#very military very practical lots of pockets

[spicyraeman]

more lae'zel doodles. I am nothing if not predictable

#bg3 #lae'zel #as much as I love fuckboi laezel #I don't actually think she'd dress like that on her own #she'd wear some utility core shit or whatever #very military very practical lots of pockets

[cenittxnadir]

Master Chief Dating Headcanons

It is not news that John is not the most social of the group. Not even from the Blue Team. That position will probably be split between Kelly and Fred. So seeing John in a relationship is something completely new and unexpected, but it was nice to see, especially for the rest of the team who jumped at the opportunity to annoy him. It's not every day you get to outsmart Master Chief.

Leaving this clear, expect a lot of doubts and awkward moments with him, not in a negative way, this is all new to him but he is willing to learn your likes and dislikes while he discovers things that the UNSC has long been in charge of taking away from him.

John can be someone quite serious but behind closed doors and among his fellow Spartans he is one of the most relaxed, you won't see him laughing out loud or being flashy but with you he feels like he can be that child he couldn't be, not in a sense of immaturity but for the first time he feels that there is someone who can take care of him.

Dating Spartan is complicated, no matter what generation is. Everyone has trouble interacting outside of their fellow Spartans. So it is not something that despairs you, you will have to be very patient if you want to have a relationship with them.

In John's case, it's probably you who initiated the physical contact part, he doesn't mention it verbally but he really likes the attention you can give him and the day you told him how much you liked his hugs, he kept asking you if you wanted one He was happy, he felt that he was doing good in the relationship.

Consent for John is something vital, he is not used to being touched in a more intimate way, so all the time he will be asking you if he can hold your hand or hug you. He does not do it out of shyness but rather out of respect for your personal space. The last thing he wants is to bother you and it's the same thing he expects of you.

He's the epitome of a provider, something he didn't even know he was. Not only in the economic and material part. He is a protector by nature, so expect him to be aware of everything that happens with you even if you don't mention anything to him, so be careful trying to lie to him or hide something from him, he probably already knows but he won't tell you anything. Maybe you have your reasons for not telling him, but be very careful with this, he may feel insecure, so it is best to maintain good communication.

Speaking of economics, Spartans do have a salary, most of it goes into savings, since the UNSC provides them with all their needs. So taking this into account and John's military rank, he has a few zeros in his pocket. So when he discovered that many couples gave each other gifts as a sign of affection, he took this method to compensate you every time he had to go on a long mission. Soon after, he practically became your sugar daddy until the gifts were enough and you decided to put a stop to it. You explained him that a hug from him after so long without seeing him was worth more than any material gift.

John, being a protector, will be watching you at any time, not because he distrusts you but because you are important to him and he does not want anything bad to happen to you, he has had enough bad things in his life, you are one of the few good things that has. He can become jealous, but he would not do anything extreme or sick, as long as your life is not compromised, in case something like this happens, he will not hesitate for a second to use all possible means to protect you, even if it means abusing his of position.

In conclusion, you are the most precious thing he has, he will not let anything bad happen to you and that is a promise he made the day you agreed to be with him. Despite his appearance, John has learned to be more relaxed and enjoy the little things more, as long as you are by his side to show him how valuable his effort has been all these years and that now it is his turn to be taken care of by someone else.

#john 117 #master chief x reader #halo infinite #spartan 117 #jhon 117 x reader #john 117 x reader #miguel o'hara x reader #master chief #halo x reader

[firegirl888101]

how would the harbingers react to a reader who's good at drawing? like, they like to draw the harbingers or other things

Good at drawing?

I'm shit at drawing so I'm not really sure what to say, that's why I didn't reply to this for awhile. But, I eventually got a couple things when my friend was sketching some stuff in front of me.

Sorry that the current Insatiable Madness chapter is taking so long, I've been studying a lot these past couple of days.

I also got another ask where it asked about Halloween. I don't really celebrate Halloween, because I never grew up with it. I've always been too shy to trick-or-treat and I didn't have many friends (and still don't) who'd want to go with me. Quite sad actually, but it's alright. I don't think I missed out on much.

Is anyone expecting me to make a Halloween special? I don't mind doing it, but I'll need inspiration as I wouldn't know where to start 💀

Actually, the more I think about it, I do have one fun idea. (Harbingers going trick-or-treating??? Halloween party if that even exists? Idk, I'll have to do some research.)

|You can take this with Yandere and without - some will probably lean towards yan though.|

So, to begin with:

Pierro wouldn't be too bothered. I feel if Y/N had a skill they were confident in, and wanted to show it, he'd let his curiousity get the better of him and check it out. But, if it's something like drawing he'll probably leave a comment then leave. Whether it's positive or negative, you be the judge. This man is like a slate slab. No personality I'm sorry 😭😭 (When I see more of his character, maybe I'll like him more?)

If you were to draw this man, he'd be humbled. A Grandpa who received his very first present from his grandchild. Would definitely frame the damn thing in his office (which originally was your parent's) he'd put it on the desk. It's his office now, don't argue for it back.

Capitano would show interest. Not too much since he's the main captain of the Fatui, but still interested. If he's bored, or deems the 'fort' (the house) safe, he'll sit down with you and watch what you're doing. Occasionally asking you if he could doodle with you - but I think that would be very rare. His main objective in his mind is guarding you when your own is low whilst you're having fun, doodling or drawing something.

Would 100% deny the picture of him at first. He'd think, that looks like me, but it can't be. Yes, it's him, you'd reassure. Eventually he does take it and folds it in his coat. After that, he'd probably leave the room in embarrassment. Since then on, he'd definitely keep all drawings you've made of him in his pocket. There's too many? Let's put it in the second pocket. That's full too? Looks like he's buying a new coat. Oh? There's room in his military coat he hasn't worn in two years? That'll do just nicely.

Dottore would be intrigued if he saw you practice anatomy - or if you drew more of a gorey scene. I think he'd be even more interested if you liked to draw the human body with extra things (such as arms, legs, eyes or even got rid of a few), and question you on your design choices and if it already exists somewhere. (He's not fooling you, he's obviously taking inspirations for a new experiment). If he didn't know, or wasn't good, he'd probably ask for tips on how to sketch ideas like yours. He reassures you it's not for any experimentation but once again, he's not fooling you at all.

If you were to draw him he'd treat it like glass. Nobody has ever given him a sketch before - bonus points if you draw him injured whilst you're angry with him. He'd treat it as if you drew him with love, and not as if you'd stab him in the heart if you ever got the chance. What do you mean he shouldn't like it this much? It's a work of art! He'd be very quick to correct the drawing if you got anything wrong. Who knows what this man has in his body at this point.

Columbina would join you in your drawing activities. Maybe add some glitter if you have any. The second you complain about cleaning up, however, she has somehow disappeared and has become very forgetful about the events upstairs. 'How curious!~' She would hum to herself with her usual smile. Is definitely the type to ask if you could draw her. Who are you to refuse? Especially when she gives you that look of daunt hope and kindness which makes you drop your pen in fear. Before you can give her an answer, you've already picked up your pencil and began to sketch her beautiful headpiece.

When Columbina receives her multiple sketches, she's overjoyed. Oh, look how you drew this part! How you drew her clothes! She's quick to kiss you on the cheek as a thank you and runs off somewhere. Huh, you feel like you've just been used.

Arlecchino will roll her eyes at first. She's seen many children in the hearth draw for her. Her initial thoughts were vague, she didn't really see much of your hobby. That was until she actually saw what you were drawing. She would stare as you worked, your pencil delicately brushing against the paper you most likely bought the other day. It soon will become a habit to watch you work, becoming a therapeutic source for her. She sometimes questions why you're drawing... certain things, but she wouldn't actually stop your creative mind from working.

Handing Arlecchino the drawing you drew of her would make her blood rise to her cheeks slightly. Sure, she's received a lot of gifts in this sense before. But from you? What an honour! She'll accept it with a soft smile she'd usually show the kids, and pat your head treating you like one. Little do you know she's trying so hard to control her cute agression response by not tearing the paper.

Pulcinella would react very similarly to Pierro. However, he'd have more experience with complimenting and encouraging 'a child' in a hobby they're having fun with. If he saw your skill, he'd probably compliment it whole-heartedly with a chuffed smile. Massaging his mustache like some aristocrat, in the 1940s... Anyway, he'd be very pleased when he watches you draw more and more. He's happy that you're spending your time doing something you like under the tense situation his coworkers (and him, but he doesn't like to admit it) have brought upon you.

I do not see you drawing this man at all. He's a short, dobby, old, looking as man. I don't see him as the type to ask either, at all. He's minding his own business in your house and plans to keep it that way until the situation is resolved.

Scaramouche really doesn't care. We've all got our own likes and dislikes, but he's not bothered about yours. Will most likely purposefully pass by you working on a piece and insult it just to get attention. He'd never actually mean it though - he just never tells you that important fact. As time progresses he'll sneak into your room just to look at more sketches or finished drawings you've done, and assess your progress from each year if you've been practicing for a long time-period.

Now, here's where things get interesting. If you were to draw him and never show it to him, said puppet finding it for himself in one of your drawers, he'd first feel angry. Why wouldn't you show him this? It's of him! ...But then he'd quickly realise it's because of the way he treated you when you were working (oops). If you actually handed it to him and let him keep it, he'd be delighted. You actually drew him? He didn't even have to manipu-- he means 'ask' you to draw him? This is a good step forward to where he wants to be in your heart.

Sandrone would be delighted to know that she's finally found a use for you in her head. She never thought that purposefully walking past you one evening would lead to her shuffling through all the sketches and designs you've done with awe. Where did you get this idea from? How can she recreate it? Would you be happier and more devoted to her if she were to make your dreams true? She digresses. Watching your creative little mind draw your ideas to life inspires her also, and makes her want to recruit you as a special exception to the 'no non-artificial beings' allowed in her workshop. Thinking of all the monstrosities you could design with her help sends pleasurable shivers up her spine.

Drawing her, however? This was rather unprecedented. Out of all the things-- no, people you could have drawn... and you decide on her? And ooh! You even drew her slave she likes to travel around on, how thoughtful, you're already expressing your adoration for her works! Trust me, don't draw her. You'll give her daydreams that will never happen.

Signora, like most of the harbingers, wouldn't care at first. She hates your house and hates your world, why in Teyvat's name would she be interested in what you're doing? That's what she used to think, until her arrogant slick eyes caught sight of what exactly you were drawing. In my opinion, there's only a couple things that would interest Signora. Drawing dresses, if you were interested in fashion designing, would definitely be the main one. Viewing your designs after you finished them would soon become a small hobby for her, and soon, she'd eventually ask you to draw her in one of your designs.

You'd say yes, of course. An excuse to draw a drop-dead gorgeous woman in one of your designs for free? No way you were going to pass this opportunity! For her hard work in modeling, you'd definitely pay back twice and give her a drawing of her in her harbinger uniform too - which I think would flatter her a bit too much.

Pantalone wouldn't care, and would never become interested. He's a very rich and successful banker, not any ordinary man. As soon as he sees you drawing somewhere in the house, he'll shrug and go the opposite way. He knows what it's like to be interrupted through a thoughtful process, and he doesn't feel like getting an earful from you if he interrupts it. What he does think about, however, is if you're making money from it. Maybe an online business. He asks, and receives a very disappointing answer. No? What do you mean no? These are good, he'd pay for a portrait! Well, if Mora was a usable currency here. Ugh, the thought of being a poor man in this world makes him disgusted.

Drawing him would result in lots of praise. He'd be very happy you used your own time to draw him. He didn't even have to pay for it, it was gift! You even said so yourself. Immediately taken from your hands and framed somewhere. You can't seem to find the drawing though... Pantalone insists it's still in the house, but no matter where you look you just can't find it! Oh well, it's probably better you didn't know where it went. (You would have never been able to find it, he hid the location so well after all.) Pantalone told you he'd give something back to you as a thank you, but you're not holding him to his word.

Tartaglia would be interested the second he sees you doing something he hasn't seen you do before. That looks interesting, let him give drawing a try! He'd boast how his siblings love his drawings he creates, but you knew he was lying to set a cheery mood. Your understanding was backed when you actually saw his 'Amazing Drawing'... It was embarrassing to say the least. He would heed all your little tips and eventually get good at drawing from your guidance! I can see him as the type to use these skills later for his siblings, and as the type to continue drawing even if you begin to get bored of it... He's skilled with his fingers after all-- okay I'm sorry I'm done.

Drawing him can go one in two ways. I see him as someone who will whine about being drawn. He'll say: 'Have you drawn me yet?' in one of the most annoying voices he cna muster. He knows and understands you find it annoying when he asks you to draw him, so he's found a loophole. Just keep asking questions related to it until you get the hint! ...You got the hint weeks ago, but you're refusing to do it. Well, you're refusing to show him your drawings you've already finished and hid out of sight. Showing him these drawings would make him really happy! Would fold his favourite and carry it around with him everywhere like some of the other harbingers. His next commission he's planned to ask you is of a drawing of Capitano. You eagerly declined, not wishing to impose on the Captain's privacy.

#genshin impact #yandere genshin impact #fatui harbingers #yandere harbingers #genshin #pierro #capitano #il dottore #columbina #arlecchino #pulcinella #scaramouche #sandrone #la signora #pantalone #tartaglia #childe #fatui #genshin fatui

[transmutationisms]

…so can you expand on the psychological ramifications of stewy being in private equity? that has definitely been lost on me given that i barely understand what private equity is

ok this is an underrated funny aspect of the show imo, and also good insight into stewy and kendall. i'm trying to spare you a bunch of stupid business jargon but basically, maesbury capital (which stewy represents but sandy/sandi ultimately own) is a private equity fund, meaning it's a big pile of a bunch of rich people's money, and stewy's job is to take that money and invest in private companies. a PE fund can invest at a few different points: at the very beginning of a startup's life (venture or angel investing), at a point where the company is trying to grow or restructure (growth investing), or when a company is struggling financially, in which case the fund is usually planning to either dismantle it and sell it for scrap, restructure and go public, or sell it for cash to another company. PE firms like to present themselves as doing a lot of growth or venture investing, but in truth many/most are primarily engaging in this third category of investment strategies, because they're lucrative (and because many startups are stupid, and only good for generating investor payouts).

so, when kendall went and dismantled vaulter in season 2 because logan decided that selling most of it for scrap would be more profitable? that's basically a dramatisation of what stewy does routinely, except of course the exact financial instruments and strategies will differ because stewy represents a PE firm. like, if kendall's venture capitalist schemes tell us about his delusions of creating cool new products and services, stewy is sort of the opposite because his structural goal is usually to dismantle companies and liquidate them however is best for maesbury's backers. it's a total destruction of all use-value and a conversion of it into pure exchange-value in the form of capital (which goes into his pockets and maesbury's). stewy generates money by destroying utility, which is perverse if you think capitalism is supposed to create and sustain human life, but actually completely comprehensible if you understand that capitalism is an insatiable growth machine with inherently contradictory internal tendencies and no raison d'être beyond the endless accumulation of pure capital itself.

many viewers think stewy is insane because he is friends with kendall roy. this is true, but on a deeper level stewy is insane because his job is to participate in the inexorable tendency to more and more abstraction in the capitalist mode of production. it literally does not matter at all to someone like stewy whether people are fed or clothed or happy, or have any of their needs met. the point is solely to create money, to turn all social forms and values into numbers on a balance sheet. this is why, when kendall tries to threaten him on axos at the end of season 2, stewy is able to casually tell him that "it doesn't matter; it doesn't mean anything." he and sandy are convincing shareholders that their offer will be able to make them more money, "and that's all that this is." stewy speaks the language of business differently than logan, because stewy doesn't care about dick-swinging competitions or demonstrating dominance in logan's cringey old catholic military way. which makes stewy more rational in certain ways, but also more insane, in that he operates in a way totally detached from this type of social value system and solely motivated by cold hard numbers.

the irony is that, whilst being detached and disembodied in his business practices, stewy is also better than the roys at appreciating the material fruits of wealth. he eats; he dresses well; he enjoys the "several houses" he owns. kendall is always trying to come up with some grand moral bullshit masculinity reason that what he's doing is noble or whatever, and he's alienated from his body and afflicted with severe catholic martyr disease. stewy just bypasses all that shit, measures his success by his payouts, and enjoys wealth because he sees it as an end in itself and not a means to logan roy's respect.

this is also why kendall's line in 'living+' about "it's enough to make you lose your faith in capitalism" is so funny. kendall can't just accept that business is a bunch of meaningless bullshit confidence games played by coked-up assholes who like to win; he always has to try to convince himself he's making cool new tech shit, or saving the world from the spectre of death itself or some shit. it's like, insane that he made it to literally 40 years old, growing up in a media conglomerate of all things, and still thinks that what he's doing requires actual skill or creates actual social value—but of course, part of the reason he still thinks this is because he deified logan and was therefore incapable of ever seeing logan or waystar for what they really were. stewy would never say that line because he can't be disillusioned this way on account of he already knows the whole thing is bullshit. it's just that to him it doesn't matter, because being bullshit does not preclude it from paying well.

#some1 also asked about that kendall line and it seemed like it wanted to be bundled into this post lol i hope that answers yr q #blood sacrifice #typing this gave me flashbacks to when i did freelance transcription and i used to do this guy's podcast on angel investing #literal nightmare fodder. the hours-long homophobic baptist sermons were better

[geminiwritten]

hold on ; billy butcher

fandom: the boys

pairing: billy x reader

summary: you’re the youngest member of the boys and you hate that butcher insists on calling you ‘kid’ so you show him in more ways than one that you are not a child

notes: this is very weak, but it was kind of good writing practice because i definitely don’t write a lot of action (i’m so sorry if it sucks)! as always, please let me know what you think!

warnings: a lot of swearing, google translated french, age gap (not specified, but inferred) guns, violence, a dagger, explosion, descriptions of wounding (please don’t read if any of this is triggering for you!)

word count: 4310

Butcher is an asshole. You knew that from the moment you met him. He is rude, and brash, and impulsive to the point that made you believe he didn’t have an angel on one of his shoulders, only two antagonistic little devils. You often found yourself itching to dig your fist into his face, especially when he called you by the stupid nickname he coined the moment he met you. Kid, or The Kid, if you weren’t in the room. It vexed you beyond belief, and you knew exactly why.

Butcher is an asshole, but he’s also fucking gorgeous. He’s tall and broad, and his voice is so delicious, it often finds its way into your filthiest dreams. To say you were obsessed with the man wouldn’t be an overstatement, and it was no secret, everyone but Butcher himself knows it. You’ve wanted him from the moment you met him, but then he went ahead and called you ‘kid’ and you quickly realised that he didn’t see you as anything more than one of the boys. The youngest one of the boys.

“Are you okay, mon amour?” Frenchie asks, nudging you with his shoulder.

You look at the man sitting beside you, dressed head to toe in black with a bandolier slung across his body. The van rattles as it hits a bump, and across from you, MM casts an angry glare toward the driver’s seat.

“I’m good,” you reply, flexing your fingers around the gun laying across your lap.

You were no stranger to the weapon, having spent years training in the special forces before flunking out the minute you found out about the movement for Supes to be contracted into the military. You were furious and scared, and then you ran into an old neighbour whose mother used to be book club buddies with yours – Hughie – and the rest is history.

“Butcher’s on location,” MM says, tucking his phone back into the pocket on his vest.

“Make sure he waits,” Hughie calls from the front of the van. “It’ll take me five minutes to get eyes on the whole building, but he can’t go in blind.”

MM looks at Frenchie, “Are you sure about this?”

“Positive,” Frenchie replies, “They will not be prepared for a raid, and they will have the information we need.”

“And how many are going to be willing to give it to us?” you ask.

He grimaces, “Not many, but I do not doubt your persuasion skills, mon cherie.”

“Persuasion,” you scoff, looking down at the weapon in your lap.

Don’t get it wrong, you weren’t some kind of super CIA motherfucker who should be feared by all, but you were pretty swift when you needed to be. You weren’t overly worried about the mission, not with Frenchie, MM, and Butcher at your back, but you hadn’t properly exercised your training in months. You know you’re going to be rusty, and you don’t exactly know what you’re walking into, but Frenchie does, and he’s confident in your ability.

The objective was simple. Frenchie had some old friends who were keeping tabs on his and Butcher’s movements and feeding them back to someone who was then getting them to Vought somehow. All you had to do was shut them down and find out who their contact was, and probably murder more than half of them in the process. Simple, right? Except for the fact that not even Frenchie knew exactly how many men you were running in on, or what kind of weapons they had.

“We’re here,” Hughie announces, just before the three of you in the back lurch forward with the sudden stop of the van.

You button up the fastenings on your fingerless gloves and check that your bandolier is packed with extra magazines before standing up. MM opens the doors for Hughie, and he jumps up into the back of the van with his laptop under his arm. Frenchie pulls a small stool from the storage cage and plants it in front of the flip down desk as Hughie begins unpacking his equipment. No more than five minutes pass before video images start popping up in black and white squares across the screens.

“Butcher,” Hughie says, tucking his earpiece in, “can you hear me?”

You fix your own piece into your ear before routinely checking the clips and fastenings across your tact suit.

“I can ‘ear you,” Butcher’s voice rumbles in your ear, and you can feel your cheeks flush pink.

“Alright,” Hughie scans the screens in front of him, “they’ve got pretty high tech surveillance, but their security isn’t great. I’m getting twenty-two heat signatures, most in the basement, a couple on the ground floor, and three on the fourth. According to Frenchie’s intel, there are other tenants in the building, so my guess is that three up top aren’t apart of this.”

“The two at ground level are most likely security,” Frenchie says. “There are always one or two of them watching the building’s main entrance.”

“But there’s another way in?” MM asks.

Hughie nods, “Looks like you can access the basement from the back, but that’s probably their main point of access, so you’ll want to find another way in.”

“You tellin’ me there’s one fuckin’ door to this place?” Butcher’s voice comes through the earpiece again, and you have to flex your fingers around your gun to remind yourself to focus.

“The backdoor and the building’s main stairwell,” Frenchie replies.

“Two fuckin’ doors?” Butcher says. “Fuckin’ hell, Frenchie, how the hell are we s’pposed to get out if things go wrong?”

“Nothing will go wrong,” Frenchie states, giving you an incredibly confident grin.

Your stomach twists nervously, but you don’t let it show, returning his grin with a nod and a small smile.

“There are windows,” Hughie says, “but only Y/N will fit, maybe Frenchie.”

“Then we go first,” you look at Frenchie, “through the windows and make sure Butcher and MM can get in the back.”

“No fuckin’ way,” Butcher snaps. “We don’t know what kind of weapons these cunts got, and if you two get overpowered, we won’t be able to get in ‘n’ help. We all go in the backdoor, force our way in.”

Frenchie chuckles, “You are a fan of forcing yourself into the backdoor, Monsieur Charcutier?”

MM snorts while you and Hughie snicker, but there isn’t a sound from Butcher.

“Look,” you say, “I appreciate your concern, Butcher, but we have the best chance of surprising them by slipping in where they won’t expect.”

Frenchie giggles again at your unintentional innuendo.

“Listen, Kid,” Butcher says, sending wave of irritation through your body, “I appreciate your concern, but I ain’t lettin’ you ‘n’ Frenchie get killed for somethin’ as trivial as a bit of intel.”

“I’m not a fucking kid, Butcher,” you bite back, at which everyone in the van startles. “Frenchie and I will meet you at the backdoor.”

You pull your black kerchief up over your nose and crack the van’s doors open, peaking out cautiously before stepping down and into the dark night. Frenchie and MM follow your silent footsteps toward the brick building, skirting around the side until you find the low and narrow basement windows. You point at MM and then toward the back of the building, and he nods before hurrying off.

“There’s a guard waiting outside the backdoor,” Hughie’s voice comes through your earpiece.

You hear a couple of grunts before MM says, “Not anymore.”

“Do you have Butcher?” Hughie asks.

“We’re in position,” MM affirms.

You nod at Frenchie and he gestures for you to go first, so you turn to the closest window. You take a deep breath before crouching beside the window and gripping a lip in the brickwork to help swing your body through. Using your chunky black boots, you kick the window in and follow the momentum with your feet first. You hit the concrete floor with a thud, quickly darting to the side before Frenchie drops down in the same fashion.

“What the fuck?!” one of the men shouts, scrambling to get up from the old and torn sofa on which he sat.

Your hands are on your gun before you can remember thinking about it, and a gunshot bursts in your left ear as a thug across the room fires at you, missing completely. You take aim and shoot his shoulder, making him drop his gun and crumple to the floor in pain. Two more bullets hit the brick wall behind you, and two more of the gangsters fall with wounds in their shoulders. Frenchie is already rushing to the backdoor, and you cover him easily by dropping three more men with pistols and hitting one in the leg who was scrambling toward the stairs. A cluster of lankier looking men cower in what looks like a makeshift drug lab, all wearing rubber aprons and protective goggles over their eyes. You turn away from them and take down another heading for the stairs, watching him fall on top of his comrade before whipping around and firing at a thug who was pointing his gun at Frenchie. The bullet cracks as it hits him in the side of the head, but you don’t have time to regret your aim before someone tackles you from behind. You duck forward, gripping his thick arms before he can strangle you, and use his momentum to throw him onto his back on the floor in front of you with a loud thump.

Your gun is back in your hands as you scan the room over its barrel, a familiar sense a satisfaction quelling your fight mode when you find every assailant either downed or cowering with their hands up. The backdoor creaks open, and MM and Butcher march in with guns up before stopping abruptly at the sight of the pacified room.

“What did I tell you, eh?” Frenchie says, and you hear it more in your earpiece than from across the room. “She is fucking incroyable.”

“Holy shit,” MM mutters, lowering his gun.

Butcher’s eyes are wild above his face covering, filled with an emotion you can’t discern as he stares at you across the dark room.

“Alright,” Frenchie shouts, pulling his kerchief down, “where the fuck is Lafeyette?”

The room stays quiet, but the four of you slowly cast heavy glares across the fallen thugs until one of the timid lab assistants points a shaking finger toward the two men collapsed by the stairs.

“Time to talk you filthy sac de merde,” Frenchie spits, as he and Butcher stalk toward the men.

MM nods at you as he readjusts his gun and widens his stance, guarding the door in case anyone thinks of trying to escape. Your fighter instincts settle at the slight sense of security, and you sling your gun over your shoulder as you approach the small drug lab.

“What are your names?” you ask the men.

Three of them glance at the shortest of the four, and with trembling hands he moves his goggles onto his head, revealing two clean circles of skin around his bright blue eyes.

“I am Gabriel,” he says, his accent thicker than Frenchie’s, “this is Théo, Lucas, and Éliott. They do not speak English.”

“Can they understand it?”

He nods, “Mostly.”

“Good,” you nod and hold your hands up, “I’m not going to hurt you, unless you give me a reason to.”

They all shake their heads vigorously.

“Are you here because you want to be?” you ask them.

“No,” Gabriel replies, and the other three shake their heads again.

“How did you get here?”

“Théo and I came together,” Gabriel says, “without papers, and Monsieur Toussaint said he would get us citizenship. Lucas and Éliott were here already, and they have kept us from leaving.”

You gesture to the bench full of laboratory equipment, “You make drugs for them?”

“Oui,” he nods, “Lucas is a- uh, how do you say un scientifique?”

“A scientist,” MM calls out from behind you.

“Oui,” Gabriel nods again, “he teaches us to cook.”

You frown, “Do you have any family here?”

“Théo has family in America,” he replies.

“Does he know where they are? Can you contact them if we help you leave?”

His bright blue eyes sparkle with hope, “Oui!”

You nod, “Good, we’re going to try and help you, okay?”

You barely finish your sentence before MM screams your name, and you feel the weight of a large hand on your left shoulder, dragging you back and blocking your ability to grab your gun. You crouch under the pressure and reach your thigh holster with your right hand, gripping the hilt of your dagger. You unsheathe it as you turn in a full one-eighty, escaping the assailant’s grasp and sweeping underneath his arm with your dagger outstretched. The blade slashes horizontally right beneath his kneecap, causing him to buckle as you rise to your full height and lacerate his throat. You leap back to avoid the spray of blood and falling body, watching the man slump face first into the concrete floor at your feet.

When you look up, you find every pair of – conscious – eyes on you, a mixture of terror and disbelief written across the room of faces.

“Are you okay?” Frenchie asks, though there is more pride than concern in his expression.

“I’m good,” you reply, crouching down to clean each side of your dagger on the dead man’s shirt before tucking it back into your holster.

Butcher drops the collar of who you assume is Lafayette, and you still can’t read his face behind his kerchief as he stares at you.

“Uh, guys,” Hughie’s voice speaks into your ear, “someone heard the gunshots, you’ve got emergency response on site in less than five minutes.”

Frenchie swings his foot into Lafayette’s stomach before nodding at MM, “Let’s go.”

You turn to the four lab assistants and gesture toward the backdoor. They scramble to remove their protective gear before hurrying toward MM who guides them out. Frenchie jogs past you, but Butcher stops and holds his hand out.

He pulls his kerchief down, “I’ll do it, you get out of ‘ere, Kid.”

“Fat chance,” you scoff, “now go.”

You’ve already got the gas canister in hand, and he knows you’ll pop it before he can argue, so he turns and mutters something inaudible as he stalks toward the door.

With your kerchief securely up over your nose, you release the pin and throw the gas into the room before turning to the lab table. You work quickly, pouring the two vials that Frenchie gave you into an empty beaker and setting it atop a lit burner. In five long leaps, you’re out the door and slamming it shut before sprinting away.

Butcher is waiting for you just around the side of the building, his hand outstretched. You barely have time to grab it before a huge explosion blows through the low basement windows and shakes the entire building. Butcher pulls your body against his, pivoting so that his back is to the blast as it knocks both of you off your feet. You hit the ground and your ears ring, but you don’t feel a single bit of debris hit you thanks to the body lying on top of yours.

“Fuck,” Butcher curses, though his voice sounds distant in your ringing ears.

You look up at him, his face inches from yours and smattered with dust and dirt. The adrenaline coursing through your veins has your whole body on high alert, overly aware of every part of him that is pressed against you.

He looks down at you, his pupils blown wide as his gaze darts to your lips. He licks his own, his chest heaving against yours and your head spins with a thousand filthy thoughts. For a split second, you think he might kiss you, and your breath catches in your throat in anticipation, but then he pushes himself up and offers his hand. You sigh and take it, letting him haul you off the ground.

“You alrigh’, Kid?” he asks.

“I’m not a fucking kid,” you spit, snatching your hand from his.

You run toward the van and leap into the open doors, Butcher at your heels. Hughie slams on the accelerator before Frenchie has even closed the doors, and you instinctually grab onto the nearest thing to steady yourself. It just so happens to be Butcher, and you know not from the scratch of his beard against your temple as you cling to him, but his scent. Warm and woody, with hint of apple-scented soap and whiskey.

You retract quickly and fall into the seat on the opposite side of the van, resting your head back against the blocked-out window.

“What the fuck, Frenchie?” MM exclaims. “You said that would be a small explosion, that it would look like an accident.”

Frenchie grimaces, “I did not account for the other reactants in the lab.”

Butcher sits quietly across from you, his eyes trained on you as you do everything you can to avoid looking in his direction. You focus on your gun, unlocking the empty clip and clicking the safety on. MM and Frenchie speak with the four timid men huddled at the back of the van, asking them a series of questions before deciding where would be best to take them.

After a painfully long drive, Hughie stops the van and Frenchie helps the four men out of the back doors. He tells you all to go back to the safe house and he will be there soon. The rest of the ride home is tense and silent, MM not daring to speak once he sees the irritated frown on your face as you fiddle with your equipment, packing it into cases and locking it in the van’s storage cage.

Once safe inside the decrepit apartment you currently call home, Hughie grins at you, “Holy shit, Y/N, you are fucking bad ass.”

“Thanks,” you mutter, starting on the clips of your tact suit.

“I wish I saw all of it,” MM says, “you’re deadly.”

A small smile quirks the corner of your lip, and you let out a small sigh as you release the last buckle on your Kevlar vest. You drop the heavy thing on the dining table along with your bandolier.

“I’m still pissed that you didn’t listen to me,” Butcher states, at which you roll your eyes, “but you did good, Kid.”

Your head snaps in his direction, your eyes narrowing at him. “Do I look like a fucking child, Butcher?”

Hughie’s grin vanishes and MM freezes on his way to the couch.

“Do I?” you press, holding your arms out as if to emphasise your attire. “Because a fucking kid couldn’t do what I just did, yet you insist on calling me by that fucking name!”

He doesn’t flinch the way Hughie does, nor are his eyes as wary as MM’s. He remains his usual cool self, though his frown is more curious than irate.

“Didn’t realise it bugged ya so much,” he says.

“You don’t fucking realise much, do you, Butcher?” you snap, before turning on your heel and marching toward the room that was designated yours.

You march inside and slam the door, but a pair of heavy boots are hot on your heels, and you curse the landlord for not installing any locks as the door swings open again.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Butcher demands, slamming the door once again behind him.

You unzip your outer jacket and throw it on the bed, “Didn’t I make it clear?”

“Uh, no, actually,” he steps toward you, “I’m not fuckin’ pissed about the raid, I’m pretty fuckin’ impressed, but you’re still throwin’ a tantrum like a fuckin’-”

“Like a child?”

His eyes narrow, and he crosses his arms over his chest, “I was gon’a say kid.”

You clench your fists in an attempt to refocus your frustration, digging your fingernails into your palms until it stings.

“Look,” he says, “I know you’re capable, and fuckin’ talented with a gun, but I wasn’t tryin’ to be a dick, I was tryin’ to keep you safe.”

“Because I’m so young and stupid?” you ask, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Because I can’t fucking handle myself even though I just prevented all of you from getting your fucking asses kicked?”

He sighs, “I never said you’re fuckin’ stupid.”

“But I am young,” you mutter, your voice revealing more emotion than you intended.

His brows shift into a dubious frown, “What’s this fuckin’ obsession with your age?”

“What’s your obsession with my age?” you snap, “Calling me ‘kid’ all the time and acting like you’re my fucking babysitter.”

“Oh, so fuck me for caring ‘bout your safety, is that it?”

“No, Billy, that’s not it,” you sigh, tearing your gaze from his to focus on unclipping your thigh holster.

“Then what is it? ‘Cause I don’t know what I’ve fuckin’ done!”

Your holster comes loose and you grip the hilt of the dagger with white knuckles, standing straight again.

“You haven’t done anything!”

“Then what haven’t I fucking done?!” he exclaims, unfolding his arms and throwing his hands up.

The little voice in your head splits into a thousand, screaming a thousand different commands at you. Cry, yell at him, throw something at him, scream, hit your head against the fucking wall, punch him in the throat… kiss him.

Your ears, still numb from the explosion, fill with the sound of your thumping heartbeat as you take three quick steps toward him. His height is intimidating, but you don’t have time to regret your decision as your fingers curl into the material of his shirt and pull him toward you. You have to stretch onto your toes, your other hand finding his chest for stability as you crush your lips against his.

For a second, you think you’ve seriously fucked up, but then his mouth begins to move against yours and your knees buckle. His arms catch you, wrapping around your waist and holding your body against his as his tongue slides across your bottom lip. You part your lips with a sigh, and he takes all control, claiming your mouth and wiping your mind of any thought that isn’t him.

In two easy steps, he backs you against the bed, sitting you down without his lips ever leaving yours. He crawls on top of you, straddling your thighs and catching your hands as they find the buckle on his belt.

“Love,” he sighs against your lips, “hold on.”

You blink up at him, slowly coming down from your high, “To what?”

He chuckles, “I meant slow down a sec.”

“Oh,” your cheeks burn, and you snatch your hands out of his grasp. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t ever fuckin’ apologise for that,” he says, a dopey smile on his lips, “but I don’t know-”

“I do,” you interrupt him, holding yourself up on your elbows.

He raises his brows, “What do you know?”

“I know that I want you,” you reply, “and I know that you want me. I don’t know if this is a good idea, but it fucking feels like it, so please, Butcher… please.”

“Fuck,” he groans, his eyes lingering on your lips before trailing down your body to where he sat. “I know I want you, but why the fuck do you want me?”

You snort, “You’re kidding, right?”

He only frowns.

“Butcher, I have wanted you from the moment I fucking met you,” you fall back against the bed with a sigh, “I don’t know how you haven’t fucking noticed.”

He leans over you, holding himself up with a hand either side of your head. “Why?”

His voice is so deep and his eyes so dark, you struggle to breathe as your clothes suddenly feel like they’re strangling you.

“Because you’re-”

“An asshole?”

You giggle, “Yes, and rude, and brash, but you’re also fucking beautiful.”

His heavy breathing suddenly stops and his eyes widen as they search yours, as if looking for some sense of deception or sarcasm. You open your mouth to reassure him but he swallows your words with a kiss, his lips crashing into yours with bruising force. His mouth moves across your jaw and down your neck, and you whine when pulls away before quickly realising that your high-neck undershirt is in the way. His fingers find the hem and yank it up over your breasts, not bothering to remove it completely before his lips assault your chest, biting and soothing your skin in five separate spots as you writhe beneath him.

He moves down, placing a kiss on your sternum and your stomach, before pausing at the waistband of your pants and looking up with hungry eyes. “You sure ‘bout this?”

His hot breath fans your skin and goosebumps rise in response.

You nod, “Yes, please, Butcher. Yes.”

The buckle and button are loosened in a second, and he groans at the sight of your lacy black panties. He places a hot, wet kiss just above the hem before sitting back and unbuttoning his own shirt. He doesn’t manage to shrug it off though, because you take the opportunity to grip either side of it and pull him back down on top of you. The feeling of his skin against yours makes your whole body clench, and you know you’re kissing him sloppily but he doesn’t seem to mind.

Your fingers find his belt again, struggling to remember how the damn thing works when he pulls away with a gasp, “Hold on.”

You frown, “What now?”

He chuckles, “No, sweethear’, not like that.”

His hands take yours guiding them up over your head until you feel the wood of the headboard at your fingertips.

“I said, hold on.”

END.

#billy butcher #the boys #karl urban #billy butcher x reader #one shot #imagine #fanfiction #homelander #hughie campbell #karl urban x reader #butcher x reader #mothers milk #mm #frenchie

[furiousladyking]

It's a Date

It's a Date - Part One??

Jake Seresin x Reader

A/N: this is kind of a feeler to see if anyone is interested in yet another fic in this trope

Summary: Jake Seresin is feeling defeated. His youngest sister, Brooke is getting married in 3 weeks, and he has yet to find a date. While he loves his family, he can't say he enjoys getting those comments from his mother about when he is going to find a "nice girl" and settle down. In comes Y/N "Casper" L/N, a prime target to help get rid of the one on Jake's back.

Warnings: probably very incorrect military information - but hey we're trying our best, probably profanity

________________________________________

The Hard Deck was seemingly filled to the brim with aviators and civilians alike, something quite common for a Friday night in July. The crowd was loud, and there was an old rock song playing, however drowned out. The familiar clink of pool balls and thump of darts lulled incredibly tired individuals into a sense of calm.

In an entirely uncommon event, Hangman was... quiet. Too quiet if you ask any of his fellow aviators. Looks were passed, and whispers between Phoenix and Bob were somewhat hidden for thirty minutes.

"As much as we all appreciate a little bit of a break from hearing you go on about how great you are, you're kind of freaking me out," Phoenix tried as she walked up to the pool table. Coyote snickered beside her.

"Hmm?" Rooster quirked an eyebrow at the distracted man beside him. No come back? No stab at flirting? He took the pool cue and placed one end of the floor. He waited a moment. Despite the far away look in Jake's eye, he sunk the shot he had lined up. Rolling his eyes, Rooster decided to test the boundaries.

"Hey Hangman, did you hear that Cyclone let me know I was getting a promotion? Lieutenant Commander."

"Wow, that's cool," Hangman replied. He lined up his next shot. Those surrounding the pool table were a bit taken aback. Bringing his cue back, he stuttered on the follow through. "Wait, what?" The ball missed the pocket by about half a foot.

"There he is," Bob said from his seat, rolling his eyes.

"Lieutenant Commander? Rooster we both know you'd be the last-" Hangman began, hitting what the squad called his sassy stance. One hand on his hip, jutted out, the other holding his cue stick.

"Hey, no need to hurl insults, I was just seeing how out of it you were. Wasn't sure if we needed to send you to the infirmary. Your ego wasn't practically suffocating us" Rooster put his hands up in a mock-surrender.

Hangman placed his hand on his face, letting it slide down in hopes it wipe the worry away. He debated on brushing it off and telling them he was just picturing the best way to rub in his latest win during their dogfighting. The Dagger Squad had been stationed together in Miramar for a little over a year and no one was being reassigned anytime soon. Jake had been making a conscious effort to be more vulnerable with the squad, to let them in as his chosen family.

"My sister is getting married in 3 weeks."

The others were silent for a moment.

"Congratulations?" Phoenix offered. Hangman sighed and shook his head, mostly to himself.

"When they started planning the wedding six months ago I told my mom I had someone to bring with me," He started. Rooster cocked his head to the side. "She reminded me on a phone call about how excited she is to meet my girlfriend"

"Hangman has a girlfriend?" Fanboy pipped in, after hearing bits of the conversation.

"He doesn't," Rooster answered for him. "That's the problem."

"Hey, why don't you get someone to go with you and just act like you are dating?" Bob spoke from his spot on the chair. Suddenly feeling numerous eyes, he started to defend, "I've heard people do it a lot."

"I'm not bringing some hooker to meet my family," Hangman huffed, glaring in Bob's direction, then softening his gaze. "I'm just going to have to tell my mom that she and I broke up. Maybe she'll even pity me enough to not try and set me up with her friend's children." Jake leaned his pool stick up against the table and went to sit down next to Bob. He sipped his drink as he pondered how that would play out in reality.

"Get Casper to go with you." Hangman almost choked on his drink. He looked incredulously in Coyote's direction. "Think about it, she's the only one you know well enough to pretend you've been dating. Besides Phoenix, but we all know her acting skills wouldn't be good enough to go along with being your girlfriend for four days." Phoenix elbowed him in the rib. Coyote tries to stand tall, but still clutches his side in his hands.

As if on cue, he hears her voice. Still in her service khakis and hair in a bun, she carries her drink with her toward the group.

"Hey, what are we talking about?"

"I swear this type of shit only happens in movies."

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading!

Anyway, let me know if this is something I should even consider continuing!

#jake seresin x reader #hangman x reader #tgm #tgm fic #top gun maverick #jake hangman seresin #fanfiction

[good-beans]

Concept that just popped into my head: Milgram characters doing "get ready with me" videos

Aw, this was so fun!! I always love your hc style of normal au/everyone's chilling, and tried to go the same route -- it was so cute to think about :D

Haruka: Puts on his outfit for the day and explains everything in great detail. He has lots of comfortable items and fun colors. At the very end he speaks off-camera and you realize Muu was standing there cheering him on the whole time. He gets a lot of encouraging comments, and Muu and Fuuta keep an eye on the account to delete any nasty ones that may come in.

Yuno: Shows her outfit, makeup, nails, and bag she’s taking with her. She tries out a variety of styles (not just sticking to the more feminine looks we see in canon). She gives a bit of a tutorial and tips as well as showing things off. Has a main account for her daytime outfits, and a more private one for her nighttime looks. Mahiru is the only one aware of the latter account.

Fuuta: Layers. Lots of layers. There will be three sweatshirts laid out in front of him and you wonder which he’s going to choose before realizing he’s putting them all on. He focuses most on his sneakers and sportswear. He plays loud music over the videos, not knowing what to say. Has gotten into comment-section arguments over those yellow socks.

Muu: Also does a full look at her appearance: nails, accessories, etc. She mentions where you can buy everything, and it’s unclear whether she was sponsored by these brands or is just excited to talk about them. (Whether they’re actually together or not,) she’ll have Haruka on as a guest a lot to show off couple’s outfit ideas. She definitely has the biggest following, and loves recommending Haruka and the others’ accounts.  

Shidou: He doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but his account is getting tons of views so the others keep encouraging him to make videos. He’s just glad to be connecting with the other prisoners as they show him how to do it. He dresses in a mix of the sleek patterned shirts and dad fits, and both types of videos are equally popular. 

Mahiru: None of the serious-faced flirts or little pouty faces – it’s all smiles for her. Every video is basically a full tutorial – she has captions and a voiceover giving commentary on everything. She has the next biggest following, and interacts constantly. She loves getting questions “what should I wear on an x type date?” “How do I dress to impress x type of person?” because she always comes up with the perfect outfit to help. 

Kazui: A bit confused as well, though he does know a lot about style. His interro question makes it seem like he wanted kids – I think he’d really get into the account as one of those “Dad How Do I” types. He talks about matching things, clothes upkeep, shaving/hairstyling. 

Amane: Also wouldn’t have made the videos without prompting from the others, but enjoys it a lot. She usually talks about practical things instead of “vain” fashion: she’s excited to show off a new raincoat, sturdy shoes, useful pockets, etc. Over time, she leans into outfits that are more cute and colorful, gaining confidence in them. 

Mikoto: He started the account as something for one of his design classes, and got really into it. He likes to challenge himself with unique styles and clothing articles, making pretty much anything work. He keeps everything professional in case an employer/coworker sees, but isn’t afraid to add some flirting and flaunting in there. If he’s open about his plurality, he’ll have some special videos, “choosing an outfit for John today!”

Kotoko: Like Amane, she’s more excited about practical outfits. She’ll show off clothes that have good flexibility, places to store and conceal objects, and heavy duty materials. She’ll rate jackets, boots, and other “military-grade” things for what has worked best for her. She’s very attentive to the accounts that follow her – she does full background checks to make sure her info is being used for justice, not more crime. Mahiru convinces her to do a special where she puts all her piercings in and talks about why she chose them/what they mean.

Es: Experiments with a lot of new styles, trying to figure out what they like. They also just play music in the back, not having much to say about each outfit. They'd rather focus on their series of dressing-up-Jackalope videos, much to his dismay...

#milgram #haruka sakurai #yuno kashiki #fuuta kajiyama #muu kusunoki #shidou kirisaki #mahiru shiina #kazui mukuhara #amane momose #mikoto kayano #kotoko yuzuriha #es #jackalope #thank you so much for the ask!! i didnt mean to take so long for a cute lil post but ah well #i kept getting caught up in canon timelines and relationships and finally tried to just vibe and it worked out #i love all your cast headcanons ;-; #it was still hardest for shidou and amane... i think theyd be the least likely to start/stick with it #but itd still be fun for them if they did :3 #kazui starts slow but once he gets the hang of it i think hed be really into the whole thing #i can see es running a real cute pet account #both pet care and just cute/funny videos #fuuta thinks hes slick using a fake account to secretly follow kotoko but she knows its him... #mahiru follows everyone and leaves sweet comments on every video <3 #though in canon im picturing yuno waking up every day to torment fuuta by going 'get ready with me' and explaining how she #puts on her uniform every. single. day. despite his protests

[crab-milk]

What is lion dancing? You've mentioned it before, but I don't think I've seen it before

I'm particularly new to the world of lion dancing myself, but I hope this could also help! Lion dancing is a Asian tradition that blends puppetry, martial arts, and dancing that has been around 206 BC. Although it originated from China, countries like Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and South-East Asian countries have their own respective forms of lion dancing. There's actually quite a few types out there, but they can be identified by their martial art forms, lion heads, or nationalities. I'm probably going to info dump now so I'll cut it here for others to read if they'd like.

Before we get into that, I have to clear some common misconceptions. Lions are NOT dragons. Dragons are puppets that generally have 6 or 9 people holding it up on poles and are long (龙 lóng - do you get the joke lol). Foo dogs are technically lions, but the terminology was derived from white people who mistook lions as chow chow dogs.

To clear further confusion, the reason they're called lions is because allegedly, when China started trading with the western world, lions and their pelts were only reserved for the wealthy. Poor people spread word about what lions looked like, and it somehow turned out that way. There's a lot of mythology surrounding why people do lion dances, but the shorter version is that the lion scares off demons and ill-intentioned spirits from villages. It's now a tradition at openings of businesses, weddings, funerals, and festivities.

Most people are generally used to seeing southern Chinese or Cantonese lions. Traditionally, all of these lions are male and have different variations, again based on nationality or style of martial arts that it's derived from. There are northern lions, which have a male and female (red and green bows respectively), as well as Japanese and Korean lions, which are mostly comprised of wooden masks and long fur.

I'll mostly focus on southern Chinese lions, but they're all pretty neat! I mostly practice Fut-San lion dancing, which is a pretty common form. They notably have a ":3" face and the style of martial arts (wushu) is considered a very common standard for southern Chinese lions. Recent variations of these lion heads also have pom-poms as they are derived from Beijing opera costumes. Each lion also has a pointed horn on the top. They can also have fluffy or wiry fur for its eyelids and mouth, but there exists variations with bristles instead, which may signify that the lion is based on a historical military figure (kind of similar to how Beijing opera singers do specific makeup for specific characters).

These are generally more common in other countries. South-east Asian versions of the lions are extremely decorated, intricate, and distinct.

Hok-San lions are also pretty common. They are distinguished by having a "snake" horn which means the horn curls into a circle at the end and a ":)" face.

Despite their differences, all southern lions have a mirror in the front to ward off evil spirits, some horn with a bow attached, and a beard. Traditionally, the mirror is there to scare off spirits who look into it. The horn is generally added after the lion is almost finished being made, and the bow on the horn is added ceremoniously to bless the lion and honor the gods. It is highly recommended people don't touch them, save for the practical reasons of dirtying the mirror or tearing off the delicate horn, but also to avoid getting bad luck from ill-intentioned spirits.

That aside, I'd like to finally to talk about what to do when you see lions! If you have red pockets of money, the lion eats them up (and the performer in the head puts everything in their sweaty shirt). Sometimes, lions go and play with the audience, so feel more than welcome to pet them or play fight with them! Each performer has their own distinct personality that they play in the lion and as a result, have a lot to share with the audience!

I could go on and on, but I'm afraid this is really long for no reason. I hope this info dump helped!

#i saw an opportunity to info dump and took it #sorry lol #lion dancing #info dump #silence crab

[slotumn]

Apparently I'm having a lot of 3H worldbuilding thoughts this weekend. This post is on: on what Adrestia (+Agartha) was after, exactly, by invading Faerghus first in most routes

So the ideological/political explanation is that Faerghus is close to the Church and will defend them so you automatically have to go after them if you go after Church etc etc very cool, but what do they get, materially, by going into the frozen north first thing? That they don't have as much of in Adrestia (or Leicester)?

Metal and mines, apparently:

On top of this, regions adjacent to Faerghus— Duscur and Sreng— are also known for metalwork and weaponry.

Of course you can say it's because the Slithers have deeper infiltration up north (with their involvement with Duscur and Western Church plus Cornelia) so that obviously makes it easier, but I think it's the other way around. Meaning, I think the Slithers put more effort into infiltrating Faerghus because of the metal resources.

Following from that, I think the decision to invade Faerghus first in non-CF routes was a compromise between Edelgard/Adrestians and the Slithers, where Edelgard gets the ideological/political points but Slithers get the material benefits. Ideological stuff listed above aside, if you want to do wide social/civil reforms and make Fódlan less myopic, wouldn't it be more practical to take over the country with fertile farmlands and ports and industry and finance and trade first?

Well, that's what the Empire does in CF, where the Adrestian side presumably has more leverage on operations thanks to having Byleth and the Creator Sword on their side. Situation's a bit different in Hopes but I think it's interesting that in SB, the official invasion as led by Adrestia (instead of Lonato jumping the gun) does end up waiting until after securing the pact with Leicester.

Back to Houses though, it's not hard to see why Slithers want metal and mines. They want to make weapons, and not just regular weapons, they're out here making big fucking mechs. Probably fantasy computers (which also require metals, including precious metals) to operate them, too.

And on the one hand, seeing the Agarthans drag all the actual spoils off to their underground lair so they can make whatever fucked up weapon that they'll use for their own goals probably pissed the Adrestians off. But on the other hand, what can they do when the Agarthans are also providing the military technology (ex: Aymr) that the Adrestians use for their own goals?

Given all this, I think in non-CF routes, by the time Byleth wakes up again, the Empire is actually in a far worse state than we think. The Adrestian troops who are actually doing the fighting are stuck up north where they haven't made much progress in years, and any material gains they have there just go straight into Slither pockets. Back in Enbarr, the Adrestians and Agarthans hate each other even more than they already did at the beginning of the war and are probably doing everything they can to sabotage and spy on one another, while fighting a war on the same side.

At that point, the greatest common motivation the Adrestians and Agarthans would have in finishing up conquering the continent is probably the prospect of finally getting to go at it with one another.

And the letter Hubert leaves in SS/VW telling Byleth about the Slithers: the suddenness of that plot point aside, let's just appreciate how petty (complimentary) that is, politically. "I know you killed us and all, but we really hate the guys we were doing this group project (war) with. Can you kill them too. Thanks."

Tl;dr the Adrestian-Agarthan war councils in non-CF routes probably gave multiple people high blood pressure

#fe3h #fire emblem three houses #adrestia #faerghus #agarthans #those who slither in the dark #twsitd #meta #slotalks #fe3h meta

[wanderlustmagician]

More Modern AU stuff because I’m too jazzed from getting off work an hour ago Anywhoozle -

Thinking about their styles? Like personal styles and their like careers/lifestyles.

Sky would be all soft hoodies worn under like a bomber style jacket (Sun totally got him that, it’s brown leather with the Hyrulian shield emblem on the back, patches on the front and sleeves of like a Loftwing, a cloud, a copy his pilot wings pin, etc). Baggy pants with lots of pockets, sweatpants, yoga pants, or anything very comfy. Combat boots. Sometimes a beanie, sometimes no. Always looks super soft and comfy, very unintimidating, and squishy. (Misnomer, Skyboi will throw down if you burn through his patience fast enough).

Sky is NOT an active pilot, but he did earn his wings. Skyloft is home to the only Military school that’s solely focused on one branch, it’s their Air Force. So by graduating from Skyloft Academy, he earned his wings. He is considering going to college for a Mechanical Engineering degree. Maybe. He hasn’t decided.

Hyrule is all things that are good to move in. Loose jeans, yoga pants, good hiking boots, loose graphic tees, windbreaker type rain coat. It’s all practical things. He likes the colors red, brown, and green for his clothes. Occasionally orange, if he’s feeling spicy. All his socks are patterned and are in general very silly.

Hyrule is a landscape photographer, but currently in a non professional capacity (to himself). He’s enrolled in online courses for Photography and Photoshop Editing, so he can better himself at his craft.

Wild is that one guy who everyone knows has a lot of clothes, who wears said clothes, but is always seen in the same outfit. He’s a cryptid and loves it. Generally seen in a blue graphic tee, brown pants, and brown hiking boots. I will not go into the contents of his closet at this time, it’s too vast. No.

That said, Wild currently works as a tour guide for the local Dueling Peaks National Park. He takes tourists to the top of the Peaks safely and back down again. He’s currently deciding between a degree of sorts (undecided) or culinary school.

Twilight is (in public) generally in some combination of work clothes. A plain t shirt with either overalls or jean work pants. Everything is stained, ripped, and patched to all hell. He doesn’t care, just rolls with it. When he knows he’s going to be going somewhere with friends, he’ll clean up nice with some good, unblemished by work jeans and a nice shirt (especially if they’re going out dancing). When at home he’s in the few comfy clothes he owns, sweatpants and loose tees, a pair of overalls that Uli gave him once that are soft and patched with cutesy patterns for aesthetic purposes (he knows she gave it to him as a gag, he doesn’t care it’s soft) and Ordon wool sweater. Things like that.

Twilight is in Veterinary school and currently works for the local farm in Hateno. So he’s usually going to school and coming home in his work clothes, doing that school and work grind. It’s not sustainable how he does it, but hell if he’ll stop yet.

Wind is graphic tees with jokes on them, layering shirts on shirts, and cargo shorts. He absolutely wears socks with sandals and crocs unapologetically. If he could wear swim trunks to school, he would.

Wind is still in middle school, so nothing really affects his sense of personal style other than maybe girls.

Four is going wear whatever is most practical for working in the smithy. Other than that PJs. Not in between unless he has to be plussed to find one. It’s very rare when it happens though. I’ll be honest, I definitely have to do more research on smithing and all that.

Time, being retired, tends to wear whatever is comfy and doesn’t require him to keep it clean. He helps out around the ranch and often just wears work jeans and plain shirts. Malon has gotten him a couple of sweaters and when the boys are around, they’ll get him some silly graphic tees.

Time is a retired Ambassador. He mainly is around the Ranch and enjoys making the “trophy husband/wife” comments about himself.

Warriors and Legend both are very into their looks and I’ve only combined them here because I’m still looking into WHAT I want them in. Like Warriors is an Ambassador, he has to look semi presentable all the time and I need to figure that style out. Legend on the other hand just likes to look good all the time but it needs to be practical. He’s a travel blogger, so he needs clothes that hold up to both his standards and what he’s putting them through.

#lu modern au #linked universe #wandering thoughts #Lu chain #currently the first four are SPEAKING to me #I’ve got so much on them #the others are a bit of a struggle

[malevolent-muse]

Closing Arguments - Barisi Fan Fiction

Sonny Carisi is conflicted about the outcome of a court case.

[ ←Previous Work ]

Standing at the top of the courthouse steps, Sonny Carisi heaved a sigh as he looked out across the square. As much as a breath of fresh air revived him, he could dismiss the misgivings he had about exiting the building.

"Hey," Barba said, pulling Carisi's attention away with a friendly pat on the back, "let's go."

"We shouldn't be leaving," Carisi replied as he watched the assistant district attorney begin to descend the steps.

Pausing in his stride and turning around, Barba remarked, "Detective, the court is in recess. And I need some coffee. You coming or not?"

Hesitant, Carisi shifted nervously.

"Sonny," Barba practically barked, "come on."

Reluctantly, Carisi followed. His, and the rest of the Special Victims Unit’s efforts for the past month had been focused on not only finding probable cause for arresting Major Simmons but ensuring he would be convicted as well. It wasn't every day that a humble NYPD officer was permitted to pursue a case against a high ranking military member. Consequently, this case could make or break Carisi's career. A lot was riding on the court's ruling. 

His mind was churning over potential scenarios of how the day might play out, and Carisi hardly noticed where he was going as he trailed behind Barba. It seemed as though the prosecutor was hardly bothered as he nonchalantly stopped at a food cart and ordered a coffee.

"Do you want anything?" Barba asked. "My treat."

When Carisi did not immediately respond, he pressed again.

"Carisi, can I get you something?"

"No, Counselor," he replied, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "I'm fine."

Handing over a few paper bills to the vendor as Barba graciously accepted the paper cup filled with the steaming beverage.

"Come," the ADA said, grabbing the detective by the elbow and pulling him alongside him, "let's go for a walk."

Grumbling, Carisi relented and fell in step with Barba.

Taking a tentative sip of his drink first, Barba asked, "Do you want to tell me what is bothering you? This case is rock solid. There is no need to act like a nervous nelly. I've got this. Or do you not have confidence in my ability to try this case?"

"No, that's not it," Carisi answered. 

"Then what is it?"

Finding himself unable to put it into words, the junior detective held off from answering.

"Sonny," Barba pushed again, "what is it?"

"I'm worried what will happen when you win this case."

"I'm paid to win cases, not to lose them. And why would you be worried? Do you think Simmons would retaliate against me or SVU?"

"No," Carisi mumbled. "It's just..."

"Just what?"

Glancing around to see who was around them, Carisi didn't want anyone overhearing what he was about to say.

"If you win this case, Counselor, it would make it very difficult for me to justify to myself, or anyone else for that matter, the reasons why I want to leave the NYPD."

"You want to leave SVU?" Barba questioned, a stunned hesitation in his tone.

"No," Carisi replied emphatically. "But I also pursued a law degree for a reason. And now that I've passed the bar, the reality of leaving a secure job to barrel headfirst into the unknown is terrifying. Additionally, attaching this high-profile conviction to my record as an officer and justifying a departure becomes more difficult."

"I'm confused," Barba quipped. "You say you don't want to leave SVU. But from the sounds of it, you also think you should. What are you so conflicted about?"

Stopping in his tracks, Carisi eyed the shorter man. Barba's bright hazel green eyes were keen with interest below his hooded brow, as the occasional fleck of gray in a sea of dark brown hair glinted in the sun. Though there was an age difference between them, Carisi couldn't help but feel a strong emotional connection to the ADA.

"If I stay at SVU, Rafa," he finally admitted, "we can't be together."

Sighing, Barba rolled his eyes and said, "Oh," before walking away.

"Oh? That's all you have to say?" Carisi replied, quick to catch up with the prosecutor.

"You're being dramatic for no damn reason," Barba retorted. "We're together now, and it has had no impact on your standing within your unit. In fact, and I am one-hundred percent positive about this, it would also not have any impact if you allowed us to be open about our relationship."

"You're not a cop," Carisi explained. "You have no idea how gay men are treated within the NYPD."

"Please," Barba scoffed. "As if being an openly queer man in any government job is easy."

"It would be a lot easier if I quit SVU and pursued a career as an attorney."

"Listen, Sonny, if that's what you want to do, I'll support you. But if you're going to stay with SVU, if you find your work as a detective fulfilling, I am willing to support you in that decision as well. But if your justification for leaving a job you love is because you want to come out of the closet, then I'm not okay with that. And, I'm telling you, Liv will understand. She will be your biggest ally. With her on your side, the rest of the team will fall in line."

"I'm just...," Carisi said with trepidation, "I'm just not ready yet."

Resting his hand on his boyfriend's arm, Barba gave it a tentative squeeze and replied, "I know, Sonny. I know. And it's okay."

Hanging his head, Carisi blinked away the moisture that had gathered in the corners of his eyes. He should be more careful about bringing up this sort of subject, especially in public. 

"You hungry, Detective?" Barba asked, resuming the facade of professionalism. "Let me buy you a hotdog."

A smile colored Carisi's lips as he replied, "I thought you hated hot dogs. You said they are disgusting because they're made from the least appetizing parts of a pig."

"And I stand by that assessment. However, a Staten Island boy like you isn't bothered by such inconsequential facts, are you?"

"Well," Carisi admitted, his stomach growling, "it's better than relying on chemical stimulates like caffeine to get you through the day."

Rolling his eyes in response once more, Barba led the detective over to a nearby food cart.

"One hotdog, please," Barba said, pulling out his wallet. "Mustard and onions only."

"How did you know?" Carisi asked.

"I pay attention," Barba returned with a wink, taking the paper encased snack and handing it off to his boyfriend. 

Somewhat placated, Sonny took a bite and savored the rich flavors washing over his palate. Next to him, Barba sipped at his coffee and glanced down at his watch.

"Hurry up, detective, we've got to get going. I don't want to make a bad last impression showing up late for closing arguments." 

Nodding, Carisi took a bigger bite as he and Barba began to walk back towards the courthouse. Chewing quickly as they went, he swallowed. However, the detective soon figured out that that particular bite was a bit too big. Coughing against the food lodged in his throat, dread washed over Carisi as he realized it was stuck. 

The remains of his food dropped to the ground as Carisi stopped in his tracks. Reaching up to tug at his collar, his eyes went wide.

Having noticed the discarded hotdog, Barba turned to look at his detective.

"Carisi, you okay?"

Sonny shook his head 'no' as he was unable to speak.

Quick to action, Barba's cup of coffee was hastily discarded on the ground, its contents splashing on the pavement. After placing a hand on the detective's chest, the ADA held Carisi steady as he placed coordinated blows across the detective's back.

"Sonny!" the prosecutor said as he tried to prevent his boyfriend from choking to death.

When his actions did not result in the food becoming dislodged, Barba had no other choice but to get behind Carisi. Placing his hands together in a fist, he performed a couple of abdominal thrusts.

Sputtering, the bit of hot dog flew from his throat and landed on the asphalt in front of them with a soft splat. 

"He okay?" a passerby inquired.

"He's fine," Barba replied as he gently patted the detective on his back. 

Still partial doubled over, his hands on his knees, Carisi attempted to recapture his breath. When finally he straightened back up, he was met with the very concerned face of his boyfriend.

"You okay, Sonny?"

"I'm fine. Just a bit of a scare,” Carisi replied, wiping at his now watering eyes.

"You're scared? I just nearly killed my boyfriend after buying him a dangerous hotdog and then outing him by dry humping him in public."

Rolling his eyes, Carisi smacked Barba jovially in the chest and replied, "Come on, Rafael. You said you didn't want to be late for closing arguments."

[Next Work→]

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#barisi #svu fic #rafael barba #sonny carisi #fanfic

[safarigirlsp]

The Case of the Colorado Cannibal

The Case of the Colorado Cannibal

Flip Zimmerman x Lawyer Reader

Word Count: 18.4k

Warnings: NSFW. Smut. Horror. Action. Violence. Gore. Graphic Violence. Lots of everything aforementioned. Very Horror and Action Oriented. 

AO3 Link

To kickstart Halloween, please enjoy this horror story for Monster Monday inspired by The Descent! 🍂🍁🍂

Edits by the wonderful @kyloremus

Detective Flip Zimmerman leaned against the back wall of the courtroom. Although he was in a perfectly fine mood, a fine mood for a Monday morning anyway, he donned his best scowl as he looked out over the defendants seated in the courtroom. Some of the bastards would be getting out today or have their charges dismissed, so Flip liked to make their courtroom experience as terrifying as possible in the chance it might deter future criminal enterprises. It usually didn’t, but Flip enjoyed himself nonetheless when some nervous defendant glanced back over his shoulder, saw Flip, and immediately faced about front and sat up straighter.

From a distance, Flip cut a dark and imposing figure in his standard court attire of slim black pants and fitted charcoal shirt. He added the badge he usually pocketed to his belt for the occasion. A closer look would reveal that his pants were actually jeans in denim so dark they were nearly but not quite black, and his charcoal shirt was a flannel with military style breast pockets and epaulets at the shoulders. He and the Chief disagreed that dry cleaning bills should be an on-the-job expense when Flip had to attend court, so as his own form of protest, he refused to wear suit clothes unless he was testifying in a jury trial.

The judge took the bench and opened court with a sentencing hearing and Flip watched as several women walked down the aisle, herding some sniffling kids along with them, to take a seat closer to the podium before they were called to speak. It was a widow and her remaining children and, presumably, some of the woman’s friends along for moral support, who would speak as to why the defendant should be given the maximum sentence. The defendant was a drunk who had plowed his truck into her husband’s car when the unlucky husband was driving their older sons home from football practice a few months ago. It was Ron’s case and Flip had heard all about it. There was about to be a lot of crying. Flip didn’t care to watch women and kids cry, so he slipped back out through the double doors of the courtroom.

Other than days with jury trial settings, Mondays were the busiest court days of the week. They were the docket days when the judges had a veritable cattle call of cases ranging from pretrial conferences and status updates to pleas to conditions of release hearings to sentencings. On an average Monday, around one hundred defendants would come and go for their day in court along with the witnesses and victims associated with their case.

Of course, all the lawyers and law enforcement involved in all those cases were present, too. For them, those faction of people who came to court as a matter of routine for work, it was just another Monday. It was normal protocol for cops and lawyers. Hurry up and wait. Punctual arrival to court was mandated even when one wouldn’t be getting down to their own business for hours. It rendered the hallways ripe for cops and lawyers to shoot the breeze together and gossip, their relationships mostly friendly until it was showtime in the courtroom.

Colorado Springs was a sleepy little town, criminally speaking, that is. Big crime and hard criminals were rare. Denver saw most of the heavy action. Most local cases were DWI’s, bar fights, domestic violence, thefts, and drugs. But today, there was a big fish in the small pond of petty criminals, and he was the word on every mouth in the courthouse. Flip even saw some reporters trying to weasel out information from rookie officers and junior public defenders. Reporters were even fuckin’ worse than lawyers. The reporters had labeled the man “The Colorado Cannibal” for the gruesome way he had begun eating his victim while the poor young man was still alive. Not that Flip needed to be informed of that detail by the papers, he was the lead detective on the case.

Hikers went missing in the mountains. It wasn’t uncommon. Nine times out of ten, they were just lost in the woods and turned up a few days later a little worse for wear. Sometimes they got themselves good and lost and their bodies were found in the spring. On rare occasions, there was a bear or a lion attack. This was the first case of Flip’s career where the missing hiker turned up the victim of murder.

The body had been found down an abandoned mine shaft by a couple high school kids who had driven out there under the guise of hiking to find a place to hook up without getting caught. The boy didn’t mind the smell of carrion that wafted out of the mine and into the cracked windows of his jeep, but it ruined the mood for the girl so much that the boy was forced to investigate. Flip doubted the high school kids would be using that particular spot again for romantic purposes, but he suspected that now the mine would gain even more popularity as a spot for the juvenile idiots to have bonfires and do all the other stupid shit kids do, especially with Halloween coming up. It made his temples throb just thinking about it.

Flip had caught the murderer himself, red handed. So red handed that he was coated up to his elbows in the victim’s blood. But even Flip had to admit that the loony old hermit who was pushing seventy-five and weighed the same as an average woman sure didn’t look like a match for the big fit lacrosse-playing college kid he had murdered. Flip had handled more murders than he cared to count, but he had never seen anything like the brutality of this murder before. The victim had been beaten so severely that his knees were both broken in backwards so they were buckled the wrong way like the hind legs of a deer. Marks on the body indicated the poor kid had tried to drag himself on his crippled legs over rocks and through mud as he tried to escape his murderer. Flip thought it looked like the kid had fallen down the mineshaft, or even off a cliff, and hit bottom, but the medical examiner said otherwise and it was his opinion that mattered. The murderer had begun eating on the kid while he was still alive, taking chunks out of him the way a wolf does to its prey while the prey stands crippled and dying. The body had been found completely naked and so mutilated and disfigured by bites, lacerations, and broken bones that he was only identifiable through dental records.

Speak of the Devil and She appears.

As though he had summoned her by thinking of the case, Flip heard the laughter of the cannibal’s defense lawyer from down the hallway. Flip frowned when he spotted her, less from the sight of her than from the way his treacherous body responded, his pulse jumping a beat faster and an unmistakable stirring further down south. She was a beautiful woman, the most striking he had ever seen in person. She was an easy nine on any man’s scale, but Flip reasoned that being a lawyer dropped her a solid five notches. That’s what he tried to tell himself when he felt his palms moisten when she spoke to him. He had never been so disarmed by a woman since he had been as much of a fumbling idiot as those high school punks who had found the body. Since he couldn’t bring himself as a self-respecting Detective to make a move on a defense lawyer, he took it upon himself to rile her and throw her off her game. He was pretty damn good at it.

She was standing near one of the witness rooms talking to one of the newest prosecutors, Sheldon something or other, a four-eyed blonde goober who looked like he had a Ralph Lauren Polo in every color of the rainbow for when he wanted to impress the ladies at the country club, but who hadn’t seen the inside of a gym since he graduated his last PE class in high school. Flip watched as the defense lawyer flashed her dazzling smile and touched Sheldon’s arm in a gesture that looked innocent and impulsive. Flip knew it was a calculated attack, a jab right through the prosecutor’s guard. Sheldon giggle-snorted and blushed.

What a fuckin’ idiot. Flip shook his head and went to the goober’s rescue. The lawyer’s unnervingly beautiful eyes locked onto Flip as soon as he began walking toward her, and he couldn’t tell if he was the predator or the prey.

“Well, I guess I can give your client a break,” Sheldon cooed, leaning toward the lawyer, thinking he had just won a great victory on his way to getting into her pants. “I’ll dismiss his charges, but just this once.”

“Oh, thank you, Sheldon,” you said in your most honeyed tone, batting your eyes at the nerdy little troll who wouldn’t have a chance with you if his last name was Gates. “That’s really so sweet of you. I owe you one.” You reached out and touched his arm again, this time you looked over his shoulder to the Detective who had stopped to glare at you with disapproval. “You don’t mind filling out the dismissal, do you, Sheldon? I really can’t thank you enough.”

“Sure, I uh,” Sheldon stammered when he noticed Flip behind him. Sheldon cleared his throat and tried to appear businesslike. “I’ll go file that dismissal right now. Maybe we can get some coffee after?”

“Detective Zimmerman won’t let me, I’m afraid.” You cocked your eyebrow at Flip and saw the way he stiffened and swallowed thickly at your statement. He shook his head more at himself than at you when you added, “He’s the Detective on my big cannibal case. I’m sure we’ll be stuck here all morning.”

Sheldon sneered at Flip as though Flip was the reason the poor idiot had been denied a coffee date with the woman of his dreams. He stomped petulantly away to file the agreed dismissal, leaving Flip standing face to face with you.

“Smooth, Counselor,” Flip addressed you. “Was that Valdez you just flirted off the hook? He’s one of my cases too. I have him dead to rights for selling meth to highschoolers.”

“Had.” You grinned up at Flip. “You had him dead to rights. That’s why I had to get creative.” You smirked at him before adding, “But you screwed up, Detective. Valdez didn’t understand your Miranda warning before he confessed. No habla ingles. Granted, I think the jury would believe your testimony over his, which is why I batted my eyelashes instead of filing a motion to suppress, but you were sloppy.”

“I’m gonna be arrestin’ that punk again before the end of the month,” Flip grumbled, crossing his arms over his impossibly broad chest.

“Please do,” you exulted with sarcastic pleasantness. “I’ll get hired again on his next case. Job security.”

Flip huffed, fighting back a nasty retort, and jerked his chin in the direction of the Senior Prosecutor down the hall. “You think your silky smooth touch will work on Fat Freddy? Your hand might get greasy if you’re rubbin’ up on him like a cat in heat.”

Fat Freddy was one of the three senior prosecutors in the DA Office who handled all the big cases, the rapes and murders. Fred Mathews was as many feet around as he was tall and balding to boot. He had a notoriously miserable marriage and he made up for his impotence in all other ways by winning cases. At that, he was formidable. He was the prosecutor assigned to the Colorado Cannibal case.

“I don’t think I could flirt with Fat Freddy even for a murder dismissal,” you laughed quietly. “Do you think he’d settle for a tub of KFC? When I tell clients that Fat Freddy eats defendants for breakfast, I wonder how close to the truth I really am.”

Flip would love to get you in some hot water by ratting on you for calling the prosecutor Fat Freddy, but Flip was hamstrung. He had coined the nickname himself. He didn’t answer you, but he followed your gaze over to the fat disheveled man who was now yelling at Sheldon as he snatched the court-stamped dismissal on Valdez from his hand and shook it back in his face. Someone was in trouble.

“Do you think Fat Freddy got laid this weekend?” you asked Flip in a conspiratorial tone. That was always the joke every Monday. If Fat Freddy got some action over the weekend, he was in a slightly less hostile mood the following week.

“Nope.” Now it was Flip’s turn to grin.

“It’s a sad state of affairs when you’re the most temperate man I can deal with on a case,” you teased Flip in a sultry tone, enjoying the way he shifted on his feet at the change in your demeanor.

“Your Mata Hari tactics won’t work on me, Counselor.” Flip composed himself at once. “I’m not cuttin’ you any breaks on your pet murderer.”

“Alleged murderer,” you corrected, using that lawyer word Flip hated so much. Alleged. You looked at him squarely, narrowing your eyes at him in a challenge. “Come on, Zimmerman. I’ve seen a lot of murders and murderers, and you’ve seen a lot more than I have. This guy isn’t the Colorado Cannibal, and you know it.”

“Now you’re a mind reader?” Flip enjoyed poking you even if you were even prettier when you were angry. “Do your clients have to pay extra for that?”

“My client says he didn’t do it.” You ignored Flip’s snarky questions and pressed on. “I’m not in the habit of believing my clients, any more than I’m in the habit of believing victims, witnesses, or cops. Everyone lies. But I believe this guy. He’s not a murderer.”

“Yeah?” Flip raised his eyebrows as though this was a great revelation. “Who’s he say killed the hiker?”

“Demons.” You shrugged with a self-deprecating smile, knowing how absurd your client’s story was. “But that’s beside the point. It’s not my job to say who killed him. That’s your job, Detective.” You patted Flip on the arm. “It’s only my job to prove that my client didn’t. My client may be crazy, but he’s not a murderer. Being a crazy hermit isn’t a crime the last time I checked.” You smiled slyly at Flip. “You should be sympathetic to that lifestyle, Detective. Given how well you get along with people, I can see you going that route in a couple decades.”

“Funny.” Flip chewed his lip to keep from grinning despite himself. “I only tracked him down and made the arrest. It’s not my job to say he’s guilty, as you would say. That’s the jury’s job. The medical examiner thinks he’s our guy, though.”

“The medical examiner,” you said with unveiled distaste, waving your hand dismissively. “A nerdy shut-in who’s probably younger than Sheldon and only leaves his mom’s basement to trundle off to the morgue every day. He’s never seen a crime scene. He’s never talked to a witness, or a real murderer, for that matter.” You fixed Flip with your most penetrating gaze. “You and I have both done those things plenty of times. You know as well as I do that you can’t get a feel for the real facts of a case from inside a sterile lab.”

“This wasn’t much of a crime scene,” Flip told you. “Not much to see at the bottom of a mine shaft that saw its last visitor a century ago.”

Flip’s remark gave you an idea. Shuffling thick file folders in your hand awkwardly, you placed the cannibal’s file on top of your stack, opened it, and thumbed through the pages of the police report that Flip had typed. Unlike most officers, he actually typed his reports fresh each time instead of copying and pasting almost every word from older reports, a technique that often gave lawyers ammunition to pick them apart. Tracing the typed lines, your finger came to rest under the location where the body was found. “Sawyer Mine. I’ve never heard of it?”

“Neither had I,” Flip replied, his eyes drawn down to where you pointed. “That was the man who recorded the claim in 1895. I tracked it down in case I needed to inform some yuppy millionaire that a body had been found out on his vacation property, but it’s National Forest now.”

“Thorough, Detective, but you should have included a map,” you teased with genuine appreciation. “What’s the closest access point?”

“The Vista Bonita trailhead is the closest you can find on any map.” Flip paused, recalling his trip out to the mine. “From there, you have to take an old mining road up and around the mountain. I almost got my truck stuck three times even in four-wheel drive.”

“That’s actually helpful, Flip.” You saw the effect using his name for the first time had on him and you couldn’t resist teasing him more, “I’ve come not to expect that from you.”

“Wait.” Flip shook his head as if coming out of a daze. “Hold on just a damn minute. You’re not thinkin’ about goin’ up there to that mine, are you?”

“I’m thinking exactly that.” You smiled triumphantly. “I need to see the crime scene for myself if I’m going to have a good defense. And I intend to win this case.”

“Of all the stupid ass things I’ve heard come out of a lawyer’s mouth, that has to be the blue-ribbon winner!” Flip scoffed at you openly. “That crime scene is three-hundred yards down a mine shaft! Besides that, you can’t go up there alone, especially not this time of year. It’s October, for Christ sakes! You could get caught in a thunderstorm or a blizzard out there and the next body I get to quiz the medical examiner about is gonna be yours!”

“Look, I enjoy the whole big tough alpha male chest-pounding thing as much as the next girl, but if you think I’m going to be bossed around by a big flannel barbarian, you have another thing coming.” You snapped your file closed and stuck out your chin defiantly.

“And what if you’re right, huh? Which I’m not conceding.” Flip took a step closer to you until you could feel the heat radiating off his massive body. “But if you are right, then there’s a violent killer out there, a real psycho.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’ll still be camped up on the mountainside waiting for another victim to walk into his grasp,” you laughed. After a moment, you caught yourself and raised an appraising eyebrow at Flip. “Why do you care what happens to me, anyway?” You smiled wickedly and prodded him cruelly, “I’m flattered to know you care, Flip.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, girlie,” Flip growled angrily, but he couldn’t stop himself from watching after you as you walked away from him and out of the courthouse, denying him further argument.

*******************************************************************************************

Saturday morning was perfectly pristine without a cloud in the sky, which was the unique shade aptly called Colorado Blue. An unseasonably cold October chill greeted you when you walked outside from the front door of your house to your SUV and tossed your light backpack onto your passenger seat. Living in Colorado, you naturally had all the gear necessary for a day in the mountains, even if you hadn’t indulged in a day spent outdoors in some time. You didn’t notice the truck that had been parked under a bushy pine tree on your road. You didn’t even notice when the same truck pulled out behind you and followed you down your road and on out of town at an innocuous distance.

By the time you stopped for gas at the last station on your way into the mountains, you were very well aware of the truck that was following you. You and the big truck were the only vehicles on the lonely winding stretch of highway this time of morning on a weekend. By that time, you also knew full well who the driver was.

“Are you stalking me?” you accused Flip hotly as soon as he pulled in behind you at the pumps and stepped out of his truck, clad in his favorite red and black flannel shirt and jeans.

“Stalkin?’” he asked, all too pleased with himself, as he inserted the gas nozzle into his tank. “It’s called a stakeout. You’re not the first unscrupulous character I’ve had to stakeout to catch in the act.”

“Catch in the act?” You stomped toward him, angered even more by the way his chest swelled and his smirk bloomed at your approach. “You’re about to catch me in the act of battering a bastard police officer!”

“I knew you’d go out to have a look at that damn mine this weekend. I know how criminals think.” He smirked even broader at the way you bristled. “If I can’t stop you from doin’ stupid things, at least I can babysit you and make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

“Is it too urbane for you to simply ask to join me?” you asked sarcastically, trying not to see the way the wind rustled his thick black hair. You hadn’t even noticed the wind had picked up.

“If I’d asked you, you would have given me a little laugh and a little remark to rile me up.” Flip ran his hand through his hair to smooth it back into place as if deliberately making things more difficult for you. “Then, just to bust my balls, you would have told me no. Am I right, Counselor?”

“And just what would you tell another man who decided to stake out a woman’s house and chase her down, all because she told him no?” you leaned forward until your chest was close to his, making him shift on his feet.

“I’m not just another man.” He deepened his voice and met your challenge, leaning down closer to you.

Your breath caught at his closeness. You could smell the masculine scent of him on the wind. Before you could retort, he stepped by you and walked to your SUV. Without asking for permission, he went to the passenger side, retrieved your pack, opened it, and began rummaging through its contents.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” you snapped at him, fighting the urge to shove him when you came to stand beside him.

“This is the last outpost before we get up in the mountains,” Flip answered without looking at you as he went through your pack. “If you need any supplies, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“I’m not going on a great adventure,” you huffed indignantly. “I’ll only be gone a few hours.”

“Famous last words. I used to work search n’ rescue. I did that for a few years as a college job after I was discharged from the military and before I joined the force.” Flip pulled out a jacket from your pack, frowning as he evaluated it. “I can’t tell you the number of bodies I had to drag out of the mountains of folks who were just gonna be gone a few hours.”

“All I want to do is hike down to the crime scene, look around a little, do my due diligence, and head back out,” you explained, trying to keep your voice even. “Easy.”

“Uh huh.” Flip flicked on the flashlight you had in your pack, shaking his head as he examined the strength of its beam. He lifted the small box of tampons from your backpack and just to anger you he asked, “Is it shark week?”

“A girl should be prepared.” You gritted your teeth but didn’t let him get to you more than he already had.

“Yeah, a girl should be.” He tossed a handful of items he didn’t approve of into your back seat and stuffed all of your remaining things back into your pack. “And your pack is about thirty pounds short of everything you need to be prepared.” He sighed in frustration and looked at the small gas station and general store. “We’ll get what we can here, but they won’t have everything you need. We should go back, get your supplies in order, and then try this again tomorrow.”

“I will do no such thing.” You deliberately used the singular pronoun instead of the plural Flip had adopted. “You can do whatever you like. Maybe you’ll find another woman to stalk by tomorrow.”

“Stalkin’ women is new for me.” He grinned at you. “I have a pretty good selection of girls chasin’ after me at any given time.”

“Poor things,” you quipped.

Flip smirked at you and walked into the paltry store while you quickly and annoyedly inventoried the items he had thrown into your backseat. Your cosmetics, your wallet, a large tube of hand lotion, and a paperback book you had left over from a camping trip were all among the items he deemed unworthy of taking up space in your pack. When he emerged from the store, he carried three full bags of supplies. He all but pushed you aside and began shoving items into your pack. Three new flashlights, two packs of batteries, a handful of cheap Bic lighters, a keychain compass, a handful of meal bars, a pair of workman’s Carhart gloves, a huge bottle of water, and a knit cap in garish hunter orange. The last item he packed was a newspaper, explaining how in a damp mine kindling was scarce if you needed to start a fire.

“My pack weighs fifty pounds now!” you exaggerated, glaring at him.

“Best I could do at a gas station.” He smirked, enjoying your irritation.

“My knight in shining armor,” you replied in your most sarcastic tone.

“Is this the heaviest jacket you have?” He held up the offending garment that he had pulled out of your bag.

“I’m not climbing Mount Everest.” You snatched it out of his hands and shoved it back inside your nearly full pack.

“No, but you need a guide just as badly as if you were,” he assured you.

“So, you want to be Tenzing Norgay to my Edmund Hillary, do you?” you asked with a cocked eyebrow.

“I’ve never been much into roleplayin,’ but I’m not one to turn down a pretty girl like you.” He winked at you and smirked at the slight fluster he gave you.

Finally satisfied that your pack was adequate for a few hours exploring a mine, Flip allowed you to leave the gas station. He followed you until the pavement ended and on down a dirt road that took you both to the Vista Bonita trailhead. This was as far as any map could lead you.

Deep in the mountains, the scenery was even more beautiful. This was the most picturesque season when the forest and mountainsides were colored as though on fire; a canvas painted in reds, oranges, and yellows. More than half of the ground on the mountainside was covered with snow. It was knee deep in the shadowy places but only patches remained in the areas that saw sunlight. Higher in elevation it was much colder, and the snow could deepen to thirty feet on the peaks by autumn. The alpine air bit into your exposed skin when you exited your SUV. You were parked in a mountain bowl with snowcapped peaks surrounding you on three sides like great kings holding court to judge your sins. The sky was blue no longer. Grey and carbon clouds swirled above you like monochrome ice cream. The clouds were drawn to the peaks of the mountains, congregating there densely and whirling around them. Any attempt to summit a peak would have to be canceled today, but you were going inside the mountain, not to the top of it.

Now, Flip could actually prove useful and save you the time of having to blunder around until you found the mining road. You took his offer of driving you up from there, happy to leave your SUV parked at the trailhead and save it from the rough road and getting scraped by brush. Seated in Flip’s truck, you bumped along the old mining road that looked less navigable than two scant parallel game trails. Classic rock boomed through the truck’s speakers and Flip tapped his hand on the steering wheel to the tune of Bad Moon Risin.’ Your pack rested on the floor between your feet and Flip’s took up the middle front seat. You took the same liberty with his pack that he had taken with yours, opening it without his permission, and rummaging through its contents.

Flip’s pack was enormous and nearly every cubic inch was filled to the brim. You tested the weight of it. His pack exceeded one hundred pounds if it was an ounce. Inside you saw a cornucopia of supplies ranging from food and water to extreme cold weather gear to mountain climbing gear such as rope, carabiners, and pitons. He had packed two pairs of the largest sized gloves you had ever seen, extra socks in heavy wool, a hat with deer-hunter-style ear flaps, and a thick gray wool sweater.

“You sure like wool,” you teased. “It’s sad to think of all the sheep out there who are now running around naked because of you.”

“Wool is the only material that will still keep you warm after it gets wet,” he explained.

It was slow going up the mountain on the narrow track and it took the better part of two hours to reach the abandoned mine. Flip offered you surprisingly good conversation, and you had to admit it was easy to see the ladies’ man peek out from his sideways grin. Above the mine’s entrance damp tendrils of brush hung down over the old wooden frame of the opening giving it the appearance of the ominous black mouth of a gargoyle, eager for the chance to swallow you whole. The entrance was barely larger than a doorway, only slightly taller than Flip and just wide enough for the two of you to walk abreast.

“I’ll tell you what.” Flip drummed his knuckles on the steering wheel as he looked through his windshield at the forbiddingly dark hole in the mountainside. “How about if I tell Fat Freddy that I think we should let your cannibal out of jail on heavy conditions of release? Can we call it a day and head back to town?”

“And waste the chance to use all my lovely new gas station wilderness survival gear?” You laughed and got out of Flip’s truck.

Hefting your too-heavy pack onto your back, you started out toward the mine. Flip took a few jogging steps to catch up to you, his footfalls heavy from the extra hundred-plus pounds he carried. From behind you, he unzipped your pack and shoved another last-minute addition inside, a spare wool sweater he scavenged from his back seat. He now had a climber’s ice axe tucked into his belt and his armed shoulder holsters on under his pack. When you reached the mine, you felt an icy drop land on your cheek and melt instantly. Flip looked up at the sky along with you, watching a light haze of snowflakes slowly drift down from the clouds.

“The weather is only gonna get worse today.” He glared up at the sky as if he could intimidate the snow out of falling. “We should get out while that poor excuse for a road is still passable.” He looked at you with his most wolfish grin. “Unless you like the idea of bein’ snowed in with me and havin’ to get nice n’ close to stay warm.”

“I hear freezing isn’t the worst death.” You rolled your eyes at him. “If there is a big snow, this could be my last chance of the season to see that crime scene and anything I might learn from it before it gets buried until spring. By that time, the trial will be over and done.” You looked at him squarely. “I’m going. But I understand if you’re scared…” you let your voice trail away, leaving the challenge hanging in the thin alpine air.

“Sugar,” he lowered his voice and leaned closer to you. “There ain’t a damn thing in these mountains that scares me.”

“Happy to hear it because that makes two of us!” you said brightly and walked to the mine entrance.

Although the surrounding mountainside was beautiful and serene, the light snowfall giving it a dreamlike quality, the mine menaced at you portentously. You pulled your flashlight out and flicked on its beam, then you took a deep breath and stepped into the darkness with Flip at your side.

*******************************************************************************************

The mineshaft dropped steeply downward. You could keep your footing and walk down its descent, but you kept a hand on the wet wall of rock beside you to help keep your balance. The inside of the mine was damp, your boots slipped and slogged in ankle deep mud and frigid drops of water dripped down on your head every few steps with the frequency of a leaky faucet. You felt even colder inside from the elevated humidity. It only took you a few seconds to leave all light behind, your path ahead illuminated only by the twin yellow beams of yours and Flip’s flashlights while the lighted exit back to the mountainside dwindled behind you until it was nothing more than a tiny square of light like a star in an otherwise black night sky. Above you, the ceiling of the mine was reinforced by ancient wooden tresses, soggy and dripping with mud and water. Beside you, the walls of the shaft were a mix of stretches of rock that gave way to firmly packed mud, also reinforced with wooden beams where needed. Some Colorado mines had been revamped in order to make them safer and preserve them, but the last improvements this mine had seen were made by its owner sometime before the old miner met his lonely death deep inside back in 1927.

“Now I know how Dante felt,” you joked more to fill the deep silence of the mineshaft.

“If we’re roleplayin,’ I need to know if I’m Virgil or Tenzing Norgay.” Flip grinned, his teeth gleaming white in his darkened face. “Get your story straight, Counselor.”

The mineshaft took a ninety degree turn and you were plunged into the total consummate darkness that can only be found in deep caves and sealed sepulchers. The darkness surrounded you like a funerary veil, claustrophobic in its completeness. Without the small beams of your flashlights, you wouldn’t have been able to see Flip or even his silhouette right beside you. Distracted by the thought, your foot slipped out from under you but Flip’s arm shot out to catch you around the waist, as strong as iron and as comforting as a warm embrace. When you regained your footing Flip released his hold on you, but he remained close enough that his arm brushed yours as you walked on. The feel of his large body next to yours was reassuring, and welcome in the cold darkness.

“We’re comin’ up on the crime scene.” Flip pointed ahead with the beam of his flashlight to illuminate an antique wooden mining cart. “The body was found crammed inside.”

Two of the cart’s wheels had long ago broken off, leaving it canted on one side and leaning against the wall of the shaft. The wood shone glossy wet black, pieces of its side were broken away giving it the look of a wrecked ghost ship at the bottom of the ocean. Death seemed to hang in the musty air around the cart, as if the lonely hiker’s spirit watched you morosely from the underworld. The beam of your light shook as you walked forward to study the cart.

“I told you there wasn’t much to see.” Flip’s voice sounded unnaturally loud in the cloistered mineshaft.

“It was too wet to get prints or blood spatter?” you asked, knowing the answer.

“Yep.” Flip nodded, frowning as he stepped up to the cart beside you. He mumbled distractedly, “But the kid was killed somewhere else and moved here, shoved into that cart.”

“And you think my feeble old client was strong enough to do that?” you asked as you looked at the ground for any drag marks. There were none.

Flip didn’t answer you. He was studying the wall ahead of the cart, his flashlight focused on a patch of wall eight feet away. His voice was a low growl when he said, “Well, that’s fuckin’ new.”

Following his gaze, you saw in his light a mark on the mud wall. It was a pattern that had been crudely scratched into the mud with a pointed implement, a sharp stick maybe. It looked like a glyph from an ancient language or a mandala from an Eastern religion, a whorl with points and patterns.

“That wasn’t here when you examined the crime scene?” You should have been excited by new evidence, but your skin crawled when you looked at the unnatural design.

“No, it sure as hell wasn’t.” Flip chewed his lip as he shone his light around the tunnel. “Ron and I came back down here again after I arrested your guy to take a second look. This wasn’t here.”

“So, we agree my client couldn’t have done this?” You grabbed his arm with nervous excitement, for a moment forgetting the pervasive feeling of unease.

“Yeah, we agree. But your client isn’t what we should be thinkin’ about right now.” Flip stepped cautiously ahead, drawn in by the prospect of what more he might find deeper inside the mine, the same as the long-dead miner hunting for gold. He unconsciously pushed you behind him, keeping his body between you and what might lie ahead in the darkness beyond the beams of your lights.

“We can head back now. I’ve seen what I need to see,” you said quietly to Flip’s broad back as you walked behind him.

“Give me a few minutes, I wanna see what else might be down here.” Flip drew his revolver and rested his right hand over his left wrist, pointing both his barrel and his flashlight down the mine, focused intently ahead along its sights.

“You don’t actually think the murderer is hiding down here?” you asked incredulously. “He couldn’t be.”

“No, I don’t think so,” he gruffed without looking back at you. “But I’m damn sure gonna be ready if he is.”

Several long minutes walking ahead into the darkness yielded nothing but a sense of dread that increased with every step. You grabbed Flip’s shoulder firmly, digging your nails into him and imbuing your voice with as much authority as you could. “You can have your manhunt later. Get me the hell out of here, Flip.”

You felt Flip’s body stiffen from your touch and your words, then he sighed heavily and he relaxed as he lowered his gun and turned to face you. You saw the grin on his lips as he prepared a sarcastic retort, but he never spoke it.

Around you, the mineshaft shuddered violently like the throat of a coughing giant. Mud slid down the walls in watery rivulets and dropped down from the ceiling in globs that splattered on your shoulders and splashed in the soupy ground at your feet. A boom resounded from somewhere far above you, reverberating through the mineshaft like heavy bass through the thin walls of a nightclub. Flip hunched his shoulders like he had taken a punch and looked up at the trembling ceiling of the mine so close above his head. He shoved his gun back into its holster, grabbed your hand, and ran back toward the mine entrance.

Running hard, Flip’s light bounced wildly ahead down the shaft as he pumped his arms. Your feet barely touched the ground as he dragged you along with him in his powerful long-legged stride. You slipped sideways in the slick mud as Flip pulled you back around the ninety-degree turn in the mine, but he again kept you from falling and charged ahead fast and hard. The mineshaft now shook with near earthquake force, debris fell all around you both and struck your bodies as you ran. The light of the exit grew larger with every sprinted pace, but it was no longer blue and welcoming. Outside the mine, the air was churning white and gray and the wind howled like a freight train.

Flip slid to a stop fifteen feet before the exit, pulling you roughly to a stop beside him. His voice was hoarse from exertion and fear when he voiced what you already knew, “It’s a fuckin’ avalanche. The snow from the peak is gonna bury us in.” He looked at you and added something that was lost in the roar of the avalanche as a wall of snow belched inside the mine, stinging your faces.

Before the body of debris sluicing into the mine reached you, Flip shoved you harshly down into the mud and dove on top of you, covering you with his body. He tucked his face into the crook of your neck and wrapped his arms over both your heads. You felt him flinch and heard him grunt in time with the dull slaps of rubble that struck his body as the avalanche passed by outside the mine entrance and flooded its wreckage inside and down upon you both.

Icy cold enveloped you like the breath of the Grim Reaper, then everything was dark and deathly silent.

*******************************************************************************************

Gruff cursing that sounded very far away reached your ears accompanied by the feeling of your body being jostled and roughly tugged. You were trapped in that restless disconcerting place between oblivion and consciousness, but as incapable of opening your eyes as if a sleep paralysis demon was perched heavily on your chest. Cold surrounded you and your limbs couldn’t have felt less lifeless and heavy if they had been packed with sand. The profane voice grew louder and you felt light but insistent slapping against your cheeks. The irritation it roused in you was enough to pull you fully into full alertness and even sent your hand striking out at your attacker in a retaliatory smack of your own.

Flip flinched from the sting of your slap against his cheek and blinked several times in surprise before grinning at you. The large hand that had been patting your cheek to rouse you now caressed your skin gently.

“I guess that means you’ll live,” he told you softly. “But humor me and follow my light.” Kneeling beside you, he shone his flashlight into your eyes and slowly moved the beam from side to side. You squinted your eyes against the bright light but followed it easily. “Well, I’m not a doctor but at least I wouldn’t be able to arrest you for DWI.”

Only after your eyes re-adjusted to the darkness after Flip’s light did you notice that Flip’s face was covered in mud and blood. A deep cut sliced across his cheekbone and blood dripped down from his hairline. Looking around, you saw that muddy snow had been blown into the mine and that you sat on the ground at the head of a trail the size of your body, realizing Flip had dragged you out of the snow drift that had filled the mine. Flip had stopped with you fifteen feet before the entrance when the avalanche hit and now you were another ten feet deeper down the shaft. The avalanche had buried you both with at least twenty-five feet of snow between you and exit, with no telling how much deeper the snow was piled outside the mine.

“Are you alright?” You reached to his hairline, feeling the hot blood that oozed from a cut on his scalp.

“I’m just peachy.” Flip smiled sardonically. “Other than bein’ buried in a mineshaft.” He took your hand from his face and held it tightly. “Does anyone know you’re out here?”

“Not unless I have some other stalkers I don’t know about.” You shook your head.

“I didn’t tell anyone either. I knew I’d get a helluva lot of shit for comin’ back out here with a lawyer, even one as pretty as you.” He looked at his watch perfunctorily. “When I don’t show up for work Monday mornin,’ Ron will know somethin’ happened to me. I haven’t been a no-show since he joined the force. Not without tellin’ him anyway. Even on the days I called in sick or wanted to sleep in late with a hot date, I gave him a head’s up. When your car is found at the trailhead, he’ll be smart enough to put two and two together and figure that we came out to this mine.”

“That’s two days from now!” The direness of your situation was beginning to dawn on you. “Not to mention how long it will take to find the entrance to the mine under the snow and then dig us out. How long will that take?”

“Do you want the truth?” Flip glared at the wall of snow.

“Nevermind, I don’t want more bad news.” You sat up straighter and set your jaw. “Just tell me what we need to do.”

“That’s my girl.” Flip smiled and squeezed your hand. He pushed himself up to his feet and pulled you up with him. He kept his hold on your hand. “In a situation like this, the general rule of thumb is to stay put, but we don’t have the supplies to wait it out for long enough. No sleepin’ bag, not much food, and only one heavy coat between us. We’re not equipped for a long stakeout.” He lifted his hands to your shoulders, giving you a reassuring squeeze. “Our best chance is to see if we can find another way out. A lot of old mines tie into cave systems, and cave systems have outlets. We have some time to kill before anyone can get to us, to say the least, and movin’ around will keep us warm.”

You nodded your agreement as a rush of shivers raked your body, the first of many. You had gotten wet from snow and mud, which had quickly chilled you through to your bones. Flip retrieved his own wool sweater from your pack and then lifted your pack off your shoulders so you could put his sweater on. It hung down past your hips, but you were instantly warmer by the time he had your pack back in place. He pulled the climbing axe from his belt and handed it to you, telling you, “Just in case.”

Walking side by side you both retraced your steps back down the mineshaft. The only light was from Flip’s flashlight; you conserved yours, rationing light like food for what could be a long dark wait. When you passed the crime scene a second time, the strange markings in the mud wall now seemed like an ominous warning, a signal that you were trespassing into hostile territory. Flip felt it too and made a point of keeping his beam off the glyphs so as not to fuel the fear growing inside you. On ahead in the edges of the light, he caught glimpses of other markings on the walls; glyphs, crude etchings, and places with scratch marks that had the same appearance of a tree trunk sheared to rags by a bear marking his territory with his claws. Flip didn’t let his light illuminate them, nor did he allow himself to react to the sinister markings. There was no reason to worry you.

For over two hours you followed the twists and turns of the mineshaft until you came to where the tunnel had collapsed decades ago. The shaft was nearly blocked by a pile of muddy rocky rubble. There was just enough space between the top of the debris and the ceiling of the shaft for a large person to squeeze through. Flip told you to wait while he scrambled up and over the pile of debris. It only took a minute for his shaggy head to pop back through the opening and call to you to join him.

On the other side of the collapse was a natural formation in the rock, a crevasse that had been revealed when the mine had collapsed and taken part of the mountain with it. The walls of the crevasse glinted with gold, so much gold that veins of it spiderwebbed across the rock walls. The gold was so plentiful that a pure gold nugget sat on the ground dead center at the entrance to the crevasse. You picked it up, it was the size of a walnut and deceptively heavy.

“This is a nice souvenir.” You slipped the nugget into your pocket.

“That poor old bastard miner missed the mother lode by feet.” Flip shook his head and held his lighter up to the crevasse opening. The flame flickered on a breeze too light for you to feel. Flip smiled, broad and toothy, for the first time since you both had entered the mine. “Airflow means an outlet.”

The crevasse was narrow, forcing you to walk single file. Flip had to carry his backpack because he was too broad to walk straight and had to twist his shoulders sideways to squeeze through. He bent to retrieve another gold nugget from the ground, just as large as yours and pocketed it as you had done. Another twenty steps brought him to another nugget, then another and another, like golden breadcrumbs laid out by Hansel and Gretel. Flip glared at the next nugget he saw, stooping almost reluctantly to pluck it from the ground. He stared at it a long time before adding it to his pocket. His features were darker than they had been at any other point that day as he pressed on.

Abruptly, the crevasse emptied into a natural cavern as large as an amphitheater. The ceiling of the chamber was high and domed, a stone cathedral formed eons ago in the cave system. Shining his flashlight upward, its yellow beam barely illuminated the ceiling. Spears of stalactites hung down from the roof of the dome like a forest of viper fangs. At the far reach of Flip’s light, another piece of gold lay on the ground, beckoning you forward.

“Something’s not right, Flip.” You grabbed his arm and stood beside him. “This feels like a trap.”

“It is.” He didn’t look at you. Keeping his voice low and his eyes focused ahead, he strained to see anything at all in the darkness that surrounded you. “That gold was a bait trail.”

“A bait trail?!” you whisper-yelled. “Why the hell didn’t you turn around?”

“It was too late once we were inside that crevasse. It’s a squeeze shoot like you use to herd cattle into the butcher box.” His jaw clenched. “We’re bein’ hunted.”

“Hunted?” You looked around the cavern, seeing nothing but rock formations and darkness. “By whom? Or what?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.” He stepped forward into the chamber.

Flip inhaled deeply through his nose, testing the air. You smelled something now too. As soon as Flip had mentioned a butcher, you thought you could detect the distinct scent of the inside of a slaughterhouse or a meat freezer. Flip smelled it too.

A few steps more and Flip’s light illuminated an unexpected swatch of color. Across the cavern floor it looked like brightly colored bags were littered haphazardly. Curiosity pulled you both closer.

“Don’t look,” Flip warned you when he realized what lay scattered across the ground, but of course you looked anyway.

The brightly colored bags were dead bodies, six of them. Slain hikers in their cheerfully bright mountaineering parkas lay butchered in a way that would put Jack the Ripper to shame. You saw that two bodies were women, which was only apparent because their clothing had been ripped open to expose their bodies in the process of disembowelment. One of the men was missing both legs, having been tore away at the hip joint like the drumsticks on a Thanksgiving turkey. Another man lay on his stomach with his broken ribs protruding backwards through the flesh of his back like gruesome butterfly wings. The faces of every person had been clawed away the same as a scorned woman would do to faces of her ex in photographs. Their features were gone, left to grimace in slashes of hamburgered meat. Each corpse had the unmistakable marks of cannibalism, patches of flesh ripped away by human shaped mouths and ragged bite marks in bloody U-shaped signatures.

“I guess that kid wasn’t alone,” Flip observed, speaking about the victim in the Colorado Cannibal case to distract you.

Morbid curiosity drew you closer, the same compulsion that makes people slow down when they drive by car crashes. You had seen crime scenes and murders before, but nothing like this. Neither had Flip, not in all his years overseas in the military or the decade-plus since he’d joined the force.

Flip made a quick circle of the bodies without looking at them at all. He looked as deep into the darkness as he could with his feeble light, making sure there was nothing and no one watching over their kill. Satisfied there were no hostiles in the immediate vicinity, Flip turned his attention to the bodies. The detective part of him wanted to look for clues, for similarities between the modus operandi of the killings, for the calling card of the lone serial killer or the ritual behind a cult killing. He ignored that impulse for now. Now, all that mattered was keeping you safe and getting you both the hell out. Live to fight another day.

A quick pat-down of the bodies yielded a pocketknife, a few more granola bars, a pair of relatively clean gloves that would fit you, and a handful of glowsticks, but the group had burned through all their lighters and flashlight batteries before they met their horrific fate. He slipped the pocketknife into the front pocket of his jeans and packed the rest away. One of the women was close to your size and she wore the least offensively colored parka in the group, a shade of royal purple. Kneeling beside the butchered woman, Flip struggled to peel the parka off her body, fighting against her rigid limbs that were stiffened from rigor mortis and stuck out at ninety-degree angles like a scarecrow.

“Oh, Flip, I really couldn’t.” A wave of squeamishness hit you when you realized he was solving the problem of you lacking a heavy coat.

“Oh, you can, sweetheart.” With a final yank so rough that Flip fell back onto his ass and the dead woman’s stiff limbs crackled like dry twigs, he freed the coat from the body of its former owner. “You can and you will if I see you shiver again. You’re not gettin’ hypothermia on my watch.”

Flip sneakily avoided shining his light on the parka when he stuffed it into your pack, but you saw the copious bloodstains on the purple Gortex. The blood had dried almost black, giving it the appearance of an urban camouflage pattern. You fought back a shudder, but you knew Flip was right. You hugged his voluminous wool sweater around you tighter, willing more warmth out of it to stave off having to wear your new second-hand coat.

“Stay behind me,” Flip commanded in a low growl. He pulled the knife from his pocket and opened the blade with his thumb.

You had been so distracted thinking about the coat that you hadn’t noticed the small noise that sounded like slowly tearing a paper towel apart. Flip had heard it at once and was instantly alert. He stepped ahead, keeping his bootsteps as silent as a panther. There was only darkness before you, all around you. Then, at the edge of Flip’s light, something shot across the beam on the cavern floor.

Training on it with the eyes of a sniper, Flip followed the small scurrying animal with his flashlight. The creature was a hominid the size of a large racoon, squatting on the floor and covering its eyes with its clawed hands. It was hairless with albinoid white skin that was almost translucent. It held a chunk of hiker meat, a hand by the looks of it, and it kept chewing, making more sounds like tearing paper, while it covered its eyes from the binding light.

“What the fuck…” Flip muttered, his voice trailing away.

“Whatever it is, it looks like a juvenile,” you observed, noting the short pudgy arms and legs, the fat belly, the bulbous head, and the way it sat on the ground like a toddler with a bottle.

“Yeah. Keep your light on it.” Flip shone his light around. “They say the most dangerous bear you can find out in the woods is a cub, because it means his mama is out there watchin’ you.” He spun to look behind you. “And she ain’t happy.”

On your right, something rushed at you with unnatural speed. You didn’t see it, so much as you felt its attack spring from the shadows. Flip reacted with predatory speed, spinning to meet the attack. In the same motion, he slashed the pocketknife out in a backhanded swing. The knife met the animal before the light, slicing clean through the white skin of its throat. Blood splattered against your face, hot and viscous, but it barely registered.

As the first creature dropped, a second charged from the darkness behind it. Flip swung his light to meet it. When he caught the creature in his beam it stopped, frozen for an instant like a deer in the headlights, then the animal shrieked, an unnatural sound from the depths of Hell and ran away as if its skin had been scalded by the light. That one was much much larger, the mate of the female Flip had just killed. It looked like a large male, heavily muscled and nearly as big as Flip himself. It had enormous black eyes and devilishly pointed ears. Those features stood out stark in your mind from the brief glimpse, but engraved deeper yet upon your memory were its teeth, rows of razed fangs like the gaping mouth of a piranha.

From the darkness beyond the reach of the flashlight, the creature howled. You and Flip knew at once what it was doing, but it was Flip who voiced it, “He’s callin’ for reinforcements. That’s our cue to get the hell outta here.”

“Get your gun!” you shouted as he dragged you through the cavern at a sprint, the two beams of your flashlights bouncing crazily ahead of you.

“I only have the six shots that are in it. I better make ‘em count,” he huffed as he ran hard. “Besides that, a gunshot in here is gonna be just like ringin’ the dinner bell. We’ll have every one of whatever the hell these things are on us once they hear me shootin.’”

The end of the cavern was honeycombed with tunnels snaking away into deeper darkness. There was no time to assess or reason which was best, not that either of you had any information to reason with. Flip pulled you into the left-most tunnel and pressed you flat against the wall. He crowded against you, putting himself between the tunnel entrance and you. He retrieved one of the hikers’ glowsticks, cracked it open, and threw it as far as he could down a neighboring tunnel.

Switching off your flashlights, you both waited, statue still, utterly silent, and blind save for the faint green glow of the glowstick some thirty yards away. The sounds of the creatures pursuing you echoed through the cavern. Nails scraping on stone, sniffing breaths to catch your scent, guttural snarls that had the lilt of rudimentary language. You thought that surely every living creature in the cave system must be able to hear your heart for as loud as it thundered in your ears. You clung to Flip like a life raft in a stormy sea, trying to draw strength from him.

The creatures passed you, three of them now. They hunted the light of the glowstick, prowling low on the ground in leopard-crawls. They had the vague shape of humans, but they didn’t move like humans. Their movements were almost reptilian, jerky and shuffling. At the tops of their naked asses they had vestigial tails that twitched like spaniels and two of them had small spinal ridges like crocodiles. One of them sniffed at the glowstick then warily prodded it with a clawed hand. With a triumphant howl, the ghastly animals charged ahead down the glowstick tunnel and away from you.

Slowly and with infinite caution, you and Flip crept down the tunnel he had chosen. He didn’t risk a light again until he had put several bends in the tunnel between you and the cavern, and he was sure the light wouldn’t reach back to the creatures that hunted you. You were shaking slightly from cold and nerves, mostly the latter. You took a deep breath to compose yourself. Flip could feel you shivering beside him. Grabbing your shoulder, he turned you to face him.

“You’re gonna be just fine.” His voice was strong and sure, and he looked into your eyes with fierce resolve shining in his own. “I’m gonna get you outta here. I promise.”

“Well, if you promise.” You tried to smile, tried to make light, but your voice trembled.

“Are you religious?” he asked, taking you aback by his non sequitur.

“No, and I don’t think we’re descending into Hell if that’s your next question.” You tightened your grip on the ice axe. It helped your nerves.

“It wasn’t. I’m not religious either, but I’ll tell you my favorite passage.” He gripped your shoulder tight and his voice rumbled into you as he grinned wickedly. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because I am the baddest motherfucker in the valley.”

“You damn well better be.” When you smiled back at him now, it was genuine.

The tunnel you were in was only wide enough for the two of you to walk single file. You walked back to back with you walking forward and Flip backing his way down the tunnel in case the creatures caught on to his ruse and came after you. Although you both moved as silently as you could, every scrape of your boots on stone and brush of your pack against rock sounded as grating as nails on a chalkboard. Even the quiet drips of water that ran down the cave walls around you sounded like gongs. With your nerves on edge, your senses were heightened. Every scent filled your nose, every sound rang in your ears, every sight that met your eyes was sharpened and clear.

You felt it before you heard it, heard it before you saw it. The feel of a body rushing toward you through the narrow tunnel. The creature erupted out of the darkness ahead of you, already in mid-air as it lunged at you with its claws slicing and razored mouth open wide and aimed for your throat. Before your conscious mind could assimilate the attack, you were swinging the ice axe like a baseball bat. The tip of the axe caught the creature just below its temple at the hinge of its wide-open jaw with enough force to knock it to the ground. It howled with pain and anger, thrashing at your feet like a white fish out of water. Flip couldn’t move ahead of you in the tight space, unable to help you. Fear turned to rage. You stomped your boot down on the creature’s head and yanked as hard as you could on the axe handle, pulling it free with a spurt of blood. Raising it high, you bludgeoned the creature again and again and again, its blood spurting up into your face and chest with each strike, until the squeal it made died along with it and only the wet smack of your axe into meat filled the tunnel.

“Good girl,” Flip rumbled near your ear. “Now keep movin,’ and move faster. We’re gonna have company after that ruckus.”

With renewed vigor you walked ahead more quickly, holding your bloody ice axe at the ready. Killing the creature gave you more confidence. They could be killed. You could kill them. If you hadn’t been prepared and your bloodstream flooded with adrenaline, you never would have been fast enough, but you had been and you knew you could do it again.

After several more gradual turns, the tunnel abruptly straightened and widened. You felt a whisper of air caress your cheek, so faint you would have missed it if you were not in a state of heightened awareness. It was wide enough for Flip to come beside you. He slowed to a creep as he came to the edge of a crevasse that the tunnel emptied into. The end of the tunnel was a sheer drop into bottomless darkness. His flashlight glinted off veins of gold lacing the rock for hundreds of feet down the crevasse until darkness devoured the beam of light. It was twenty feet across the crevasse, far too far to jump, and there were no ledges around it. Your tunnel had dead-ended, and you were very likely being hunted from its entrance. 

Across the gorge, you could faintly see the shadowed entrance of the continuation of the tunnel just peeking around the rock wall on the other side. The ceiling of rock hung just a few feet over your heads, but the drop down might as well be infinite because if you fell into you, all you would find is oblivion. 

“We have to go back.” Your heart sank at the realization. 

“Somethin’ tells me that’s not a great idea.” Flip frowned as he eyed the crevasse and the continuation of the tunnel across it. He then looked up at the ceiling and ran his hand up the rock wall, feeling its ridges. The ceiling hung a foot above his hand when he stretched to his full height and reached as high as he could. “We’ll cross here.” 

“Are you insane?” The black gorge looked utterly impassible. 

“Jury’s out.” He grinned at you as he shrugged out of his pack and quickly rummaged through its contents. 

Flip pulled out a coiled length of rope and slung it over his shoulder like a cowboy with a lariat. Next, he retrieved a handful of metal items you recognized as climbing gear and stuffed them into the pockets of his jeans. When he straightened, he put his hands on your shoulders. 

“I’ll run a line across.” He rubbed your arms like he was rubbing heat into you, but his touch was more affectionate than that alone. “But you’ll have to man the fort here while I’m out over the drop. If any of those sonsabitches come through that tunnel, you give ‘em hell.” 

“I’d love to.” You hefted your axe and smiled at him. You were both aware of the extreme danger for each of you. There was no reason to voice it or let emotions run rampant when keeping your mind clear and focused was the best weapon you had. 

Before Flip could move away from you, you grabbed his lapels and pulled him down into a hard hungry kiss. His hands flew to your waist and he pulled you tight against him, kissing you ravenously. It was only a few quick seconds, you couldn’t waste more, but you were breathless when he drew back. 

“For luck,” you told him huskily. 

“I’d rather be lucky than good.” He winked at you and stepped to the edge. 

Flip secured one end of the rope the best he could on an outcrop on the ledge near where you stood. It wasn’t a great hold, but hopefully it would be good enough just to get you both across. He tied the other end of the rope around his waist and returned the remaining coil to his shoulder, then he pulled three cams from his pocket and put them between his teeth. Just as you wondered how in the hell Flip was going to run a line across the chasm, he bent at the knees and jumped as high as he could. With one hand he caught a horizontal fin of rock on the ceiling that was too small for you to see in the darkness, his feet dangling at the very edge of the ledge before it dropped away. With his free hand, he felt ahead on the ceiling, using touch instead of sight, until he found an adequate crack. Retrieving a cam from his lips, he jammed the device hard into the small crack and secured his rope to it. All this was done while he hung from one hand on his scant hold. 

One down, twenty feet across the deadly chasm to go. 

Grabbing hold of the cam, Flip searched ahead for another crack to wedge the next cam. He repeated this again and again, using the cams and cracks like they were monkey bars to cross the gorge and run the line for you. If the rock gave way or if his strong grip failed and he fell, there would be nothing to stop him until he hit bottom. By the time he was only halfway across, his hands and fingers felt as though they had been bludgeoned by sledgehammers and his forearms were twitching and spasming, the precursor to cramps that could freeze muscle into inoperable knots. He found himself swinging his lower body and using momentum to push himself forward rather than the steady strength in his hands and arms. That sort of sloppiness made a slip and a fall even more likely. Flip was out of condition for this kind of extreme free climbing, he hadn’t done anything of this caliber in nearly twenty years. He thought that over the years he had gotten smarter than to risk his neck in stupid ass ways like this, but here he was again. 

Helpless, you watched Flip’s large body hanging precariously from one one-hand grip to the next as he ran the line. Despite his obvious attempts to keep his body controlled, he still twisted and canted dangerously with each swing forward. It seemed impossible that he had gotten so far, it defied your expectations of the capabilities of the human body. He was three-fourths of the way across when you heard chuffing breath behind you, like a dog scenting a trail. 

Without taking the fraction of a second to look behind you first, you spun, swinging the ice axe sideways as hard as you could. It struck the palm of a creature, outstretching and clawing for your neck. The animal howled, trying to wrench its hand free. In the time it was distracted by pain, you yanked forward on your axe handle and stepped out of the creature’s path. You were so close to the edge, the yank forward sent the pale ghoul catapulting over the ledge to its death an untold distance below. Your axe popped free of its hand as it fell, leaving your weapon in hand. 

Flip could hear everything, from your sharp frightened intake of breath to your axe striking flesh to the scramble of claws on rock as the monster went over the edge, but he couldn’t turn to look without losing his grip and plummeting to his own death. He could barely spare the breath to call out your name in a frantic entreat. 

“I’m ok,” you assured him. “I can do this all day.” 

“That makes one of us,” Flip grunted under his breath as a bead of salty stinging sweat ran into his eye. His left hand was cramping now, growing stubborn when he tried to clench it around a hold and slow to open his fingers when he needed to release. He drove another cam. He didn’t have a choice but to ignore it and keep going. 

He was almost there. Almost. 

Several feet from the opposite ledge, he tried to shimmy another cam into a tight crack. It slipped free when he put some weight on it, and Flip slipped on his hold, twisting dangerously. He rammed the cam into the crack with all his might and it held. He secured the rope and reached ahead, groaning with the pain it caused him. And his grip gave out. 

Time seemed to stop as Flip’s fingers failed him and his hand slipped off the feeble hold he clung to. He felt the tug of gravity taking him, winning over his own strength. With the very last of his might, he swung his body as powerfully as he could toward the edge as his hand slipped free. His feet fell just short of the ledge, but his flailing arms caught it. Flip’s chest hit the lip of the ledge hard enough to knock the breath out of him and his numb fingers caught in fissures on the rock. His legs kicked free over nothingness as he hauled himself up, grunting and growling with effort. Crawling onto the ledge to safety on his hands and knees, he heaved for breath and let the blood flow back into his aching fingers. 

Once he felt in command of his body again, Flip anchored the end of the rope. He didn’t have a climbing harness but he fashioned a crude but workable one from a section of rope, his belt, and some carabiners. Again, he had to jump up to grab the line and use all his strength to lift his entire body enough to hook the carabiners and harness to the line, but once he did it was comparatively easy for him to shimmy his way back across to you like a like a crude pulley. 

“See, there’s nothin’ to it.” He flashed you a dashing smile when he rejoined you on the ledge. 

He rigged a makeshift climbing harness for you with straps of rope running around your waist and under your thighs to come up between your legs, and he affixed the straps of the two backpacks with carabiners and hooked them on the line. He would go back again first, dragging the packs behind him and checking the hold of the cams as he did, then you would come last. 

Flip made it look easy the second time, but you hardly needed his encouragement when you heard a faint snarl from the tunnel at your back. Doing as Flip had shown you, you clipped the carabiner on your harness to the rope and grabbed the line with both hands to pull yourself across the chasm to the other side. You tried not to think of the abyss below you or of the creatures that hunted you, and to focus solely on putting one hand in front of the other as you pulleyed yourself along. An excited squeal sounded behind you, the elated sound of the hunter spotting its prey. The line jerked in your hands, shaking your body wildly, as the creatures on the ledge tugged on the rope, as curious as cats with a string. 

“Keep comin,’ gorgeous. Slow n’ easy,” Flip encouraged you, his voice steadying. “Don’t look back. Don’t look down. Keep lookin’ at me, sugar.”

More creatures shrieked from behind you, a whole troupe of them now gathered on the ledge, hooting like evil baboons as they tried to figure out how to prevent their meal from escaping. You pulled yourself faster along the line. As you closed in on the ledge, Flip reached out, grabbed your collar, and yanked you roughly to him. You wanted him to hold you, but he shoved you behind him further away from the edge.

Three of the white demons had figured out they too could use the rope to cross the chasm and continue their pursuit of you. They were better climbers than monkeys and crossed the line twice as fast as Flip had done. The lead creature was already halfway across.

Flip drew his gun and aimed. He steadied his breath as he focused on the small target in the dim light from his flashlight. Flip was a deadly shot and he didn’t miss when he squeezed the trigger. His bullet hit the rope dead center, one inch ahead of the leading creature’s clawed hand. The gunshot was deafening in the rock chamber, making your ears ring painfully. The rope sheared apart, whipping away into the abyss and taking the three squealing demons with it. Their terrified screams echoed off the rock for many long seconds until they ended abruptly far below.

It wasn’t from shock, but with relief that your legs gave way and you collapsed to the ground, finally able to catch your breath. You laughed in joy that bordered on the hysterical and Flip sank down to his knees beside you.

“Fuck, I haven’t done somethin’ like that since I was in my twenties.” He ran a hand through his damp hair and grinned like an idiot. “Back when I was young, dumb, and full of cum.”

“I’d say you did alright.” You smiled up at him from the ground. 

“Well, I still have two outta three goin’ for me,” he replied, still grinning. “I’m not young anymore, but I’m still dumb and full of –” 

“I get the idea.” You patted his arm as you sat up. “Maybe I’ll let you give me a demonstration of the latter sometime, but you have to take me someplace nicer than this.” 

“With that as a reward, sugar…” He took your hand and you pulled up to your feet as he stood and then fully into his arms again. He kissed you desperately before reluctantly breaking away. You had to keep moving. 

Flip pulled the remaining rope back, re-coiling it as he drew it in, and returned it to his pack. You both shouldered your packs again and Flip took the lead down the new stretch of tunnel. He was armed with his flashlight and knife, and you held your axe at the ready. 

******************************************************************************************* 

It was impossible to tell distance in the cave system. With all the twists and turns, ups and downs, five mile’s worth of walking could only advance you one mile as the crow flies. However, both the chintzy keychain compass Flip had forced upon you and his own military grade tool indicated that you had maintained a steady heading as you cut through the mountain. Flip’s hope was to find an outlet on another face of the mountain that hadn’t sustained the avalanche. Bring on the other dangers of the forest, the bears, the lions, the elements, he would take them all on at once over this hell in which he found himself.

The tunnel bifurcated, two equally dark paths twisting deeper into the mountain. Flip again held his lighter up to the entrance to each, watching the flame dance in front of them both.

“They each have air flow.” He looked at you. “You got a coin to flip?”

“I like to take the left-hand path in life.” You pointed into the darkness of the tunnel.

“That doesn’t surprise me one bit.” Flip grinned and started down the left branch.

“Do you think we’ve lost them?” you whispered as a chill shuddered down your spine. You were cold and wet, but you shivered from something else entirely.

“Nope.” Flip shook his head. “I think we’re in their house now. Whatever they are.”

“I bet you won’t be so quick to scoff at the next defendant who tells you demons did it, Detective,” you teased quietly.

“I’m gonna arrest ‘em on sight.” He bumped you with his shoulder as he walked beside you. “Maybe he’ll hire a pretty lawyer for me to piss off.” He smirked at you. “But after seein’ how deadly you are with that axe, maybe I won’t try to piss you off too too much.”

“I might be able to think of a few ways you could make me happy instead.” You stopped suddenly, sobered instantly, when you felt Flip go rigid beside you, his arm flexing in anticipation.

Now quiet, you felt what Flip had sensed. That creeping sense of unease that warned you of the presence of something malevolent washed over you like ice water, pinpricks of dread crawling up your spine like horrible ants. Flip pushed you behind him as he walked ahead. With every step forward you looked back over your shoulder, your senses piqued for any sight, scent, or sound. You expected, as did Flip, an attack to come at you from down the tunnel, whether ahead or behind.

As if springing from the darkness itself, Flip was struck with a blow so heavy that it knocked him down to the ground. The creature had dropped down from the ceiling of the tunnel fifteen feet above you where it had crept unseen and unheard like a pale spider. Flip struggled on his back with the demon on his chest, slashing its claws against his raised arms and his chest, gnashing its teeth in his face. You raised your ice axe to strike, but Flip and the demon rolled together one over the other in a macabre parody of a lover’s embrace. Pinning the creature to the ground with a hand on its throat as it thrashed wildly, Flip pushed up on one knee as the beast sliced its clawed fingers at his throat, tearing his skin open from his neck down to his chest in four ragged bloody lines. Growling ferociously, Flip thrust his pocketknife into its open screeching mouth, driving it up through the roof and into its brain.

Flip was bleeding more than the dead creature when he shoved himself up to his feet, wiping his sleeve across the sweat on his brow. You rushed to him, your hands flying to the wound on his neck and shoulder, to the tatters of his blood-soaked shirt. Blood trickled down his neck and chest in rivulets like the water that seeped down the cave walls, but thankfully it was only a flesh wound that didn’t penetrate deep enough sever veins or arteries.

“Don’t worry, sugar,” he told you with his best cocky grin, placing his hand over yours where you examined his wound. “I’ve had worse scratches from a night in bed with loose women.”

“Do you want me to knock you around even more than that creature did?” you asked, but before he could answer you kissed him tenderly, inadvertently smearing his own blood on his cheek when you caressed him.

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand.” Flip broke your kiss, groaning in pain as he straightened to his full height. “The sooner we get outta here, the sooner you can thank me properly.” He didn’t say that he knew if he stopped for long, his injuries would stiffen, making him slow and cumbersome. That would be a death sentence. He only hoped that he could find a way out before one or both of you succumbed to exhaustion and had to stop for rest.

The tunnel you followed twisted like the gnarled branches of a tree, forking off in some places and converging with another trail in others. The cave system was as honeycombed as an underground beehive, making it impossible to keep your path straight and directions were impossible to know. Whenever possible, Flip took the lefthand path in the hope that should he need to backtrack he wouldn’t be desperately lost. Minutes passed as slow as hours and hours like days as you trudged. Your flashlight was the first to die and Flip’s had begun to flicker ominously, giving the tunnel the dizzy effect of a strobe. Maybe it was your subconscious clinging to hope, but you thought you felt a slight upward slant to the tunnel you were in now.

It had to be because fatigue was setting in, dulling Flip’s senses. He should have heard the sound of chewing, of ripping flesh off bone. He should have smelled the sickly sweet tang of carrion. He should have sensed the presence of the creatures in such close proximity when the tunnel widened into another bulbous cavern.

Rounding a curve, Flip’s light landed on a mass of white bodies clustered over an elk carcass like writhing maggots, tearing its flesh apart and swallowing clumps of meat, tinged with the oil green shine of rancidity. When the light illuminated them, the monsters froze for just long enough for you to see blood drizzle from their jaws before they shrieked and exploded away from the kill like a flock of birds taking flight. Others scattered from the periphery, more creatures who had been waiting for their turn at the elk. There were a dozen or more, males, females, and juveniles, all of which now snarled and howled at you from just outside the beam of light.

“Well, fuck me,” Flip grumbled and roughly pulled you behind him. The pair of you had little chance of fighting off such a large group of the monsters. They had recovered from their initial fright and were now slashing their claws at you from the periphery of the light, thinking you a superior meal to rotting elk meat.

The largest creature lunged at Flip out of the darkness, light be damned, its jaws open to tear into Flip’s throat. Flip raised his arm into a block on reflex but instead of using his forearm to block, he shoved his open hand into the demon’s open mouth, clamping his hand down on its lower jaw and wrenching viciously across. Flip ripped the jagged jawbone right off its hinges with no more effort that tearing a drumstick off a chicken, leaving the demon staring in wide-eyed shock while blood gurgled down its throat and its tongue flailed errantly in the bloody cavern of its mouth. Flip followed with a violent elbow to the creature’s temple with the full force of his body behind it, caving its skull in sideways as easily as taking a sledgehammer to a jack-o-lantern. For an instant, the others watched as the large male collapsed in a broken heap, its body convulsing with the shivers of death.

Choosing the nearest fork in the tunnel, Flip grabbed your hand, yanked you down it with him, and ran like hell with all the strength he had left. Another creature bolted ahead of you, trying to block your path. Flip didn’t slow his pace. Lowering his head, he barreled headlong into it like football player, knocking it harshly into the side of the tunnel wall. The crack of its ribs when they snapped against Flip’s shoulder was loud in the tight space and you could hear its wheezing breath as you dodged around it to follow Flip.

Those creatures that remained of the dozen gave chase. Their eldritch cries echoed around as they called out to their comrades that they were on the hunt for fresh meat. The scrapes of their claws and the shuffling of many bodies in the small tunnel was even louder than yours and Flip’s running bootsteps. His light bounced wildly down the path ahead of you, but it hardly mattered. There was no turning back, your only hope was in pushing forward and staying ahead of the ravening pack of demons nipping at your heels.

Ahead, the tunnel bifurcated, two dark paths snaking away, equally bleak. Flip moved toward the lefthand branch as he had down at every turn, but something stopped him. “I felt a breeze!” he barked and hauled you down the right fork.

The delay was just enough for the nearest creature to hazard a slash at you. Its nails tore through your clothing like tissue paper and the flesh of your shoulder beneath like butter. You felt the burn of its four razored claws and the warm flood of blood down your arm, but knew it was only a flesh wound. Enraged at the bastard, you whirled to face it, swinging your axe in a backhand that would have made any ninja proud. The point of your axe sunk into one of its huge black eyes, rupturing it like a juicy fig. Following Flip’s example, you jerked the axe sideways, catching the tip in the eye socket and ripping the side of the creature’s head apart. The rest of its companions had to scramble over its body in their pursuit of you, some of them pausing to take a bite of fresh meat.

While the tunnel remained narrow, the creatures could only chase you but not surround you. That stroke of luck was short lived. The tunnel widened until its walls faded into darkness outside the flashlight’s beam. The demons filled the space around you, encircling you as they snapped and scratched at you, kept at bay only by the feeble flickering beam of light. Trying to fend off all the grasping fingers, Flip spun in a tight circle, keeping you shielded by his massive body. He had little chance of fighting them all off, but he’d damn sure go down swinging.

As Flip turned around, taking the beam of his flashlight with him, you realized that the cavern wasn’t pitch black anymore. You could see the rock walls ahead of you in deep shadow, but not complete darkness. The light came from around a corner, a faint glow in the darkness. You would never have seen it with the flashlight shining ahead, dimming your night vision. Without sparing a second, you grabbed Flip’s arm, your nails digging brutally into his flesh as you spun him forcibly back around to bring his attention to the light. He saw it at once and pushed you ahead of him as you both sprinted toward the beacon of hope.

Rounding the corner where the light shone, there was indeed a spire of bright sunlight that shone down into the cave from far above, but your heart sank when you saw it was a dead end. The light illuminated a small alcove in the cavern the size of a dining room, but there was no exit from it. You both stood, panting for breath inside the light, safe for the moment, but unable to run further.

You were surrounded. On all sides of you, the pale demons crowded just outside the single beam of light. A creature would swipe its claws at you both, trying to hook in your clothing or your backpacks to drag you back into the darkness, then another would bark and snarl, trying to make you jump away from it toward the clutches of another still. The two of you barely had space to cling to each other inside the safety of the light, and there were legions too many creatures to fight off now.

Looking over his shoulder, Flip studied the only feature in the vertical rockface at your backs. There was a single crack in the face the width of a football that ran from the cave floor up to the small opening far above. Through it, the sunlight shone down like an angel’s smile.

“Unless you have any bright ideas, we better get movin’ on up,” Flip told you with a crooked smirk. He was being cavalier for you, but the sentiment didn’t reach his eyes.

“We’re going to climb up the vertical face, are we?” your laugh was tinged with just a hint of hysteria.

“That or we’re gonna be somebody’s lunch.” Flip chewed his lip and pulled you with him when he turned to face the rock. He had your body pressed to the rock as he examined it, keeping you both pressed close and just outside the grasping reach of the creatures.

Flip flexed his hands a few times, priming them for some heavy work. Reaching his right hand over your shoulder, he put his open hand in the crevasse as far as he could. When he was elbow deep the rock was tight on his hand. He clenched a tight fist and leaned his weight back, testing the anchor he created. His knuckles scraped against stone, but his clenched fist was far too big to pull back out from the crevasse that could barely admit his open hand. His arm would have to be cut off for him to fall free from his improvised hold.

Nodding his approval, Flip relaxed his fist and withdrew his hand. He shrugged out of his hundred-pound pack and quickly pulled out the most essential items that he could stuff into his pockets. He turned to face out toward the monsters and hefted his pack in his hand. Like an Olympian swinging a discus, Flip drew back and swung his boulder of a pack at the nearest rank of the creatures, mowing through four of them and sending them flying and rolling like pins broken apart by a bowling ball. He released his hold on his pack when it was aimed at the head of a large creature, hurling it straight into its pointed teeth inside its leering snarl. The pack was heavy enough to crush its skull on impact, snapping its head backward and knocking its body to the ground like a shell from a Howitzer.

“That felt good.” He turned back to you with a grin, stripped you of your own pack and dropping it to the ground. He again wedged his right fist into the crevasse at the height of his shoulder then propped his knee against the rock and looked at you pointedly. “Start climbin.’”

“You can’t hold my weight and yours.” You looked at him incredulously and then up at the sunny opening eighty feet above you, your unattainable salvation.

“You watch me, sugar.” Flip winked at you. “I’ll bet you a good time on it. Now move your pretty little ass.”

At least falling to your deaths seemed less awful than being torn apart by the cave creatures. You stepped your boot onto Flip’s thigh and used a hold on his shoulder to pull yourself up. Your next step was onto his forearm and you wedged your opposite boot into the crevasse as far as you could for balance. Flip hoisted himself up using his fist anchor and a scant foothold until he could jam his left fist into the crevasse at the level of your hip. That was your cue to step onto that forearm and climb another few feet higher. The going was slow but steady as you both ascended with Flip using his fists to ladder you up and haul himself up the crevasse. Below you, the demons shrieked and squalled in ravenous anger as they watched their prey climb away from them in the narrow beam of sunlight where they could not follow.

One industrious demon scrambled its way up the rock just outside the light. It paralleled you, hissing and gnashing its jaws like a piranha at chum, taking a razored swipe at you or Flip whenever it could get close enough to your bodies. So far, the light kept it just out of reach. It climbed up the rock as easily as a spider, except that spiders don’t froth at the mouth and snarl, and their claws don’t rake across stone like broken fingernails through gravel.

The effort required for Flip to support both your weights while climbing vertically was monumental. Sweat and blood dripped down his face and ran stinging into his eyes, his brow was knotted and his jaw clenched as tight as his fists. His arms and powerful shoulders tremored with fatigue by the halfway point in the climb, but he didn’t slow his pace.

“You need to rest, Flip,” you said breathily as you stepped a rung higher on the ladder of his arm.

“I haven’t even begun to defile myself, sugar,” he grunted between pants, tasting salty sweat and coppery blood in his mouth. He knew that if he stopped now, starting up again would be exponentially more difficult, and his great strength was dwindling fast. Beside him, the demon slashed its slender crooked hand at his face. He felt the air and smelled the stink of carrion on its claws. There was nothing he could do about it, his arms were so fatigued that he probably couldn’t throw a punch even if he were able, so he settled for glaring at the little bastard. Instead of addressing any of these points with you, he lied, “I’ll stop in ten more feet. Count ‘em out for me.”

You counted aloud every time he lifted you both higher, fist over fist, as the light above you grew slowly brighter and more hopeful. “You passed ten feet. Time for a break.”

“Ten already?” Flip’s face was a rictus of strain now and he didn’t even try to smirk. Beneath your boot his arm shook with seizure force and his knuckles were torn and bloody from scraping against the rock. If he wasn’t so haggardly spent, it would have amused him that the creature beside you was now climbing off-balance and weak from exertion. Fifty feet below you the demons howled and clawed at the walls. “That was nothin.’ Count me out ten more.”

The light above you was almost blinding after the darkness of the caves as you neared the top. Only ten feet now separated you from the safety of the sunlight. It was a cruel circumstance that in those last ten feet the rockface bowed outward like the obscene beer gut on fat balding uncle Jack, who everyone shunned from holiday parties because of his proclivity to grope the women and leer at the girls. Also like uncle Jack’s beer gut, the convex rock glistened with a sheen of sweat, water that dripped down from the vegetation and mud of the opening. It was too small to be recognized as a cave from the outside, more like a sinkhole, but it would be enough for you both to crawl through if you could reach it.

Flip’s arms were now shaking tremulously and his fists were cramped and unresponsive. But he damned sure wasn’t giving up or quitting now. Growling with determination, he hoisted himself higher, pushing you up with him, using every last reserve of strength to keep his body close to the convex rockface when he felt gravity try to wrench him away. Another notch higher and you couldn’t keep your own grip without toppling over backward, Flip could lock his meaty fists inside the crack but your hands were too slight. Flip crawled over you, pinning your body to the crevasse with his own covering you. You had no choice but to lean back against his quivering chest as you both crawled higher. He was at the very end of his strength, and you knew it just as well as he did.

Beside you, the demon who had tried to climb the outward bulge of rock slipped. It scratched and scrambled for a hold, its black eyes blowing wide with fear when it found none. As if plucked away from the rock by marionette strings, it floated away from the wall seemingly in slow motion, and fell down to be swallowed in the pool of darkness below you. It screamed with human-like terror as it fell, cut off by the dull thud of its body hitting the rock ground and the surprised cacophony of the other creatures below.

Three feet from the top, Flip’s hold failed. His right hand slipped and he dropped dangerously, crushing you to the rock when he regained a hold. Bloody and cramped, his hand wouldn’t hold a grip again and he had no way to rest it.

“Brace against me and climb up,” he rasped painfully. “I can hold out that long if you hurry.”

There wasn’t time to argue or question. You crawled higher, grabbing at anything that could gain you an extra few inches in height. When your ass was at the level of Flip’s chest, he shifted his shoulder beneath you and with the last of his reserves, bumped you up just enough for you to hook your arm out into the cold fresh mountain air and onto the secure rocky lip of the opening. You felt Flip’s hold weaken at the same instant, knowing he had saved you.

“Hold on to me now!” you commanded as you struggled upward.

“I’m too heavy for you, sugar,” he groaned, his voice sounded weaker and further away.

“Do what I say, damnit!” you hissed at him. “I’m the one who gets paid to argue.”

It was like an immovable anchor when Flip locked his arms around your legs, but with the same burst of feral emergency strength that mothers have used to roll overturned cars off their trapped children, you pulled yourself and Flip up and out of the cave, belly-crawling out like a soldier through a minefield.

When you were completely out and Flip could manage the rest of the crawl himself, you flopped down on the ground and rolled onto your back. Nothing had ever felt as good as those frigid wet leaves under your back and the icy sleet that pelted your upturned face. Flip was recovering fast if his sense of humor was any indication. He continued crawling until he was positioned over your body, his arms still trembling as he acted like he was lowering himself in for a kiss. Instead, he plopped down on you, playfully crushing you beneath him and groaned theatrically like a man dying on stage.

“Sugar.” He let out a heavy breath, settling even more of his weight on you. “This little excursion better damn well count for several dates.”

“I’ll waive the Three Date Rule, if that’s what you’re asking.” You tried to laugh but found it difficult with well over two-hundred-thirty-pounds of man on you. “But you better not ever ask me to go hiking, climbing, or caving with you again after this.”

“Deal.” He did kiss you now, soft and grateful. “I only wanna hike as far as a hot shower and a soft bed.”

*******************************************************************************************

There would be no speaking of the events in the mine, not outside your own private company. You and Flip got caught in an avalanche and had to hike out, and that was that. Being involved in the legal system, you both knew well that if you emerged after an avalanche and a collapsed mineshaft, raving about monsters and demons, without a shred of supporting evidence, the best case scenario was that you would both be sent away to a nice retreat in a padded room and be discredited as a detective and a lawyer. The worst case was if you were actually believed, only to be locked away in Area 51 or its equivalent along with all the other nasty dark secrets the government doesn’t want out in the open frightening the populace. No, you and Flip agreed that someone else would have to be unlucky enough to have the macabre honor of officially discovering the demonic cave creatures. 

After escaping the infernal cave system, nothing sounded better than Flip’s offer of going home with him to his cabin for a hot shower, a soft bed, and good company. Not to mention that neither of you wanted to be apart from each other. His cabin didn’t disappoint, it was beautiful. It was hidden from view until the final curve in the dirt driveway. nestled in a small clearing in the forested mountains with a creek trickling idly through the horse pasture. 

Showering together was an erotic admiration of each other’s bodies that washed away your exhaustion along with all the mud and blood that covered you both. By the end of it, you were hot and dripping from the feel of his enormous hands caressing you, and he was hard and eager when he backed you out of the shower with his lips on yours, guiding you backward to his bed. 

His lips were so soft as he kissed you, plush and caressing, mis-paired with his insistent erection that pressed into your belly. His searing kiss burned hotter than the fire that roared in the hearth when your mouth parted, allowing his hot tongue to lick into you. Your hand flew up to grab the back of his neck, pulling him harder against you, clawing at his skin and twisting into his dense wet hair. Flip’s hand trailed down your side, following the curve of your waist and hip, then back upward as he pulled you harder against him. His coarse broad palm smoothed against the skin of your back, and he kissed you with all the passion he had. A groan rumbled low through his chest when you slid your hand down the ridged planes of his body to grip his massive cock, your fingers unable to meet around his incredible girth. Flip’s head dropped to kiss at your neck, licking and nipping at your skin. 

Flip pushed you gently back onto the bed. You allowed yourself to fall backward, exaggerating the bounce of your tits as you bobbed on his mattress. He stood admiring you for a moment, taking in every detail of the beautiful sight of you laying before him. The mattress dipped with his weight when he placed his hands on either side of your hips, lowering his weight onto the bed. Instead of crawling over you, as you expected, he dropped his head to kiss at your belly. His mouth traveled lower until he kissed the top of your pussy. 

“I’ve wanted a taste of you since the first day I ever saw you in court. You were wearin’ a pretty blue dress,” he growled, placing his next kiss to the lips of your pussy. “Too pretty for a fuckin’ lawyer.” 

You writhed, moaning his name, when his prominent nose parted your folds, followed by his tongue licking through your pussy. He kissed you again once you were open for him, his lips working your pussy as passionately as he would your mouth. 

“I knew you’d taste so fuckin’ sweet.” His deep voice vibrated into you, raising goosebumps along your spine. 

You could already feel heat pooling in your core from his lips and eager tongue alone, but you wanted more. 

“I want the first time I cum with you to be all over that big cock of yours, Flip,” you told him huskily. 

“Demanding, aren’t you?” Flip grinned up at you from between your thighs. He trailed his lips up the center of your body as he crawled over you, leaving kisses in his wake. 

Planting his left forearm outside your shoulder, his fingers reached to lightly stroke your cheek. Gripping his cock in his free hand, he ran his fat tip through your folds, collecting your arousal. His heavy breath blended with your sigh when he pushed into you, feeling you stretch around him. Returning his lips to yours, he kissed you deeply, almost soothingly, as he rocked his cock into you, sinking in inch by delicious inch. 

“Your little pussy feels so fuckin’ good, sugar. So wet. So fuckin’ tight on my cock,” Flip groaned when his cock filled you completely, his hips flush against you. 

Your nails digging into his back told him to start thrusting into you. You felt every thick vein and ridge of cock rubbing against you, as he slowly thrust into you. Raising your legs higher up his waist, allowing him to slide in even deeper, you met his thrusts with your own motions. Flip’s angle was perfect, each drag of his cock sending a current of pleasure coursing through you. Your hands moved to twist into his thick hair, tugging harshly, as your pleasure quickly built. Flip felt you tighten around him, wanting to suck him in further, and your thighs squeezing him harder, your hands gripping him desperately. Everything about your body wanted to consume as much of him as possible, and Flip felt it all. 

You moaned his name as you came, pulses of ecstasy shooting through you in time with his rough thrusts. Flip groaned through gritted teeth, his eyebrows pinched together, straining to drag out your pleasure until he felt your body go limp beneath him. He allowed his rhythm to falter, pounding into you while his own orgasm crested and he emptied into you. You shivered at the delicious feeling of his warmth spreading through you and his weight relaxing down on top of you. 

Still throbbing inside you, Flip returned his lips to yours. His kisses were less expert now, his lips pulled into a smile instead of kissing you properly. Wrapping your arms tight around his neck, you pulled him down harder against you, making your kiss even worse, as your smiles crashed together. Flip rolled onto his back, pulling you with him and trapping you inside his arms against his massive chest. Gazing down at him, you brushed his wild hair back from his forehead. 

“I like the view from here,” you told him, tracing the aquiline line of his nose with your fingertip. 

“Me too, sugar.” Adoration gleamed in his eyes as he looked up at you. 

After kissing him again, you lowered yourself to lay against him, resting your cheek on his chest. Feeling his hands rub and caress you and his lips kiss your skin, you marveled at how such a rough and powerful man could be so loving and gentle with you. 

“I never want to spend another night away from you, Flip,” you whispered against his skin. “I want to stay just like this.” 

“Well, it’s a good thing that’s not somethin’ we need to argue about,” Flip purred, his chest rumbling beneath you. “Because those are my thoughts exactly.” 

*******************************************************************************************

© safarigirlsp 2022

#my stuff! #my writing #Halloween #flip zimmerman x reader #flip zimmerman x you #best #fic #flip #lawyer

[natty-light-of-my-life]

did you wish you'd put up more of a fight (part i)

summary: big city, wrong choices indeed

part ii, part iii

loosely, VERY loosely inspired by questions...? by taylor swift.

Agent!Reader x Natasha; Agent!Reader x Wanda

[‘cause i don’t remember who i was / before you painted all my nights]

The breeze of the ventilation system hummed softly in the silence of the S.H.I.E.L.D barracks. Moonlight streaked through the window next to a bed, casting a pale glow on the profile of a younger Natasha Romanoff. She sat with her shoulders back, bent backwards at the waist. Her arms were taut behind her on the firm mattress. She looked up at the ceiling above her pillow, watching as tiny particles of dust circulated whimsically in the midnight light.

The sound of boots and fabric shuffling in the vents above brought a smile to her face, and she rose to stand atop her mattress. With a nimbleness that could only have come from years of practice, Natasha unlatched the duct cover and laid it down, silently, next to her nightstand. A mess of hair tumbled from the exposed vent, followed by your sparkling eyes and a mischievous grin.

“Hiya, stranger,” you whispered to her, rubbing some dust off your nose. Natasha rolled her eyes and grabbed your shoulders. Yanking you down from the ventilation shafts, you burst into giggles as you landed on your back onto a slightly dusty comforter. You felt the lightness of your companion’s amusement on your chest as it moved up and down, in a futile effort to catch your breath.

“Hi,” you whispered again, gazing down at her red mane, tinted amber in the darkness.

She cupped your chin in her hand and lifted her lips to meet yours. You sighed softly into her affections, and she tugged you closer. After a blissful eternity, you pulled away for a breath. As she dipped her head into the crook of your neck, you reached into your jacket pocket and pulled out a small rectangular box.

“Happy birthday, Tsarina.” The silver necklace shimmered as you sat up and latched the clasp near the nape of her neck. Once done, you ran your fingers through her hair, tugging gently at the water-curled ends that she revealed to you only. In the light of the moon, the charm shone with an almost lavender hue. 

You reached into your uniform shirt. Your dog tags clinked together as you revealed the other half of Natasha’s birthday gift. You put it in her palm as she pulled and brought the two of you, impossibly, closer together. The two matching halves of the heart-shaped charms lined up perfectly in her hands as Natasha admired the gift.

“Just like us!” you buzzed, watching her expression closely. Her green eyes misted slightly. That’s a good sign, you thought. She doesn’t hate it. She sniffled once and you giggled, “Did I make you cry, Nats?”

She wiped at her eyes sharply and sent you a glare, “You just kicked up a lot of dust, is all.”

You grinned and wiped at the wetness under her eyes. “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t kick up a bit of dust coming in here.”

She scoffed and nuzzled her head back under your chin. You hoped she was still admiring the necklace. “Yeah,” she mumbled, her breath tickling your collar, “I can’t remember a time when you didn’t, either.”

[fuckin’ situations] 

After the Battle of New York, life got a whole lot more hectic for both of you. As an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, you were constantly on the move. You worked for an international – nigh, interplanetary – military institution and you think you may have spent more time in Colombia, Belarus, or South Africa than you ever spent in your Manhattan studio apartment.

You genuinely missed your days of rookie training at S.H.I.E.L.D. It was a simpler time. Lower stakes. Fewer expectations. More Natasha. You missed your Tsarina.

The newly dubbed Avengers were all over the media, and Natasha was too busy and too high profile to keep working with you on missions. But the world was more fucked up than ever, and hell, isn’t this why you left the Army and joined S.H.I.E.L.D instead? You get to make a bigger difference now. You get more say in what missions you take. Yet, truth be told, you are more miserable than ever. 

You’re lonely. The Army had and has its problems, but you loved your unit and the companionship it brought you. It wasn’t so bad when you were still working with Natasha. But now, you didn’t have either of them.

You trudged through another year and a half of international missions before Deputy Director Hill took pity on you and sent you back to New York.

“Wow,” you commented, looking up at Maria skeptically when she handed you the folder, “a babysitting gig? Should I feel insulted, Hill?”

She rolled her eyes and said, dryly, “Ask Romanoff, she’s the one who volunteered you for the mission.”

You stared at her. “You still talk to Natasha?” you asked, desperately trying to seem nonchalant.

“Sure do, soldier. You want an autograph?” she smirked at you.

“Oh bug off, Maria,” you shook your head. After a moment of contemplation, you sighed and asked, “you got a quinjet ready for me?”

“Wheels up in fifteen minutes,” she confirmed.

“You were that confident that I was going to go, huh?”

Maria wordlessly squeezed your shoulder. Yeah. Who were you kidding.

Natasha wasn’t standing with the welcoming committee when you landed. It hurt. Just a bit. You shook Captain America’s hand anyways and let yourself be led into the Tower. All too aware of the silver chain around your neck, you tried to pay attention as he introduced you to Wanda Maximoff, the woman you were sent here to watch over.

“Nice to meet you,” she greeted with a cautious smile. You responded similarly. Steve kept talking about rooms and schedules but you tuned him out, hyper-fixated on every flash of red in your peripheral. 

When he finally left you to get settled, Wanda tapped your arm softly. “Are you looking for something?” she asked, interrupting your search with probing eyes, “Or someone?”

You began to answer the Sokovian’s question, but at that moment your eyes finally landed on Natasha. You seemed to have caught her off guard and you would have made fun of her for it if she hadn’t immediately turned on her heel and walked away. You swallowed harshly.

“No,” you replied finally, “I guess not.”

It continued like this for weeks. You would search for Natasha in every room, but she made herself scarce. You were confused. She was the one who requested you to be here. So why was she avoiding you now? The rest of the Avengers were nice enough. Even Wanda didn’t seem too upset that the government had sent her a glorified parole officer. 

“I mean,” she told you during dinner one night when the others were on a mission, “I was technically a terrorist. You’re far from the worst thing the U.S. government could have sent my way.”

You laughed softly and patted her hand resting on the table, “I’m flattered, Maximoff.” She blushed slightly and looked down at her plate.

As your conversation continued, neither of you noticed the pair of green eyes gazing somberly at you from the other room.

Natasha was conflicted. When Fury told them that they were going to send an agent to oversee Wanda’s training, Natasha jumped at the chance to bring you back to New York. Years had passed since she last talked to you, and even longer since she had seen you in person. She missed you. Terribly so. But you never reached out. You never showed any sign that you still wanted her as she wanted you.

The boys were all on a mission. Only Natasha, Wanda, and you remained at the compound that night. It was as good of a time as any, Natasha thought, to finally break the ice with you. But when she finally mustered up the courage to find you in the dining room, she found that you weren’t alone. 

Her fists clenched and unclenched at her side in parallel to her heart. She had missed your laugh and amicable nature. At least, she missed it when it was directed at her. You looked good, she thought. Your hair had grown and your shoulders were broader than before. But your left cheek still dimpled when you laughed and you still twirled pasta on your fork exactly two and a half times before bringing it to your mouth.

Natasha skipped dinner that night, opting instead to wait for you outside your bedroom door. She scowled when she saw you approach, dropping Wanda off at her door before giving the other woman a reassuring hug and another smile. She watched you tuck your hands into your hoodie pockets before rounding the corner. You jumped at the figure at your door.

“Natasha!” you startled, “hi?”

Your eyes met hers for the first time in years, shock coloring your features.

Natasha gave you a bittersweet smile and nodded, “Hiya, stranger.”

[did you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded room]

You and Natasha were….friends? Coworkers? Truly, you did not know where you stood with your former lover. Technically, the two of you never broke up. Technically, the two of you never got together. It was all so simple when you were younger. She was your person. You were her person. Need there be anything else?

Apparently, yes.

She at least talked to you now. During training, she would even occasionally offer to spar with you. It was easy to fall back into a comfortable pattern with her when trading blows. You relished the closeness and the taunting comments and the fucking move she does with her legs and– yeah. 

But that was only in the safety of the boxing ring. Usually, she would thank you for the fight and then pad away to the locker rooms alone. You considered following after her the first time. Quickly, your brain reminded you about how she never indicated that you would be welcome. She hadn’t wanted you around for years, your mind helpfully supplied, she probably doesn’t want you around now. 

Whether your brain was right or not, you couldn’t tell. Days had passed since that night in front of your bedroom door. Natasha had hugged you and said she missed you. You’d breathed her in and said you missed her too. Perhaps you were hoping for more. For a kiss. For an acknowledgement that you were still as much her person as she was yours. Neither came. You would wait, you decided.

While you were waiting, the boys finally came back from a successful mission abroad. Tony decided to celebrate with a group dinner before Thor had to leave the next morning. The pizza was ordered and Clint had returned from the liquor store with a few handles of alcohol. Everyone was in good spirits and you sipped your can of Diet Coke merrily enough. 

Next to you, a flushed Wanda gesticulated wildly, giving you an exaggerated performance of her wiggly woos. You laughed in bemusement and she grinned happily at the sound. 

Next to Natasha, Bruce tapped her on the shoulder. She forced herself to look away from you and, absentmindedly, turned to the scientist, “What, Bruce?”

“Are you okay, Nat?” he asked softly.

“I–” she hiccupped.

Bruce frowned. A beat of silence passed. “Natasha, are you drunk?” he asked.

The spy glared at him, but couldn’t hold it for long as her vision blurred. That got Tony’s attention.

“Shit, Widow, you are drunk! Damn, I didn’t think that was possible,” he laughed. 

Thor giggled, “I hope you did not serve yourself the Asgardian mead, Lady Romanoff. It is quite potent for you humans.”

Multiple pairs of eyes glanced from the spy to the half-empty bottle of unlabeled liquor next to her. 

Natasha chuckled, “Oops.”

After Clint confirmed with Thor that his best friend wouldn’t die from the Asgardian alcohol, he promptly brought out the karaoke machine. (“Did you buy that with your own money, Birdman? Because I know you didn’t use my credit card on this bedazzled atrocity.”) 

Seeing everyone’s raised eyebrows, he shrugged, “Nat never gets drunk. She has too much blackmail on me. I am not wasting this opportunity, folks.” 

Thor smashed his cup on the ground and that was that. It was karaoke night in the Avengers Tower.

It got pretty rowdy after that. After Tony’s positively dreadful and, frankly, disrespectful attempt at I Will Always Love You, you and Wanda decided to cleanse the palette. The two of you had a great time, singing a random One Direction love song. You caught Wanda’s eyes during the height of the chorus and cheesily dropped down to your knees. She laughed through the lyrics and pulled you up bashfully.

Cheers greeted the both of you as you hopped down from the table that had become a rudimentary stage. You grinned at everyone, eyes sparkling as you dramatically bowed at the applause. You turned to look at Natasha. Maybe she would sing a song with you next.

But all joy dropped from your face when you registered what you were seeing. Natasha was in Bruce’s lap. She obviously had not paid any attention to your performance, because she was too busy making out with the scientist. Your heart fell to your stomach, queasy even though you had not had a sip of alcohol all night.

Tony leaned over to see what you were looking at and yelled excitedly, “Get it, Widow!” 

Clint and Thor laughed as Natasha raised her middle finger behind her at the commotion. Even Steve chuckled a bit. She eventually slid off of Bruce’s lap and wiped her lips. He had a happy, hopeful look in his eyes, but Natasha didn’t notice as she scanned the room. Her hazy eyes yearned to meet yours, but you were already gone.

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda x reader #fanfic

[msfcatlover]

Trying to design the Reverse!Robins suits, and suddenly realizing Damian & Jon basically traded aesthetics when they became Nightwing & Flamebird.

Shadow!Damian suit: Aiming for sleek while still somewhat disguising his body outline, almost ghostly in Gotham’s dark nights. Primarily black with (dark) red fingerless gloves and red stripes going up the backs of his sleeves to “pool” into a bat in front of a gold circle, plus red laces & trim on his boots, and a couple other pops of gold (the hems of his gloves, the eyelets on his boots, and lightly decorating every one of his weapons.) Uses a hooded cowl & greasepaint on the upper half of his face to hide his identity.

Nightwing!Damian suit: Focused on practical functionality, body armor & lots of pockets make it look almost military, while still not impeding his freedom of movement. Dark blue (nearly black) with silver highlights, though he’d eventually add purple gloves with metal-capped knuckles in tribute to Steph. Hides his identity with a neck gaiter & black domino mask with white lenses. Wears their shared symbol (the House of El diamond, with a pair of feathered wings spread out over the edges) on his back in silver.

Superboy!Jon suit: Leans hard into his boyish charm, aims to be disarming by looking almost like an ordinary kid. Blue sleeveless Superman suit (slightly darker than normal) with a bright white S, worn beneath jeans, sneakers, and a plain zip-up hoodie (worn open, so the S is still visible.) As he got older and became one of the co-leaders of the Titans, the rattier jeans got traded out for dark skinny jeans, the sneakers for work boots, the undersuit got a few shades darker, he added long sleeves with fingerless gauntlets worn on top, and the hoodie mostly stayed tied around his waist until he found a civilian who would be comforted by it (the hoodie can be any color at all.)

Flamebird!Jon suit: Leans way more into his kryptonian heritage, in the “the Superman suit is inherently alien, and that’s why it fits like that and Clark can get in & out of it seemingly easily” way. Black with gold panels on the sides, gold soles on the shoes, with their shared symbol in (flame) red on the chest. Also wears red gauntlets and a red domino mask (to match Damian’s) though Jon’s mask doesn’t have lenses and he wears black greasepaint behind it (which only makes Jon look more alien, when you think about it.)

.

I did not do (most of) that on purpose. It was only when I realized how closely they mirrored eachother ( [black, gold, red, “otherworldly” sort of look] vs [blue, white/silver, very “grounded,” with a single pop of bright color] ) that I decided to lose the red in Jon’s Superboy design. Just... they straight-up traded aesthetics, and I did not plan that.

(For the record they didn’t either, and I’m pretty sure they don’t even notice. Damian just wanted something more functional & less reliant on a utility belt, while Jon wanted to embrace his heritage more.)

#reverse!robins #supersons #superbatfam #reverse superbatfam #jonathan kent #damian wayne #jon kent #damian al ghul #jon el #superboy #robin #nightwing damian #nightwing!damian #nightwing damian wayne #nightwing!damian wayne #flamebird jon #flamebird jon kent #flamebird!jon #flamebird!jon kent #flamebird jonathan kent #flamebird!jonathan kent #reverse robins #reverse robins au #reverse batfam #my writing #mine #// #There will almost certainly never be art for this because I'm easily frustrated and not very good at drawing #I mean #I'm gonna /try/. But don't expect much.

[floralovebot]

Can you describe a typical day for a specialist at Red Fountain?

Or even for Helia specifically, if that inspires you more haha

And what he prefers to do in his free time

AHHH FUN!!

I'm not sure if you meant canon or headcanons, but canonically, it's implied that the school day starts pretty early at RF. We don't have a specific timeframe, but it seems to start early in the morning, likely anywhere from 5 am to 7 am.

We also know that they serve breakfast and yknow,, probably other meals. It's possible that they have different groups of students eating at different times based on one of Riven's lines in s3. In this scene, he's talking to Helia and how he words it implies that they haven't already talked about it that day.

"Could you believe the slops they were serving up for breakfast this morning?" -Riven; Season 3 Episode 21

It's also possible that Riven and Helia just didn't sit together though alhdg

They have proper classes (in a classroom writing notes), but they also have a lot of hands-on training and outside training exercises. There also seems to be a period where a few students gather in one courtyard and practice different things.

Classes likely end in the afternoon, but missions can easily go into the night, and we often see the specialists up at late hours.

"... right now, [but] it's the middle of the night!" -Bloom about calling Sky, however, he was awake because they were on a mission; Season 3 Episode 18

Most likely, an average day at Red Fountain is probably very similar to real life military academies. They have strict schedules that include some lectures, a lot of training, fake exercises, and repairing the ships. Then obviously there's the occasional mission.

But enough about that time FOR HELIAAAAAA akjdhgkjahdg

We know that Helia obviously likes to do art, write poems, and meditate. I headcanon that he also enjoys yoga (he's canonically very flexible!), reading, and diying furniture. Not in the Cringe "paint everything white" millennial way, but in the Cool woodwork and restoring antiques way. I can see him making little wooden animals with like a pocket knife. I also think he's the kind of person who rearranges his entire room at like three in the morning but that's not really a hobby aldhg

#answered #obsessed with helia and its not a secret #another day of wishing we had more info on cloud tower and red fountain #the bits we get are nice and again i Know its not about them and its perfectly normal that we know more about alfea #but Still

[obitv]

i apologize if u have already posted this and i missed it / forgot but do u have descriptions for the upp? like their appearances n whatnot … iwould like to view them

I HAVENT BUT I DO KNOW!!! i made mary in a picrew but i can never find ones that have exactly what i want so i give up but . here ^_^

mary - long straight very light brown hair, green eyes, around 5'5-5'6. she wears lots of outdoorsy clothes and practical things so thick jackets, hking boots, anything with a lot of pockets, etc. wears her hair tied back most of the time and usually has some sort of hairband or scarf keeping it out of her eyes. she does like cardigans too though and she has a collection of skirts and resses she wears but they arent very good for ghosthunting. she doesnt wear makeup but she is good at it!! lots of earthy tones, nothing bright. she totally has a buzzcut at some point but i have no idea where in the timeline that goes considering the rest of the time its past her shoulders

cory - very short curly dark brown hair (hes naturally blond but hes got the aesthetic going on), more greyish-blue eyes, 5'8 or so but he slouches a lot. tends to wear darker clothes but he does own a lot of very bright shirts and such for contrast. he tries not to stand out as much as he can in school because without the upp and other deadwood kids he would be tormented by other students. i imagine bc of his strong Sight and a few quirks of how that works he wears sunglasses or something similar to those tinted lenses for colourblindness to hide how his eyes glaze over a lot if hes not focusing hard enough. got that kinda punk/skater look but a lot less cool and more trying to copy what other people wear that isnt high maintenance

dara - i have the most clear visual for him because hes based entirely off a guy in my year so while i unfortuantely cannot show pictures i can describe him. IRISH. VERY short almost military cut ginger hair some freckles but not as pale as he could bc bc hes a sports guy he gets out a lot more than anyone else. wears jerseys and halfzips and shorts in whatever their school colours would be sorry i dont know what american sports clothes are. other than that yeah he just dresses like a normal guy. around 6'1. probably more on the sweatpants and tshirt and jacket type of guy rather than jeans and hoodie though

abby - sterotypical american cheerleadergirl. 5'1, super long blonde hair that she has up in some sort of bun or braid most of the time, light brown eyes? very minimal makeup but she has that always perfect look to her. shes also a ballet dancer though so shes a lot stronger than anyone would expect from her (probably teaches some small things to mary in theiir spare time. i want them to bond). while in school shes always got that meangirls perfection colour-coordinated outfits vibe as Soon as she gets back to deadwood shes just Some Girl. doesnt want to get in trouble with her parents or her school friends for destroying her Approved Clothes she probably borrows a lot of mary and corys clothes for going out and has a special collection of practical clothes for those adventures. its not that she dislikes the way she dresses in school its just that deadwood is such a boring town that she'd look out of place like that. if the upp were just chilling together she'd wear her own clothes though

william - same as canon, probably? pretty much his getup from season1. i dont get to ave as much fun with him i think his hair is a lot longer back in deadwood though (it gets to that length again after the timeskip once he relaised he can make his hair grow as fast as he wants bc wisp powers or some shit, but when he'd started in the prime defenders it was suggested he cut his hair or tie it back in fights since longer hair can be dangerous), probably almost to his shoulders. lot of dark colours but unlike cory who does black and one bit of colour he just goes for any dark tones mixed together

michael also maybe exists but i feel like michael is more of an experience than a person so like. he can be whatever. whether or not he exists is debatable

#mailing list #i did not think i would write this much. #seraphex #deadwood #unwitness protection program