#this is a whole lot of bullshit that may sound melodramatic

[uhgood-girl]

i have dealt with a lot of grief, already, throughout my not very long life and yet i remain surprised by all of the different shades of it i still find myself experiencing for the first time.

processing the final members leaving today feels like a large, deep bruise i was ignoring but can no longer pretend isn't there, so purple it's almost black.

i wasn't expecting this level of emptiness? how it already feels like a long, dark corridor in a once full house that should give back an answer when you shout and yet only your own voice echoes between the doors.

maybe that sounds melodramatic, i know i don't know these people irl but i know other army get it when i say the amount of comfort bts provide as this steady, background hum in the trudge of daily life cannot be understated. just knowing they're out there, existing, together, maybe making more amazing music, pursuing their own forms of existential happiness is really grounding. it's inspiring. those are my long distance besties, i don't give a parasocial fuck.

so in contrast, knowing they have been fully removed from that individual pursuit, forced into a mandatory conscription to appease a government who they don't personally seem to agree with and who also would happily expend them for it's own gain feels like thorns. like knives. like an unwanted reminder of our helplessness in the knowledge that even the best and brightest of us are not exempt from the bullshit powers that be's whims while they look at all of us like pawns on a chessboard. low value and consumable.

for me right now, it's honestly just boiling down not to the fact that they're gone necessarily, if they were on a vacation of their own choosing, i would happily wait however long, but that they've been forced to leave. you can for sure keep any tirade of "it's an honor to serve, they always planned to do so, blah blah blah" to yourself too because their intrisinc loyalty and integrity does not make the system as a whole less fucked up.

bc mandatory military enlistment is fucked up. the military industrial complex is FUCKED UP. if you are sad today but also not a little bit angry at the system that has gotten us here, and i'm talking look past the blue house, the color you're searching for is white, i hope you can find a little bit of space at some point for some healthy indignation.

tweet. (not me, i just like and agree with it)

it feels better than grief and sure as hell mobilizes better, but per usual, i digress.

the grief is still insistent.

i cried when jimin took off his beanie in that live this morning. he had already said he didn't want to show us and yet the comments were full of people demanding he do so. ultimately the decision was his and i respect what he chose. i also hope he found some comfort in the flood of comments calling him cute and beautiful but it still broke my heart knowing what hair to someone like him (self expressed gender fluid, likely queer), how much of your identity can be wrapped up in it, probably meant. how it probably feels representative of this larger thing he is not eager to do as a whole.

hell, the idea of namjoon having to pick up a gun and point it at a person shaped target, edges not eroded but sharp and distinct, breaks my fucking heart.

i could go on for each of them individually tbh but i don't want to add to anything you may have not already considered, we don't all have to be victims to my imagination here.

i just need the world to not blow up between now and 2025. i'm begging. or even after that, really. what if we lived a few years in precedented times? is that even possible at this stage?

is this our monkey's paw? you get to live at the same time as bts but you're also gonna experience the (deserved, burn it down) collapse of the colonial empire? good luck!

i don't even know how to end this, i just needed to get some of it out. my biggest comfort in all of this right now is knowing there are people taking this just as well as i am at least. and by well i mean not very well at all, obviously lol. misery does love company, it's true. but i think because much like seokjin's views on embarrassment, it's easier to bear when shared.

and yet, please just step over my sad, fetal position body till i can get it together. i'm gonna need a moment, or ten. go on, i'll catch up.

#bts #sad on main #in this essay i #bangtan sonyeondan #this is a mess read at your own risk #jimin #namjoon #taehyung #hoseok #jungkook #yoongi #seokjin #hey what if you just gave them all back #wouldn't that be cool #bts enlistment

[cynthiaandsamus]

Thoughts on DBS: Super Heroes

I liked it, probably put it on par with Resurrection F, which I liked more than most people so that’s not bad. It feels like a joke movie in a weird way, like there’s serious bits but at the same time nothing’s taken super seriously except the final action bits.

I actually ended up seeing the subbed version on accident, I don’t mind either way but I think the one I had set up was the sub so I may have missed a few minor details while trying to read the dialogue and see the action. The art style was a bit distracting but it looked pretty good all things considered, I noticed the fights were using a lot of wrestling/grappling moves, I don’t know if those are easier with the new style or if someone in development was just a big fan but dramatic wrestling moves combined with the Super Hero themes of the villains kind of made the whole thing seem kind of melodramatic and silly which like I said it’s clearly what it was going for so it’s not bad just noteworthy. The movie seems to be aware of how contrived it is since Piccolo himself wants to put on a show for Gohan to get him to get serious and help fight these new Androids, him getting Pan to act the part of a damsel was kind of cute but after Broly this is the second time we’ve manipulated a situation to purposely milk out a transformation and I feel like the characters may be getting too meta about how their narrative works XD.

I like Dr. Hedo and his silly superhero gimmick and how he’s basically “I want to be a good guy but I’m way too lazy to do research on how sketchy this guy hiring me to build death warriors is” like it’s kind of a funny way to not make him an idiot or a scumbag, just a well-intentioned guy that’s not necessarily picky enough about where he gets his paycheck. I also REALLY like the idea that the bad guys think Bulma is this Mafia Don head of an alien organization and they think she’s the final boss in all this because of all the weird shit that seems centered around Capsule Corporation, it’s nice to see how the world thinks of all the shit the Z-Fighters do in general. Gamma #1 is kind of bland and straight-laced because all the focus goes to Gamma #2 since he’s the one that gets character development and a full fight, like #1 gets a little skrimish with Gohan and that’s all he does the whole movie except feel sad when #2 dies. Still I like that #1 gets to survive and be part of the world and maybe his brother’s death will develop his character for stuff in the future (also they call them both Androids which is to say they’re probably Cyborgs like 17 and 18 but are they human or what? They look completely mechanical even with mettalic sounds when they’re hit or do some hitting so maybe they ARE actually Androids after all these years? I mean #2 does melt away into ash which doesn’t seem like something an organic would do) Also Hedo and Magenta’s little mini-fight showing off their normal-level cyborg enhancements was pretty funny.

The Goku/Vegeta Interlude is kind of out of place to fill up time but it’s nice to flesh out what they’re up to while all this is going on and development since the Broly movie, almost feels like they thought they couldn’t get away with a DBS movie without Goku and Vegeta in it for at least a couple minutes. Still Beerus being a Cheelai simp is pretty cute (my god that’s a weird love triangle, a thief chick, her oblivious space puppy himbo and the ultimate god of destruction) and really honestly who doesn’t love Cheelai, and seeing Broly’s group come to hang with Beerus is neat but makes me wonder why they dumped them on that random planet at the end of Broly if they were just gonna bring them straight to Beerus anyway. Also Bulma’s butt is good, think I heard a small cheer in the theater when we got to the scene with her sticking it out. Speaking of which I kind of like the idea of Bulma gathering all the dragonballs as soon as they become active and wishing for random bullshit to keep them inert as much as possible to keep people from wishing for Frieza to be revived or giant space trees or young namekian emperors or some shit, like it’s treated as a joke but it’s actually pretty smart to make sure the villains aren’t grabbing them up all the time, though if Super ever does decided to adapt the Dark Dragons arc you can bet Bulma is behind like 90% of the negative energy the dragon balls accumulate which I think would be funny, like have one of the Dark Dragons just be the epitome of all of Bulma’s bullshit superficial wishes and basically be Superpowered Evil Bulma.

Hulkbuster Piccolo is a cool transformation and all but it fucking comes out of nowhere, like Piccolo asks Shenron to untap his power and the dragon’s like “Oh new transformation? Sure!” and Piccolo just kinda unlocks it out of nowhere, feel like a lot of DBS doesn’t really have a handle on how to make a transformation engaging and just tosses them out as plot developments. We also get Teen Goten and Trunks but they specifically avoid showing us real Gotenks despite teasing it twice and we get Fat Gotenks who for some reason still acts and looks like a twelve year old.

Gohan’s Beast Transformation was at least kind of led up to but probably could’ve been dwelt on a little more like have Gohan thinking about how Piccolo kept telling him to be ready for danger and he wasn’t and that guilt triggers the Beast, like milk the emotion a little more than him just seeing Piccolo get beat up pretty bad and replaying his Super Saiyan 2 transformation with a new coat of paint. Cell Max looked really freaking cool like Semi-Perfect Cell always looked like an awkward middle stage pokemon but they really did make him an awesome beastly looking thing and the sheer size of him made for a cool Kaiju battle with Piccolo. When they mentioned his weakness was in his head I kind of groaned because it’s another of those ‘we made the bad guy too strong so here’s a video game weakspot’ deals that crops up every now and then but I really don’t mind it too much here because Cell Max seems to lack the intelligence to use regeneration when his arm was ripped off and Gohan blew his whole head off so he probably would’ve been done anyway. Gohan using the Special Beam Cannon was ridiculously hype like think that’s the first time since Raditz that technique’s actually killed anyone and it was really cool to see it in such a large scale.

Like it’s such a weird feeling that this movie knows it’s running with the B-Team but tries to keep the stakes interesting regardless and for the most part through a combination of decent comedy and character development I’d say it succeeds, they try to pull the “Even if Goku and Vegeta were here we might’ve lost” which is probably bullshit but it’s cool to see them giving a shot to some neglected characters, this’d be like if they made a Naruto Movie where Rock Lee opens the Ninth Chakra Gate and becomes a demon and honestly I’d have loved that. Also the post-credits scene has Vegeta finally beat Goku in their sparring match which is a nice little fanservice bit, like I don’t think it counts because they didn’t use transformations or anything but it’s nice for him to get that bit of closure after all this time.

Anyway yeah, probably my 3rd-4th favorite movie I think?

#ooc #Dragon Ball Super #Dragon Ball Super Super Heroes #spoilers

[angelicamerlinbarnes]

A detailed list of shit the Marauders reveal when they down Veritaserum-spiked drinks (yes, it is all Sirius’ fault)

Sirius 1. The true horrors his family have inflicted on him

RESULT: James and Remus get so angry they turn slightly murderous, Mcgonogall and Dumbledore are informed, Mcgonogall adopts Sirius and Regulus for the time being while James arranges things with his parents (from then on, “Minnie” sounds more like “Mom”, so Mcgonogall lets him call her that. Even in class).

2. His love for Remus

RESULT: Nothing. He and Remus have been together since they were thirteen. There’s just a lot of blushing and giggling and things that James would rather have never seen.

3. How much he cares about Regulus

RESULT: Regulus starts to sit with the Marauders at lunch. Sirius will randomly grab his hand while they’re walking around. There’s a lot more affection and sweetness between the two of them now.

4. How much he fucking adores James (“I think you’re my soulmate, Jamie, you know that? Not like the lovey-dovey romancey kind, because yuck and also Remus Lupin exists, Jamie, and have you seen him, but Jamie, I - fuck, I just love you so much -” and James just blushes and beams super wide)

RESULT: James and Sirius start to refer to each other as “soulmate” as well as “best friend” and “brother”, including to casual strangers. To assure Remus of how much he loves him though, Sirius makes sure to call Remus “the love of my life” and “my only one” and “the moon to my stars” and “Moony, my love” and other mushy-gushy bullshit we don’t have time for right now.

5. How he thinks he’s a terrible person in every sense of the word

RESULT: Remus, James, and Peter start to make a list of everything they love about him in a notebook. Every time someone, anyone, says something they like about Sirius, the Marauders force them to write it down and sign their name. When the notebook is full, they wrap it up and give it to him for Christmas. He’s already on the verge of tears, and then they show him the new one they got a week ago that’s already half full, and he starts bawling so hard he can’t breathe.

Remus

1. All of his anger at the world

RESULT: Severus may or may not have started an impromptu class strike with every Hogwarts student who wasn’t a Death Eater in support of werewolf rights. James and Sirius may or may not have barricaded the school from the Ministry officials who came to shut it down. Peter, Lily, and Regulus may or may not have collected petitions from wizards and witches all over the world in support of werewolf rights. And the Ministry definitely changed the laws.

2. Just how much he loves Sirius even if he’s constantly afraid to show it

RESULT: Sirius and Remus eloped in sixth year without telling anyone. When James finds out he loses his shit at not being there to be their best man. Sirius starts responding to all of the people who ask him out with “Sorry, I’m a married man” and signs all of his school assignments Sirius Lupin. It drives Mcgonogall nuts. Remus sneaks out for months to arrange them a makeshift wedding on the grounds. This involves decorating trees and making them all flowercrowns and creating veils and dresses for both of them. Sirius cries when he sees it. They get married at midnight, with Severus officiating and James and Regulus standing as Sirius’ groomspeople and Lily and Peter as Remus’. Dumbledore and Mcgonogall are their witnesses. It’s gay and it’s beautiful.

3. How much he hates himself

RESULT: They all work on complimenting him more. Though they assure him they love his scars and his body exactly as they are, Sirius and Lily offer to teach Remus how to do makeup to cover them up. Peter learns how to keep his hands steady so he can paint Remus’ nails because he knows it makes him feel beautiful. Regulus learns the best Muggle clothing shops from Amir and James smuggles Remus out to shop there and buys him whatever he wants. Severus keeps creating spells and potions and researching old texts until he finds a way to cure lycanthropy.

4. How he’s sort of casually suicidal because he just keeps asking himself what there is to live for

RESULT: They clear their dorm of anything he can hurt himself with. They’re extra protective leading up to, during, and following the full moon. And  they remind him every day that they love him. Every day.

5. How ugly he thinks he is and how beautiful he thinks Sirius is

RESULT: This is really up to Sirius to fix. It’s a lot of kissing Remus’ scars and casually referring to him as beautiful (“How are you today, beautiful?”). And Sirius makes Remus mixtapes. Hundreds of songs reminding him how beautiful he is in Sirius’ eyes. It doesn’t work. Remus still doesn’t think he’s beautiful. But he knows Sirius thinks he is, and for now, that is going to have to be enough.

6. How he doesn’t think he deserves to be a Marauder or have Sirius’ love

RESULT: They try to include him more. They make sure to tell him how brilliant his plans and ideas are. They know that when it comes to his self-esteem, there’s not much they can do. But they try. They try so, so hard.

7. His gigantic inferiority complex

RESULT: You’d think it would be something sweet, but they just yell at him any time he makes a self-deprecating comment. Sometimes Sirius angry-kisses him. Somehow this works. (They also force him to have tea therapy with Mcgonogall.)

James

1. How guilty he feels for not having to go through all the shit his friends do

RESULT: Well, for awhile they try to stop telling him about their problems, but that only makes it worse. So they settle for buying him thank you presents, except they’re all things that only the giver likes. He asks what the fuck he’s supposed to do with that Queen record Sirius wanted, sixteen bars of Remus’ favorite chocolate, and that glittery hair bow Peter wanted. They smile and tell him that they know helping them makes him feel better and that his wealth makes him feel like shit, so they’ve resolved to drain his pockets by buying gifts for themselves. James laughs so hard he can’t breathe as they all tackle him onto his bed and cuddle him for hours. (They buy him real thank you presents too. Just, y’know, all with James’ own money.)

2. His hurt feelings at Lily’s constant rejections

RESULT: Lily blurts that she hates how he flirts with her but she doesn’t hate him, she actually quite loves him really, and James’ eyes go squinty with hurt and then widen with stars and they just kind of stare at each other and blush in stunned silence until Severus blurts, “Just kiss already, why don’t you?” And they both whip towards him and he turns crimson. (This is where Sirius starts laughing.)

3. How he actually thinks Lily and Severus are really good for each other

RESULT: In response to Severus’ remark, James confesses to having not made an actual move because he truly believes that Lily and Severus are better for each other than he could be for either of them. Lily smiles slightly and Severus’ mouth drops open as he gasps, “Either of us?” James’ face burns. (This is where Remus loses it.)

4. How he doesn’t actually hate Severus, he just hates how much he wants to kiss his stupid perfect mouth

RESULT: James then fucks up further by spilling out his guts about how much he wants to kiss Severus. Severus’ eyes get so wide they worry they might pop out of his head. He reaches out and tugs James by the tie into a filthy kiss. Lily squeaks. James faints. Severus panics. (This is where Peter collapses on the floor next to Sirius and Remus in uncontrollable laughter.)

5. How he misses pranking but feels like he’s more hated for it than he is revered

RESULT: Sirius, Remus, and Peter help him come up with pranks that are fun but don’t hurt or inconvenience people too much. Severus helps add safeguards, Regulus finds targets for them, and Lily encourages them and tells James over and over that she enjoys a good bit of fun.

Lily: It should involve glitter.

James: That doesn’t even make sense -

Sirius: Shut the fuck up James, we’re using glitter.

6. How much he wants to be a good person but feels like his friends are so much better than him

RESULT: They tell him what a good friend he is as often as they can. They try to remind him of all the things he does for them and how they’d be nothing without him. He doesn’t quite believe it, but it’s still nice.

7. How he feels like he’s not doing enough to help the people around him

RESULT: They make written lists of the things he’s done for them and tape them to the bathroom mirror. (Like any melodramatic teenager, James’ breakdowns take place while gripping the sink and staring in the mirror while questioning your every life decision.) They sometimes lock him in there until he reads the whole list out loud. (When they let him out Sirius hugs him so hard he struggles to move or breathe.)

8. How he’s pretty sure he’s gonna die before all of them and he’s way more okay with that than he should be

RESULT: Remus forces him to learn even more defense spells outside of class. Sirius and Regulus teach him hand-to-hand combat. Lily and Severus make it their priority to give James reasons to enjoy life. And Peter is the one tasked with noticing when James’ mood dips and swings.

9. His repression of his bisexuality

RESULT: Remus forces him to talk for ten minutes a day about being bisexual. Sirius makes them all I LOVE MY BISEXUAL BROTHER shirts that they wear every weekend (James’ says I’M THE BISEXUAL BROTHER. Severus and Lily’s say I LOVE MY BISEXUAL BOYFRIEND. James has a matching one that says I’M THE BISEXUAL BOYFRIEND. Those get made after James is way more comfortable with who he is.) Peter will nudge James’ side every time a boy he thinks is cute walks by, and James learns to do the same in return. They tease him and love him and Sirius kisses his cheek all the time, and life is good.

10. How the happiest day of his life was when all four of the Marauders wore skirts and he felt so comfortable in his own skin and so happy and so ashamed

RESULT: Sirius starts wearing skirts to class every day. Remus wears summer dresses. Peter wears tutus. James is still hesitant, but then Severus shows up at breakfast in a soft skirt and smiles as he kisses James’ cheek and James runs upstairs and changes before his first class. Regulus tells him, “You look beautiful, Jamie,” and James throws his arms around his neck and holds on tight even as Regulus huffs in fake annoyance.

Severus

1. How he internalizes every insult the Marauders throw at him

RESULT: They stop insulting him. And apologize for every single one they’ve ever thrown his way. (And Severus is treated to the first of many hugs from Sirius and Remus - they’re the best huggers in all of the Marauders.)

2. How he used to be proud of being a Slytherin but because of them now hates himself for it

RESULT: James, Regulus, and Sirius arrange a House Pride day. It encourages interHouse mingling and everyone is decked out in their House colors. A lot of friends are made, and plenty of long-lasting relationships too. Dumbledore thinks it’s such a great idea that he makes it an annual tradition.

3. How terrified he is of the impending war

RESULT: There’s not much that can be done. But they start having family movie nights to distract themselves. Cuddle piles are common and welcome.

4. How jealous he is of Sirius and Regulus for having somewhere to go when their home life is too unbearable

RESULT: Naturally, James adopts him immediately. And Sirius and Regulus do their damndest to be his brothers. The nightmares are still there, but the causes for them are not. (Also, Severus, Sirius, and Regulus get the help of Mcgonogall and Dumbledore to create a safe haven for the kids of abusive pureblood families. It takes awhile for the secrets to come out and the pride to fall, but eventually this place is home to Narcissa, Andromeda, Lucius, Bellatrix, and quite a few others. To all of their surprise, there are multiple kids from every House in the haven (dubbed “Love Haven” as a parody of the pureist institutions called “Blood Havens”). It doesn’t excuse their behavior, but it gives them reasons to change for the better.)

5. How much he hates James for stealing his only friend and how much he hates himself for losing her and how much he loves, loves, loves James Potter despite all his efforts not to

RESULT: A lot of long, drawn out, uncomfortable conversations between James, Lily, and Severus. Even after they’re together, their insecurities get in the way. Luckily, the good times make up for the bad ones.

6. How he’s known Remus’ secret since first year and never once thought to tell

RESULT: Sirius loves him. Like, really loves him. Severus is treated to so many Sirius hugs he starts to forget what it was like before they started hugging. And Remus and Severus build themselves an unlikely friendship, one that mostly involves them sitting next to each other while reading and occasionally leaning their heads on each other’s shoulders. And Severus becomes one of the people Remus Lupin reaches for when werewolves are brought up in class. He finds, surprisingly, that holding Remus Lupin’s hand is something he just never quite wants to stop doing.

7. How the Slytherins the Marauders think are his “cronies” are actually his bullies that follow him around everywhere

RESULT: When Severus goes to class the next day, the cronies don’t look at him. They don’t speak to him. They don’t touch him. Severus asks all of the Marauders in increasingly urgent tones what they did, but they won’t say. In the end, all Severus knows is that he will never be mistreated again. Not while they’re alive.

8. How much he cares about Regulus

RESULT: Regulus will slip his hand into Severus’ a lot. They refer to each other as brothers to total strangers. In a group of Gryffindors, it’s nice to have a fellow Slytherin around to talk to. As much as they love their friends, there are just some things those headstrong Gryffindors will never understand.

9. How he feels like a freak for his asexuality

RESULT: Dumbledore opens a sex ed class at Hogwarts. (As part of his punishment for, ya know, the genocide, Grindelwald is forced to teach it. He and Dumbledore make eyes at each other the whole time, which makes Sirius and James gag and Remus and Peter laugh.) The class explores sexuality, including asexuality, and there are open discussions. Dumbledore authorizes an annual Pride at Severus and Remus’ request. There’s a lot of cake and glitter and hugs. The world is all the better for it, and they are all the happier for it.

Lily

1. How guilty she feels for loving James when she promised Severus she would only ever love him

RESULT: More awkward conversations for the three of them. And a lot of kisses, hand holding, hugs, and other assorted variations of affection between Lily and Severus.

2. How wholly and purely she loves Severus, no matter what James or anyone else says or thinks

RESULT: They apologize to Lily as well as Severus for all their remarks against him. James touches Lily’s shoulder and tells her she couldn’t have picked a better person to love, not even him, and she smiles. And James creates an organization to combat anti-Slytherin bias, which includes a lot of talking to first years and helping them be proud of who they are. Lily is at every meeting, holding tightly to Severus’ hand as she breathes in deep and blinks back happy tears. And whenever James catches her eyes, she smiles. Wide and big.

3. How she feels when James flirts with her like she’s a prize to be won rather than a human

RESULT: James apologizes. A lot. Like, more than is honestly necessary. But he also tries to amend his ways. He treats her like a person from then on; he treats the people she loves like people. He’s careful not to touch her unless she asks for it or invites him to. And she learns to trust him, that he doesn’t always mean the shitty things he says. The day she first kisses him is the day she finds out he’s asked every single girl in their year how to respectfully flirt with someone, respect boundaries, and remain unthreatening in a conversation.

4. How much she struggles with being a witch because of what her family and classmates think of her

RESULT: The Marauders work to better their classmates and professors’ minds by speaking out against pureist slurs and encouraging her to stand up for herself. And her last summer before graduating, they all travel home with her to her family and give them a talking to. (It doesn’t quite work, but, well. She has a new family now. One she chose. One she likes much, much better than her old one.)

5. How she’s never really felt like much of a girl (FTM Lily)

RESULT: Regulus helps Lily, since he’s trans, with ways to battle dysphoria and feel better about his appearance. James, Sirius, and Remus help correct people when they use the wrong pronouns, and encourage Lily by calling him “dude” and “bro” and whatever other masculine nicknames they can come up with. Peter talks to Dumbledore and Mcgonogall about all of the needed steps that should be taken to ensure Lily’s safety and comfort, and Severus buys him too many clothes and tells him he’s beautiful and helps him search for names until Lily decides he wants to keep his original one. And they all tell him how proud they are of him every day. (They also buy him a trans flag, along with every other pride flag needed for their group, and a couple hundred mini ones for every other queer student. Lily leads the school’s GSA, though it was founded by Remus and Sirius. And James smuggles them all out to Muggle Pride.)

Peter

1. How left out he feels all the time

RESULT: James, Sirius, and Remus are sure to include him in their antics. They ask him his opinion on things and let him make the plans some days. And they hug him more. There are lots and lots of group hugs.

2. How he constantly wonders if they would notice or care if he disappeared

RESULT: The seven of them start to play Hide and Seek every week around the castle. And they don’t stop until they find everyone, including Peter. It’s stupid, but it proves to Peter that even in the context of a children’s game he’s important. (He feels even better when he’s found first.)

3. How he doesn’t think they would go to the same lengths for him as they would for each other

RESULT: They hope they never end up in a situation where they have to prove this to him, but. In the meantime, they tell him how much they love and appreciate him. They do what they can for him. And they try to make things more equal between the four of them, even if that just means splitting a chocolate bar into equal pieces.

4. How he thinks he might be bi but he also thinks it doesn’t matter because nobody will ever love him, right?

RESULT: Remus actually throws a fit at this. He shouts for nearly twenty minutes about how if a werewolf like him can be loved, and he is, he knows he is, then Peter can be loved. Sirius then starts shouting at Remus, because he hates when Remus refers to himself as less than human. Their fight eventually devolves into a very fierce makeout session, at which James rolls his eyes and envelopes Peter in a hug, telling him that they love him no matter what and one day someone else is going to too. Then he grins and takes Peter’s hand, pulling him out of the dorm (as Sirius and Remus collapse on a bed that is probably not either of theirs) and down the halls to the Great Hall, where their other three friends are waiting with grins. A Hufflepuff punk looks up at Peter and smiles, and Peter’s heart lights itself on fire.

5. How much he actually cares about that nonbinary Hufflepuff Maxwell

RESULT: A nonbinary Hufflepuff named Maxwell Needles, a transfer student from Beauxbatons, is the object of Peter’s affections. The other Marauders tease Peter endlessly for his crush on the Hufflepuff, but also encourage him, and Remus and Sirius do recon work to see if Max will make a worthy Marauder, should they like Peter back. After watching them undo an entire Potions lesson in plain sight and not get caught, they decide that yes, Max is good enough for Peter. Eventually Peter works up the courage to ask Max out, and they grin at him and pull him in for a quick kiss by the tie, whispering their assent against his lips before pulling back and fluttering away, though they leave a trail of magical butterflies in their wake that follow Peter around the whole rest of the day. (Peter and Max have conversations while Max carries Peter around piggyback style.)

6. How stupid he feels compared to all of them

RESULT: They help him study, but are sure to compliment him every time he does something well. And they assure him he’s not stupid - he’s just smart in other areas. Besides, Remus notes dryly, a person as intelligent as Maxwell Needles would never love him if he weren’t at least interesting.

7. How sometimes he’s thought about joining You-Know-Who because at least then maybe they would finally see him as something other than their tag-along laughing stock

RESULT: They assure him of his worth, and they make him promise to tell them every time he thinks about giving in to the Dark. They know there’s very little they can do if he chooses to become a Death Eater, so they do all they can before it’s too late. (And they all live to be grey and old, so it must have worked.)

Regulus

1. How much he looks up to Sirius

RESULT: Sirius bursts into tears and pulls Regulus into his arms. They hold each other and whisper in each other’s ears with their eyes closed as they sway until finally Sirius pulls away and cups Regulus’ face in his hands, smiling through the tears and kissing his forehead hard before whispering, “I love you.” Regulus smiles and returns the sentiment. The two are inseparable afterwards. They hold hands a lot, their fingers woven together during classes, and so it’s no surprise when less than a week after Sirius Black becomes Sirius Lupin, Regulus Black becomes Regulus Lupin.

2. How he thought he was going to die when Sirius left him at Grimmauld Place

RESULT: Sirius tears up and pulls him close, cradling his crying baby brother against his chest as he whispers, “Come home with me. I’m sorry. Come home with me. I’ll never let them hurt you again. I’ll never let anyone hurt you ever again.”

3. How much he genuinely adores Remus

RESULT: Remus gives Regulus his last name without hesitation. He takes on a motherly role towards Regulus, often holding his hand and kissing his forehead. Regulus takes to occasionally calling him “Mum”, which Remus doesn’t mind in the slightest. When Regulus becomes an Animagus, his cat will sit on Remus’ lap for hours, letting him brush his fingers through his fur without pause as he sleeps. Regulus introduces Remus to strangers not as his brother-in-law, but simply as his brother, and Remus loves him. (And Sirius adores how close his brother and husband are. He’s not sure what he’d do if they didn’t love each other.)

4. The existence of Amir and Regulus’ shame for loving him

RESULT: The Marauders visit Amir (a Muggle librarian) with Regulus to assess whether he’s a good person (he is). They create an organization at Hogwarts that helps Muggleborn and half-blood kids, as well as anyone else who wishes to join, with Muggle-magic relationships. They, but especially Lily and Regulus, work hard to better Muggle-magic relations long after graduating Hogwarts.

5. Being born a girl and being a boy but also just a person (he/they)

RESULT: They take care with his pronouns. Sirius screams at their parents (and willing takes the Cruciatus Curse) any time they call Regulus “Regina” or their “daughter” or “she” or “her”. Similarly, James is fiercely protective of him at school, helping him stand up for himself when people get it wrong. And Remus, sweet sweet Remus, helps him dress in whichever way makes him most comfortable and brushes his hair while humming lullabies.

6. Thinking Sirius looks beautiful in a skirt

RESULT: Sirius starts crying, but they’re happy tears. And he smiles for days afterwards. So any time Sirius wears a skirt, Regulus goes out of his way to tell him how beautiful he looks. (Both brothers know how much the other struggles with the whole concept of loving yourself, but Regulus knows that Sirius often struggles with it more than he does.)

7. Being happiest when he’s hanging out with the Marauders and James throws an arm around his shoulders

RESULT: Regulus grows to be incredibly close to James. While at first he worries about intruding on James and Sirius’ friendship or James’ hospitality when he comes to live with them, his worries are soon forgotten when James starts treating him like another brother. James has a casual affection with him that Regulus loves, like when he’ll throw an arm around his shoulders or take his hand or kiss his cheek. After growing up in such an abusive family, physical affection is everything to Regulus (and Sirius, though he never says it).

8. How much he likes Severus and holding his hand and just simply being his friend

RESULT: Severus holds his hand like all the time. They’re each other’s best friend, and they aren’t ashamed to admit it. They even go to some of the school dances together, sitting criss-cross on the floor in the corner and playing Muggle hand games that Lily and Remus taught them.

9. How much he admires Sirius just for being who he is without shame

RESULT: Sirius tries to help him out of his shell. They go out shopping together and Sirius encourages him to buy whatever he wants. James buys him skirts for Christmas, Remus does his hair up when he wants it, Peter paints his nails, Lily gives him her approving nod, and Severus smiles and tells him he looks beautiful. (And in private, Sirius lets Regulus in on the little secret that he’s never been unashamed. He’s just better at hiding it.)

10. How much he wants to be like Lily, a boy who nobody questions is a boy

RESULT: Lily is extra helpful in helping him assert himself. He teaches Regulus some techniques he knows to look more masculine, and they talk about their dysphoria together. And Lily tells Severus, Sirius, and Remus that Regulus struggling, so they’re sure to call him handsome every day. And James, of course, is as sweet as ever, kissing his cheek and referring to him as “your highness” and “your majesty”. (James calls Severus “my prince” as a joke because of the whole Half-Blood Prince thing, and it makes Severus blush and cover his face with his hands every time.)

#wolfstar #james x lily x severus #marauders #friendship #veritaserum #i think i'm funny #i am usually wrong #original characters #communication guys come on #there are seven marauders and you cannot change my mind #angst #fluff #my crack ass brain and its useless shit #please dear merlin just let them all be happy #or at least not dead #yes i know i'm asking for too much shut up #have a nice day y'all #trans boy lily evans

[kurt-nightcrawler]

Homecoming

Warren Worthington III x Male Reader

You like Warren. You want to ask him to homecoming. He might be straight...

Warnings: language, that’s about it

Word Count: 2.2k

“Do you think this is all too much? What if he gets mad and says no?”

“Why would Warren get mad about you asking him to homecoming?” Jubilee asked, throwing groceries in the shopping cart.

“I mean the whole like, proposal thing… It’s a bit much… We’re not even a thing…”

Jubilee rolled her eyes and lazily pushed the cart forward. “We need baby carrots, regular carrots, kale, broccoli, and peppers.” You grabbed everything she listed off and set them in the cart. “Didn’t you guys kiss one time?”

“Yeah, at a bonfire party during a game of spin the bottle.”

“Did he protest about having to kiss you?”

“No.”

“Did he seem into it?”

“I don’t know. Everyone was watching us, plus it lasted for like, three seconds.”

She shrugged, “You should ask him to homecoming. He’s probably into you.”

“He’s probably not. It’s like straight girls… Super close and touchy and complimenting each other to the point where you can’t even figure out if they like girls or not.”

Jubilee squinted her eyes, “Has he done any of that?”

“No, but we kissed so…”

“God, you are a lost cause.”

You jokingly scoffed, “Says you! Ms. Lonesome Lesbian!”

Jubilee hit your arm. “Don’t call me out like that!”

-

You carried as many bags as you could to the kitchen, with Jubilee carrying some more.

“Who needs to train when it’s your turn to get the groceries?” you joked. Jubilee laughed in agreement.

You set your bags on the countertop, resulting in a loud thud.

“Hey, do you guys need help?” Warren asked.

Your heart fluttered for a moment. Maybe it’s because you were nervous about fucking up your friendship. Maybe it’s because you had a teeny weeny, itsy, bitsy, ginormous crush on him.

It was probably both.

Yeah— you decided as he flexed his biceps by carrying the remaining grocery bags— it was definitely both.

You got so close to telling him— asking him, multiple times, but you never did.

First off, your mind always railed off all the evidence telling you he was 100% straight— his crush he used to have on Jean, his obvious attraction for girls, and just his typical demeanor.

Sure, he was good friends with Alex and Jubliee, both queer mutants, but that didn’t mean anything. And sure, he didn’t object to kissing you during spin the bottle, but he didn’t exactly leap at the chance either. And maybe he sometimes had a playful, kind of flirty, teasing thing going on with you— but that was just him. Just Warren being Warren.

-

You went down to the lab, not even caring what Hank was doing Down there.

“Alex!” He looked up from his spot at the table, where he could do paperwork and watch Hank work on his next experiment.

“What’s up, (Y/N)?”

“I need some advice…”

“Is everything okay?”

“So, I’m really into this guy, and Jubilee has been pushing me to ask him to homecoming, but I’m really nervous and every time I get the courage to ask him, I back out because what if he says no and then things are weird between us. Or what if he says no and then I have to live with the pang of rejection leering over me like a dark cloud? I like him a lot, Alex.”

“Okay. Look, homecoming— when even is homecoming?”

“Two weeks from Saturday,” Hank responded.

“Right. Homecoming is in like two weeks. You still have plenty of time to ask—“

“No, no!” You cried. “That isn’t why I came down here. I need help because he’s probably straight and I don’t know what to do!”

“How can I help?” Alex asked dumbfoundedly.

“You can’t tell him any of this. At all.”

Alex nodded, “Yeah, of course.”

“Neither can you Hank.”

He chuckled, “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Okay… Wooooh…” You sighed. “Ugh… Okay… I have a crush on Warren.”

-

A week prior

“I’m not gay.” Warren defended.

“I didn’t say you were, Ren. I’m just saying, you usually don’t think about friends like that.” Peter observed.

“(Y/N) is just a good friend. We’re kinda close. That’s it.”

“You kissed him at the bonfire.”

“It was spin the bottle, Pete! I wasn’t about to reject him in front of everyone like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like... Like... Fuck, I don’t know. I mean it was just a kiss-- I’m sure there are people who’d make fun of him if I didn’t kiss him. It was a party game anyway.” It’s not like I stayed up thinking about it for several days.

“Alex…” Peter whined.

“What’s wrong now?” He walked into the kitchen.

“Is it possible to like girls, and only girls for the longest time, but then you meet a guy, and you feel different?”

Alex’s face was covered with confusion and shock. “Peter?...”

“Not me. Warren.”

“Warren? I’m confused?”

“He has feelings for (Y/N).” Peter staged whispered to Alex.

“Maybe,” Warren stated.

“Oh no, you definitely like him. There’s no doubt about it.” Peter said surely.

“Why am I here then?”

“Because you lived your whole life liking girls, and then you met Hank. You guys are in a great relationship, nothing tragic has happened—

“I went to Vietnam to avoid Hank when in reality he liked me back.”

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Really fucking stupid, but whatever… It was the 60s. And obviously being gay now isn’t much better, but… it could be worse. Anyway, if you really like (Y/N) you should tell him.”

-

“You want to ask Warren to homecoming?”

“Xavier’s residential leather-clad, curly blonde-haired, green-blue eyed, hot, winged, bad boy? Yes.”

“That’s a very specific description,” Hank commented, “Do you have a type?”

“Don’t call me out like that!”

Hank smiled to himself at your annoyance.

“Listen, I would die for Warren. He could choke me and I’d thank him. Some days I’m like, ‘Run me over! I want you too!’”

“That’s not healthy…” Hank stated awkwardly.

“I know, I know, but he’s like straighter than Scott— I don’t stand a chance with him!”

“Wouldn’t say that,” Alex mumbled.

“Well…” Hank glanced at Alex, unsure what to say, “What’s the worst that could happen if you ask him out?”

“Easy, rejection.”

“Warren’s not going to be a jerk and publicly humiliate you. If he says no then you guys can just pretend it never happened.”

“Easy for you to say!” Alex didn’t get it. “I had this whole big thing planned and it’s probably so stupid, and I don’t even know why I came down here.”

“Don’t say that,” Hank told you, “I’m sure—“

“It’s fine. Thanks anyway, Hank, Alex. I’m gonna go.”

-

What a waste of time. I don’t know if I should ask him to homecoming or not. He’s probably already got a date. You groaned. Why were crushes so complicated?

Perhaps, Hank was right. What’s the worst that could happen?

You opened your door to see Scott face down on his bed, listening to Lesley Gore.

“What’s wrong with you? There’s only room for one melodramatic teenage mutant in this room, and it’s me.”

“It’s been your turn for days. Let me be sad right now.” You rolled your eyes. You knew Scott’s moment of sadness was probably just because some guy hit on Jean, or Peter walked in on him jerking off, or maybe he got a bad test score.

“Alrighty, one eye. Have you seen Warren?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Hmm? I couldn’t hear you. The pillows muffled your voice.”

“I don’t wanna talk about him. He’s an asshole.”

You looked at Scott with confusion, “What did he do to you?”

“Jean’s been ignoring me for him.”

“Oh. Is that it? I know you’re totally obsessed with Jean and all, but you have to let her have guy friends. It’s toxic of you not to—“

“Everyone’s been telling me that. And at first I didn’t really think much of it, but it’s an all the time thing now. They’re talking all the time and spending tons of time together, whispering and getting all secretive when I’m around. She’s even skipped class with him one time to go out!”

Your heart dropped into your stomach as Scott told you his relationship problems. It was obvious Warren was into Jean. She probably wasn’t into him, everyone knew she was crazy for Scott, but still! She was leading him on and she was one of your best friends! She knew you liked him!

“Jean’s a bitch.”

“Excuse me?! What did you just say?”

“Save your breath, Summers. Your girlfriend is a total backstabber and I’m going to murder her.” You stormed out of your shared room to find the redhead and give her a piece of your mind. Scott followed close behind, trying to stop you.

“Can you shut up, Summers?”

“No! You’re not going to talk to her about this.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Her possible thing with Warren. I’ll talk to her myself.”

“No way! She knows things to where she shouldn’t be doing this. I’m mad at her, and I’m going to tell her. You can’t stop me.”

-

“Jean Grey! Open the fuck up!” The door opened and you walked into the room.

“You’re so two-faced, aren’t you? You’ve got a boyfriend who literally worships the ground you walk on, but yet he thinks you’re probably cheating on him with none other than Warren— who, by the way, I’ve had a crush on since May. Not only did I have to prepare myself for the obvious rejection because I’m gay and he’s not, but now I have to deal with your bullshit!”

Warren was sitting on the floor, working on a poster of some sort. He had stopped to listen to you go off on Jean, but he wasn’t expecting this. He wasn’t even sure if you noticed him or not.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ditching class, keeping secrets, and sometimes ignoring Scott? Does any of that sound familiar? Or did he pull that out of his ass?”

“I didn’t mean to seem like I was cheating or something— also skipping class was one time— I was helping Warren out with stuff.”

You crossed your arms, “What stuff?”

“Homecoming,” He spoke up.

All color drained from your face. Warren knew you had a crush on him.

“I was going to ask you to homecoming… I was getting help from Jean because you guys were good friends and I thought Jubilee would tell you and ruin everything but now it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh. Oh… Oh.” Your brain was going a hundred miles per minute. Warren— Warren, he— he liked you? He wanted to ask you out? Jean wasn’t leading him on? Too much was happening at once.

“I need to go.”

“(Y/N), wait!”

-

The first thing you did was run to your room and put on some deodorant and a little cologne. Then you brushed your teeth and panicked.

“Oh god! He probably hates me! I left him there with Peter and Jean— no. No. No, no, no. I am going to talk to Warren. I can do that. I can talk to him.”

-

You exhaled deeply. You could do this.

You knocked on the wooden door. It opened slowly.

“Hi, um, can… I come in?”

Warren mumbled, “Yeah.” And nodded weakly.

You stepped inside his dorm, which was covered in art supplies and blank cassette tapes. “Sorry about the mess. I— It was for homecoming, but…”

“Oh… This looks way less complicated than what Jubilee was helping me with.”

Warren laughed. “That’s because it’s Jubilee. She’s so bright and flashy and extra at times. What did you expect?”

“She’s my only gay friend! I thought she could help me. Hell, I went to Alex for advice! God, I was so nervous, Ren. I still am, but like, there’d be moments and I was about to ask you and then I would just completely back out because I thought what if you said no, but not only—“

“You went to Alex for advice?” You nodded. “So he told you?”

“No?... He just said “I think you should go for it. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

“Oh. I told Alex I liked you, so I kinda assumed he told you…”

“Oh, no, no. He didn’t say anything. If he did I wouldn’t be this nervous.”

“Why are you nervous?” You quickly glanced around the room— you were the only two in it, the windows were closed, the door was probably locked shut. You didn’t have anything to be worried about, you knew Warren liked you back.

“I like you a lot.”

“I like you a lot.”

“Okay.” You sat down on the bed next to Warren. You glanced at him through your lashes. “Um…”

He was hesitant to place his hand on top of yours. “Is this okay?”

You nodded, unsure by what he meant. His cheeks were rosy and you could feel your heartbeat in your chest.

He bit his lip.

“Why are you nervous?”

The slight lingering glance at your lips told you everything you needed to know. You got closer, so your chests were touching, and you leaned in. You pressed your lips against Warren’s and he did the same. You wrapped your arms around his neck, tugging on the ends of his hair lightly. He groaned against your lips and you tried to hold back a smile.

He broke the kiss and frowned. You were still close and you could feel his breath.

“What’s so funny?”

“Your sensitive scalp.”

“Shut up.”

“No, no. It’s cute.”

He mumbled, “You’re cute,” Before kissing you again.

You smiled— worries gone, and the only thing you could focus on was Warren.

#warren worthington iii x reader #warren worthington x reader #archangel x reader #angel x reader #warren worthington iii x male reader #warren worthington x male reader #archangel x male reader #x-men x reader #x-men oneshot #warren worthington iii oneshot #warren worthington oneshot #homecoming

[sparklestheunicorn]

Whitelaw one shot

I started this with the express purpose of proving that ‘the Shadowhunters are a small group of people’ is bullshit, and have kept at it because why not? Here’s hoping I don’t forget about it.

This one follows Rachel Whitelaw in the two days (or so) before she dies. (Things may not be ‘correct’ with canon, but who cares.)

Word count: 2455

It was a dark and quiet night in the bowels of New York City. Rachel Whitelaw was waiting in the shadows for the shadows to attack her, which probably wasn’t the best idea, especially with everything being so tense and all. Downworlder and Shadowhunter relations had been going down the drain for months, all thanks to the Circle.

Personally, Rachel thought they were a bunch of idiots – and clearly jealous of everything Downworlders could do. She also thought the Clave was partially to blame, shoving it down everyone’s throat that Shadowhunters were the best thing to come onto the earth since the Angel Raziel. Well, look at where that got you, Rachel thought.

If they ever touched her city, Rachel knew exactly how she would kill each and every one of them. She’d kill their leader – Valentine Morgenstern – first. Just because he came from a rich, well-renowned family didn’t mean he could get away with anything. And then, she’d kill his wife (she was only two years away from 18 and couldn’t even stomach the thought of falling in love), Jocelyn. Born from a rich family and married into another one. Rachel curled her lip in disgust just thinking about it.

Then there was Robert Lightwood, she’d make him hurt with his parabatai only inches away. And then she’d kill his parabatai, too. She remembered Valentine had a parabatai, too, and, after fighting her gag reflex, decided that he would die after Michael Wayland.

Next was Stephen Herondale. Her aunt and uncle were saying he tarnished the name of the best Shadowhunter family. She remained entirely impartial on the matter – but she did know that Stephen would die right in front of his wife. And then his wife would die. Just because Amatis Graymark looked too delicate to touch didn’t mean she deserved mercy for being a part of the Circle.

Rachel knew that Maryse Lightwood, wife of Robert (why did they all get married so young?), was in it too, and she would die without ever seeing her precious boy again. Rachel was still gobsmacked they had a son. A whole living child they had to take care of. She didn’t think she would be able to commit to anything at their age – it would be the prime of her life, why would she want to tie herself down to anything with so much responsibility?

“RACHEL!”

The sound of her name being screamed jolted her out of her dream of killing all the members of the Circle. Didn’t they know no one who lived outside of Idris could walk the streets and feel safe?

“RACHEL!”

It was her brother, and she rounded the corner to find him fending off a Mantid demon. No wonder he had been screaming her name. The demon was huge, larger than a lot of other Mantids she had faced in the years she had been patrolling New York. The Mantid let off a screech, and Rachel was struck by the fact that the night was not so quiet anymore.

She could always return to dreaming about killing the Circle one by one. She named a seraph blade and pounced at the Mantid demon.

It wasn’t expecting an attack from her, or anyone else besides her brother, so when she took a chance and hopped onto its back, it didn’t immediately throw her and she was able to stab it. Ichor oozed out immediately, and Rachel hurried to pull the seraph blade out of the demon in an attempt to avoid both her hand and the blade being coated in the stuff. By the time Rachel landed beside her brother, seraph blade still ready to use, hand gripping it tighter than it should have, the Mantid was already failing its attacks.

Rachel’s brother dodged one lazily, and even had time to cut off an appendage before the next one. One of the remaining appendages went after Rachel, slower than usual, and she only had to dodge before severing it with her seraph blade. Mere seconds afterwards, the Mantid collapsed in on itself and went back to whatever hellish demon dimension it came from. (Rachel liked to call them demon-sions, but it was not lost on her how bad that sounded.)

When it was gone, Rachel raced to where her brother was, checking him over to make sure he hadn’t been hit by anything, like flying ichor or something worse. There was nothing she could see, but she put an iratze on his arm anyway, better to be safe than sorry.

Her brother sighed. “I didn’t need that Rachel.”

She slapped him as she pulled away from where she had drawn the iratze. “Let me have this, okay.”

He put his hands up in surrender, knowing better than to fight her when she had been awake the whole night. “Okay, okay.” Amusement danced in his eyes and curled his mouth. “But I’m giving you one, too.”

Rachel looked at him like he had just sold her over to the Circle. She placed a hand delicately to her chest. “Well I never.”

Her brother rolled his eyes and gestured with his free hand to hand over one of hers. She looked away as she placed the one without the voyance rune into his like she was a lady earlier in the century waiting to be kissed. Rachel wiped away an imaginary tear as he applied it. She could feel his annoyance as he let go of her hand and laughed as she dropped the act.

It was always something she was doing – seeing how long she could get away with being as melodramatic as possible. The only person who enjoyed it as much as she did was her aunt, and that seemed too sad for her to admit, even to herself.

“The sun’s coming up,” her brother said.

And when Rachel looked to the horizon, she could see the sky lightening, shooing away all of the demons they hadn’t seen throughout the night, which was just the one Mantid they had dispatched with barely any thought. She frowned. “Do you think it’s weird?”

Her brother was already walking back to the Institute, a lightness in his step now that the sun was putting all the demons to sleep. He turned to face her, walking backwards. “What?”

She caught up to him as she asked, “The lack of demons?”

The lightness in his step disappeared, as did the mischievous glint in his eye that always suggested a baked good before going home. “I think it means something’s coming.”

Rachel hummed in response. Of course something had to be coming, something was always coming ever since the Circle got bigger. The Circle – even the thought of that disgusting group of people (not even good enough to be called Shadowhunters in her mind) was enough to curdle her blood. She wished, suddenly, for a demon to pop out of nowhere so she could let out her frustration on that. But the sun peaked over the horizon and all hopes of that were lost. She had to settle for curling her mouth in disgust.

Out of all the rich families, Rachel thought, the only one decent enough to remain away from the Circle seemed to be the Carstairs. Throughout history, it seemed, they were the only family to remain decent, on the good side of it all the time. She thought that one day, she would very much like to meet John and Cordelia and tell them just how much she respected them by keeping their family name good. That is, if they stayed out of the Circle, it seemed like every other young person was joining it nowadays.

Even she had been approached by Valentine himself. Rachel was less than impressed, and told him exactly what he could do with his ideals – she distinctly remembered that his mouth had curled in the exact same way hers was at that moment. She wiped her face clean of emotion.

Rachel barely remembered getting home and going up the elevator and crawling into her bed. Patrols always took a lot out of her, and last night seemed to be more exhausting than most, considering she slept for half the day, and she usually woke up before the half-day mark. Her aunt had to wake her up with the smell of hot chips.

She smiled at her and sat on the edge of the bed. “Wakey, wakey.”

Rachel smiled blearily, eyes already drifting to the chips her aunt’s hands. “When can I have those?”

Her voice was the croaky sound of waking up – the domestic side of her loved it, the not-so-domestic side of her didn’t.

Her aunt chuckled. “When you wake up.” She got up and walked back to the door, taking the smell with her. “They’ll be waiting for you, untouched, in the kitchen when you deign to grace us with your presence.”

Rachel contemplated just closing her eyes for a minute as the smell of the hot chips lingered in her bedroom before deciding to get up and dressed. All thoughts of the Circle had been stricken from her head by sleep, and she wasn’t in any hurry to get them back. She decided against shoes as she got dressed. What would be the point? It wasn’t like she would be leaving the Institute in a hurry today.

Yawning, she stepped into the hallway, closing her door behind her. As always, the plain walls struck Rachel as rather unforgiving. Her aunt and uncle said it spoke of sophistication, but she just thought it made them look cold and untouchable. Sure, it was an Institute that people came to for business, but it was also a home.

If Rachel ever got her hands on an Institute, she would have it be as welcoming as possible, a place where people could feel at home when they weren’t anywhere close to it. But she wouldn’t get her hands on an Institute unless she married someone that already had one, and that was almost as unlikely. Rachel planned to travel, to treat every year past her eighteenth as though it were her travel year. It was one thing that she would never give up on.

The smell of the chips woke her from her daydream, and as she walked into the kitchen she saw her aunt hitting her brother’s hand as he reached for one with a scalding look. When she noticed Rachel standing in the doorway, she presented them as though they were the grand prize. With her brother, they probably were.

The chips tasted as though they were the grand prize, too. And, for once, her brother’s longing glances at the food in her hands did not get her to give any of it to him. Once he left and went to annoy someone else, she slipped into her room to continue eating in there. Rachel had given herself the day off training, feeling as though she deserved a little bit of a break considering she had been training every day and patrolling every night of the week.

Her aunt and uncle had thought it was just a desire to do something, because that was what she had told them at the beginning of it. But she had heard rumours that the Circle were in New York, and she was hoping to run into them by chance and give them a piece of her mind in the most violent way possible. That was something her aunt and uncle didn’t need to know about.

With a quickness that surprised her, the sun went down well before she was ready to do her nightly routine. She blamed all the patrolling. (And, really, what was the point of fixing her sleep schedule when she was just going to resume patrolling again after tonight?) Once night had fallen, she left her room and headed to the library to find her parents. They would know who was on patrol, and if the Circle just so happened to do something the one night she was off, well, she wanted to know who didn’t catch them.

But, once again, her aunt and uncle didn’t need to know that.

From the other side of the door, she could hear them talking in hushed voices in the library, and she was just about to leave them to it, thinking she could always find out later, when she heard her brother’s hushed voice. Rachel straightened. If he could be apart of their all-important conversation, why couldn’t she? She pushed open the door.

All talking ceased, and she squared her shoulders, prepared to fight for her right to be in the conversation. But, to her surprise, her uncle waved her over after she closed the door behind her.

There was a note on the desk, and her family were huddled over it. It was in an elegant, but hurried, hand, and was signed with the name Magnus Bane. Rachel, who had only glanced over the letter, wondered what the High Warlock of Brooklyn would want with them now. She read over the letter properly.

Adrenaline pumped through her veins and forced herself to stay still. It was a call for help. Against the Circle. She looked into the faces around her as calmly as she could.

“Well,” she said, “what are we waiting for?”

“Rachel,” her aunt started, “we can’t just – ”

Despite trying to stay calm, she couldn’t. “They are hurting people in unthinkable ways, and we can stop them.”

“And what if we do?” her brother said. “What then? They could come after us, they could hurt us in unthinkable ways.”

Rachel looked at him like he had grown another head, because he had to have. Or he had to have hit it on something because she would rather be hurt than have someone else be hurt when she could have done something about it. “I’d rather be hurt in unthinkable ways than let someone else be hurt in unthinkable ways if I had the power to stop it.”

Because she was staring so intently into her brother’s eyes, trying desperately not to smash his head into the ground, she didn’t notice the look her aunt and uncle shared.

The tension between her and her brother peaked just as her aunt said, “Okay.”

She whirled to look at her, her hair slapping her in the face with the force of it. She would have to put it up. Seeing the look on her aunt’s face, she smiled and hugged her as tight as she could.

Rachel didn’t even wait to hear her aunt say ‘gear up’ before bounding out of the library to do just that. Oh, she was looking forward to beating the shit out of the Circle.

#tsc fic #tsc #the circle #the whitelaws #Rachel whitelaw #Marian whitelaw #Adam whitelaw #Magnus bane #writing #I am not tagging every single member of the circle #tscfic #the shadowhunter chronicles

[vagrantblvrd]

Bones (1/1)

Summary: There’s not a lot to do between missions. Hell, there’s not a lot to do on missions sometimes with the whole hurry up and wait bullshit that happens.

So you know, you find ways to entertain yourself. Pick a random topic and go off on it just to keep from being bored out of your mind while you wait for something to happen.

Notes: Prompt fill for Anon who asked for agency Jeremavinwood with Battle Buddies vs Play Pals???

(Read on AO3)

There’s not a lot to do between missions. Hell, there’s not a lot to do on missions sometimes with the whole hurry up and wait bullshit that happens.

So you know, you find ways to entertain yourself. Pick a random topic and go off on it just to keep from being bored out of your mind while you wait for something to happen.

“So wait,” Jeremy says, bundle of wires tucked into the corner of his mouth. “You’re telling me you two idiots decided to call yourselves the Play Pals because you couldn’t figure out what the designation Command gave you meant?”

Well when you put it like that, it does sound stupid. (Also, team designations are randomly generated by some fancy computer algorithm or something, Michael tuned out when Ryan tried to explain it to him once, because who the hell cares?)

To be fair to Gavin and Michael, however, most of the teams in the agency get two or three letter designations. They’re the only ones he’s heard of to get a four letter designation.

Jeremy must have finally realized that too because he just had to go and ask about it, didn’t he. Got Michael going on the subject while he tinkers and fiddles and swears under his breath as he works.

“Gavin’s idea,” Michael says, because the little idiot’s not there to refute the claim. “Who the hell else would come up with something so dumb?”

Not his fault he’s got Gavin as a partner and not some melodramatic idiot like Ryan with a penchant for the really destructive kind of chaos. The kind of team designation that lends itself to them being called Battle Buddies and having it stick until no one can remember a time when they weren’t called that. (Funny as all hell when Command slips up and puts it in the official reports that go to the bigwigs in DC, though.)

Jeremy laughs and almost inhales the wires he’s fucking around with. Gives Michael this look when Michael reaches over to hit him on the back to keep him from choking and all that.

“Thanks, pal,” he says, in that way he does sometimes.

Sarcastic as fuck and this touch of amusement to it and then the alarms go off, which means their dumbass partners have finally arrived to rescue them from their terrible fate as prisoners. (Shit happens.)

Michael glances around at the unconscious bodies of the guards who were meant to be watching them.

Some might lean a little more towards dead, but since they’re the ones who started it Michael doesn’t feel too bad about things.

There’s at least three levels of secret bad guy base above them, and Michael can still hear the explosions clear as day.

Michael and Gavin make a hell of a team, and so do Jeremy and Ryan. Do a little mix’n’match like this mission has forced them into and the results are maybe not the desired sort. (To hear Command talk anyway.)

“You got the door, or are we going to wait for those morons to save the day?”

Their escape may have met with a few complications, or maybe just another round of bad luck. They made it out of the zip ties and locked room these assholes had them hidden away in, sure, but then they had the fortune (misfortune?) of getting locked in this shitty little room. (Because fuck them, that’s why.)

Michael gets another look because Jeremy’s been trying to hot-wire the door’s locks or whatever the hell he’s been doing for the last half hour with no success. (Michael may or may not have been heckling/nitpicking him the whole time, but that ties in with the finding ways to entertain himself.)

Another explosion goes off above them, big enough Michael can feel it, and Jeremy looks down at the mechanism he’s been fiddling with. Takes the wires out of his mouth and gives Michael this wry little smile.

“Well,” he says, and dusts his hands off before reaching for the hand Michael's holding out to him to help him up. “Since they’re here anyway and all.”

Right, right.

Hate to pop their balloon or whatever bullshit excuse Jeremy has.

Another explosion rocks the compound and Michael

========

Michael loves to give Gavin shit for pretty much everything he does? But the truth is that Gavin is good at what he does. (And he does a lot.)

Still, there’s no denying he’s also a colossal moron.

“Gavin,” Michael says, because how the fuck, and also why the fuck. “What did you do?”

Ryan is running around HQ with a gooddamned crossbow and nowhere is safe.

Gavin is a goddamned horrible little goblin who loves enabling Ryan and his lunacy and Michael and Jeremy were gone for maybe – maybe – twenty minutes tops for a coffee run.

And now look at the place.

Crossbow bolts embedded in the walls and people hunkered down waiting for someone to either talk Ryan down from playing with his new toy or just tranq his ass. (Oh, Ryan’s too good to be careless with the damn crossbow, but that doesn’t make him any less of a menace with it.)

Gavin’s rolling around on the floor wheezing and squeaking and no damn help at all because he thinks it’s hilarious.

Meanwhile Jeremy’s tracking Ryan down and checking in every few minutes sounding like he’s trying not to choke on his own laughter. (With Geoff in DC for budget meetings Michael’s the only sane man left.)

“You’re explaining this to Geoff when he gets back,” Michael mutters, and heads out to grab a tranquilizer gun to put an end to Ryan’s little rampage before it really gets out of hand.

========

The kind of missions Michael and Gavin get sent on mostly deal with stealth. In and out before their target knows what’s happening because Gavin is fucking spectacular when it comes to stealth and Michael’s not too bad himself. (He’s always been a quick study, and keeping up with Gavin is not something just anyone can do.)

Jeremy and Ryan get the missions where subtlety isn’t a key factor. Get sent in with a case of explosives and other shinies and walk out when everything’s on fire. (That wasn’t always the case, but Geoff and Jack just kind of gave up after a while, and hey, it works.)

Every once in a while they get sent on missions together, and that's just -

“Oh, dear,” Gavin says, leaning back from his laptop. “That’s not ideal.”

Michael leans over his shoulder and tries to make sense of the million and one windows Gavin has open.

Security cam feeds he’s plugged into thanks to the Battle Buddies and satellite feeds. Other bullshit Michael recognizes but doesn’t give a damn about because things just went to shit.

Again.

“Christ,” he mutters, wondering if the agency throwing them together on missions is just an experiment to see how quickly things will turn to shit when combining their bad luck or if they’re just cursed like that. “They didn’t even make it inside this time.”

Gavin smothers a laugh, turns it into a cough as he toggles between camera feeds to keep track of Jeremy and Ryan being marched through the compound to wherever the guards are taking them.

“Should have taken Jack up on that wager of his, Michael,” he says, because he’s an asshole and Michael forgot, okay, he forgot.

Too busy checking over their gear to pop over to Jack’s office to join in on the betting pool and then Ryan threw a fit because he didn’t get the flamethrower he wanted. There was a lot going on, okay. Fucking sue him.

“Fuck off,” Michael says, and glances at the weapons crate stuffed full of the goodies the Battle Buddies love to lug around with them. “And dibs on Ryan’s mini-gun.”

========

So the thing is, the four of them get along a little too well for Command’s peace of mind.

Don’t give a shit about so-called friendly rivalries or trying to one-up each other in the hopes of currying favor with Geoff or Command.

No point to it when none of them give a shit about those things. (Geoff’s not the kind of guy who’d appreciate any of it no matter what he says, and Command’s long been wise to them.)

Gavin and Ryan are the worst because they’re stupid smart and have that little workshop down in one of storage subbasement no one’s supposed to know about. Make use out of the downtime they get between missions to “improve on” whatever gadgets tech comes up with for them and other fun experiments of theirs.

Jeremy joins in every so often when he gets a hankerin’, as Ryan likes to call it. Stars in his eyes and visions of explosions in his head or whatever the hell, and Michael?

“Jesus Christ,” he says, and plucks the grenade out of Gavin’s hand before the idiot blows them all sky high. “No.”

Gavin gives him a look, all sad-eyed puppy in the rain because Michael is a terrible bully. Behind him Ryan is just kind of pathetic, because somehow he set himself on fire – again – and thankfully Jeremy was there with a fire extinguisher, because what the hell.

“Michael,” Gavin starts, earnest as hell like the three of them aren’t the most ridiculous idiots Michael’s ever met. “You’ll love it, Michael. Ryan had the best idea!”

And, see.

Michael knows it’s going to be the worst damn idea in the world if Ryan came up with it. Dumbass always thinks he knows what’s what only to have things (sometimes literally) blow up in his face.

This time it’s something about putting the explosive power of a grenade in a pen – a pen - like something out of a dumb spy movie to use on missions.

“Just think of it, Michael!” Gavin says, clearly infected with Ryan’s dumb. “It would be amazing!”

It would be a disaster is what it would be, but then again that sounds prefect for them.

========

There are fraternization rules and regulations in the handbook they were given when they signed on. Outdated bullshit no one bothers to enforce because it would mean cracking down hard on half the agency at this point.

The only time anyone brings it up to Geoff is when it’s a suit down from DC to see how the funding they receive is being spent. Little meet and greets with the operatives and other assorted assholes working here and find them lacking in some way. (None of them are ever what people expect them to be. Too human to begin with, all these hopes and dreams and lives outside the agency. Emotions, feelings, all that shit.)

“Just don’t – don’t let it fuck things up,” Geoff told them when he found out. Tired and worn down and trying to act like he didn’t know because the suits wouldn’t get it, understand. “Be careful.”

It’s a lot to ask of assholes like them, but they do their best to make it work. Have their moments where things get real shitty real fast thanks to the stress of their jobs and the way life has of being a shitshow.

Rough patches and all that, but they’re all a little too invested in the life they’ve built for themselves to give up so easily and he knows it baffles the hell of the people who know. Look at them and try to figure out how the hell assholes like them make sense, when they don’t even know themselves.

(Only bit of good luck to stick for the four of them, and goddamn if they’re not going to hang on to it with everything they have.)

#jeremavinwood #ragehappy #Anon #prompt fills #Kings of Nowhere #vagrant fic #(this is suuuuper late #and probably not what you meant? #so double apologies and suchlike #/o\)

[heartfulofsighs]

Baggage Claim

Description: Seunghoon back from a business trip only has a mind for growing his company. You are in the middle of running from the by the book life that was drowning you. When a minor inconvenience sets you in his path will you be the reason he eases up? And could he be what you need to get serious again? 

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 

I’ve been wanted to get this out forever. Not sure how many parts will be in this series but def more then 3. There will be smut eventually but the first parts will be very tame. Thanks always to @negrowhat who I keep on retainer now to bounce ideas off of lolololol. About 2.7k

   He listened to the ringing tone his brow furrowed in deep annoyance. He couldn’t figure out how this had happened. Not only that he felt just the tad bit attacked by the events of the day. He already had enough on his plate and here was this… He glanced down at the black suite case that was most definitely not his and groaned. There was a pink luggage tag hanging from the front shaped like a crown. “Take me, I’m yours.” The tag said on one side, on the other was a name and phone number. He had called 5 times in an effort to get his bag.    “Hey, you’ve reached_____. Please leave your number and I’ll try to get back to you...I’m travelling so it might be longer then usual. Take care...bye!” You sounded mostly cheerful and it made him just a touch madder. He took a breath and left another message. He had already confirmed with the airline that his bag was indeed not left there. He took a breath and left another message. His tone was clipped but he couldn’t help it he had work to do and you were holding him up. “Hello, my name is Seunghoon and I do believe we switched bags at the airport. Please call me back as soon as you hear this. Thank you, bye.” He ended the call and stared at his phone. You should have noticed by now that you didn’t have your bag. Time was ticking and he finally gave up, he pushed the bag, your bag, to his car and placed it in the trunk. He had meetings to think over. Things that weren’t going to wait for you to pick up your phone. “This is not theft…” He said gently to himself, “she didn’t pick up the phone,” he opened the car door and got in, “what the hell else am I supposed to do with it?” He said as he pulled the door closed.

You had given your mom maybe a week’s notice. The idea had been in your mind for so long in retrospect, you could have given her more time. Could have let her know that you felt like you were drowning. That everything anyone said to you felt like a lie. You could have told her that your job felt like it was crushing the life out of you that everytime you got home you weren’t any happier. It had taken a lot of self convincing. A lot of you telling yourself that wanting to be happy wasn’t a crime and disappearing...well that disappearing didn’t make you a quitter. It had morphed from a two week long trip to you buying a one way ticket. Your mother was practically in hysterics but then she took a few days out of the weeks notice you gave her and calmed herself. She called you while you were packing most of your life into one large black suitcase. “I want you to be satisfied with your life. You only get one. So if this is what you need to do with yours...then do it.” There was a part of you that knew this could all be melodramatic bullshit. That all the problems you thought you had weren’t real problems. But you went anyway. You had found a long term airbnb and paid for 5 months. It had taken a lot of saving, your trip may have seemed spur of the moment to everyone else but you knew the truth. You had laid out a very neat plan for leaving. What you didn’t know was what would happen after the 5 months had finished. Would you stay? Would you come back a new person like in the movies? Maybe you would come back with a whole new perspective only to have your old life crush you all over again. You considered the option then immediately turned your mind to other things. You pushed your bag in front of you and thought about catching a cab. It didn’t cross your mind that your bag seemed lighter than before.

“So have you opened it?” He rolled his eyes and shook his head, “why would I open it, it isn’t mine.” He pointed out. His friend Mino leaned back on his couch eyeing the bag suspiciously. “Maybe it has an address or something inside?” He pushed. “There’s an address on the luggage tag...but it’s her home address.” He was beginning to lose his temper. Mino was suppose to be over for meeting prep and here they were wasting time over luggage.  Seunghoon had already moved on. You hadn’t called him and he had mentally chalked the clothes in his bag up as a loss. He had taken his usual post flight nap, and now he was ready to work. They were gathered in his living room for a particular purpose. Getting ready for a meeting on a sponsorship. He loved his friend but most times his odd lack of focus drove him crazy. Hoon was on the opposite side of the spectrum. Once he set his mind to an idea it was hard to be distracted. He had to see it through to the end. He bit his bottom lip his thoughts centered around getting what he wanted.   “So it’s a she?” Mino questioned. Seunghoon made a frustrated noise, “why does that matter?” He asked. “It doesn’t,” he said, “I was just curious.” Mino ran his hands through his hair and sighed, “sit down, relax a little, you’re all bent out of shape.” “Are we finally gonna talk about this meeting?” He asked. He didn’t have the patience to talk about anything else. “I have some more questions about the guy we’re meeting.” He pushed. Mino kept his eyes on the bag, a small grin forming on his face. “Later,” he stood up and put his hands on the zipper, “let’s just take a quick peek in here, then I promise we’ll prep.” He started pulling the zippers apart before Seunghoon could stop him. In fact he watched in a sort of annoyed horror as he opened the bag dramatically. “Wow,” Clothes piled out and Hoon put his hand over his face. “She packed a lot,” Mino babbled, “look at all these shirts...she must be staying for a while.” He picked one up and read the saying across the chest out loud, “not your babygirl.” “Put that down.” He seethed, “what your doing is an invasion of privacy...what if she sues me?” “Relax, it’s not like I’m looking at her underwear or anything. I’m just trying to see if maybe she has a card of where she’s staying out here or something like that.” Mino explained. “You aren’t making any sense.” Hoon pushed. Mino looked up, a small grin on his face, “what if this was all fate?” “What are you talking about?” He moved away from his friend, fed up. “What if you two meet while switching the bags back...and it’s like...meant to be?” His voice was rising with excitement. “Like a fairytale!” “Put the shirt down, and please stop.” Hoon whispered. Mino rolled his eyes and obliged, setting the shirt down, “you have no imagination.” He said softly to himself. He repacked the bag and carefully zipped it up. “Fine let’s talk about this meeting that you’re so worried about.” He leaned back again. “What do you want to know?” He asked, “don’t be mad if I don’t have all his secrets.” He warned. Hoon sat on the couch opposite him and sighed, “I don’t need all the secrets, really I just wanna know if he has a soft side for anything? Any charities?” Mino was studying his hand with rapt attention. He cleared his throat, “he donates a lot to charities that benefit single mothers.” He said. Hoon nodded. “Also instruments to high school music programs.” He added. Hoon liked Seungyoon he thought that he ran a good clean company. Adding him to his list of clientele would be a win on everyone’s part. He sat back and considered his pitch. He wanted to make sure it was clear and concise. “I think what you have down already is perfect. I think you might be worrying about this too much.” Mino offered. He rolled his eyes. “Someone has to worry about it.” He said softly. “You really need to relax, all this stress...it can’t be good for you.” Mino added, “maybe after we get through with all this you should take a vacation.” Hoon rolled his neck and sighed. He didn’t feel like arguing.

The Airbnb was more of a loft then anything. It was painted blue with two white garage doors facing the street. A flight of metal steps leading up the side of the building gave you hope. The host had mentioned them in the instructions.  You climbed the stairs dragging your bag and worrying that it indeed felt much lighter. You stared down at it and noticed your pink crown luggage tag was gone. Shit. Your fingers trembled as you pulled on the zipper right there on the landing. In front of the boring brown door that you should be knocking on.   “Oh no.” You breathed out loud. The clothes peeking through the small space you had unzipped did not look like yours. They were all monotone and vaguely smelled of cologne. “This isn’t my bag.”  You said. You couldn’t figure out what to do. You stood straight and knocked feebly on the door. Your phone was somewhere in your backpack, maybe your bag was still at the airport? Maybe you could call the airline and tell them what happened. “Hey welcome!” The door swung open. The girl standing in the doorway was shorter than you and all around smaller in the way you had gotten use to. Most girls were smaller than you. It wasn’t an observation you thought about anymore.  She had gigantic brown eyes and long dark hair. Her skin was perfect, not a blemish on it. She beamed at you with straight white teeth and reached for your arm. “Come in come in. It’s cold out there.” You had to admit she was pretty strong for someone so small. Once you were in she closed the door and faced you. She brushed imaginary dust from the front of her crisp white tshirt and then extended her hand. “I’m Cherry!” She announced. You shook her hand and introduced yourself though you were less cheerful about it. “Lemme take you on the grand tour-“ “Actually, can you just show me which room is mine?” You asked, “also the WiFi password so I can check my messages?” Your voice rose in panic the more you talked. You couldn’t control it. She cocked her head studying you then nodded, “sure, you’re room is this one right at the beginning of the hall….the WiFi password is treehouse.” She showed you to the door and you wished you had been able to control your worry more. She seemed perfectly nice and you hoped you this first impression wasn’t going to hang over the five months you were staying. “I’m sorry,” your voice was stammering the words barely making it out of your mouth, “it’s, my...my bag it’s just…” She stopped walking and looked at your suitcase trying to figure out what you meant, “what happened to it?” She asked. She rubbed your arm, concern etched on her face, “hey, maybe you should sit down?” She suggested. You shook your head, “I just need to check my messages, and call the airport,” you took another step and took a big breath. This was an easy to solve problem.    “I think, I think I picked up someone else’s bag at the airport…” You turned, the offending bag that was definitely not yours squarely in your sights. “I opened the zipper just a little cause it felt too light, and those aren’t my clothes, also it smells like cologne.” Cherry’s already wide eyes got even bigger. Like he has yours and you have his? He’s probably calling you.” She said. You started to try and shrug off your backpack. Your phone was in there. To your new room mate’s credit she watched patiently as you dug your phone out. She spelled out the simple password and clapped her hands when a slew of voicemail notifications popped up on your screen. “He’s been calling you. That must mean he’s got your stuff!” She cheered. You felt yourself beginning to calm down. You held your breath as you prompted the newest message to play. “Hello, my name is Seunghoon and I do believe we switched bags at the airport. Please call me back as soon as you hear this. Thank you, bye.”

You let out the breath you were holding in one big whoosh. Cherry smiled hard, “see, it’s gonna be fine! Just give him a call back and you guys can trade back.”    “Yeah,” you agreed. Your hands were shaking a bit but there was a rush of relief. Your whole trip had almost been derailed. You would have had to cut into your very careful budget for clothes, and shoes, and everything else you had stuffed in your bag.    “Call him back.” Cherry urged. You tapped your phone screen and held it to your ear. You didn’t know her but it was reassuring to have her touch your arm. The ringing tone felt like it was echoing in your ear until it stopped.

“Hello?” His apartment was empty. Mino had gone home long ago and he was enjoying a hot cup of tea while he watched a movie. There was a quiet breath taken on the other end of the line. He waited.    “Ummm, hi...I think we may have switched bags at the airport?” He sat forward on his couch.    “Yeah, I have your bag.” He blurted out, “when can we meet?!” He winced at how loud his voice sounded. He listened as you took a large breath. He could almost feel your relief.    “Listen, I’m happy you have my stuff but I’m not sure if I have the energy to leave my airbnb right this minute.” You confessed. He considered this and understood. He was use to travelling all over and had his own tricks for jet lag. Maybe you didn’t. He looked at his watch, it was getting late. Your bag was near his front door. He stared at it and wondered what you would wear until he got it back to you. “Is it possible to meet tomorrow?” You asked him. “I have a meeting.” He answered automatically. “Oh, maybe at your lunch break? I mean we’re just switching back. I promise I won’t take up any extra time...I’ll even meet you near your job.” You sounded desperate and he felt a bit guilty. “Do you want to give me the address to your airbnb? I can just drive there and we can switch?” He asked. There was a pause. He bit his bottom lip. “I’m not sure how my roommate would feel about that...please, can you just give me a place to meet you tomorrow? Like a cafe? I promise I’ll be there at whatever time.” The desperation was giving way to exhaustion. He would push normally, for his way which made the most sense. Why have you trek somewhere with his stuff when he could just pick it up? But for some reason he found himself giving in. He sighed, “There’s a cafe inside of my office building. I’ll text you the address and you can meet me there tomorrow.” He finally said. “Thanks!...do you know a time?” You asked. “Let’s say 2, I should be more then done with my meeting then.” He answered. “Ok, I’ll be there I promise. Thanks so much for your understanding, I really appreciate it.” “No problem.” He said finally. He rubbed his eyes and tried to be happy about getting his things back. He focused on that and not the stress of having the wrong bag in the first place. He could forgive you easily. You sounded like you were a few steps away from crying and he didn’t want that. “Bye then.” You said after a while. Then the line clicked off. He opened his eyes to look down at his phone. He typed out the address to his building and then got up to take a shower. His mind already already going back to his meeting. You would be the easiest part of his day...all things considered.

#Winner #Winner fanfic #Seunghoon #Hoony Fanfic #kpop fanfiction #Series #Baggage Claim #Baggage Claim Series #Thank you Eboni for the title

[le-lex]

I love you in the morning when the blood runs to your cheeks

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Pairing: Keith/Lance Words: 15k

“Hey, do you want a croissant? Or a cookie? They’re really good! My ma makes them all. What are you into? Take anything, seriously, whatever you want!” Bakery Guy keeps waving him over at a faster pace the closer Keith gets and as Keith approaches the table he backs off from where he was hunched like a dragon over a pile of leftover pastries.

“Uh…” Keith has no idea what the fuck is going on right now and he knows that his eyebrows are furrowed in a way that always makes Shiro laugh, but he can’t help it. What is happening.

Bakery Guy shoots a ray of pure sunlight out of his face directly into Keith’s eyes with his smile and tries again, “We don’t always sell everything pastry and bread wise, so I try to hook up the other vendors with some treats before we take everything to the women’s shelter downtown. Do you want anything?”

*

In which Keith and Lance fall in love over a farmers market season the same way they do everything else: a little bit backward and a whole lot stupid.

AO3: (x)

Keith has to keep actively reminding himself to stop clenching his teeth so hard by opening his mouth and moving his jaw from side to side like an actual idiot. Each time he does it, he casts a quick glance to the booths on either side of him to make sure their occupants aren’t witnessing his stressed out dumbassery in real time. What the fuck is he doing here, truly.

He’s currently sitting in his stupid, slightly rickety camping chair a cool hour after initially getting to the market and unpacking all of his things. He’d been awake for hours before he psyched himself up enough to actually drive to the market and he’d sat in his gently rumbling truck for ten minutes in the parking lot before he crow barred himself out of the cab into the fresh morning air to set up his market table and tools.

Hunching a little in his work jacket to brace himself against the early morning breeze, he looks down at his set up and has to physically prevent himself from sighing melodramatically. The table cloth he’s using to cover his folding table is an old red plaid one of his dad’s that Shiro always brutally makes fun of whenever he sees it. His toolbox is propped up and open with everything he needs handy and his two grinders are set up at an appropriately reachable distance from his shitty, unbalanced chair.

Just to be clear, he’s nervous as fuck. And he doesn’t really want to be here.

It’s his first day at this farmers market, his first day at a farmers market in general truly and he has essentially…zero idea what to expect. Obviously, he’s been at a farmers market before in his life, he doesn’t live under a fucking rock, but he’s never had his own booth at one and he thinks it may just be easier to climb back into his truck and fuck off into the sunrise and abandon this idea in its final hour.

But as he’s thinking this and as his hands are twitching to toss all of his utensils into his toolbox and haul ass out of here, he catches Shiro’s smile and wave from across the circular rotunda type structure the market is housed in and resolves himself to a morning of what is likely to be socially motivated torture. He’s not able to make a timely and quick escape if Shiro has already seen him, unfortunately.

Keith begrudgingly waves back to him and watches as Shiro hefts a pallet of cucumbers out of the farm truck he’s currently unpacking.

Shiro is dressed like every middle-aged white mother’s wet dream, wearing a flannel rolled up past his elbows over a t-shirt with his aunt’s farm’s logo on it and dark jeans tucked into his scuffed-up work boots. He’s such a beautiful, buff motherfucker that it makes Keith’s eyes roll into the back of his head, because honestly, who even looks like that. Who looks like that and works at a farmers market and hauls vegetables out of the bed of a truck with such a look of tranquility and contentment that it makes all the waiting regulars sigh a little watching him. Shiro, that’s fucking who, he supposes.

He catches the eye of Shiro’s tiny little aunt standing behind her table and setting up literal pyramids of vegetables and gives her a small smile as she waves across to him.

Shiro helps his elderly aunt out with her vegetable farm during the on season because he just truly is that good of a person. Thinking about it makes Keith a little ill.

Ignoring the sweatiness of his palms, he leans back in his chair and glances up at the sign that’s swinging lazily in the breeze where it’s attached to the front of his tent. It makes him laugh a little every time he sees it, even though it’s nicely made. That’s what patronage at the town UPS Store will get you. A quality sign with your bullshit name on it. It mostly makes him laugh because the name he decided on for his market booth is “Keith’s Knife Hut” solely because it causes Shiro to make a face that’s split between disbelief and actual pain every time he looks at it. Motivation, y’all.

Despite the growing dread over being present in this current situation, the knowledge that Shiro is going to be in his line of sight for most of the day and that he’ll likely wander over later is comforting enough.

The market hasn’t officially opened yet which Keith is grateful as fuck for, but early regulars mill about and later arrivals to the market are efficiently setting up their booths just in time for the sunrise.

He has his pricing spiel all planned out in his head and he turns it around and around in his mind as he sits there. He’s said it enough times to his commercial clients that he isn’t particularly worried, but this is a whole different setting than the back of a restaurant kitchen where he usually works and that’s enough to make him stumble over his words. Five dollars per knife, seven dollars for anything else. Including multitools, yard tools, and lawn mower blades.

Forcibly unclenching his teeth yet again, he chants his prices in his head and triumphantly thinks that even if he can’t always connect to the customers he has, he can sharpen anything. Let’s go, middle upper-class patrons of this bougie farmers market, give me your bladed tools to sharpen.

With a glance to his phone showing that it’s officially seven am and a final straighten of his sandpaper loops, he shoots a pleading request to whatever deity may be out there for today to go well and thinks, here goes nothing.

*

Three hours later and Keith is able to actually sit back in his chair and finally glance around the rest of the market.

It’s been…a day, surely. And it hadn’t gone as bad as Keith had been expecting, which is generally the way things play out. Being at the market was surprisingly fun and after the first few clipped conversations with inquiring customers where he had no idea what the tempo of the interactions was supposed to be, he was able to fluently and efficiently roll out his pricing bullshit for the next, like, fifteen people who stopped at his booth to chat.

Granted, he didn’t really sharpen anything aside from a few pocket knives and a multitool here and there, but mostly because people don’t carry around full sets of kitchen knives on them without a valid reason. A valid reason being…well, getting your kitchen knives sharpened.

He’d given his business card out to a lot of interested people and he figures that that’ll be enough to get him some real business when he’s back the following Tuesday. Just the thought has him feeling a little bit cheerful.

Truthfully, he really likes doing this in a way he doesn’t like doing a lot of things. Working with his hands and fixing something and making it more efficient and useful in a very tangible way. It feels purposeful, gives him a very clear outcome with just a little bit of action.

Plus, it’s not like sharpening knives is hard, if he’s going to be totally honest. Anyone could do it with the right equipment and knowledge, but, he supposes, that most people don’t really want to.

With his extensive background in tools and knives, he was able to cultivate a pretty solid customer base in the form of restaurants and specialty food stores when he first started, and he keeps up with a lot of those regulars on a pretty consistent basis. He can, however grudgingly, admit that Shiro was definitely right in the farmers market being a good side gig on the weekends and a few days during the week.

It’s not like he’s going to tell Shiro that. A thanks for the connection to the market manager for the booth space might be in order, though.

Keith struggles a little bit when shrugging out of his jacket and knocks a few of his own tools off his table before he’s able to really look around.

The way the market is set up is kind of odd, in his own humble architectural opinion. Which means absolutely fuck all nothing, but still. It’s a giant concentric circle with a lot of open space in the middle where the plant people congregate and sell giant potted flowers. All of the booths are set up inside the circular roofing at the outer edge of the biggest circle, so you can enter the market and walk all the way around in one direction until you end up right back where you started. He guesses it’s a pretty good business model, a trap that doesn’t really feel like one when you’re looking at artisanal cheeses and bird houses made out of refurbished cabinets or whatever the hell people sell here.

His booth is right next to the entrance, so he’s one of the first stalls that market patrons see upon arrival. Beside him to the left is another vegetable stand with a kindly middle-aged woman who runs it and across the way from him is a weird sounding combination goat cheese and mushroom stall that he doesn’t really understand at first inspection.

There’s a bakery next to that, and a honey and bee paraphernalia stall down the way a little bit the opposite way.

He could, potentially, make attempts to talk to these people, but also, he could literally do anything aside from that. For a bit this morning, he made polite small talk with the other vegetable woman before he began to feel like he was betraying Auntie Shirogane’s farm by fraternizing with the enemy. She was nice though, and she gave him a bag of snap peas that he has absolutely no idea what to do with, so he supposes that they can be market friends.

That was a big component of the market that Shiro had ranted on and on about when he was convincing Keith to “join the market family.” That right there was enough to make Keith think that it sounded a bit like a cult, but Shiro had adamantly championed that the younger market workers were “good friends” who “looked out for each other” and “gave each other a lot of free shit.”

When Keith had pointed out that he doesn’t really have a lot of free shit to give aside from free knife sharpenings and what millennial is going to want that, Shiro had cheerily told him to piss off and to submit his application for a market booth as soon as possible.

Which Keith did. Thus, explaining why he’s here.

But whatever.

He’s startled out of his thoughts by a lidded coffee cup being briskly set on his plaid tablecloth and sends a pair of pliers toppling to the floor with his full body flinch.

“What in the ever-loving fuck,” Keith hisses up at a very amused looking Shiro as he dips under his folding table for the rogue pliers.

“I brought you coffee. Stop swearing in this wholesome, family environment.”

“You literally told me when I got here that I had to try “the dope ass baklava” from that stall next to yours, so I don’t have to take orders from the likes of you.” He takes the coffee though, he’s not a dumbass.

Shiro’s eyes crinkle up in a smile that Keith knows is his I’m Proud of Keith for Doing Something That Really Wasn’t That Hard Smile, which only serves to make him grumble under his breath and adamantly avoid Shiro’s gaze.

“So, how’s it going so far?”

Keith actively evades his meaningful eye contact by staring at the bakery stall across from him and a little to the right, where two tall, vaguely attractive people flutter around behind the table and slide pastries and bread into little plastic bags. “It’s going. I’ve talked to a lot of people who seemed interested and wanted to know if I’d be here on Tuesday.”

One of the tall, fluttery people behind the bakery table is flapping his hands around as he talks to the customer he’s serving, his grin split wide across his face and so bright that it actually makes Keith squint a little.

“That’s awesome. I’m really glad to hear it. Auntie was worried about you earlier, she said you were scowling and that it mars your handsome face.”

Shiro is…definitely still talking, but all Keith can focus on is the frenetic movement of the bakery boy’s long fingered hands. He’s talking so fast that Keith can’t even make out any of the words from his spot about twenty feet away. He smiles wide again as the customer leaves, and Keith quite literally feels like he’s staring into the sun. What the fuck.

He cuts a quick glance back at Shiro, who is now involved in a conversation with the Other Vegetable Woman and makes a noncommittal noise that he knows Shiro will deem as an appropriate response simply from long term Keith exposure.

Keith picks up his pretentious farmers market coffee to take an experimental sip and his gaze slides back over to the butterfly-handed boy, who chooses that exact split second to raise his own face up to meet Keith’s eyes.

It takes a few seconds for Keith’s heart to restart after being caught staring across the market at this deadass stranger who is now looking back at him, and when it does, it’s basically a lost cause anyway.

Bakery boy meets his eyes and smiles that stupid solar powered smile back at Keith, lifting up his hand to waggle his stupid long fingers at him in a quick, little wave.

Keith forcibly resists the urge to look around to see if that wave is for him and clenches his teeth to stop from audibly groaning in socially fueled distress, he lifts up his coffee cup in an odd kind of salute before resolutely looking absolutely anywhere but the bakery stall.

Shiro is still talking about vegetable shelf life or something dumb like that when Keith returns to both Earth and the conversation they’re having. It’s like the sound of the market immediately floods back into his awareness and he has to ball up one of his hands against his thigh to reign himself back in.

What in the fuck.

For the next hour, Keith looks only straight ahead at inquiring customers, down at his table, or to the left of the circle.

*

This avoidance tactic only works for so long. Keith makes eye contact with the tall bakery boy across from his stall three more times before the afternoon comes to a lazy close. His heart essentially stops each time, usually because said bakery boy is looking back whenever Keith glances over at him.

He’s able to catch glimpses of the boy across the way a few times without making any reciprocal eye contact. He’s tall and lithe in a way that is annoying to Keith simply due to his own more compact build. What can Keith say, he’s got a low center of gravity.

Details of said boy, or more likely said man, are not able to be gleaned from his position at his own booth, but Keith can tell that he’s fairly good looking even from far away. Tall and dark skinned and in a constant state of motion. He’s also wearing fucking overalls. Not coveralls like Shiro sometimes wears out in the fields when it gets cold in the later part of the season, but actual jean overalls over a bright yellow tie-dye shirt with what Keith assumes is his bakery’s logo.

It’s all he’s able to take note of when he’s constantly glancing there and back under absolute duress.

The last time it happened, Keith had to physically clamp his own mouth shut to prevent any untoward exclamations because Tall Bakery Man smiled so widely at him that his eyes were practically closed. It was most enchanting thing Keith had ever seen. It can absolutely not happen again or it will put Keith straight into his grave.

At around one o’clock, Keith starts to pack up all of his shit. He sharpened around six pocket knives and a few multitools and has given out about thirty of his Keith’s Knife Hut business cards. He feels good. Satisfied in a way that he usually doesn’t after social interaction.

He figures that because he’s talking about something he’s more or less dedicated his life to is why it’s easier to talk to strangers about it. Hyper focusing is something that tends to happen to him and he’s got a lot of material in terms of talking about and around kitchen knives and gardening tools. It’s comfortable and comforting all at once, which is a very novel feeling after being exposed to upwards of hundreds of people for six hours.

Just as he’s finished taking the sandpaper loops off his grinders, he glances up to possibly catch Shiro’s eye to wave goodbye to him when he spots Bakery Boy behind his own table. He’s relatively still and not actually doing anything aside from smiling but it makes Keith’s breath stop. How the hell did this happen? Why is Keith acting this way in the face of one singular person looking at him a few times throughout the day? The guy is wearing overalls, for fuck’s sake.

From across the way, the bakery worker smiles even bigger and gives him another jaunty finger wiggle. Only this time, he gives Keith a thumbs up with one hand and winks at the same time. It’s charming in an annoyingly effortless way and it forces a truly pained noise through Keith’s teeth and has him aggressively tossing the few tools he has left into his toolbox. He has got to get the fuck out of here.

He packs up his table and tool box and grinders as quick as possible without spilling all of his shit all over the cement floor of the market. His truck rumbles to life after a few rushed attempts to jam his keys into the ignition, mostly because he’s still flustered as fuck.

Trying to take a step back from the experience and the staccato beating of his own heart, he carefully considers how his first attempt at being a farmers market vendor went. It was a good first day, in all honesty. He’s happy to be here. He may even like it here.

But Keith isn’t going to think about this interaction with the Tall Bakery Man ever again. He’s going to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this shit. He’s all good.

It’s fine.

*

He thinks about almost nothing but that five second interaction all weekend. It’s not fine.

*

It continues on in this way for the next few weeks. Keith’s business kicks up now that people know that he’s at the market and he finds himself sharpening upwards of 25-30 kitchen knives a day along with his usual pocket knives. He also sometimes gets scissors, a few handheld axes, and once a comically large pair of hedge shears.

Honestly, Keith would be lying if he said it wasn’t fun. It’s a good, friendly atmosphere and being out in the open air for most of the day a few times a week is probably good for him. He’s met the market manager, Coran, a few times now and quietly chats with the Vegetable Lady next to him most days. She’s still hooking him up with peas.

Coran is fascinating because he rules the market with an iron fist and a slightly unhinged sense of responsibility. His bright orange t-shirt says “Market Master” on the back and he spends a lot of his time chasing after dog owners who bring their pets under the covered portion of the market despite the copious signage stating otherwise.

It’s nice, even if he has to see Coran’s white ass thighs at seven am three days a week because the motherfucker refuses to wear anything aside from jean cutoffs and ridiculous white dad tennis shoes.

Shiro floats by most days and brings him coffee and makes small talk about the TV shows they’re both watching and Keith makes a few tentative attempts to talk to one of the goat cheese mushroom women about their stall and their goats, which don’t go totally horrible.

He likes it here, he supposes, at this slightly pretentious outdoor farmers market. Plus, he’s making a good chunk of cash on top of his commercial clients, so he’s absolutely not complaining.

Okay, well…actually, he’s complaining a little bit. Mostly just about the Bakery Boy and the weird eye contact impasse that they’ve cultivated from across the aisleway of their part of the market.

Tall Bakery Man has not let up in terms of his cheeky little waves and plentiful amounts of winking and Keith is pretty sure it’s made his blood pressure rise to dangerous levels.

He’s worried that it’s going to make him pass out one of these days.

But, it’s fine. It’s totally cool. It feels like camaraderie without speaking and that’s one of Keith’s sweet spots. They just smile and wave at each other a lot. Sometimes, when they both first get to the market to set up, the Bakery Man will send him a thumbs up as a sort of little check in and Keith will return it without hesitation.

It’s noncommittal and sweet and it makes Keith want to bang his head against the brick pillar his stall is next to until he falls unconscious amidst the market patrons because he’s a little attached to it now. To the interactions and to the knowledge that Tall Bakery Man will probably already be looking at him if Keith looks over that way throughout the day.

He wears those overalls a lot, Bakery Guy does. Keith doesn’t really see him out behind the tables that his bread and pastries are on, but he’s caught him walking to other vendors’ stalls and lingering at the mushroom goat cheese combo stall a few times.

When he does that, Keith looks resolutely at his feet as he weaves between patrons and tables and absolutely nowhere else, to appear like the exact opposite of the kind of weird creeper that he might be. The shoes Bakery Guy wears are usually some dumb kitschy patterned plimsoll shoes with no socks, his overalls cuffed up past his ankles. Last week they had little sunbathers on them, this week they’re covered in little Dachshunds and hot dogs. It makes Keith want to scream.

He feels like some fucking Victorian woman in ye olden times, in love with this boy’s ankles and getting light headed over it like it’s some big scandal. He’s legitimately stupid.

But yeah, it’s going well.

*

To say that the rest of the market noticed the Knife Guy on his first day would be an understatement.

They absolutely noticed. They all talked about it incessantly after Coran had mentioned a new vendor would be there the Thursday of the week previous.

Shiro had offhandedly mentioned that he was a friend of his and that he was a little quiet, but that they would all like him. Hunk and Lance had made meaningful eye contact and left it at that. Shiro liked everyone, so that didn’t mean shit. They weren’t going to accept a weird interloper into their fold without appropriate information.

But now, oh but now. Knife Guy is leaned back in a folding chair with one leg crossed and one heavy boot resting on his knee, looking for all the world like he doesn’t give a damn about anything.

Lance silently berates himself for being totally into that as he unloads his pastries from the van and heaves them into a tall stack just behind their stall.

Allura has already started setting up their tables and getting their cash register and display stands ready. He catches her eye and smiles at her a little as he heads back for yet another round of unloading. Even though they’re both morning people, they’ve been awake for a few hours already and aren’t fully into speaking territory yet.

Coran and Shiro both failed to mention that the new guy sharpens knives. Because that is some pertinent info. Who the hell sharpens knives at a farmers market?

As Lance thinks it around in circles, he guesses it makes some kind of sense. He’s just never seen it before and he’s worked at markets in the surrounding area for years. Someone who actually knows what they’re doing and has the tools to make your shit sharp, sure. It’s still weird though.

Plus, the dude looks intense. Long dark hair and heavy eyebrows combined with knives and all that plaid? He’s cultivating a very specific look. And now okay, Lance didn’t say it was a bad look, but it’s a look nonetheless. It’s going to scare the shit out of all the old women.

It takes a bit of time for he and Allura to get all of their shit set up, but they manage to before the market opens which in itself is a win for them. They always have bullshit old people regulars who show up at like 6:55 and demand their favorite loaves of bread before the market has even really opened. Lance rants on and on about entitlement and appreciating market hours to both Allura and his ma frequently, but they just roll their eyes and tell him to help the elderly out.

Whatever. It’s fine. He’s fine. He goes about his market day.

He just can’t stop glancing over at the Knife Guy.

From where their stall is situated, he can’t really see the sign that hangs from Knife Guy’s tent to tell what his stall is called. Even if he pitches over to one side like a dumbass, the brick pillar that his tent is pressed up against blocks it.

He’s cute, though. Real cute. And now that Lance has been watching him for a hot minute, he can see that Knife Guy looks a little bit nervous. He’s staring straight off into space and keeps rubbing his thumb against his pointer finger in a kind of repetitious, comforting sort of way.

Lance should probably go over and say hi, right? It’s been a few hours since they all got here. That’s what normal people would do. Miss Kelly from the vegetable stand next to Knife Guy’s has already talked to him a little earlier. It’s probably weird and hard to start at a market a few weeks into the season and not know anyone aside from fucken Shiro.

And speak of the devil. Lance glances up from putting raspberry danishes into a pleasing arrangement after they sold about half of them earlier to see Shiro slinking across the middle of the market where the plant people are to cut across the aisle way and sidle right up to Knife Guy’s table.

He smacks a coffee cup down against the cheesy plaid tablecloth and Knife Guy, on god, literally flails all of his limbs. Shit falls on the ground and he glares up at Shiro, and Lance…has the good sense to feel a little winded by that glare. It’s not even aimed at him. This dude is good looking, what the fuck.

Lance is still shuffling pastries and cookies around to appeal the most to market patrons, that shit is his life blood and what he’s best at, when he looks back up to see Shiro and Knife Guy chatting a little. He takes a break from organizing raisin croissants and just watches the easy way they both interact with each other.

They’re definitely friends. Of course Shiro would have good looking friends. They’re both wearing plaid too, must be some sort of good-looking dude wavelength they’re both on. Lance only looks good in very certain colors of plaid and he likes wearing his overalls to avoid dressing himself at four am in the dark and getting to the market looking like an actual dumbass. Plus, yellow tie-dye is kind of hard to accessorize. He’ll stick with his denim and zip up hoodies, thank you very much.

He keeps watching them and notices the specific moment where Knife Guy zones out again and then they’re making eye contact. It takes a little bit for Knife Guy to even realize they’re looking at one another and by then Lance is already waving at him a little bit and smiling what he can totally feel is a huge, dorky smile.

Knife Guy…straight up turns pink. Blushes so bright that Lance can see it from across the way. It’s the cutest fucking thing. He can feel warmth curling in his stomach and he laughs a little as Knife Guy is startled into giving him a salute with his coffee cup.

It should look stupid. It doesn’t.

Knife Guy is now resolutely looking anywhere aside from Lance, which makes the warmth in his stomach rock back and forth like he’s on a boat out at sea. He keeps pushing his hands into his dark hair and messing it all up and it serves to makes Lance smile softly down at his pastries.

He should probably leave well enough alone and not embarrass the guy from across the aisle. He should probably go over there and actually speak to him. Introduce himself and Hunk and maybe Pidge and ask him what his name is, find out why in the hell he sharpens knives. How he knows Shiro and where he’s from and what he likes to do in his spare time. Maybe find out what his favorite pastry is.

He should probably do a lot of things.

And yet, he spends the rest of the day sweetly waving at Knife Guy and making his entire face turn red each time. Because this is who he is, not being able to leave well enough alone. He winks at him once right before he leaves and he’s pretty sure Knife Guy chokes as he lurches towards his weird pickup truck and tosses all of his supplies in.

Lance is absolutely not going to let this go.

*

It continues on in this way for the next few weeks. Lance mans his ma’s farmers market stall. He interacts with his regulars and gives them good deals because they’re nice to him. He chats with Hunk and Pidge and Coran. He makes Knife Guy blush.

They still haven’t spoken, but it’s become a thing. A capital T thing. Lance’s favorite kind of Thing.

It becomes a routine. A few times a day Lance will glance over to Knife Guy’s stall and smile at him, especially big if Knife Guy is already looking. He peppers these ten second interactions with a few thumbs ups, maybe a wink here or a finger guns there. Knife Guy never stops blushing. Lance might be a little bit in love with some random dude in a brown Carhartt jacket that he’s never spoken to.

It’s chill.

He and Hunk make a whole lot of jokes about the Murder Pickup Truck. Knife Guy drives a beat up cream and brown pickup that makes horrible noises when he starts it up and has a lot of weird shit in the back. Hunk is absolutely convinced that he’s a serial killer from the pickup alone, so the working with sharp bladed objects really doesn’t help.

It makes Lance laugh because he’s pretty sure Knife Guy is just a normal dude and once he and Hunk actually speak to him, it’ll be chill. But their jokes give him a hell of an excuse to look at Knife Guy a lot. Not that he wouldn’t anyway, but still.

Over the last few weeks, Lance has subtly watched Knife Guy get more comfortable at the market. Not a lot of people talk to him, usually just Shiro and Miss Kelly and occasionally Coran. But the difference in the way he holds himself in his folding chair a few weeks in compared to his first day is noticeable. It’s sweet, almost. He has a few regulars who bring him their knives and their tools and seems to be able to connect with them a lot more. Lance doesn’t even know him, but he’s proud of him anyway.

Lance had been watching covertly from behind a pyramid of their French bread when Knife Guy had made his first customer laugh. It was revelatory. Knife Guy had seemed surprised but then so, so pleased, smiling shyly from where he sat, and it had made that stirring warmth in Lance’s stomach spread out and fill his entire body.

He might be in trouble. He doesn’t really mind.

Talking to Knife Guy soon might be in the cards, though.

*

Hunk leans against the outside of the table that all of their bread is piled on and gestures vaguely towards the Knife Guy with the leftover half of his croissant, “I don’t know, man…I just think he’s weird. He puts off a vibe. A very specific vibe. Vibe with a capital V. And also, he may be an actual murderer? Who sharpens knives as a job?”

Reaching over the cash register to pick up fifty cents in change that the woman with the Can I Speak to the Manager Haircut didn’t deem appropriate enough to put in his hand instead of on the table, Lance considers this.

“Hm, okay, duly noted. But his hair is actually pretty nice?” With a cursory glance to be sure that Knife Guy’s head is ducked down focusing on whatever it is that he’s sharpening, Lance takes thorough note of his thick head of dark hair that he’s been appreciating three days every week for the last few weeks.

“It looks even better when it’s pulled back though, he’s done that a few times since he’s started.” Lance decides on after careful deliberation, turning his body back towards Hunk just in time to catch his mouth drop open.

“I- what, we were literally just talking about how he might be a serial killer? Not talking about how nice his hair looks! Do you care at all for our potential safety?”

“Hunk, please, you know I don’t want you to get mur-“ before Lance can even finish, Hunk is straightening up and frantically slapping Lance’s arm, motioning back toward Knife Guy’s stall.

“Look! He’s sharpening an axe right now! Is that not the perfect weapon for horror movie style decapitation?”

“Okay, valid, but it’s not his axe…I saw Mrs. Fitzsimmons drop it off at his stall when she got to the market.” Lance clearly had been keeping a very close eye on his neighbor across the way. So what? Sue him.

Hunk makes a noise of pure disbelief and finishes off his croissant before wandering back to his moms’ stall.

Even though Hunk isn’t looking his way anymore, Lance shrugs. Knife Guy is cute and gets very obviously worked up when Lance winks at him. Plus, he’s got a soft spot for guys in work jackets and plaid, what can he say?

*

It all comes to a head about a month after Keith first started at the market. Things have been going surprisingly well. He likes being at the market and likes the few friends he’s made. It’s something to look forward to every few days because it’s easy and chill and non-committal.

Shiro is very smug about it. Keith ignores the stupid faces he makes.

It’s a Thursday market day, so there weren’t as many people as there is on Saturdays, but Keith still did pretty well. He had a lot of bigger things to sharpen today, a few lawn mower blades and an actual deadass scythe that a tiny old woman brought him earlier.

It’s about one, so he’s packing up all of his stuff and looking forward to going home and melting into his couch and watching whatever show Adam and Shiro deem good enough to put on when they come over later.

As he’s tucking his finer grade sandpaper loop into his toolbox, he’s startled by what sounds like someone hissing. He whips around only to see Bakery Guy hunched over his front table and beckoning him over. He’s wearing an actually giant sun hat with his usual overall ensemble.

Keith wants to hate it. He, yet again, doesn’t.

“Psssst, Knife Guy, over here!” Bakery Guy makes pointed eye contact with him and waves him over in a flurry of hands.

Keith looks around to either side of him, but Vegetable Lady is gone and the soap booth on the other side of the entrance is just about packed up.

He glances back and makes eye contact with Bakery Guy, pointing at himself with what he knows is a stupid, bewildered look on his face.

Bakery Guy rolls his eyes with practically his whole body and points directly at him, “Uh, yes you, you’re the only knife guy around. Get over here.”

His voice is really nice, musical and fun. It wasn’t what Keith was expecting but absolutely should have been. This is the first time he’s heard it and absolutely the first time it’s been directed anywhere near him. He snaps his toolbox shut and edges around his table to make his way across the aisle.

“What’s…up?” Jesus Christ, is Keith an actual dumbass?

“Hey, do you want a croissant? Or a cookie? They’re really good! My ma makes them all. What are you into? Take anything, seriously, whatever you want!” Bakery Guy keeps waving him over at a faster pace the closer Keith gets and as Keith approaches the table he backs off from where he was hunched like a dragon over a pile of leftover pastries.

“Uh…” Keith has no idea what the fuck is going on right now and he knows that his eyebrows are furrowed in a way that always makes Shiro laugh, but he can’t help it. What is happening.

Bakery Guy shoots a ray of pure sunlight out of his face directly into Keith’s eyes with his smile and tries again, “We don’t always sell everything pastry and bread wise, so I try to hook up the other vendors with some treats before we take everything to the women’s shelter downtown. Do you want anything?”

Oh, okay. Yeah, Keith wants something. He’s been inadvertently staring at all of this stuff for the last month.

“Yes, please.” Has he never spoken to another human being in his entire life? Clearly not.

“Oh sweet, awesome. Cool cool cool. Take whatever! Do you like really sweet things? You don’t really seem like you do, but obviously that’s a totally unfounded assumption, so some of the less sweet stuff would be our pain au raisin, maybe a muffin, or a cream cheese danish!” Bakery Guy’s eyes are so fucking blue up close that Keith is pretty sure he’s going to close his own eyes tonight and see this color reflected on his eyelids when he goes to sleep.

“Um, a cream cheese danish…sounds good?”

Before he’s even finished, Bakery Guy is darting forward and closing Keith’s hands around an already plastic packaged danish. His hands are soft as fuck and Keith is going to drop dead.

“I’ll keep that in mind! I almost always try and go around before everybody leaves, but I don’t always get to it. Plus, you seem to leave pretty early and I’ve never been able to catch you before you’ve packed up.” The look Bakery Guy sends him makes his heart stop, because it’s sweet and a little flirty and an admission that he’s been watching Keith. Admitted like a secret that they both share.

His eyes scrunch up when he smiles, and Keith is composing sonnets in his head as he stares at this freckled son of bitch who’s wearing the biggest sun hat that Keith has literally ever seen. How is this his life?

“Well, thank you? I, uh, really appreciate a good danish. Also, what’s your name?” Keith has to struggle to get the words out of his mouth because he and this guy are still making really intense eye contact and his big ass hands are still curled around Keith’s, the danish sandwiched in the middle in a weird cradle.

Bakery Guy smiles even bigger and Keith literally has to shut his eyes in the face of that solar power.

“Oh shit, I totally forgot we’ve never been introduced! The name’s Lance! And you are?”

Does he have a name? Is he anything but an entity-less soul bouncing around in the ether? What the hell is going on here? Why are they still holding hands?

“Keith.” It’s literally the only thing he can say. At least he remembered his own name.

Lance is opening his mouth to start speaking again when someone reappears back beneath the tent of their stall.

“Are you done packing up yet?” comes from the other tall beautiful person that Keith has seen behind the table of the bakery stall. She’s tall and posh-sounding and also probably the third most good-looking person Keith has ever had the misfortune of standing next to, behind both Shiro and Lance.

She touches Lance on his shoulder lightly as she says it and in a way that suggests familiarity before she turns around to do something or other with the plastic wrapped brownies.

Lance and Keith both jump, and their hands immediately fall to their sides. Keith has to flex both of his hands to rid the sensation of Lance cradling them from his skin.

Great. Back on his Mr. Darcy bullshit. He has got to protest harder when Adam and Shiro binge watch period dramas.

Keith’s jams his hands into his pockets and Lance’s fall to rest on the assorted jumble of pastries.

“Almost done, ‘Lura.” He sends a little smile back her way and it’s so sweet and small that Keith can hear his own heartbeat echoing in his head.

Well, fuck. Maybe this incredibly good-looking tall person is dating the other incredibly good-looking tall person in front of him?

The thought almost strikes him dead. He knows next to nothing about Lance or this other ethereal person whose platinum hair seems to be reflecting the sunlight and fucking blinding him. What if they’re dating, oh god, or worse, what if they’re married? And Keith has been pining away uselessly from his Knife Hut for the last month over a married man?

Jesus H. Christ. They probably have kids. Beautiful brown children running around that are adorable and perfect in every way. They probably own the bakery together. Hell, and here Keith was mentally preparing to be a homewrecker.

Holy shit, death is the only option here. He may be getting ahead of himself, but the ball is already rolling and there’s no going back.

They’re all just kind of standing there looking at each other and the Kill Bill sirens are sounding in Keith’s head, but he doesn’t move to do anything.

Thankfully, Lance smiles his way again and snags another danish from his pile, handing it to Keith delicately.

“Here’s another for the road. I’ll see you on Saturday, yeah?”

All Keith can do is nod like a fucking bobble head and return the little wave Lance gives him before he about faces. As he’s hopping into his truck, he glances in his rear-view mirror to see the two bakery workers packing up all their things and laughing together. Probably talking about something cute that their two-year-old did last night. Dear lord.

Yep, the only solution here is death.

*

Friday night, Lance is so keyed up to get to the market that he’s practically vibrating. He succeeded in actually speaking to Knife Guy on Thursday, who he now knows is named Keith. Which is cute. Kind of dweeby and not entirely fitting, but still cute.

He also now knows that Keith is a little socially awkward but not in an unbearable way. In a way that Lance knows how to navigate, usually by asking specific questions and kind of talking a lot like he does anyway.

So, moral of the story, he’s hype to get back to the market to maybe actually talk to Keith a little bit more rather than just making fucking googly eyes at each other from across the aisle like they’ve been doing for the last four weeks.

But when Saturday morning arrives, he’s forgotten that Allura took the day off and is dismayed to realize that he’ll be running the entire stall by himself.

Packaging everything, packing everything into the van, unpacking everything, and then dealing with the weird old dudes and condescending soccer moms all day. By himself. He’s sufficiently less hype by the time he actually gets to the market at quarter to six.

Keith is in his Knife Hut, which makes Lance laugh a little every time he thinks about it, already unpacked and set up for the day. He’s fucking around with something on his phone and rubbing a chunk of his long hair between his thumb and pointer finger.

Lance kind of desperately wants to run his fingers through that hair. But first, he has to get through the day. Then he has to actually talk to Keith again. Then they have to fall in love. There’s a process to these things, you see.

And with that, he begins the arduous exercise of unpacking the van. Usually it’s not that big of a struggle, they’ve got about fifteen plastic pallets with all of their product in with weird little handles that he’s able to stack behind their tables but it’s a lot more work without Allura here to toss things around with her stupid buff arms.

He’s going to be late setting up, which flusters him, because then all the fucking early ass old people will bitch about how he’s not set up, which will prevent him even farther from being set up. Endless cycle of not being set up until like an hour in when he’s all good.

The days that Allura’s gone are the worst, but his ma is right to give her them off. She deserves a break once in a while. She’s a great general manager and helps out a whole lot when she doesn’t even really have to, so Lance doesn’t begrudge her her days off.

He might die today though.

Hefting huge trays of bread and pastries out of the van is kind of a bitch and he’s hyper focused on doing it as fast as he can without hurting himself, which is why he’s truly startled when someone clears their throat behind him.

It’s Knife Guy. Er, Keith. And he’s standing there in his brown work jacket layered over a maroon and gold plaid flannel that really brings out the grey of his eyes. He looks kind of...off balance and Lance sort of wants to kiss his face a little.

“Do you, uh, need some help?” Lance has been pleasantly surprised when he hears the raspy quality to Keith’s voice all like, four times he’s heard Keith speak.

Lance casts a quick look toward the empty Knife Hut, but nobody is really around yet and it’s safe to assume that Keith had been watching him flap around frantically for the last thirty minutes.

“If you’re offering? Absolutely.”

He gives Keith a few pointers on the easiest way to maneuver the unwieldy bakery trays and they make quick work of stacking them all up behind the tables. When he tosses the table cloths to Keith, they make even quicker work spreading them over the tables, making beautifully uncomfortable eye contact, so Lance can start placing all of the stuff he has today out.

They work in silence for a while, Keith handing him things and Lance setting them all up in the specific way he likes. After he gets everything set up, he’ll have to put all the little labels and signs out, but he’s feeling way better now that everything is at least out of the van. Thank god for Keith.

“So, uh...where’s your wife?”

When Lance glances over at him to see if it was really, truly Lance he was speaking to, Keith won’t look at him. Just keeps making laser eyes at a loaf of wheat bread he’s fondling.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Keith shifts uncomfortably, and Lance tracks his movements.

“Your, uh, wife?”

“Who?”

“The lady from Thursday? The one that’s normally here with you. The white-haired good looking one?”

Lance can feel his eyes practically bug out of his head as Keith trails off quietly. He glances around the market to make sure he’s not like...being Punk’d or something. What in the fuck.

“You mean Allura? British accent? Built like an actual goddess? Able to handle the most passive aggressive of patrons with a sense of poise and rationality?” Lance cannot fucking believe this. He wants to laugh in disbelief, but doubts that would go over well with Keith.

The group chat is going to blow up when he relays this information.

When Keith finally chances a quick look up at him, he looks brutally uncomfortable. Red dusts the tops of his cheeks and ears and he’s twisting the wrapper of yet another loaf of bread around his fingers so tightly that it’s turning his fingertips purple.

Lance reaches out to grab the loaf from him and their fingers touch. He smiles at the jolt it sends through them both.

“She’s not my wife, dude. She’s a lesbian, first of all. And she’s the general manager of my mom’s bakery. I wouldn’t even be allowed to look at her if my mom thought I was trying to get with her.”

He can visibly see the distress disappear from Keith, the tight way he was holding his shoulders all but melts out of him and the only thing Lance can do is smile like a dumbass until they make eye contact again.

“Was that a Panic! at The Disco lyric?” is the only thing Keith says back to him, his mouth curving up into a crooked smile.

“Shut up. Let’s finish setting up so I can set you free to sharpen knives, you little weirdo.”

*

After that morning and the wildly uncomfortable clarification that followed, Keith comes over to the bakery stall to help set up most days. Even if Allura is there.

Lance is a just and fair motherfucker, so he makes Allura, Hunk, and Pidge promise to not bring up the wife thing until Keith is actually like, cool with them. As to not embarrass him and ruin Lance’s chances of kissing his stupid face, mostly.

He gets along well with Allura, which is nice because Lance doesn’t fuck with people who don’t get along with Allura. They talk about shit that Lance doesn’t really care about, like, old books and Downton Abbey and Jane Austen or whatever the fuck and they have pointless, winding arguments about the architecture of the market.

Keith is a little quiet, like Shiro had said, but still funny and easy to get along with. He makes a lot of small pointed comments that have Allura and Lance cracking up, especially when they’re about some of the patrons they have.

He spends fifteen minutes one day ranting about a woman who wanted her blender blades sharpened. Which, Keith maintains, would have been fine, if the blender blades actually detached from her shitty old ass blender. He’d had to explicitly detail why he couldn’t sharpen the blades in the blender if the blades were still in the blender to this woman for upwards of twenty minutes and he’d come over to the bakery stall after she’d left red in the face.

At the end of market days, Lance usually moseys on over with leftover pastries and bread for him, now that he knows that Keith has a secret spot in his heart for the energy bars that the bakery makes. The smiles he gives Lance are enough to make the entire day and all the bullshit that comes with it worth it.

It takes a little bit of persuasion on Lance’s end to get Hunk to agree to actually talk to Keith. He spends a lot of time at his moms’ stall but always seems to vanish whenever Keith shows up in the morning to help Lance and Allura unpack. Probably because he still thought Keith was going to mcmurder them all.

“Did you really think I was a serial killer?” Keith is pouting a little at Hunk, who looks horribly offended that Lance just threw him under the bus like that.

They cluster in little groups at one person’s stall depending on the time and the day and right now Lance and Hunk are loitering in front of Keith’s Knife Hut while Allura mans the bakery stall. There aren’t that many people here yet so nobody feels that bad about abandoning work to troll the other vendors’ stalls.

Hunk is weak in the face of Keith’s naturally occurring puppy dog eyes and is actively trying to backtrack, “No, dude, no, of course not. I didn’t really think that. I was just, well, ya know…concerned.”

“You don’t think that now though, right?”

Lance can’t help it when he taps the knife that Keith has just sharpened and set down beside one of his grinders, “You better not think that still, because if Keith knew that you convinced everyone he was a serial killer when he first started here, that could be a pretty good motivator for him to actually start killing.”

This causes Hunk to flap his arms a little bit and whine, “It was just the truck, alright? It gives off really intense murder vibes.”

Keith is starting to look actually affronted, pressing his hand to his chest like one of the Victorian women he and Allura always go on about. It makes Lance outwardly laugh, he can’t help it.

“What’s wrong with my truck? I love that truck.”

“Dude, are you fucking me? It’s weird and old and makes creepy noises and is not one, but two, horrible colors.”

“So what? I’ve had it forever and I love it. It’s not weird.”

“Whatever man, it’s weird.”

It’s fun, being friends with Keith, even if had taken a while. He drifts between them like a satellite, coming to talk with Lance and Allura and then down to Hunk’s moms’ stall to talk in depth about foraging for mushrooms, and over to Pidge’s parents’ stall to talk about bees and honey.

They tease him a lot, especially Hunk and Pidge, because he gets along really well with their moms. Shiro eventually gets wind of it and gives him mad shit for befriending all the older women at the market, including Miss Kelly and Auntie Shirogane. Apparently, it’s always been kind of a thing. Shiro’s mom loves Keith too.

For two market days, everyone makes wildly pointed jokes about Keith attracting cougars and being into older women until he loses his shit and practically shouts “I’m gay!” in the middle of yet another conversation about it, making a few of the market patrons stop and look at him.

He looks embarrassed for a few seconds after until he powers through and continues with, “So, no, I’m not a cougar hunter. Excuse me for getting along really well with older women. It’s more than I can say for the rest of you.”

And that’s that.

Except that it isn’t.

Because hearing that proclamation makes the warmth swirl around low in Lance’s stomach again and he’s reminded just how strongly he wants to kiss Keith’s stupid, red face.

*

Lance and Hunk hang out a decent amount when they aren’t at the market, perks of being best bros obviously, and occasionally Pidge will come out as well. A lot of the time they just hang out at one of the bars downtown but sometimes they go out and do fun things, like movies and apple orchards and seasonal shit like that.

They’ve been trying to get Shiro to come for literal seasons to no avail, but Keith may be their in.

It’s Hunk who actually verbally suggests they invite Keith to go out with them after the market the upcoming Saturday, but Lance has been thinking about it for, well, weeks.

Lance doesn’t even have to Hunk to get behind the bakery table and keep things running before he’s already doing it, he heads over towards Keith’s stall with a skip in his step.

Before he even gets there, he’s smiling like a dumbass bastard, because Keith is wearing the ridiculous magnifying headset type thing that he sometimes wears. It has a light in it to help him see better and it also serves as one of the best things Lance has ever seen in his dumb life.

“Good looks out here, Knife Guy.”

Keith starts and bats the magnifying headband up from his line of vision and is starting to blush before he even realizes that it’s Lance who’s giving him shit.

“Oh, get fucked.” His words sound dismissive but he’s setting the pocket knife he was working on aside and turning off his grinders, smirking up at Lance from the chair that he now knows is horribly off balance.

Keith lets him sit in it sometimes, while he quietly explains the intricacies of knife sharpening to Lance from over his shoulder. He lets Lance sharpen things occasionally, hand over handing him along so he doesn’t do anything stupid. Lance…truly doesn’t give a shit about knives, but he gives a shit about Keith and what Keith gives a shit about, so he shuts up and listens and presses close when he’s allowed.

“I’d sure like to get fucked, but only if you come with me.” He’s saying it before he really has a chance to think it through and then he’s just committing, leaning into it. Full speed ahead, boys.

It’s stupidly obvious that he and Keith have a bit of a thing going on. They don’t talk about it or confront it, but it’s very obviously there. He’s just waiting to see which one of them breaks first and makes the initial move.

He’s pretty sure the rest of them have bets on when it’ll happen but he doesn’t want to know any of proposals for fear of swaying a certain way. He wants this to happen naturally.

Keith is bright red and rolling his eyes so far back into his head that Lance is concerned that it hurts, but that’s all he does.

They watch each other for a few seconds before Keith uses the pocket knife to kind of make a “well, what do you want?” type of gesture at Lance. It’s kind of hot.

“Come out with us tonight.” It comes out softer than he intends, more of a request than the command he means for it to be and he leans up against the brick pillar to look down at Keith. It doesn’t feel like a power move, things feel perfectly balanced and Lance is caught in the intensity of Keith’s half lidded gaze.

“Where ya goin’?” The more comfortable Lance gets against the pillar, the farther down Keith slouches in his chair. His legs are spread wide and he looks comfortable and relaxed and just a little bit challenging and Lance wants to crawl in his fucking lap and cuddle up. This is absolute bullshit.

“Probably just Ryner’s. We usually go after the market and she lets us chill because we bring her free shit.” Please say yes, Lance is viciously wishing, chanting over and over in his head. Come hang out with us, you big idiot. Let me buy you a beer, let me see what you’re like when you aren’t at the market.

“Alright, I’ll be there.” Keith’s smiling up at him and Lance feels like his knees are going to give out and he’s going to collapse on the cement floor in a gooey, love struck pile.

It becomes a thing. Because of course it does.

They go every weekend. Lance buys Keith a whole lot of beers.

*

As the season progresses and the weather gets colder at the end of September, Lance starts to bitch more about his wardrobe.

It makes Keith laugh, mostly because of the overalls and the fact that Lance refuses to stop wearing them and also refuses to wear anything resembling socks. The big sun hat goes away for the season, unfortunately enough.

The plimsolls and the bare ankles stay, and Keith still can feel himself get pink when he thinks about how every part of Lance is nice. He’s a dumbass.

Their mornings stay dark and cold and Keith always brings as many layers as he can because he can’t sharpen knives if his fingers don’t work.

It’s six am one morning when Keith wanders over to the bakery stall after setting up all of his own stuff to see Lance shivering aggressively in only a zip up. He says nothing at first, but he takes note that Lance still seems cold after all of the manual labor of unpacking the van.

“I hate this stupid state. Why don’t we live somewhere where it’s eternally warm?”

Hunk rolls his eyes at Lance saying the same thing he says every morning of the market at six am and snags an old-fashioned donut from the display.

“I can’t feel my fucking hands. Weather below 60 degrees is cancelled. Fall, whomst? I don’t know her.” As Lance continues loudly damning the weather, he sneaks up beside Keith and under his arm to snuggle into his body heat.

It’s not the first time they’ve touched this close, but it still feels like the first time. Keith can actively feel the heat rushing up his face as he lets Lance tuck his taller self up against him.

He’s about ready to offer Lance the work jacket off his back and just suffer through the chill in the air when his mind flashes a picture of yet another jacket tucked in the backseat of his pickup. He ducks out from Lance’s octopus limbs and throws a quick “I’ll be right back.” to Allura, Hunk, and Lance.

As he’s shuffling past his own stall, he can hear Hunk crow “Look what you did!” and Lance squawk in offense. He smiles and ignores it, jogging to the parking lot to rummage around in his truck.

By the time he’s back, Lance and Hunk appear to be trying to put each other in headlocks and barely notice when Keith sticks his arm out and taps Lance with the hand the jacket is in.

“Here. Wear this.”

Lance is big eyed and silent as he glances over at Keith and it makes him resolutely look the other way to prevent a full-bodied blush from taking over. He doesn’t have time for this.

He doesn’t glance back over at Lance and Hunk until Lance has pushed his arms into both sleeves of the leather jacket and tugged it on. It looks kind of dumb, because Lance’s limbs are a lot longer than Keith’s, but his hoodie is long enough to cover his wrists and it’s warmer than nothing.

It causes something warm to unfurl in his chest and he can’t help but smile at Lance’s slightly reddened cheeks. He wants to do shit like this always.

Allura is looking on with an absolutely unimpressed expression and she turns to Hunk with an elbow to his solar plexus.

“Hunk, I’m cold as well. Where is your convenient leather jacket that you can give to me for the day?”

“Damn Allura, I can’t control the weather. Get off me.”

They’re so clearly making fun of Keith, but he barely even feels it, he’s too busy watching Lance’s dumbstruck face.

He feels tingly and alive and he’s so glad that he works at this stupid farmers market and that these are his stupid friends. He pushes his shoulder up against Lance’s and they spend a few seconds suspended in each other’s smiles and it’s, on god, one of the dumbest things that’s ever happened to him and Keith loves it.

*

Weeks pass like this, the four or five or six of them, depending on Shiro’s level of bullshittery that day, fucking around on market days and giving Coran grey hair and exchanging their wares for promises of beer on the weekends.

Keith learns that he actually really likes Pidge and that she actually really likes bees. Her parents are apiarists who do weird, complicated scientific research with bees which resulted in a farmers market stand and copious amounts of different flavored honey.

He goes over to her house one afternoon after the market closes to see her parents’ colonies and it’s one of the coolest things he’s ever witnessed. It feels like some sort of weird fantasy movie where he’s able to talk to bees and they don’t sting him, because the honey bees as Pidge says, are docile and sweet and only sting as the last resort.

Hunk’s moms take him out to forage for mushrooms with their special Italian mushroom dogs and Keith gets dirty and grimy and laughs more in one afternoon than he has in ages. He comes home with a little brown paper sack of some of the best mushrooms he’s ever had.

The five of them spend slow and lazy autumn evenings tucked into a copse of trees on the Shirogane farm and it feels good. Good in a way that Keith didn’t even know he was missing before this.

They meet Allura’s new girlfriend, a soft-spoken blonde named Romelle, who turns around and gives Lance a run for his money in terms of drinking him under the table. They love her.

He’s so pleased with how this random choice in his life turned out. He really does owe Shiro a thank you.

He’ll get around to it.

One crisp afternoon in the beginning of October, Lance invites him, just him, over to the bakery for a cookie making demonstration from Lance’s very own mother.

She’s sweet and shorter than Keith but takes up a perfectly appropriate amount of space in every room and Keith might be a little bit in love with her too. He’s forced into a dorky apron with the bakery logo on it and it makes Lance laugh so hard that he sprays flour everywhere with the force of it and Keith feels like he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.

His ma, Lance explains to him after she heads to the front to work the register, started the bakery ten years ago on a whim. She didn’t know if it would work but it was something she had thought about for years and her culinary and baking background was sufficient enough to get it up off the ground.

“I love it here, and I love her, and I love that this is what she loves to do,” Lance is telling him as he frosts little cookies with a pastry bag with such concentration that it takes Keith’s breath away.

“Do you see yourself doing anything else?” Keith is hesitant to ask, but he’s also genuinely curious. His eyes keep catching on the flour that’s dusting over Lance’s freckles. He wants to reach out and brush it off, mostly for an excuse to feel Lance’s face, but he focuses back on poorly decorating his own cookie.

“I can see myself doing a lot of other things, but I’m not sure if I’d like anything as much as this, ya know?”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“Ma will get, I don’t know, probably fifteen more years out of the bakery if she chooses to, and I think after that she’ll pass it along to me. I hope so, at least. My other siblings have all either moved out of town or aren’t interested in the bakery.” Lance glances up at him as he says it, a sweet little smile on his lips.

“Plus, the market part is one of my favorite things in the entire world. I like being there and I like the vibe and Coran giving me shit. I more or less run that entire part of the bakery and it’s a responsibility that I didn’t even know I was going to like so much.”

Keith is diligently trying to pipe icing out in the way that Lance’s mom showed him earlier when Lance bumps his hip into Keith’s to get him out of the way. He takes over and Keith just lets him, watching his long-fingered hands.

“Like, having regulars is one of the coolest things to me. I know these people and I know what they like and I can have their orders ready before they even tell me what they want. It’s rewarding in a way a lot of other things aren’t, ya know?” Lance is so close to him now and looking at him while piping at the same time and the knowledge that he’s choosing to share this with Keith, here, in this space, makes him warm from the crown of his head down to his toes in his boots.

“Mm, I get that. It’s not quite the same for me, but I definitely understand the familial ties to a specific craft.” Keith doesn’t really say much more than that, doesn’t want to bring the mood down out of his own volition.

“Yeah?” And Lance stops what he’s doing entirely, focuses his huge luminescent anime eyes on Keith and he just crumbles. Whatever normally stops him from talking about this part of his life kind of gives way in the face of how interested and genuine Lance seems to be.

So, Keith talks.

“My dad, he, uh, passed a way a few years ago. Around five or so now? I was young when it happened, about eighteen. So, it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happen, I could have been younger, but it wasn’t easy either.” He searches about for something to do with his hands so he’s not just standing here monologuing to a boy he likes about his dead father.

Finally, he spots a dish rag and sets about cleaning the gleaming chrome countertops of Lance’s mother’s kitchen.

“I don’t know how the hell he even got started sharpening things, but he’d done it for as long as I’d been alive. He had all of the tools and stuff, everything I have now is actually his. And when he died, I just had a surplus of what felt like useless knowledge about knives and tools and shit. And basically all the paraphernalia.”

Lance is still watching him as he turns lazy circles around the island that they’re working at. It doesn’t feel heavy or like Lance is making him speak, he just keeps looking.

“I had dropped out of college about a year after he died because I’d lost essentially the only structure I’d ever had and just kind of floated for a bit. I realized, eventually and only because one of my dad’s old restaurant contacts called looking to set him up with a new client, that everyone my dad had been working for had nobody taking care of their stuff. So I figured, okay, might as well take up the mantle. Be the knife sharpener I wanted to see in the world.”

He looks up from sweeping flour into his hands to toss in the trash to see Lance smiling at him. It’s soft and sweet and makes Keith want to kiss it off him.

“I like it a lot, though. More than I ever thought I would. It’s nice being able to do something with my hands. And now I’m here. Well, not physically here, but like…at the market. So, I figure it was worth it.” Keith should be legally required not to speak anymore.

“Thanks for sharing that with me, Keith.”

Normally something like that feels weird and forced and clichéd, but yet again, Lance just seems truly genuine to the point where Keith can’t look at him anymore.

“Uh, yeah, of course. Thanks for making me feel like I could.”

*

The market feels comfortable to Keith in a way that he never thought that it would.

He knows most of the vendors, by sight if not by name. He’s, by law, allowed to give Coran mad shit about just about anything.

When his grinders make horrific squealing noises during a particularly tricky knife sharpening, all of the other vendors ignore it while the patrons all act like he’s murdering someone in real time. At first Keith adamantly apologized to anyone who was around when it happened, now he just lets it go.

Sometimes people hover behind him and watch him sharpen like they’ve never seen a dude with a knife before. At first it made him tense, made him feel like he was being judged. But he realized after a while that people are just interested in something that doesn’t get done often enough.

And kids love to watch. They’ll stand beside him for the entire time it takes their parents to make a round of the market. Sometimes he lets them sit next to him and watch, answers their poorly phrased questions and let’s them look at his tools. He loves that it makes Lance blush from across the aisle.

He talks more in the last few months than he’s talked in the last six years. Mostly explanations for what he’s doing and why. He gets to talk about something he’s really passionate about to people who are occasionally equally as passionate three days a week.

If he looks up, about three quarters of the time he’ll catch Lance’s eye and they’ll smile at each other in a way that Pidge says should precede the chorus of a boyband’s Top 40 single.

It’s around this time in late October that Keith realizes that the season is ending soon. The market won’t be open after the first weekend in November.

He, predictably, freaks the fuck out.

How is he going to see Lance? And Hunk and Allura and Pidge? The main reason he sees them so much now is work and the odds that they’ll want to hang out with him when they don’t see him three times a week is slim.

What in the hell is he going to do?

A full two days between Tuesday and Thursday are spent going balls to the wall crazy with anxiety, but Keith can’t help it. He doesn’t want to lose this new-found friend group and go back to only watching Downton Abbey with Shiro and Adam on the weekends. He may not survive.

He can feel how weird he’s being when he gets to the market on Saturday and Lance picks up on it almost immediately.

Keith is so freaked out that he dumps the entirety of his toolbox on the floor when Lance pops into existence next to his table about half an hour before the market opens.

“Keith, dude, are you alright?” Lance’s eyebrows are well up his forehead and it makes Keith’s face flush so red he feels fluorescent.

“What. Yep, totally fine. So good. Just great. Thank you for asking.”

“That was like, five different responses. What’s going on?” Before Keith can come up with another evasion, Lance is reaching out and lightly touching his shoulder and it stops Keith in his anxiety driven tracks.

He must see the look on Keith’s face because before he really registers what’s happening, Lance is tugging him up out of his folding chair and ushering him into the weird little overhang that the market bathrooms are in.

“Keith, did something happen? Do you need help with something?” Lance’s brows are furrowed and his mouth is turned down in a frown and Keith wants to kiss him so badly he can barely think straight.

Both of his big hands are pressed firmly to Keith’s shoulders, which shouldn’t be as comforting as it is. They’re so warm that it feels like palm prints of sun. One leaves his shoulder to nudge Keith’s chin up so Lance can meaningfully meet his eyes.

Before Lance can start up again, Keith is blurting, “Does the bakery have knives I can sharpen? Like, when the market season ends?”

He feels like an actual dumbass as soon as the words fall out of his mouth. It’s a fabulous summation of every thought he’s had over the last two days, purely distilled anxious worry.

Lance tilts his head to one side in a way that’s so reminiscent of a Golden Retriever that Keith has to stop breathing in order to not kiss him. They’re so close that all Keith would have to do is lean in just a little bit. But that’s an entirely different thing to panic and obsess over than what’s happening right now.

“I mean, yeah. I guess. Why does that matter right now, though?” Lance is so clearly trying to think through the connection of his weird knives question and why he seems so weird and anxious about the market ending.

“Are you guys still going to hang out with me when the market ends?”

In between this thought and the next, Lance is lunging forward and wrapping his arms around Keith so tight that he can barely breathe. He’s a couple inches taller than Keith, so his head fits perfectly in the crook of Lance’s neck. It’s so comforting that it has him reeling, especially when Lance’s hands rub up and down the expanse of his back.

“Dude, are you kidding me? You aren’t going anywhere.” It’s said into Keith’s hair, so it’s kind of muffled.

“We aren’t going anywhere either. You’re in our group chat. This is a solid and unbreakable market bond, Keith. We’re ride or die now.”

It settles something that was swirling inside Keith almost instantly, hearing it from Lance’s mouth.

Lance pulls back to look at him and reaches out to tuck a piece of Keith’s unruly hair back behind his ear. It makes his breath catch in a way that he’s almost immediately annoyed by.

“Seriously, don’t worry. We aren’t letting you go.” It’s so soft, the way Lance says it, that Keith has to surge back up onto his toes and hug him again. He lets Lance press him back into the brick wall and relishes the feeling of the soft hair at the back of Lance’s neck and the uneven press of their chests when they breathe.

Instead of acknowledging this comfort like a regular person, all Keith can think about is when he’s going to see Lance like this next.

“Do you, uh, want to come over later? Like…to my apartment?”

Lance pulls back and smiles bright, it’s teasing and stupid and Keith has to thunk his head back against the brick wall in the face of it.

“Aw Keith, you just want to get me alone, don't ya? Get me to your creepy murder house so you can kill me?”

Keith shoves past him with a reluctant smile and heads back to his stall, ignoring Lance’s shout of “See you later tonight so you can kill me in the privacy of your own home, bud!”

*

Lance, admittedly, is a little worried about what Keith’s apartment is going to look like. Mostly curious, but a little worried.

From what he knows about Keith, there’s a lot of plaid and leather and knives and not much else on the wardrobe front. Keith acts like nobody can see the literal knife sheath that he has strapped to his belt, but everybody knows it’s there.

He follows behind Keith’s rumbly truck after the market closes to a sweet little brick apartment building above a pharmacy on a not-so-busy street downtown.

Keith is out and heading towards the door before Lance even has a chance to park, so he’s frantically catching up as Keith unlocks the door, running into his back and looping his arms around his waist in a way he’s trying to convince himself is friendly but ultimately misses the mark just a bit.

He’s led up a few flights of stairs into a brightly lit and open living room and it’s safe to say he’s pleasantly surprised.

There’s a lot of exposed brick and a few big windows and a decent amount of slightly weird but homey touches. Keith has an entire row of plants lined up along the top of a jam-packed bookshelf, which Lance inherently knows is filled with a weird mix of sci-fi, romance, and Austen and the Bronte sisters.

Keith bumbles into the kitchen after dropping off his market supplies in a chair by his dining room table, mumbling something about tea and giving Lance free reign of his living room.

Another book shelf has a line of knick-knacks and tchotchkes, mostly small animal figurines and little bowls filled with miscellaneous items like mismatching buttons and single screws. On his coffee table rests a few good smelling candles and a red lighthouse miniature that flickers with warm light when Lance clicks the switch. It’s sweet and so unassumingly Keith that Lance almost can’t breathe around it.

He puts his hands on his hips and stands in the middle of the room, turning so he can get a good feel for it and also so he can catch all of the paintings and posters on the wall in one go.

There’s an artisanal lunar calendar that looks like it may have been made by one of the artists at the market on one wall and vintage Star Trek posters that make Lance smile.

“Is this a Pride and Prejudice movie poster?”

Keith pokes his head around the entryway of the kitchen and glowers at him.

“Fuck off, it’s the 2005 version and it holds a very special place in my heart. Don’t talk shit or Allura will know and kill you.”

Lance has to stifle a snicker and throws himself back on the couch, ghosting his fingers along a throw blanket that he can tell has been hand knit.

“Hey,” he calls out in the vague direction of the kitchen, “who made this blanket?”

With two mugs of tea in hand, Keith emerges from his kitchen and takes a seat next to Lance. He folds his legs beneath him and hands one mug off to Lance.

“Oh, my mom did? A long time ago. I think when she was pregnant with me.” Lance leans into him a little bit, because they’re alone and just because he can. The mug he has is a reproduction of a summery looking landscape from the National Gallery of Art. He wants to know everything about Keith ever.

A vaguely committal noise is all it takes for Keith to keep talking.

“She’s traveling abroad right now for a few months. Her and my dad were like, stupidly in love even though she didn’t always live with us and she spent a few years feeling like she had to be here for me until I convinced her that she just…needed to go somewhere else for a while. I think she’s in Germany right now?”

“That’s cool as hell.” Lance chances a light brush of his fingertips against the back of Keith’s hand and is unmeasurably pleased when Keith twists his palm around and twines their fingers together. He doesn’t even have to look at Keith to know that he’s flushed red as hell.

“Yeah. Uh, you wanna watch something? I have the old BBC Pride and Prejudice on Amazon Prime. I know your uncultured ass hasn’t seen it.”

“Probably because it’s fucking old, dude.”

Lance begrudgingly agrees simply because he knows that Keith will mouth along to the proposal scene. He’s rewarded pleasantly when Keith doesn’t let his hand go for the entirety of the first few episodes.

*

It’s a different night later in the week but Lance and Keith are in the same position on the same couch. This time, they get Indian take out and burrito themselves in blankets and drink probably just a little bit too much of the mulled wine they got at one of the stalls before they left the market.

The twilight settles over them like another blanket and no one bothers to turn on a light after the sun slips under the horizon.

They’re both leaned back against the couch, looking at each other and not really moving. It’s soft and comforting and sweet in a way Lance isn’t always sure he deserves.

The last day of the market is next week and he’s pleased to say that Keith only seems sad in the expected way, not the I’m Going to Lose All My Friends kind of way that he was earlier in the week. They already have plans to go to the Shirogane farm next weekend to pick and carve pumpkins and have Auntie Shirogane make them too much pie.

“My dad and I used to live in this apartment when I was younger.” They’re talking slow, sharing bittersweet things between them in the same way they keep passing the mulled wine bottle back and forth.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We moved to a different house a few years before he died but he kept this apartment. I think because he knew I liked it so much.”

“It’s a good place. It feels like you.” Lance barely knows what that means, but he knows it’s true as soon as he says it.

“I forgot about it for a while but once I left school, I came back here. It feels like his, but in an echoey kind of way, where sometimes I see something that was so clearly belonged to him that I have to stop and breathe. But It feels like mine, too. So much of my shit is here, stuff that he wasn’t ever around to see but I’m pretty sure he’d like. It’s nice.” Keith’s voice is soft and quiet, like he’s just a few more minutes off from falling asleep.

The vulnerability of it makes Lance ache. He drags his fingers through Keith’s thick hair and leans over to press a quick kiss to the crown of his head.

“I’m glad you’re here to see it.” Keith says it quietly, but Lance still hears.

“I am too. Thanks for letting me be here with you.”

They sit there like that for a while and time passes strangely, thick and syrupy and good.

Lance is just about to drift off to sleep when Keith sits up slow and tangles their fingers together.

“Come to bed with me.”

He goes.

They fall asleep curled around each other like parentheses in Keith’s bed with his handmade quilts and in the morning, Lance wakes up to the sweetest blush on Keith’s face.

It feels like the best thing in a long time.

*

As expected, they’re too loud and stupid and rowdy at the Shirogane farm the next weekend. They’re not even drunk yet and Lance is atop Hunk’s shoulders and commanding him around the pumpkin patch like he’s a horse. He doesn't know why Hunk puts up with it.

It makes Keith roll his eyes but he’s not going to pretend he doesn’t love it. Adam and Shiro keep pointing out the ugliest pumpkins and loudly declaring “that’s you” like middle schoolers.

Auntie Shirogane is sitting on the back porch watching them all wild out and it feels right in a way that pulses out of Keith’s chest.

Romelle, Pidge, and Allura are taking the quest of finding the perfect pumpkin way too seriously and he’s pretty sure Pidge is incessantly chattering about the mathematical way to find the perfect pumpkin that doesn’t seem like it’s a real thing.

They carve pumpkins on the back porch and get the slimy innards everywhere and Auntie Shirogane serves them blisteringly hot apple and pumpkin pie. Hunk forces everyone to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown even though Halloween was last week.

It’s good, it’s so good and Keith gets to sit on the couch sardined in between all of these people that he loves and just radiate with how good it feels.

During what Keith now knows from Lance is "golden hour," he feels a light tap on his shoulder and a hand thread through his. He glances to the side and predictably, it’s Lance, a grin cut across his face that’s so bright Keith has to shut his eyes a little bit. He wonders if it will always be like this. He’d like to think that it will.

“Come with me, I have to show you something,” Lance all but whispers to him, excited and tugging him up from the couch. Everybody is doing their own thing, so no one really notices when they slip out of the living room onto the back porch.

“Come on, pick up the pace, Lil Knifey, let’s go.”

“Do not under any circumstances call me that ever again.”

He drags Keith bodily up the hill that bumps against the back of the pumpkin patch. He’s drenched in gold and it makes his hair shine coppery and his eyes look almost see through when he glances back to make sure that Keith is still attached to him.

“What are we even up here for?” Keith finally asks when they crest the hill. There’s a little red barn on the top of the hill that he casts a glance at before Lance is pulling them behind it, facing the setting sun.

“Look,” is all Lance says as he sweeps his hand over the vegetable fields that the Shirogane house is nested between. There’s a thick forest that surrounds the far ends of the fields and the setting sun makes the fall colors of the trees look like flames.

It’s beautiful in a very quotidian way and Keith belatedly thinks that he loves it, thinks that he may love Lance too, for bringing him up here.

Lance turns towards him and his eyes are shining and he’s smiling just as bright as the fiery trees, “I just wanted you to see this. It’s my favorite part of fall and I wanted you to know.” Keith is so fucking stupid for him.

He can only nod and reach out to tangle their fingers together, tugging Lance closer to him by the arm.

With a slight shuffle, Lance disengages from Keith’s clinging and wraps his arm around Keith’s shoulders, bringing him close. He presses a light kiss to Keith’s temple and all Keith wants to do is seal his mouth to Lance’s.

They stand there while the sun begins to drop below the horizon until Lance gets restless. He abruptly pulls away from Keith and turns his whole body toward him.

“Okay, well, really quick, before we go back inside, I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do pretty much since I met you. If you’re not down for it, just let me know, that’s totally fine. Totally good. Cool cool cool.”

“Just, here we go.”

And he presses his fingers so delicately to the side of Keith’s jaw and kisses him so sweetly that Keith is pretty sure that this is a vivid day dream that he fucking made up.

But it’s absolutely not, because Lance pulls back and gets a good look at Keith’s face and smiles so brightly that Keith just has to…kiss it off of him. It’s what he deserves, after five months of looking at his dumb happy face all the fucking time.

Lance backs him up against the rough wood of the little red barn and Keith belated sends a little thanks to whatever deity hooked him the fuck up when Lance presses his entire body against Keith’s.

Soft little open-mouthed kisses are being dropped along the side of his neck and his jawline and the only thing Keith can see is the very edge of the sun finally dropping below the horizon and he makes a noise that he is absolutely going to be embarrassed about later.

Lance’s mouth is so fucking soft and his big warm palms feel like brands against Keith’s slightly chilled skin and this is absolutely the best thing to have ever happened.

Between kisses pressed all over his face, Lance breathes out, “I’m so gone over you,” and Keith is pretty sure that all of the light from that sunset and the fiery trees is welling up inside of him and threatening to spill over.

He loops an arm around Lance’s neck and pulls him down to whisper “Me fucking too,” against his lips.

Things go wildly downhill from there, or uphill depending on which way you look at it. In a truly stunning turn of events, Lance is the one to reluctantly suggest they go back inside because it’s well and truly dark now. Keith has to unwrap his legs from around Lance’s waist after he’d been hoisted up and pressed back into the barn again. He’s fairly sure he has bits of wood all over the back of his jacket and a pretty vivid hickey on the soft spot just below his ear, but the look on Lance’s face and the wild state of his curly brown hair leaves him mostly unconcerned.

There’s a pointed chill in the air when they finally amble inside. Keith is normally a bit apprehensive about the winter, but he has a good feeling that he’ll be very warm this season.

*

When they get back inside and pointedly ignore all of the jeers from their friends and the money changing hands, Auntie Shirogane corners him in the kitchen.

She’s a slight woman, tiny but intense. She’s been in Keith’s life just as long as Shiro has and he has a fierce love for her that he doesn’t think will ever go away.

But it’s tested pretty thoroughly when she looks at him and smirks, “Glad whatever that boy did stopped your scowling. Your face is too handsome, I don’t want you to get wrinkles.”

*

Keith lets Lance drive him home and lead him up into his own apartment. Lets him press Keith up against the doorjamb of his bedroom, because, apparently, they’ve both got a thing for that. Lets him spoon up behind him when they finally get into bed and lets him steal all the covers, but only for a little bit until he kicks Lance awake and they kiss gently in the two am darkness.

And when he wakes up the next morning to see Lance looking at him through sleepy eyes, he blushes and doesn’t even feel bad, because Lance descends on him and kisses all over his face like an idiot.

And it’s good. It’s so good.

Thank god for Keith’s Knife Hut. He’s got to tell Shiro that.

He’ll do it tomorrow, for sure.

#rise and grind y'all lets get this schmoney #klance #klance fics #farmers market au #keith #lance #vld #voltron #voltron legendary defender #I went hard for like three days and ended up with this #they fall in love over a market season #they work at market stalls across from each other #and make mad fucking googly eyes for weeks #then kiss kiss fall in love #it's just...rly fucken soft y'all

[vaguely-concerned]

empire of ivory here we go!

previous temeraire let’s read here

- um excuuuuse me I have waited two books for us to come back home to britain to see everyone again and now everything is awful and shitty and scary and my fave is leaving and nothing’s how it should be??? no??? this is unfair??????

- tharkay NO please don’t go everything provably goes to hell whenever you leave D:D:D:

(to be fair to him I guess it’s understandable to want some time alone to process the absolute outrageous bullshit he just pulled for a guy he’s known for like four months)

he used his page time well tho; instantly convincing roland of his worth and making her laugh... giving laurence his cup of tea b/c he looked like he needed it more... telling laurence that he’s leaving because he promised to do that much at least... truly the best boy, off to fetch more dragons apparently because it wasn’t quite crazy enough the first time

- god I love jane roland, I’m so glad my two faves got along instantly, between them they could... maybe protect laurence from himself? at least a little??? I can but dream

- I think this is the most emotionally invested I’ve been in a piece of media since that time I spent a few months completely incoherent over uncharted, and naughty dog very kindly held my heart in their hands and chose to be gentle with it in the end but I am not so sure that is how it’s going to be for this series and I am Not Prepared for the suffering

- I love whenever laurence thinks uncomfortably about one of the various and sundry atrocities committed by the government he’s still pledged all his loyalty to. yes william maybe the british empire... is in fact not good and has enough blood on their hands to dye the ocean red. I can’t wait until he connects the dots here (and presumably has a pretty intense crisis if faith about it because it seems like one of the loadbearing structures of his character... actually no wait I’m not ready to see this D:D:D:)

- the little details like the fact that he just calls bb!roland ‘emily’ and harcourt becomes ‘catherine’ so easily in his narration now are so so sweet  

- lord allendale is one of those dudes who have good politics but is a shitheel to his family and I want to smack him

laurence being the mortified poster boy of this party, though? priceless, imagine coming up with a protagonist this effortlessly involuntarily hilarious, it’s the mark of true genius

- I don’t usually quibble over things like this, but I think the edit for this fourth book specifically is a bit lacking? I’ve come across a lot of mistakes even my dumb ass can pick up on already, and I’m only a hundred pages or so in

- caught between crying and cackling at this part b/c like laurence I’m  d e v a s t a t e d  at the thought of temeraire getting sick but also temeraire is just like cheerfully getting laid the whole time

also how did none of the aviators think to give laurence The Talk about giving his dragon The Talk, you all know what he’s like

- oh thank god

- I have spent half of today crying about dragons coughing, how are you this fine evening good reader

- btw this series fills a hole in my soul left by jkr giving me all those tantalizing hints of different types of dragons in ‘fantastic beasts’ and never following up on it

- tharkay may not be here but laurence just mentioned him like once in his narration so let’s take the excuse to reminisce about the good old days (when tharkay was here)... remember that time when the one of his own jokes he laughed openly at was about lawyers and laurence frankly should have responded better b/c it was kind of funny and sadly temeraire doesn’t have the worldly experience to know it yet.... aaah precious, he truly is a sardonic blessing to my heart and deserves the world

okay back to our regularly scheduled content   

- riley why u gotta b such a bitch about this

(I love how laurence is constantly doubting himself over this tho, as if he’s done something wrong in this situation... like honey baby if there’s one thing worth breaking a friendship over it’s probably them being cool with slavery lol. it shows how much laurence has grown, considering that this disagreement has always existed between them but he used to be willing to just overlook it... I’m so proud of you laurence)

also lol @ berkely coming in to tell them everyone can hear them, I have a desperately soft spot for him and maximus. just the image of both of them turning to him ‘united in appalled indignation’ like ‘excuse you???’ and him giving exactly zero fucks... *chef kiss emoji*

- most important information revealed in this book: a) dragons are not widely considered to have committed original sin, thank you reverend erasmus and b) laurence has taken time out of his day at some point to worry about it b/c he’s a dork

(this is the sort of world building I am hopelessly weak to lol)

- gong su tricking temeraire into eating in the most melodramatic way possible... god bless you chef

- fkjhsadkjfhsdkjalhfaskjldhf laurence judging chenery for what he’s wearing while going out into the jungle in full uniform hat included himself... I caaaaan’t

- demane has only appeared on three pages so far but if anything happens to him I’ll kill everyone in this book and then myself

- ‘average dragon speaks one million languages’ factoid actualy statistical error. Temeraire Linguist Georg, who wants a pavilion thank you very much & learns over 10,000 languages each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted <3<3<3

(I love that temeraire is like... a nerd dragon with a hopelessly jock captain)

- laurence effortlessly rating the relative hotness of the other male aviators to try to suss out who harcourt has slept with fjsaldfhsdkljafh do you ever hear yourself think william

like this is the thing about him it’s so easy to headcanon him as bi b/c he can be so mindbogglingly oblivious it’s entirely possible he literally wouldn’t even have noticed until someone smacked him over the head with it

- see I’m very happy they found the cure but I don’t fucking trust it b/c the pattern of these books tends to be to give you one moment of ‘oh phew everything is going to be okay’ about 2/3 into the story and THEN everything goes to hell and fifty pages later laurence is dissociating and napoleon has conquered prussia 

- THERE WE GO RIGHT ON SCHEDULE

temeraire is never going to let laurence go anywhere without him again and rightly so

- hasn’t mrs erasmus been through enough. can’t she just be allowed to chill 

- this is really cool world building but I’m too stressed out to appreciate it

really enjoy the description of architecture tho this sounds so awesome

- sfahdfklsahdfksjda laurence making sure his clothes are as washed and presentable as possible... I can’t with you you beautiful idiot

- TEMERAIRE OH MY GOD IS HE HERE IS LAURENCE HALLUCINATING PLS SAY HE’S ACTUALLY HERE

- ...well I mean if anyone has a freudian excuse for being kind of dickish I guess it would be these guys? it’s actually pretty chill of them to only flog one of them (laurence, because he just can’t play it any way but stupid lawful good at every turn) and not just killing them all I guess, they kept them fed and stuff

- oh thank god

- temeraire you are the most darling dragon boy and I love you

I was really really worried for a moment there that the reference to the Colosseum was a not-so-subtle hint they would have to gladiator fight to the death but thankfully they were basically just calling in a parliament

- DID THIS MOTHERFUCKER JUST STAB A CHILD IN THE STOMACH?? I HOPE HE ACCIDENTALLY SHOOTS HIMSELF IN THE DICK AND DIES pls say demane is going to be okay

- aw okay finally something good for mrs erasmus I will take it

- laurence you useless fool of a narrator is demane okay?? 

- god roland is just so cool naomi novik really gave us a jovial butch silver fox aviator lady huh... she did that for us and I for one am full of gratitude

- oh thank GOD (hm I sense a running theme here lol) the kid is going to be okay I can breathe again

- iskierka the pirate captain + temeraire’s reaction... perfect

- ;____________; I would lay down my life for temeraire and also that’s a gutpunch of a moodswing... the perfect hilarity of ‘that is an ugly hill’ immediately followed by That... jesus

- awww every time volly shows up again is a joy (temrer!!!)

- laurence... laurence you need to stop asking people to marry you because you never actually really fucking mean it!!!!! have you learned nothing about yourself since book 1, trust your goddamn instincts for once in your life you and roland have been doing perfectly okay thus far as like... affectionate fuckbuddies right? 

(her reaction was priceless tho god bless)

- aaaah there we go the british government is looking more like itself... welcome to the world of realpolitik laurence I’m really sorry :(

- “It is only dragons, you know” JANE ROLAND WTF DID YOU JUST SAY

- “This government is not of my party; my king is ill and mad; but still I am his subject. You have sworn no oath, but I have.” He paused. “I have given my word.”

:) this is... fine

(like. I know this is necessary character growth and he’s basically been a waste of a good man in service to a government like this the whole time and the writing’s been on the wall since book 1 but I don’t want this to be happening to hiiiiim)

- tfw... ur dragon boi is so good... that being anything less than good for him in turn is unthinkable...................... b o i

- ...jane doesn’t really know him very well if she didn’t see this coming from a mile off tho does she

I mean I guess she has other stuff to think about but this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone

- remember when he thought the entire corps was weird and now he’s finally at home there... and has to leave it behind :):):) super extra fine is what this is

- yeah okay laurence definitely has a crush on ol’ bonaparte noting that down lol he’s all but blushing after that kiss on the cheek 

also... if you just overlook the dictator thing for a moment is napoleon wrong about what he’s saying tho. (no and not even laurence is prepared to say so he’s just going to go back there and get murdered anyway b/c idk lawful good is dumb as fuck sometimes I guess)

It’s really cool how the author shows that napoleon has a better handle on laurence’s psychology after barely meeting him than a lot of people he’s known for years now, though, really adds to his menace and appeal as a character

- wow uh that’s one way to end a book... it’s actually tipped over from tragedy into a strange sort of hilarity for me now: he literally got sued out of his life’s earnings for being a decent human being, committed treason for the same reason and is about to be hanged for thinking genocide might have been a step too far -- in the span of thirty pages. I believe ‘that escalated quickly’ is not too much of an exaggeration here

- SIPHO IS GONNA WRITE BOOKS ONE DAY YOU GUYS!!!! I PROUDLY WELCOME OUR SECOND NERD TO THE CREW

 - I think this one might be my least favorite so far? not that I disliked it, it’s just the one that’s hit the worst by the fact that there’s not always that much time spent with the cultures central to the book; tswana seems really interesting but because of the way the plot played out and our limited perspective though laurence it just didn’t work for me? the cool shit comes in sipho’s book at the end, like how thoroughly they kicked the europeans out of the coast of africa, which is very cathartic (I will say that most of the second book being set on the ship and then only a sliver of it is actually in china annoyed me too haha) 

I have the distinct feeling this book is setting up for some Misery and breaking of the pattern a bit in the next one though, which will be interesting! ONWARDS TO MORE PAIN AND LAURENCE IS ALREADY PASSIVELY SUICIDAL FROM THE OUTSET SO LIKE... I’M SURE THIS WILL BE REAL FUN :)

maybe my boy will be back tho? silver linings silver linings clinging to some silver linings

#temeraire #empire of ivory #meta

[wingardium-letmefuckyou]

Agate (part 10)

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Summary: When you were kidnapped and experimented on you never  thought you would see the   daylight again. But your family refuses to  give you up. When you later find yourself safe but with unstable powers  you find comfort in someone  not so unlike you. He refuses to give up on  you either.

Words: 1832

Warnings: None

A/N: If anybody wants to be on the taglist or if I missed anyone, just send me a message! This one is slightly shorter and the next one will probably be a bit shorter too but I thought it better for the rhythm of the story to split those parts up. Also a heads up, there is going to be smut in one or more future chapters!

Masterlist

Metaphysically,  Agate has a lower intensity and vibrates to a slower  frequency than   other stones, but is highly regarded as a stabilizing and  strengthening  influence. [Simmons, 6] The  layered bands of microscopic quartz in   Agate may appear delicate, they  are actually very strong. Agate is   excellent for balancing emotional,  physical and intellectual energy,   and in harmonizing the  positive and negative forces of the universe.   [Hall, 39]

Agate promotes inner stability, composure, and maturity. Its warm, protective properties encourage security and   self-confidence  

(Source: https://www.crystalvaults.com/crystal-encyclopedia/agate)

The spot where you are hiding is cramped but warm. Hours have passed and no one has found you yet, just like you want it. Or that’s what you keep telling yourself, it’s better like this. You’re better off alone. But your heart is yearning for a specific someone while your mind tells you that the vision Wanda gave you was probably right. You are pathetic and it’s no use to keep up the illusion that Bucky sees you any other way than a burden, a broken thing to be mended. Your tears stopped running and dried up about an hour ago, your breath has calmed down. You know you can’t stay here forever, that you have to come out and face the others at some point. It feels a lot scarier that in should. You try to think of a way to go back to your room unnoticed, you don’t want to draw any attention to you. Pretend like all this never happened. But that idea is quickly thrown out of the window when a shadow looms over you. They must have been looking really everywhere, you never expected to be actually found. You’re crouching into the corner of the washing room, hiding in the small space between the wall and the dryer. You look up into a familiar face, a face that is kind and seems relieved to have found you.

“Hey,” you say weakly, your voice a bit hoarse from all the crying.  

“Hey,” the other person answers and crouches in front of you, taking up the little space that is left in your nook. “Mind if I join you?”

You shake your head, moving your legs a bit in a futile attempt to create more space. Two persons definitely don’t fit in here but somehow you make it work.

“You okay?”

You shrug, not sure yourself about the answer to that question. Are you okay? You have calmed down, yes. But will you ever be truly okay? Is there something like okay for people like you?

“Oh no no no, I know that look. Stop the self pity sweetheart, it doesn’t look good on you.”

You can’t help but smile, having heard those words before from another person. Helena would always call you out whenever you were wallowing in melodramatic self pity. That wonderful girl had no patience for self deprecating bullshit. Apparently the person in front you is no different.

“Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

The other person stands up, offering you a hand too. Your muscles are stiff from being in the same position too long and you gladly accept the help to get on your feet. You let out of a yelp of surprise when you’re not just pulled upright but also pulled into a big and bone breaking hug.

“Shuri, don’t squish me,” you exclaim but Shuri only squeezes harder until she can get a laugh out of you. For such a small person, she is remarkably strong and you never expected to be hugged like that. You’re grateful, that it was her that found you. She might not be actual family but she is the closest thing to a sister you have here away from home.

“I have no idea what Wanda made you see but know that whatever it is, it isn’t true,” she says, her tone implying that she won’t accept any argument about it. Her eyes shine with so much warmth that you believe her, Shuri is your friend.

Shuri leads you back to your room, explaining that Wanda didn’t mean for this to happen and that she’s quite upset. She doesn’t want to see anyone right now but Shuri hopes that you might talk to her in the future. You’re not exactly sure that you want that. You want to believe that she didn’t mean for this to happen but then why did she reach out for your mind, unasked and uninvited. You first need to sort out your own emotions before you can have an actual conversation with Wanda. You refrain from asking about Bucky, his words from the vision still too fresh in your head. It was one thing to convince your mind that it wasn’t real and another to truly grasp that in your whole being. What he said, although you know he hadn’t actually, had torn holes in your heart. Holes that are now being fed by your own insecurity and doubt. Oh how Helena would have berated you for feeling that way about yourself.

Shuri continues to be the perfect friend, letting the water in your shower run until it’s hot and steaming.She makes sure there’s plenty of lavender soap and that a big, warm towel is waiting for you. She’s there when you get out of the bathroom, pushing you on a chair so she can brush your hair and put scented oils in it. Her fingernails scratch and massage your scalp, relaxing you from head to toe. The gentle and sweet pampering makes you almost burst out in tears again but Shuri is having none of it.

“Allow yourself to be loved, Y/N,” is all she says. You have no idea how she does it or how she knows but she is saying exactly what you need to hear. When she offers you the Captain America pajamas you shake your head and decide to settle for a neutral coloured pair. Steve’s voice is too fresh, it’s too close to your own fears. You know rationally that kind Steve Rogers would never regret saving you but Wanda’s vision felt too real. In that moment you swear to yourself to never use your powers for that, if you would ever be able to. Whatever your abilities are, you want no part in that. People’s mind are their own and no one should ever meddle with that, however well intentioned. 

Shuri only leaves you alone when she is sure that you’re settled comfortably in your bed, surrounded by pillows and blankets. You try to thank her for her kindness but she waves it away, after all it is something friends do for each other. The way she mentions the word friends almost has you tearing up again but you also smile, because you know you would do exactly the same for her. There is no doubt in your mind anymore that you are friends.

It’s a pleasant thought and for a while it does make you feel good until there is a soft knock on the door. Your spirit plummets when at once you know who  it is. You stay silent and pretend not be in your but there is a second, louder and more insistent knock and you realize Shuri must have told him where you were.

“Come in.”

The door opens slowly, revealing James Barnes in his sweatpants and sleep shirt. You are too scared to look into his eyes, too afraid to read the expression on his face.

“Hey,” he whispers softly, his voice immediately makes you feel better, makes you feel calm.

“Hey,” you whisper back. You don’t know what else to say and neither does Bucky. You both stay silent until the tension in the air almost becomes unbearable. Bucky is the first to break.

“Do you want me to go away?” he asks, trying to hide the hurt and disappointment in his voice.

“NO!”

You hadn’t meant to shout but the answer slips out of your mouth without thinking and you groan at how embarrassing you are.

“Good, cause don’t want to go away really. I need you,” Bucky says. He can clearly see that you’re uncomfortable and embarrassed and he tries to chase your discomfort away by being vulnerable and open to you. And he does need you, he needs your presence to feel at ease during the long and lonely night. For the last two nights had been the best in years.

“But I’m pathetic. Don’t you think I’m pathetic?” you ask him, feeling ridiculous for doing so but you have to know. You can’t keep the doubts and fears in any longer.

Bucky laughs, he actually laughs, the sound warm and rich.

“You adorable idiot.”

“W-what?” you have to blink a few times, trying to process his reaction. That is not what you expected to hear.

“You’re an idiot, Y/N. I don’t think your pathetic at all. I believe you are one of the bravest and strongest people I have met. Don’t let any weird mind meddling tell you otherwise.”

It takes your brain a moment to fully grasp what Bucky is saying. He thinks you’re brave? He needs you? He laughs again at the look of utter confusion on your face.

“If you want to be alone, then just tell me doll. But I think we could both use a good night’s sleep, no?”

You understand what he’s offering and it starts to dawn on you that you’re not the only one depending on someone else to cope with your nightmares. He needs just as much as you need him. He isn’t your rock, you’re more like two grand trees leaning against each other so the other wouldn’t fall. It’s a symbiosis, a two way relationship. And you must admit, you long for the human contact. You long for the warmth he provides you with, you long for his steady heartbeat lulling you to sleep. Without any further hesitation you make place for him, allowing him to snuggle up against you, your body’s melting effortlessly against one another. That night you both sleep without dreams.

Wanda does not sleep that night, she paces back and forth in her room, replaying the events of the day in her mind. She has already tried contacting Vision but he was unreachable or at least not in a safe space to talk with her. It frustrates her to no end, at least Vision would be able to giver her sensible advice. There is no one else around here to talk. Shuri is  a stranger. And Bucky, things with Bucky seem to be complicated. He is at least someone that she knows but when he had looked at her after you had ran, the mix of betrayal and anger in his eyes had frightened her. He hadn’t spoken to her but Wanda didn’t need to hear what he had to say to be able to interpret that he had been very displeased with what she did. She figures you must be very dear to him, considering his protectiveness over you.

To be honest, she didn’t know what came over her when she had touched your mind. She had not planted a vision, she had only tried to give the emotions needed to use your powers a boost. She had only wanted to help, to be of assistance. She really wanted to make the burden you are carrying feel lighter. But sometimes, things don’t go as planned, that much she has learned by now.

Taglist: @lavieenlex @babymorganna @fandomtime-123 @blueswedebeatbox @shamelessbookaddict @libbymouse @eyesofgoldenambers @moni-poloni @super-witty-fandom-girl @micolegg @lkcarts

Honorary taglist: @bitsandbobsandstuff

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #the winter soldier #the winter soldier x reader #james buchanan barnes #james barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #fanfiction #reader insert #agate #wingardium-letmefuckyou writes

[paoulkaye-blog]

God and I: Why we don’t talk much these days.

It’s been a long, long time since I set foot in a church with the purpose of worship and participation in a community congregation. I had to attend my wife’s church in the run up to our wedding in her childhood Lutheran place of worship, but the last time I really attended church and was there in the moment and a participant in the dogma of worship is so far gone to me at this point that I could not accurately pinpoint a date. And it’s weird, because I live in the south now, and Sunday mass is a BIG part of the culture down here, so it got me thinking about why I don’t go to church on Sunday anymore. I feel guilty about this as a baseline because I was raised Catholic. Guilt runs pretty deep in Catholicism because it evolved from classic Judaism where you have every reason to feel guilty about anything. And guilt is good, in small doses. It makes you check yourself, it makes you think about the consequences of your actions. As a primary motivator, though, guilt is paralyzing and no good for you. Why has it been so long since I was a devout church goer? Partly, I do not have the time for it. Life is busy, and Sunday mornings are often the only real opportunity I have to sleep in. And even then, not really, because my children get me up at 7:30 am like clockwork anyway. Another part is that, some long time ago, when I was a kid who knew no better, my parents fell victim to some of the political inner circle bullshit you find in small town parishes and they decided they were done with that nonsense. I didn’t argue, I didn’t have to get up on Sunday mornings anymore and that was fine with me. I don’t know the specifics, and I may have the whole thing wrong anyway, but that’s how I remember it, and it was at least twenty years ago, and I cannot be bothered with re-writing my personal history on this subject because it does not change my ultimately personal decision. And I know this because I began to pine for church, for that structure and ritual again, in a hard time in my life when I felt left totally abandoned by all of my friends. In truth, a few roommates had stiffed me for reasons ranging from spite to personal and I begrudge those people nothing now, but at the time, I went from living on my own to sleeping on my parent’s couch for purely financial reasons. By not living in the apartment I was now solely responsible for the rent of, I kept the monthly bills down and was able to afford to live up to the terms of my lease. My landlord was very understanding, and all in all, it wasn’t the worst period of my life, but at the time I was depressed and looking for light somewhere in the darkness. It’s worth noting that I may have still had trace remains of a melodramatic teenager left in me at this point. It’s also worth noting I may still, to this day, possess such tendencies, but I am much better at keeping them in check. Despite all evidence to the contrary. So what came into my life that replaced this itch for a place to belong? What could possibly fill the void of a kind and loving god in my life? It’s gonna sound hokey, and she’ll roll her eyes if she reads this, but the answer is my wife. I had met her socially once some months before I randomly ran into her at her job where she recognized me and we exchanged some friendly banter and a hug, but that meeting led to a date. Which led to another date, and another, and… well, I have twins now and we file taxes together. You see where this went. In Amber, I not only found a soul who was willing to put up with my various flavors of bullshit, I found a woman who was willing to and managed against all odd to inspire me to be a better person. And what is religion at its best but an inspiration to be a better you? Besides, I reasoned later, God had things to do, and it would be best if my voice was not annoying him once a week over every little thing, right? So, as my relationship with my wife developed, I made my final peace with not being church-going altar boy. My wife’s love was enough to last me a lifetime, and that love has only multiplied with the addition of my twin boys. I am spoiled for love and support, and I’m okay with that. I believe in an immortal soul, in heaven and hell, in God and angels and demons, of course. I believe in something inexplicable and entirely ‘other’ than my normal waking experience, but I am also content to leave such a thing a mystery. I live in a world with a job, children, and a woman who depends on me and upon whom I depend. I live my life by a moral code that was instilled in me by a religion and by an upbringing influenced in part by that book you can find in almost any hotel in the USA, and that’s good enough for me. So, God and I don’t talk much anymore. I mean, I do ask him for the occasional favor. When my children were on the way, I asked regularly that they come out okay, healthy, with all of their fingers and toes. It happened, and I thanked him even if he wasn’t responsible, because you don’t screw with that kind of thing. Most other times in my life that another person might turn to their pastor or to an alter, however, have been done solely by me and my wife. We make a good team, and I put a lot of faith in her, in us, and I like to think that God understands that sort of thing and that he occasionally glances down and smiles because our stuff is being taken care of well enough and he doesn’t have to worry about it. I don’t skip out on church because I’m an atheist, or because I think its stupid. I just don’t need it like some people do. I understand the need for something like that, that structure or community or the reassuring words of life, light, love and forgiveness provided in a good portion of the Good Book. I get it, but I have something that fills that gap in for me. And she’s the best wife I could have ever asked for. I’m not sure if this sort of belief structure has a name, but I know I’m not totally alone in this philosophy. I’ve known a lot of people with a lot of views on faith and religion and never once have I ever felt the need to argue with any of them. My religion, or lack thereof, is not a defining characteristic, and I see no reason to assume that anyone else’s religion should be the trait I judge them upon. I’m much more interested in the content of your character and your capacity for dealing with the rest of humanity in a decent way rather than how you got there. And all in all, I think I do a pretty good job of it. This was a tad more rambling that I usually get, but it was on my mind with Easter just around the corner. I made my ‘I gave up Lent for Lent’ joke at work the other day to the most beatifically puzzled expression I have ever witnessed on an adult man in my life because I had momentarily forgotten where I lived. And I felt the need to explain myself a bit, and for the time being this is where I choose to do that. Thanks for reading.

[luobingmeis]

<3

#i’m trying to subtly post and i don’t trust tumblr read mores #least of all when i’m making a post on mobile #but consider this a subtle gender ramble bc uhhh #honestly i don’t feel like spamming a gc and uhhhhh irl is not happening rn #so i’m here!!! my personal diary for uh. some-amount-of-k people #(i’m joking idc if people read this just don’t reblog it) #but sometimes it all really feels like uh #finding something that feels good (like really good) #and then being unable to explain why it feels good it just does #and then lowkey panicking bc aren’t u supposed to be able to explain why something feels good?? but instead it just does???? #and then that :/ of ‘well who is gonna change how they perceive me anyway’ #and /then/ kinda just looking around irl like ‘hm do i wanna even bring this to light’ #and then honestly cycling back to just kinda being :) abt that idealized version in ur head #oh and then also super secretly shoving away that thought of ‘hm does this impact my sexuality’ bc idek #this is a whole lot of bullshit that may sound melodramatic?? but honest 2 god i just needed to ramble #like i’m not looking for validation or someone to solve my problems aksjdjsjdj #and tbh sometimes idek what’s going on so!! #yeah!!!!! #anyways sometimes it gives me a headache how many identity crises i have but also i feel like that’s not entirely. abnormal. #do/nt re/blog

[ploppythespaceship]

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 Review

News of the finale intrigued me, so I caved and watched the whole season over the weekend. Here we go.

Overall verdict: better than season 1, but the bar was so low. It’s still annoying as hell. If this plot had taken place outside of Trek entirely, set in the Kelvin Timeline, or set post-Voyager, with some minor tweaks I’d probably be really into it! But as it stands... no.

Good Things:

Overall, this was better than season 1. The plot was more interesting and overall it was better written. Though I have many, many complaints (as you will see), I was rarely bored while watching.

The opening credits are growing on me. Even the understated music, I’ve caught myself humming it. And it is very pretty.

There are some standout characters and actors this season:

Christopher Pike - the praise for his Anson Mount’s portrayal is well-earned, and he’s easily the best part of this season. He combines the best of Jeffrey Hunter and Bruce Greenwood while still making it his own.

Sylvia Tilly - continues to be the best combination of badass and adorable. I feel like Tilly is what happens when you take the Barclay type character and actually make them integral to the overall story.

Saru - Doug Jones is just the best and he keeps upping his game.

Amanda Grayson - I really like Mia Kirshner’s version, she’s soft and yet so strong at the same time.

May Ahearn - I was sort of sad her role was so small. I wanted to see more of her.

Linus - I had to look up his name, the greenish/grayish alien with the big black eyes and the very deep voice. He’s just so charming. I’m happy when I see him.

There are some pretty solid episodes, mostly the ones that don’t have a connection to the overall plot. I quite liked “An Obol For Charon”, “Saints of Imperfection”, and “The Sound of Thunder.” (Edit from after the fact: “An Obol For Charon” actually tied directly into the plot, but only later. Which was perf.)

As dumb as I think the time crystals are, that scene where Pike encounters his future self scarred and deformed in the chair was pretty dope.

Bad Things:

For every awesome character and portrayal, there’s a terrible one:

Paul Stamets - it’s actually impressive how Anthony Rapp manages to ruin every single scene that he’s in with his terrible characterization and delivery. Which is a continuing problem from season 1. I’m honestly not sure how he got cast.

Ash Tyler - the character’s alright, but Shazad Latif only seems capable of delivering emotionally charged dialogue. When it’s a regular scene, he’s noticeably worse.

Jett Reno - Tig Notaro is just a terrible actress, all around. And her character seems forced into scenes where she’s not needed.

Spock - Ethan Peck is doing well with the character as written, but it’s just off. I dunno who this guy is, but it ain’t Spock.

Number One - Rebecca Romijn isn’t doing the character justice.

I despise the personal logs that open a lot of the episodes. They’re melodramatic and a wonderful example of how to tell instead of show. When other shows open with a log, it’s over quickly and usually just a way to launch into the episode plot or summarize events more quickly. Whereas these are almost painful to listen to.

The Klingons still look and sound and act bad, but thankfully are hardly around.

Spock has no fucking business being in the plot. The story honestly would be more compelling if Michael had the visions instead of him, especially considering how the Red Angel ties directly to her mother. Spock is shoehorned into the story for no reason except to have him, and it complicates an already complicated plot.

Also, Michael being Spock’s sister is still the laziest fucking writing. I hate it. So much.

Stamets and Culber still don’t have any chemistry and their scenes together are very forced and awkward. I think they brought Culber back just cause fans were pissed at his death, not cause they had any actual plan. They’re just not sure what to do with him in a lot of his scenes.

Section 31 is soooooo bad. They’re not interesting, and they’re not even secret. Everyone knows who they are and what they do which is total bullshit. The whole point of Section 31 is that they are outside of StarFleet’s control, and operate with no oversight. No one knows they exist. And the reason no one knows about them is cause they get up to REALLY shady shit that the average person would think is unacceptable. They definitely don’t have their own StarFleet badges and their own fleet of ships.

The makeup for “ugly” Vina is uhhh... hardly noticeable? And not that ugly? Like, she looks really pretty, but with a couple scars on her face. That sort of ruins the whole point of her character.

The spore drive is so deus ex machina now. It can solve anything! We can jump anywhere! I thought they were writing it out because their jumps were harming the life forms that lived in the network? And I thought that was a solid way to get rid of it. But I guess we’re StarFleet and we don’t care about them anymore...

I want to know more about the bridge crew! Airiam and Detmer and Owo and Rhys and everyone else. They’re trying to get me invested in them, especially Airiam with her death scene, but we’ve never been given anything about them but their names. We got a bit more for Airiam, but only so her death would have meaning. Plot twist: it didn’t! We still don’t know this woman!

Time crystals? With mystical properties??? What fucking show is this anymore?? Cause that ain’t Trek.

Control and Leland aren’t very compelling as villains. It’s not all that interesting to watch them.

Also, since they eradicated Control before Discovery went into the future... that means Discovery didn’t have to go... uhh...

Discovery going into the future, and StarFleet pretending Discovery never existed... *sigh*... it doesn’t fix the continuity. I don’t know why people are pretending it does. It just doesn’t. I might make a post about WHY this show is still all wrong, all the time, but for now? It only fixes a handful of the continuity problems, while the massive ones are still there for everyone to see.

#personal #reviews #star trek discovery liveblog

[brotherfaithsisterdoubt]

Defining Terms: "Christian"

Well. This one is the real doozy, isn't it? How do you define a term which means so many different and contradictory things, to so many people? "Atheist" and "agnostic" may have several definitions with different nuances, but "Christian"... Where do I even start trying to explain what I mean when I call myself a Christian, in a way that will make sense to everyone??

I could say that it means Jesus is my lord and savior. And that would be absolutely true. But... not at all in the way that my atheist and agnostic friends are thinking (and are probably horrified by). And not in the way a lot of Christians would think, either (and would slap a "heretic" label on me for saying it could possibly mean anything else).

I could say that it means I had a life-changing experience of repentance and being born from above (a more accurate translation of what's commonly translated as “born again”). And again, it would be completely true. But also, again, utterly useless in communicating information to anyone who doesn't already understand how I'm using those terms. And to be honest, it sounds awfully melodramatic. But it wasn’t some dramatic, emotional experience, and I wouldn’t have trusted it if it was. Cause if I learned anything from years and years of honing my skeptical toolset, it's the danger of allowing emotion to suppressing critical thinking, and how doing so sets people up for manipulation or self-deception. (That's not to disparage emotion – critical thinking and passionate feeling are both immensely valuable, but serve very different purposes such that neither can substitute for the other.)

So I'm afraid this post is, by necessity, a bait-and-switch (on top of being rambling and meandering – worst. post. ever.) To explain what I mean when I say I'm Christian, I'll have to explore what I understand Christianity itself to be all about. Which is a pretty tall task – I mean, I started a whole blog to explore that very question, so it's not exactly something I can adequately sum up in one post. But to start, at least, I'll be reviewing Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power – And How They Can Be Restored by Marcus J. Borg. That’s one of several books which completely demolished my previous belief that modern-day fundamentalism represents "real" Christianity, and everything else is just watered-down from there. That fundamentalism may be abhorrent, but at least it’s intellectually consistent, while everything else is largely inoffensive but utterly devoid of intellectual grounding. So yeah, surprise. Turns out that’s bullshit. I know, it’s hard to believe. That’s why it blew my freaking mind.

Tune in next time to start exploring what that Jesus guy was really all about!

#christian #christianity #defining terms #original content

[anygiventim3]

June 4, 2017

I feel so much anxiety right now. Holy, what has come over me?

I feel a bit of fear as well. Some traumatic thing happened yesterday and yes I will say traumatic because it kind of shook me up. My honey got hurt very badly to the point where he was in tears and shouting in pain. I felt so bad, In three and a half years I hadn't seen him cry EVER. On top of that I got the opportunity to see two family members that I have the feeling were not very excited to see me. Oh, also about twelve hours before the incident I was crying telling him something that has been burdening me and definitely hurt him.

What a mess. 

I think he and I just need a second to breathe, that was a lot of stuff in such a short span of hours for each of us, my goodness. I’m thankful tomorrow is monday and he and I can go be in seperate environments that allow us to decompress in a way. Ok, this is starting to sound a bit melodramatic. I just still feel like he and I are trying to find our footing all over again. We have begun a financial plan that involves paying off his debts by the end of this year and are in a new situation for the two of us. I love him so much but I just would really like to move on and start a life together and to do that we need money to be invested in us not debt. So things were going sort of as planned this week when his family drops a surprise on him. How shocking, not. He needs to cosign a loan so they can purchase a house...........

I’m pissed and sort of hurt. All. Over. Again. I should really just not be surprised by anything anymore at this point but I digress. I’m feeling this way because they got themselves into a situation that is caused by lying, fraud, impulsiveness, and just plain stupidity. No matter how heartbreaking the situation may be facts are facts. I have a feeling theres something that has happened or is happening that I am not informed of, but that’s okay, whatever, probably best if I don't know. Anywho, I very bluntly asked him if he plans to continue to live his life as a person who lies and commits fraud and if thats how he wanted to raise his kids, he said no. He looked sad, which I understand, I just insulted his family. But seriously wtf, why on earth would someone not be honest with themselves and realize how actually messed up all of that is? So, my train of thought is “Okay, well the action has already been done, lets move past it and try to make the best future possible” right? Right, BUT they continue to do stupid s#^! Like.... Just stop, good grief. And they all enable each other! Like stop supporting your retarded kids decisions to be an irresponsible little s#^! who just goes around causing everyone else to pay for the consequences, because of the “He’s my child and we are his parents we must provide” BS. Let your kid grow the heck up all he’s doing is causing harm to everyone else. Okay going off into a tangent that I don't have a desire to go into anymore. Anyway so my point is every time one of them gets THEMSELVES into a shit situation they literally expect each other to get them out lol. I am aware that there is no norms for families and no one is perfect but geez dude, get out of the shit fest. Better be damn sure my family doesn't go around fucking each other up like that, my mother would deck me if I did half the shit one of the sons does. My family don't give a shit if I’m 23 they will definitely call me out on my bullshit. I’m frustrated with the whole thing. Well, anyway after he answered no to my question he said after this he is “walking away” and it made me feel bad. In a way I really do think he understands me when I say I really do not condone irresponsibility and dishonesty but there’s a little part of me that thinks he thinks that I want him to cut them off, which is totally not true. I respect that they are his family and that he loves them, I completely understand that. If he and I have a child together I definitely want them in the child’s life and ours. But don't f!@#$$$ support their stupid shit. I told him “You can't light yourself on fire to keep people warm” to which he responded “They're using up their savings” which in all honesty I doubt they even have a savings, based on what I’ve noticed that they taught all three of their children, and even if they do I don't think it would be much. But again where did all that money go huhhhhhh??????  Maybe the 2016 car they own, or the jet ski, or the weekly restaurant visits, or the shopping, or the traveling, or the golf cart for driving around in their neighborhood because there isn't even a fucking golf course near, or their stupid spawns spawn. if this were a ‘Shit happens’ situation I’d be cool with it but no this is a situation where they got themselves into this mess........

okay, I’m really glad I just typed all of this out because I just confirmed that I’m not crazy. Relief. 

But here’s where my heart brings me into this. I care about him and I believe he’s not like that....or at least he has a chance to not be a shit. I just don't know what to believe in. Will he change or will he be like they are? :(