes glowing ominous Galra yellow, growl hammering in their throats.

“Get me my Champion back,” Haggar hissed, and each and every alien in the room growled in obedience.

Lance looked around to assess the situation. The aliens were at least eight feet tall each, all muscular and all bent to Haggar’s will. He glanced at Keith, and they seemed to have reached the same conclusion. Both shared a quick nod, turned, and dashed away from the room as fast as they could.

The controlled aliens quickly roared and chased. Panic and instinct immediately took over, and both Lance and Keith dashed faster, dragging Shiro as fast as they could away from there. As they ran through the corridor lined by more test tubes, they burst much like the other tubes in the circular room as soon as the Paladins passed them, leaving a mess of flooding clear liquid and pieces of crystalline glass as well as crawling and fidgeting creatures that immediately tried to grab the three of them. Nope, just nope.

Not only that, Lance was acutely aware of how Shiro remained unresponsive even through the general chaos, and he was sure Keith was as well. It added more to the urgency of their situation, and Lance didn’t like that.

“Guys!” a familiar voice called from ahead, and a smile bloomed in Lance’s face.

“Hunk, Pidge!” he called back. “You little pieces of Earthling miracles!”

Hunk took out his bayard and shot, barely even aiming at the aliens chasing Lance, Keith, and Shiro and managing to take out a large number of them. He quickly turned to Shiro, froze for a moment, and clenched his jaws. “Let me carry him,” he offered, deactivating his bayard. “I’m stronger than you, and we both need frontline fighters here.”

Keith let Hunk take Shiro into his gentle hands and activated his own bayard. “Our first priority now would be getting back. Let’s get back to our Lions.”

“It’s this way,” Pidge pointed to a direction.

“I’ll lead and slash away oncoming enemies, so direct me, Pidge,” Keith ordered. “Lance, guard our backs?”

“Do you even need to ask?” Lance asked back, already sending shots after shots to disable the aliens that tried to get to them still, having already set his bayard’s power level to hover somewhere above stun but definitely below kill.

“Uhhh, guys, I think we should do something before we move,” Hunk spoke up, suddenly sounding nervous, “cause I don’t think Shiro’s breathing.”

There was a pause for a split second before the four moved together, Hunk laying Shiro down on the floor and Pidge kneeling by them to offer assistance if needed and Lance and Keith providing cover for them by shooting and slashing at oncoming attacks. Lance stole glances at Hunk and Pidge trying to bring Shiro back, with Hunk pumping Shiro’s chest desperately and Pidge trying to breathe life back into his lungs. So far, the two-person CPR didn’t seem to help much.

Except it did. After a while, Shiro began frowning and coughing, hacking up the same clear liquid to the floor. But then he flopped back, gasping and rasping, eyes fluttering in a daze and looking half dead already. He kept losing blood, and his complexion looked more and more like white tissue paper than actual human skin.

Well, Shiro wasn’t the only one in a bad shape. Both Lance and Keith were starting to feel overwhelmed by all the oncoming aliens. Under Haggar’s control, they moved more like programmed robots that it was easy for the Paladins to disable them, but in their sheer numbers it was too exhausting to plow through everything.

“I will not let you take my Champion.”

Lance groaned aloud and Keith cursed.

“See, you were totally jinxing us back then,” Keith grumbled to Lance.

“Well I apologize profusely, Your Majesty the Mullet Man, but I don’t think this is the time to discuss that,” Lance retorted quickly.

Haggar walked to them, eyes glinting under the shadow of her hood, and Lance was reminded of the horror-thriller movies his younger sister seemed to love so much. He shuddered and aimed, setting his bayard to kill and shot. Haggar easily deflected the shot and narrowed her eyes.

“Give me back my Champion,” she demanded. The aliens in the room stopped attacking, backing away.

“He’s not yours!” Pidge snapped back without missing a beat. “Try to take him yourself!”

Haggar narrowed her eyes even further, and struck the air with more speed than it should be possible. Purple lighting shot up from her fingertips and struck Pidge, who screamed in both pain and surprise as the force pushed her to the side and slammed her to the wall. She coughed and tried to stand, but she was trembling, and even though Lance could see her fire was far from being snuffed he could also see that Haggar’s attack did more damage than they’d like.

“He is going to be the most powerful weapon the Galra Empire has ever seen,” Haggar hissed. “I will not have you steal away what is our property.”

Anger surged through Lance’s veins. How many times had Haggar said that Shiro was a property? A thing to be owned instead of a sentient being, a person, with wants and needs and desires of his own? His gaze flicked to Pidge for a moment, seeing her struggling to stand while clenching her bayard tightly that Lance was sure her fingers had turned white under the gloves. Haggar hurt her, and there was no doubt that she would hurt the rest of them, just like she already did Shiro.

Unforgivable.

“You told me to take him myself, and so I will,” Haggar glared at Pidge, purple electricity crackling to life on her fingertips. “I shall take back what is rightfully mine!”

That did it.

As Haggar lifted her hands, both cloaked in power and ready to strike, the aliens around them roared in unison and rushed forward. Lance opened his mouth, took a deep breath, and screamed.

The now-familiar blue glow enveloped him in an instant. Water materialized into being from out of nowhere, rising in height and rushing into an angry whirlpool, splashing and raining on every Paladin who remained safe in the centerpiece of the flood, safe around the eye of the storm that was Lance. The Blue Paladin was still glowing the same color as his title as he controlled the water to push and bang the aliens to the wall. He retracted the water around them and they fell, already unconscious, to the floor. The water vanished, just like usual.

Lance turned his attention to Haggar, who he still held captive inside a separate portion of swirling water. He glared at her before walking over, reaching out, tapping the surface of the water with his index finger. Ice immediately formed as the water froze, and Lance could see Haggar’s eyes widening within the prison. When it looked like she was trying to do something with her magic to break herself free, Lance willed the ice to spread faster. Not even five ticks later, Haggar was already completely encased in ice, like some sort of caveman preserved in a frozen display. Lance stepped back from her.

“Shiro!”

Lance whipped around and immediately saw his companions crowding Shiro, who was by now lying in his own pool of blood. Coldness that had nothing to do with the ice or his new powers spread through Lance like stubborn winter frost, and he rushed to them.

“What do we do, what do we do, what do we do?” Hunk blabbed in panic. “We need a healing pod now, but there isn’t any around, what do we do?”

“He won’t be able to survive to the ship,” Pidge’s voice was cracked, broken, despairing already.

“Shiro!” was all Keith could say, through the tears that was already streaming down his face. “Shiro! Shiro!”

Lance stared, unmoving, suddenly finding himself unable to breathe. They had tried so hard to get Shiro back, and they still lost him anyway? He stared at Shiro, lying still – too still – on the floor, with blood still oozing from his wounds and breathing too weak that Lance might just be imagining it. Pidge was right, he wouldn’t survive all the way to the ship. Was there really nothing they could do? Was it all just for nothing?

My Paladin…

He jolted in surprise. Blue?

Yes, she answered, and Lance found himself momentarily stunned. He had known that he could communicate with Blue, but never this clear from this far away.

Blue, what can I do? Lance asked hopelessly, deciding to focus on the apparent strengthening of their bond later. Shiro’s… is he gone?

I would not know, came Blue’s answer, but it is true that his light is nothing more but a flicker by now. However, my Paladin… you can change that.

I can? Lance asked, stunned. How?

Water does more than attack, Blue answered. Water heals. Water washes away wounds and closes them. Water embraces and nurtures and nurses. Water strengthens. Heal him, my Paladin. You will know what to do.

Are you saying I’m a healer? Like Katara in The Last Airbender?

I know not of the human entertainment, my Paladin, but yes, essentially.

Lance looked at his hands for a moment and clenched them in determination. As Blue’s voice retreated back to the dark corners of his mind, he let the power of his quintessence bubble up once more, summoning water into his hands. “Step back,” he told his teammates, and they looked up at him in surprise before complying.

Lance took a deep breath. He put his hands on Shiro’s chest while exhaling slowly. The water he had summoned immediately spread and blanketed Shiro’s entire body, leaving only his face dry. It immediately changed color, crystal clear stained with blood red.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Lance closed his eyes and pressed lightly at Shiro’s chest, not wholly sure what to do and letting the power surge up and do its work. The water immediately glowed ethereal blue.

He could hear Keith, Pidge, and Hunk gasp in surprise. He ignored them, instead wondering what to do, when he suddenly felt as though the water was a part of him, like extra limbs he didn’t know he had. He immediately felt through the water, probing Shiro’s wounds, feeling the blood sloshing into the glowing water.

Inhale, exhale. Blue was right. He knew what to do.

He took another deep breath and concentrated, willing the wounds to close. Slowly, the water coaxed Shiro’s body to heal, feeding the energy it needed to survive in a slow but constant stream. Lance could feel Shiro’s wounds closing, slowly, could feel his heart thumping with anxious and desperate will to live, could feel his breath deepening as his lungs struggled to take more air. Shiro’s body worked to heal and live, each organ working in tandem with one another in an orchestra to bring Shiro back to life.

“You’re healing him.” Distantly, Lance could hear Keith speak, but his attention was absorbed in Shiro too much to realize those words were directed at him. Right then, there was only himself, Shiro, and the ocean and the streams and dripping dew for Lance.

And then, a gasp, prompting Lance to open his eyes and stare at Shiro expectantly. Shiro’s eyes fluttered open and he blinked a few times, staring dazedly into Lance’s eyes before he gazed around in the same daze, seemingly unable to understand what was going on and where he was. Then his eyes fluttered closed again and his head lolled to the side, losing consciousness once more.

But that was fine. This was a good kind of unconscious. It was a healing sleep instead of a desperate battle for life. When he realized that, Lance sighed in relief, letting his hold over the water lessen at last. The water immediately sloshed away from Shiro, washing the pool of blood underneath him that somehow was intact, before vanishing into thin air once more. The buzz of energy from fighting and healing hadn’t left Lance’s fingertips, however… maybe because this was the first time he had used his quintessence in such manner?

“Lance… what…?”

Lance turned, suddenly aware that Keith, Pidge, and Hunk were still there, still staring at him in something he couldn’t quite identify. He gulped, wondering how to explain everything, when the small but unmistakable sound of ice slowly chipping and breaking reached his ears.

He turned to check. The ice that encased Haggar was starting to break, slowly but surely, cracks as fine as silk threads slowly spiderwebbing out from the innermost part of the ice. Alarm rose in Lance’s stomach and adrenaline pumped into his bloodstream once more as he jumped to his feet. “No time to explain. Haggar’s breaking out; we need to go now.”

Moving out was far easier than sneaking in, considering that the soldiers and drones they had to avoid when infiltrating were not functional anymore. They still found some stray prisoners that thankfully were not under Haggar’s control and immediately had them follow the Paladins so they could escape the ship. After directing the prisoners to the pods, the Paladins rushed to the Green Lion, which they boarded to infiltrate the ship.

The tension inside the lion was thick. Keith, for the most part, paid more attention to Shiro, but both Pidge and Hunk kept stealing glances at Lance. Lance, however, was too focused on trying to keep Haggar imprisoned from afar, but maintaining the ice from such distance while Haggar was fighting back wasn’t easy. Soon, he could feel the ice prison crumbling away.

“Haggar just broke out,” he announced. “Might be best to get back quickly.”

“On it,” Pidge responded almost automatically. Soon, Green was safely docked in the hangar and the Paladins stumbled out of the lion’s mouth, Hunk and Keith supporting Shiro while Pidge hovered between them and Lance, seemingly unable to decide where exactly she wanted to stand. They were quickly greeted by Coran and Allura, who both rushed to them.

“Paladins! What happened back there?” Allura demanded instantly.

“Get Shiro in the healing pod, please,” Lance muttered instead as he felt his strength ebbing away. Strangely, the energy from controlling water rose instead, buzzing in his ears and filling him up.

“Lance?” Allura called, suddenly sounding wary and a little nervous. “What’s going on with you?”

“Go take care of Shiro first, he still needs the healing pod,” Lance panted desperately. He opened his mouth to say more, but his quitessence spiked suddenly, painfully, and he muffled a groan as it dropped as soon as it came. The contrast surprised him, and his knees buckled in shock. Before he fell flat on the floor, though, Pidge rushed in and caught him, grunting in effort to keep him upright as Hunk and Keith both called out in alarm and Coran and Allura ran to his side.

“Lance, your quintessence level is critical!” Allura nearly screamed in distress. “How does this happen? I couldn’t make sense of anything all of you said while fighting Haggar. Did you master the elemental quintessence already?”

Lance wanted to answer, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it coherently, not like this. He moaned instead and called, “Coran?”

“What is it, Lance?” Coran responded immediately, taking his weight over from Pidge.

“You can tell them if you want to,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. His vision was swimming already, and darkness had begun to ebb from the edges of his vision. Was it supposed to do that?

“Tell us what?” Pidge demanded. “What exactly was that? How was Lance waterbending? What just happened?!”

Lance would have laughed, but he was just too tired to do anything. His eyes fluttered close.

He didn’t hear his teammates crying out for him in distress. Didn’t hear or feel the castle being rocked when the Galran ship began shooting them as Haggar finally regained control. Didn’t feel it when Allura lifted his chin for a moment to check before dashing to the control room to open a wormhole to ensure their safe escape. He was already gone.

When Lance finally came to, it was as he came out of a healing pod and straight into the waiting arms of Shiro’s. He blinked blearily and looked up to meet Shiro’s eyes, confused, before memory caught up with him and a smile bloomed in his face.

“We got you back!” he exclaimed, gesturing to Shiro as the older man chuckled and released him.

Shiro chuckled. “Yeah, I heard it was all thanks to you. So thank you.”

Lance shrugged despite their awkward position. “Eh, it was as much me as it was everyone else. Besides, you’d do the same too.”

“Like hell? You basically saved all our lives!”

Lance blinked and looked around, finally realizing that the others were there too. “Good to see you too, Pidge,” he gave her his patented finger guns. “And also Hunk and Keith and Coran and,” he wiggled a brow, “the princess. Pretty as ever, I see.”

Allura rolled her eyes with a shake of her head, but there was something akin of suppressed smile playing at her lips. “At least we know you’re feeling better now,” she sighed.

Hunk pried him off Shiro and put a blanket around his shoulders before pulling him into a hug. “Right now I don’t even care about the flirting or the jokes. I’m just so so glad you’re back. I’m gonna make you a lot of burritos as soon as we get the ingredients, just you wait.”

“That’s great, buddy, I can’t wait,” Lance grinned as he nuzzled into the embrace. Hunk’s hugs were the best.

“You’ll have to settle for food goo for now though,” Keith said with a shrug.

“But before that!” Pidge shot to him, jumping up and basically dangling on Hunk’s shoulder to meet Lance’s eyes. “What was that on that ship? How did you do all those things? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I, uh,” Lance drew back a little. “Coran didn’t tell you guys?” He glanced at Coran questioningly as Pidge slid off Hunk’s shoulder.

“I decided to let you tell them yourself,” Coran explained. “I did tell about how I found out, but other than that, nothing.”

“Oh yeah, that reminds me,” Keith interjected, “since when were you able to deal with twenty level ten drones all by yourself? I mean, that new power is handy for that, but holy shit, Lance.”

“Wait, those were level ten?” Lance repeated in disbelief.

“You didn’t even realize?!”

“No!”

“Paladins!” Allura’s voice rang above theirs, and they fell silent immediately. When she was satisfied with it, she gave a nod and focused on Lance. “Lance. I’d like to know why you didn’t tell anyone before. This is big news! Elemental quitessence mastering is a proof that you’re maturing as a paladin and that your bond with your Lion is even stronger than before.”

Lance’s face fell. “But… I did try to tell you.”

Allura seemed entirely taken aback. “What?”

“I tried to tell you,” Lance repeated. “I admit my timing was bad, but I did try. During that strategy meeting.” There was a beat of silence. “I should have picked a better time, though. And I should’ve tried to tell you again. I’m sorry.”

Allura frowned, still confused. She opened her mouth to speak and stopped herself suddenly, eyes widening. “Oh. Oh. Quiznak, you were trying to… oh.”

A bitter smile made its way to Lance’s face before he could control himself. “Yeah, that summed it up pretty nicely.” There was a beat of tense silence, and Lance popped it immediately. “I mean, that’s partly on me, since we were all tense for a mission that could potentially require Voltron, and Shiro was still gone, and who am I to just up and yell that I can deal with an entire region of Galra drones? Of course you didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me either.”

“Lance – “ Allura interjected.

Lance didn’t let her. “I know I sounded unreasonable, Princess, and I said it all just out of nowhere. Like you said, you couldn’t let probabilities control the mission. You needed certainty. And I didn’t sound certain back then, so that’s just to be expected that you didn’t believe me.”

“Alright, I see your point,” Keith chimed, “but what about the rest of us?”

“I tried to tell you too,” Lance shrunk deeper into Hunk’s hug. “I think you didn’t realize I was serious.”

Keith frowned, then his face went slack. “Ah.”

“I kind of get it,” Lance mumbled into Hunk’s shirt. “I’m not particularly strong. I’m, like, average in everything. I joke around a lot. I flirt with anything that breathes. So, I kind of see why you didn’t think I was serious. Besides, the alarm sounded right while I was talking, so it just got… brushed off.”

“Wait, how many times in total have you tried to tell us?” Hunk asked seriously.

“Uh, three?” Lance answered reluctantly. “The other time everyone got distracted by your cookies, and I kind of just dropped it too because Hunk, my man, your cookies are awesome.”

The look Hunk gave him clued Lance that it wasn’t okay, none of it was okay. He licked his lips and sighed. “It’s not your fault, guys, not really. My timing sucked.”

“No,” Keith shook his head. “We were wrong not to listen too.”

“Yes, we shouldn’t have treated you like that,” Allura added. “I’m sorry, Lance. We’re sorry. I hope you could forgive us.”

Lance blinked. “Of course I forgive you guys,” he answered without hesitation. “You weren’t exactly wrong, either.”

Allura stared, a stunned look in her eyes, before she broke into a smile. “How could you be so immature at times and suddenly speak like that? You forgive so easily, Lance.”

Lance grinned. “I dunno. It’s part of my charm, I guess.”

“Oh, hey, Lance! Can you do that waterbending thing again?” Pidge spoke up as she jumped to dangle on Hunk’s shoulder again, eyes sparkling. “I want to see how you do it!”

“Yeah, that was a wonder to look at!” Hunk agreed immediately. He shifted so he could support both Lance and Pidge better. “It was all glowey and beautiful.”

“And if we can get how you do it, maybe we can try to do our own brand of bending too,” Pidge added.

“Pidge, buddy, there’s no fancy studying here,” Lance shook his head in mock disappointment. “I can do this because I’m tight with my best girl. You just need to deepen your bond with the Green Lion!”

“Shut up and do it, Lance.”

Lance laughed and complied. The familiar blue light wrapped around his fingers as he felt that tug deep within him. Water appeared immediately, flowing in the air like a long Chinese dragon dancing through the clouds, before shooting up and split into a rain that immediately froze over and fell as soft powdery snow. He glanced around and smiled proudly when he saw the rest of the team staring at the indoor snow in awe. There was a hint of smugness he felt at Keith’s speechless, wonderstruck face.

“Oh, wow,” Shiro breathed. “I was told that it was beautiful, but… wow.” He turned to look directly at Lance. “How exactly did you get this power again? I think Coran mentioned something about you feeling like it was given to you?”

Lance returned his gaze and grinned, feeling warm and accepted for the first time in a long while. It finally felt like things were going to be okay, that everything would go back to normal.

The others stared at him expectantly, waiting for him to talk and tell his tale. His grin widened. He opened his mouth and began to speak.

#fanfic #my fic #vld #voltron legendary defender #voltron #lance mcclain #hunk garrett #keith kogane #pidge gunderson #katie holt #takashi shirogane #allura #coran #long post #this fic got far longer than i expected rip #ao3 #FF.net

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valuecifer · 7 years

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So my erstwhile friend of too-long-to-count Mr. Feel (aka @thefeelofavideogame ) doesn’t want to be known as a “RWBY Guy”, this makes sense, RWBY is a very frustrating goddamn show, in so many damn ways. I'm doing him a favor of listing a bunch of problems with RWBY that he can just reblog for his followers since he doesn't wanna deal with that shit.

Now, SOME CONTEXT: I've watched all of RWBY Seasons Volumes 1-3, I've seen maybe like, two episodes of RWBY Season 4. I know it had been improving but recently took yet -another- nosedive, and have written massive, massive amounts of words on the subject of RWBY's incompetence, so I'm probably going to regurgitate a lot of points here that I've already ranted about to my friends in private to keep the word count from being too apocalyptically long.

I'm also going to be directly comparing RWBY to what it -wants- to be: a shonen-style anime romp, instead of any sort of high literature, just in case people think I'm some pretentious ass and not, y'know, a total nerd myself.

This list is not comprehensive, but is probably a good list of major production/storytelling faults. I'd need to do a whole series on this to talk about all the things wrong with RWBY, but a few major points of discontent, in no particular order:

1. Terrible, Terrible Pacing

Pacing makes or breaks a show for a ton of people, and RWBY's pacing, for a show, is ridiculously awful. I'm gonna be rolling a lot of my issues into this large point, because RWBY has a problem with both set-up AND follow-through on points it tries to present. It does a lot of things wrong with this, in that it tries to blow past a lot of setup just to get to 'the good part', which is the kind of mistake you say fanfiction writers and NaNoWriMo novels make. You have to establish things if you want people to get emotionally invested! You can't just force these four people together into a team, say 'okay, they're a team now', and then not elaborate on how they actually feel about each other at any point! Does anyone know what Team RWBY thinks about each other? Not really, because you get a laundry list of traits, get them referenced once, and then they assume for you to fill in the blanks. It's sloppy and lazy.

Sloppy and lazy describe a lot of the other plot points RWBY puts forward. The show continually tries to introduce a cool new thing without even beginning to resolve the thing they'd already attempted to put forward. This gets really frustrating in the way they put forward the climaxes of the various seasons, because do you want to know how many times the members of the MAIN TEAM are relevant in a given finale?

0. 0 times. Twice they get pre-empted by a Cool New Thing, and the third time is supposed to be the Time They Lose And Everything Goes Wrong, Oh No, except you don't CARE because they've accomplished NOTHING! They're a vehicle for action scenes, nothing more. It's not even a problem of runtime, because the Volume 4 episodes are now the length of your usual anime episode! They just don't know how to effectively use their time.

Part of the problem with this, is...

2. Massive, massive cast bloat

Mr. Feel didn't get far enough in for this to matter, but RWBY has a -huge- issue with introducing new characters for the sake of having new characters. To wit You have basically two teams full of main characters, which is four characters apiece. The cast does eventually slim down, only to add about three more characters for each one they trim off the list. And, as of this writing the cast is all over the fictional world, splitting the focus indefinitely to a point where the narrative is impossible to follow. A bunch of characters are superfluous, such as Neptune, -possibly- Sun, and basically Everyone They Introduce during the Tournament Arc. It gets to the point where they introduce new characters and can't develop the ones they already have, with some... notable exceptions. Nearly all the main characters are about as flat as cardboard when it comes to personality, with viewers expected to fill in the blanks, only to never get any reward for inferring these character traits, because, again, RoosterTeeth is terrible at follow-through on their series.

But I've been talking like the foundations aren't rotten, when they are, due to the fact that-

3. They ignore the basic ideas around what makes shonen fighting good

Okay, so, an unrelated friend once made this metaphor about how Shonen Fights should work, and I've been using it ever since, it's how I tackle so many fights, and why I tend to dislike a lot of the fighting around RWBY.

The best Shonen fights are like puzzles. What I mean by that is that, at any given point, you know what your heroes have access to, and how each part works, and the excitement comes from not only learning what tools the heroes' opponents have at their disposal, but also figuring out how exactly the heroes' tools will come into play. Now, you may be thinking "Shonen break the rules with sudden power-ups all the time", and I posit that, no, they really don't. So long as something is alluded to being in the Hero's toolbox, they can use it, even if this means it's, in narrative context, a 'new' power. The most iconic example I can think of, of that rule playing out, is Goku going Super Saiyan on Namek. It's alluded to a bunch of times that the only thing Freiza is scared shitless of is a Super Saiyan. Vegeta tells Goku he doesn't stand a chance unless he's a Super Saiyan. From that point on, the idea of 'becoming a Super Saiyan' is a tool that's added to Goku's 'toolbox', that he eventually uses against Freiza.

RWBY doesn't play by these rules. Everyone has a boatload of powers at their disposal - Aura, Dust, Semblances, and trick weapons - but none of them feel really well explained or well-distinguished. Dust can be combined in a bunch of different ways! Okay, how? Why do crystals and powdered dust both exist? What causes Semblances to exist or not? How -exactly- does Aura even -work-? Not only that, but then they introduce new powers, like Ruby's 'Silver Eyes', and then refuse to elaborate on them, treating them as exercises for the viewer.

Not only that, but the fights just. Don't feel 'dynamic', there doesn't ever feel like there's a change or a moment where things shake up. To make a videogame-based example, a lot of bosses tend to have 'Phases' in it. These phases are well-defined, because they involve changing the way the players and the boss have to move. RWBY doesn't do that. All the interesting different stuff is just different 'strings' of combos, like in fighting games, which feel downright uninspired when you have to many different ways you can approach fights. Nope, just a varied combo string.

But all that could probably be forgiven if they just...

4. STOP PANDERING FOR GOD'S SAKE

Look, I get it. Everyone hates pandering unless they're the one being pandered to. That's how it's always been, that's how it's likely always going to be. But there's a level of -advanced- pandering that goes on in RWBY that is absolutely cringe-worthy on every level.

There's throwaway characters based off of company in-jokes, the 'combat' technique names are named after fandom's ship names, the inclusion of a character just so a prominent member of their staff could voice a character whose existence is downright superfluous. Making a character more important than they seemed because fan reaction was popular. It goes as far as like.

Okay. I would be perhaps be the last person to talk about queerbaiting, as a straight white dude, and given certain fandoms' overuse of the term, it's been relatively diluted recently, but RWBY's actions of pandering can be straight up queerbaiting, because, as it turns out, people wanted a narrative focused on girl heroes, and what they got was every plot beat being soaked up by dudes as each of the main team is effectively damselled in their own way. And yet they still try to spin it as the 'girls' story'. It's honestly kind of disgusting, and a topic for another post, but the real thing that probably makes me the most mad is...

5. Nobody at Rooster Teeth knows what they're doing with the show, and never have

Don't get me wrong. Monty Oum is an inspiration to me as someone who primarily works in creative space, trying to make creative things. Monty Oum was a creative force that will be sorely missed in this world. But Monty made one singular, huge fuckup which has kneecapped RWBY even worse than the show could ever do to itself.

There's no story bible.

For those of you who don't understand what that is, it's exactly what it says it is. If you don't know what something does, you refer to the story bible. If you don't understand what the plot's beats are supposed to be, you refer to the story bible. Over, and over, and over. Having a singular document to refer to is vital in a whole bunch of different areas. Game Design Docs, Story Bibles, Production Diaries/Bibles, they're all more or less the same concept over different areas.

From what we know of the behind the scenes, there was a lot of stuff Monty had in mind that he just. Didn't tell -anyone- else working on the show. He couldn't have known he would have died so young, but that's exactly why bibles exist. They're there as contingencies, you make them so that, in case you aren't there to work on something that's so completely -you-, people can follow what you had in mind. So many things got dropped, shifted, moved around with Monty's death that the show spent all of Volume 3 trying to recuperate, while gradually trying to salvage the show, but it's clear they didn't know what to do with a lot of pieces, and are just hoping that people are forgetting about them.

This is, quite honestly, inexcusable even for a 'semi-professional' work. You can't keep ideas to yourself. You have to share them, workshop them, write them -down-. That's the only way anyone's ever going to know what you're going with, and a lack of a story bible is as much at fault for why RWBY is so frustrating.

I wanted to like the show, I really, truly, honestly did, but it's made me so mad at every turn that I can't even enjoy when it -tries- to improve, because I know it'll continue to disappoint.

Don't watch RWBY.

#rwby #long post #negative #rooster teeth #i spent literally all night on this

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itsfinancethings · 4 years

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After more than a decade, Martin suddenly quit writing his column. He said goodbye to his readers, editors and colleagues. But he did not name the fear that prompted him to abandon his commentaries—at least not until he left Hong Kong.

“The day [the national security law] passed I just couldn’t write anything. I stared at the screen for hours,” he messaged TIME from onboard his flight out of the semi-autonomous enclave. “I hate self-censorship, so I’d rather call this an end.”

Martin, who asked that his real name not be used because he needs to return in the future, is hardly the only one to fall silent rather than risk tangling with the draconian new restrictions.

In the three and a half weeks since the enactment of the law at the end of June, a sense of fear and uncertainty has taken hold in Hong Kong, where anything seen to provoke hatred against the Chinese government is now punishable with up to life in prison. Some people have redacted their social media posts and erased messaging app histories. Journalists have scrubbed their names from digital archives. Books are being purged from libraries. Shops have dismantled walls of Post-it Notes bearing pro-democracy messages, while activists have resorted to codes to express protest chants suddenly outlawed.

The first arrests came just hours after the law was implemented. On July 1, the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China from Britain, hundreds of protesters were rounded up for unauthorized assembly amid the coronavirus pandemic. Ten, including a 15-year-old girl and a 23-year-old motorcyclist who drove into police, were accused of breaching the new law, mostly by carrying separatist stickers and pro-independence flags.

In at least one respect, the regulations are already proving successful: the sometimes violent demonstrations that flared across the freewheeling Asian financial capital over the past year have largely evaporated. The unrest, which seized university campuses, paralyzed public transportation and brought police and petrol bombs into residential neighborhoods, wrought millions of dollars in damages and plunged Hong Kong into a recession. It also challenged Beijing’s bottom line as the movement morphed into an open challenge of the Chinese Communist Party’s authority, with demonstrators sporting American flags, beseeching foreign governments to intervene and increasingly chanting, “independence, the only way out.” Their fight brought this previously stable financial capital directly into the crux of imploding U.S.-China relations.

To Beijing, the legislation is necessary to secure its sovereignty over the territory. “People in Hong Kong can still criticize the Communist Party of China after the handover,” Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of the Chinese government’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, reportedly said at a press conference earlier this month. “However, you cannot turn these into actions.”

Read more: Hong Kong Is Caught in the Middle of the Great U.S.-China Power Struggle

Some hope the crackdown will only be temporary as Beijing restores stability. But others fear the far-reaching new law marks the arrival of authoritarian control in a city that has long cherished its freedoms and independent judiciary.

“Overnight, Hong Kong has gone from rule of law to rule by fear,” says Lee Cheuk-yan, a veteran activist and former legislator.

Lee chairs the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, which established the world’s only museum dedicated to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest movement in Beijing. Afraid the museum, and its advocacy of an end to one-party rule in China, may fall foul of the new law, the alliance is rushing to raise $200,000 to digitize its archives.

While Lee and his colleagues discussed moving the artifacts abroad, including video footage and items donated by mothers of students killed in the bloody military crackdown, doing so seemed like handing victory to the Chinese government and its attempt to erase the event from collective memory. But keeping the operation running is now a game of dramatically higher stakes.

“Our worry is that the law is so vague about everything and so broadly defined that we don’t know how they will categorize our organization,” Lee says. “Will they strike at us?”

That sense of foreboding hangs over many organizations as they speculate what might make them a target.

Chan Long Hei—Bloomberg/Getty Images Police officers stand guard outside the Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong, set up at the Metropark Hotel, in Hong Kong on July 8, 2020.

‘We should all be making plans’

Drafted in secret, the law only became public as it took effect shortly before midnight on June 30. By morning, boats bearing giant red and yellow banners sailed across Victoria Harbor heralding the new legal regime.

Though the new measure specifically bans subversion, sedition, terrorism and collusion, several lawyers who are experts in Chinese law told TIME the phrasing of these crimes can be interpreted so expansively as to apply to almost any activity or speech. On the mainland, similar charges are routinely wielded to crush even moderate dissent.

“It’s so much worse than anyone expected. It can encompass all the acts we have been doing in the protests over the last year,” says Lee, who is facing multiple charges of unlawful assembly stemming from before the law’s enactment.

The Hong Kong government insists the new law will only affect a small minority of people, and that the city’s free speech is not under threat. But officials also say that the law encompasses popular protest slogans, including “Liberate Hong Kong” and “Hong Kong Independence,” that are now deemed to be inciting others to commit secession or subverting state power.

It remains unclear how far the law’s 66 provisions—which touch on education, media, non-governmental organizations, universities, the internet, social organizations, international organizations, elections and more—will extend.

“Each day the government announces something new about this law,” says Fung Wai-wah, president of the pro-democracy Professional Teachers’ Union. “The red line is still moving.” Stoking concern for academic freedom, schools have been told to review course materials, books and libraries to ensure nothing is in violation. “This censorship is as irrational as it is ambiguous,” Fung adds.

For the first time, Chinese security agents will operate openly in Hong Kong, while the most serious offenders may be extradited for trial in the Communist Party-controlled courts on the mainland. Simon Young, associate dean of the University of Hong Kong’s law school, suspects that if such extradition powers are used “It may well be that we don’t know until after the person has entered the mainland jurisdiction. It’s certainly something that keeps us guessing and in fear.”

The city’s top official, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, denies there is “a wide spread of fears [sic]” among Hongkongers, even as a Chinese government official warned the law is intended to act like “a sharp sword hanging high” over the heads of potential offenders.

“This is not just a new law, it’s really a new order in Hong Kong,” says Fred Rocafort, a former diplomat and legal expert on China at law firm Harris Bricken. He expects “relatively constant applications of the law for even relatively minor acts” as this state of affairs is established.

Read more: ‘Hong Kong Is Freer Than You Think’

Some see a deliberate deterrent effect in the law’s ambiguity.

“The whole purpose is to incept people’s minds so they have to ask the question of whether everything they do is maybe a violation,” says Peter Yam, a film producer currently working on an independent documentary about the Hong Kong protests.

While the subject matter could be considered incendiary in the current political climate, Yam says he and the crew have discussed the law and don’t want to focus on it. “If our films are put under review and censored then there’s nothing we can do,” he says.

Since the law was enacted, Yam has received a stream of messages from friends and colleagues debating whether it’s time to leave the city for good.

“I want to stay until the last moment,” he says. “At the same time, we should all be making plans.”

While Australia, Taiwan and the U.K. are all offering avenues for fleeing Hongkongers, many of the 7.4 million residents of one of the world’s most starkly unequal cities cannot afford an exit strategy. Those who stay will have to navigate what it means to lose some of the liberties that distinguished their home from the mainland.

In 1997, the former British colony was grafted back onto China under a political formula known as “one country, two systems,” designed to preserve its separate legal and political systems within an authoritarian state. The conceit meant Hong Kong was the only place in China where calls for political reform could be full-throated, and the color and vulgarity of anti-government invectives were limited only by imagination. Here, publishers hawking banned books and practitioners of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement could promote literature inaccessible just over the border. Unfettered by censorship, the hard-bitten local press documented any perceived interference by Beijing.

Lam, the city’s leader, said she could guarantee the press would not be targeted by the new law only if all reporters also gave “a 100% guarantee that they will not commit any offenses under this piece of national legislation.”

Rachel Cartland, a former civil servant and long-time guest presenter for Hong Kong’s public broadcaster RTHK, found the government’s statements less than reassuring. She announced she was stepping down from a radio program over the new law, just days after its enactment.

“I put aside this thought of, well, ‘How likely are they to come after me?’ and just looked at it dispassionately,” she says. “People are really going to have to think through: how is this going to affect me?”

‘The cost of politics will be much higher’

The government is expected to “strengthen the management” of foreign nongovernmental organizations and news agencies, according to the law, a condition that has prompted deep concern and expedited corporate relocation plans. On July 14, the New York Times announced it was shifting its Hong Kong-based digital news operation to South Korea, citing visa problems and the city’s “new era under tightened Chinese rule.”

The police force has also been given sweeping new powers to regulate online content and intercept communications. Companies may be compelled to remove content deemed a threat to national security and to handover private user data. In response, tech giants like Facebook and Google announced a pause on data requests from Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, primary elections held by pro-democracy parties mid-July could be considered a violation of the national security law by way of “subverting state power.” (The government alleges that the primaries were potentially subversive because the stated aim of many candidates, if elected, will be to veto the government’s budget and legislation, even though such deadlocking is permitted under the city’s mini-constitution.) Organizers claim that more than 600,000 cast ballots in the two-day vote, with results favoring young democrats who tend to be more confrontational toward the Chinese government. It’s unclear if these candidates, many of whom protested the new law, will face disqualification or other repercussions.

Read more: ‘One Country, Two Systems Is Still the Best Model for Hong Kong But It Badly Needs Reform‘

“The cost of politics will be much higher than before,” says Tanya Chan, a lawmaker and convenor of the pro-democracy camp. Her book was one of several removed from circulation at the public libraries pending a review. The targeting of her travelogue was “puzzling,” she says, though she expects that “sooner or later” this law “will affect almost every aspect of our normal life.”

Some groups have preemptively disbanded. Demosisto, the youth political party founded by prominent activist Joshua Wong, ceased to be on the same day the law was enacted, while other upstart political organizations relocated overseas.

Nathan Law, a co-founder of Demosisto—and frequently vilified in Chinese state media as a conspirator of foreign governments over his lobbying for U.S. sanctions on Hong Kong—went into self-imposed exile in London a day after he testified online to a congressional hearing.

“It has created a chilling effect,” says Law, “and destroyed the Hong Kong that we used to know.”

But for some, exasperated by the violence and disruption of last year’s protests, the law brings welcome tranquility back to Hong Kong’s streets.

Ronny Ng, a 52-year-old IT professional, says he was tired of not being able to go out or get to work as protest after protest transformed his neighborhood into a battlefield. “If you’re not against the government or against China, the new law won’t be a problem,” he says while on a cigarette break outside his office. Those who are, he admits, “should probably leave if they can’t adapt.”

Chan Long Hei—Bloomberg/Getty Images Blank sticky notes are displayed inside a restaurant in Hong Kong on July 8, 2020.

Among businesses in the financial center, reactions have been mixed. After the details were revealed, a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce showed the majority of U.S. companies operating out of the hub were increasingly concerned, especially about the law’s ambiguity. Yet an exodus seems unlikely, with 51% of respondents also expecting it would have either no effect or even a positive effect on their operations, given the suspension of protests.

Still, resistance hasn’t been fully extinguished. Demonstrators have already found cheeky ways to circumvent the law, like using numbers, acronyms and homonyms instead of the words in the outlawed protest chant. The Post-it Note walls have returned, although they no longer carry any messages. Blank paper has become the latest marker of defiance. So too have the opening lines of China’s national anthem: “Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves!”

Ahead of the new law’s implementation, some journalists and academics had predicted the “death” of Hong Kong. But Yam, the film producer, insists this not the end of his beloved city.

“I’ve never seen Hong Kong so vibrant in a way,” he says while on a lunch break during one of the last days of filming. “It turns out we really want freedom.”

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