#why use english when you can use old tongue instead?

[forlorn-crows]

And You Know That It Takes Two

Rating: E for Explicit

Relationship(s): Copia/Dewdrop

Tags: transitional period between era iv and era v, banter, slice of life, first time, first kiss, handjobs. beta'd AND correctly translated italian!

Words: 3731

Summary: “Well, I do. Of course I do,” he assures the ghoul. “Quite fond of you all, actually. It was, admittedly, a little rocky when we first met. But.” There’s that heh Dew was expecting just moments before. “Here we are, no?”

When Copia starts rubbing his thumb up and down the inside of his knee, Dew’s brain stops working. His gaze zeros in to the fingers splayed across the side of his thigh, so foreign, so bare, so pink against the black of his casual uniform pants. His mind is full of static and all he can hear is his own blood pumping through his head. But there’s a weird something tugging in his ribcage; something new yet old, unnamed but familiar.

special thanks to @miasmaghoul for beta'ing and @foxybouquet for the italian translations ♡

Read on AO3 or under the cut:

EDIT: now with ART from the fabulous @noahl-art. merci beaucoup, nono!! find his full artwork here

“D’you think Lucifer would want us to have black mass every Saturday?” Dew pokes the wooden arm of Copia’s chair with the toe of his boot. “Shouldn’t we be exercising our sinful wiles instead of listening to you drone on about the Dark One?” 

Caro: dear

Stai bene?: (Are) you okay?

Ti piace?: Do you like this?/Does this feel good?

Merdaccia infernale: (roughly) infernal fucking shit. Closest to "unholy shit".

Proprio così: That’s it.

Copia tugs on a scrap of paper trapped beneath the ghoul’s thigh. “You do plenty of that on your off time, my ghoul,” he teases. He looks over his reading glasses, offering a smirk. Dew can hear the unspoken eh? at the end of his sentence, so much so he can’t help rolling his eyes and smirking back. 

“How would you know, old man?” Dew fires back, flicking the hem of Copia’s trousers with his tail. He leans in closer. Elbows resting on his slightly spread knees until his face is level with the anti-pope’s. “Listening in on your free time?” The fire ghoul smiles wickedly, giving him an obvious once over. He cocks his head and bites his tongue between his teeth, waiting for an answer. 

Copia’s face rosies a bit, but he returns to his chicken scratch. He jots down a few words before he mutters: “I am sure you do not fantasize your Papa spying on you, caro.” 

“Maybe I don’t.” A lie. “Anyway, I think Rain’s loud enough to hear across the fuckin’ abbey. Probably have a soundtrack of water ghoul moans to lull you to sleep every other night,” Dew snickers. 

Copia just shakes his head with an amused sigh and continues taking notes. Little chunks of writing in the margins of photocopies of Latin texts, scrawling in both Italian and English in a little notebook off to the side. Dew’s struck with just how patient this man is, endlessly so. He can get crabby on tour, just like any of them, restless and tired, but he really is kind to him and his pack. 

The fire ghoul hums thoughtfully and returns to his upright position. Leaning back into the circles of bare desk he cleared earlier for his hands. “Do you get tired of putting up with us, Papa?” he asks casually. 

“Dewdrop,” Copia says with a measured tone. He puts his pen down, and his glasses too, looking up at his lead guitarist and steepling his fingers. They’re devoid of gloves, Dew notices in passing, his nails neatly trimmed and his skin smooth and humanly wrinkly. “We have been working together for how many years now?”

Dew shrugs. “A few.”

“Si, quite a few, hm?” Copia agrees. He swivels his chair so his body faces Dew more directly and places a gentle hand on his knee. “Why then, my ghoul, would you think I am ‘putting up with you,’ as you put it?”

“Don’t tell me you actually like us,” Dew says sarcastically. But Copia’s hand is warm on his knee, and he’s trying not to focus too much on how he’s looking at him right now, all soft eyes and a worried crease in his brow. 

“Well, I do. Of course I do,” he assures the ghoul. “Quite fond of you all, actually. It was, admittedly, a little rocky when we first met. But.” There’s that heh Dew was expecting just moments before. “Here we are, no?”

When Copia starts rubbing his thumb up and down the inside of his knee, Dew’s brain stops working. His gaze zeros in to the fingers splayed across the side of his thigh, so foreign, so bare, so pink against the black of his casual uniform pants. His mind is full of static and all he can hear is his own blood pumping through his head. But there’s a weird something tugging in his ribcage; something new yet old, unnamed but familiar. 

He’s quiet for so long that Copia clears his throat and gives his knee a polite pat before taking his hand away. He makes to go back to his notes, but Dew mourns the loss of his hand immediately. His pen barely touches the pages before the fire ghoul sobers up and inhales sharply. 

“Uh,” he blurts out stupidly, shaking his head and squinting his eyes at Copia. Unsure what to say but determined to say something. “You mean that?” Immediately he wants to crawl back into himself—back into the Pit, even—for sounding so small. Vulnerable. 

“Yes, I do,” Copia says quietly, genuinely. He taps his pen against the paper, little dots of black littering the line beneath his skip this? note. Instead of resuming his annotations, he sets the pen down once more, looking up at the ghoul perched atop his desk. His white eye is suddenly piercing in the lamplight, and he’s looking at him like he can see more than just the ghoul sitting in front of him.

“Well, I guess we’re . . . fond of you too, or whatever you wanna call it,” he mocks, aiming for levity. Dew’s tail flicks, ruffling the hem of Copia’s pants again.

Copia chuckles. “Well, that is good then,” he smiles.

Dew hums. Offers a one-sided smile in return. Easy. He could leave it at that; resume the relaxed banter about sermons and his new duties as Papa while Copia gets increasingly tired and/or annoyed and shoos him away with a chocolate truffle in hand (the ones he keeps stashed in his desk drawer for evenings like this). 

He could. But in the same moment, he decides he’s tired of tip-toeing around the idea of what this man is to him. He wades out into the waters, throwing a line.

“Is that . . . the only thing you feel for us?” he says at length, quieter. He scoots his thigh closer to the anti-pope’s hand. Encouraging him to touch again, if he wants. The sudden heat in his belly hoping he does. He wades a little deeper. “For me?” 

Now it’s Copia’s turn to falter, fingers twitching at the fabric of Dew’s trousers. He looks down at Dew’s thigh, then back up to his face. Searching his copper eyes for something, anything, his thoughts as loud as if Dew were a quintessence ghoul. 

“I . . .” he trails off, a failed start. He clears his throat. “I am, as they say, only human. So there are, perhaps, other . . . things. Si.” 

Dew grabs his hand gently, placing it just above where it was moments ago, confidence building. “Fantasies, maybe?” 

“Dewdrop—”

“For how bold you are on stage, you sure are fuckin’ shy in private, Papa.”

Copia huffs a laugh, moving his hand tentatively along Dew’s thigh. “Eh . . . reserved, maybe. But I don’t know about shy, my ghoul.” He shuffles his chair so he’s situated back between the fire ghoul’s dangling legs. 

Dew smirks. “See? Can call me motherfucker in front of thousands of screaming girls, but it’s my ghoul in here.”

“Ah, but that is the difference. They do not get the privilege of seeing you offstage.” A beat.  “Though, I imagine they would do a lot of things for that privilege,” he mutters. 

Dew bites his tongue in asserting that he is, in fact, a motherfucker offstage too. Instead, he tilts his head so his ashy hair cascades over his shoulder and spreads his legs further, hooking a foot in the arm of Copia’s chair and tugging it closer. He’s baring all of himself now, literally and figuratively. Potentially risking his position, too, if this goes south. 

But by the look on the anti-pope’s face, they’re both too deep to swim back now. 

“And what’re you gonna do with that privilege, Papa?”

“You’re asking?” he deflects, putting the other hand on the opposite thigh.

“If you don’t touch me in the next five seconds, old man, I swear to Satan—”

“Like this?” Copia smooths his hand up the inside of Dew’s thigh, running along the seam of his pants until he reaches where the ghoul’s started to chub up. His breath hitches, head tilting back. 

“Yeah,” he breathes. He looks back down at his hand, tucking chin to chest as he watches those fingers press just so, right where the tip of his dick sits already sticky in his boxers. He bites his lip with a stifled noise.

“Long time we’ve danced around each other, I think,” Copia says. Dew just nods, flexing his hips into his fingers to get more friction. Copia presses more firmly, taking the hint. Drawing a firm line down the ridge of his clothed shaft. 

“Humans and ghouls, well . . .” he trails off, looking up at Dew.

“You’ve thought about it,” he replies simply. 

“Of course. Of course I have, caro. I–” he laughs, shakes his head in disbelief. “I mean, look at you.” He stops himself, color rising to his cheeks. He drops his gaze, focusing back on the hand on Dew’s fly.

The fire ghoul watches him trace a finger around the button before reaching down himself, popping it open. “What about me?” he asks softly, inviting. Shifting his hips again to encourage him to continue. 

“Not just fishing for compliments, I hope,” Copia teases lightly, a little bit of that stage persona shining through as he drags the zipper down.

“That’s not what—hh-oh.” He cuts himself off with a stuttered breath of a moan, Copia’s hand having reached past his fly and into his pants to pet at the dot of wetness sticking his boxers to his tip. The look of pure curiosity—wonder, really—on the man’s face as he feels him up has his stomach flipping. “Fuck, keep doing that.”

“You tell me what you like, my ghoul, and I will do it,” he whispers. 

Dew groans as another bead of precum blurts out into his boxers, wet at just his words. “Keep teasing it,” he breathes. “Shit, see how wet you can get it.” He twitches under Copia’s fingers as he wraps his hand around his clothed cock, thumb swiping back and forth over the head. Firm, but just light enough that it makes Dew keen for more. 

Copia continues the little motions, over and over until Dew’s underwear clings to him, saturated with pre. The friction of it and the intensity of Copia’s gaze on him has him dizzy, wanting. The man’s thumb presses over his slit, and he can’t help his eyes rolling back, thighs twitching towards each other. 

“F-fuck,” he stutters. 

Copia rubs his other hand over Dew’s thigh, soothing. “Stai bene? Good?” 

The fire ghoul nods, hair falling off his shoulders to frame his face. “More than,” he groans. He bites his lip, bucking into Copia’s hand. “Again—do it agai—yes, Satanas, yes.”

The anti-pope presses into his slit again, this time dragging the pad of his thumb along the ridge with even pressure. Humming as he works it back and forth. It’s so sensitive, so instantly overwhelming that Dew has to consciously restrain himself from gouging his claws into the wood. He lets his head drop back, facing the ceiling and biting his lip to stave off the rush of arousal that threatens to make him spill in his pants. 

Below him, Copia sighs. “Beautiful, caro,” he comments. 

Dew half-snorts, half-groans, bringing his chin back down to his chest. “You flatter me,” he says with an eye roll. 

“They say it gets one everywhere, no?” 

“If by ‘everywhere’ you mean ‘in my pants’.”

“If that is where you want me.”

Dew sucks his teeth, scoffs a little in disbelief. Eyebrows twitching upwards when Copia fingers the elastic of his boxers, blunt nails scratching at the peach fuzz on his stomach. He can’t get a grasp on the anti-pope’s tone, switching so fast between charming and soft it makes his head spin. He’s seen both moods separately, of course, fired back his own quips with a silver tongue or begrudgingly accepted praise and a head pat for a productive rehearsal. But having a cocktail of both leaves him with mental whiplash.

The hand making his dick wet probably isn’t helping in that department.

So he nods instead, helping the man shimmy down the waistband of his boxers to snuggle it under his balls, freeing his aching length. Dew hisses at the cool air of the room breezing over the slick-coated head—though, it’s replaced with a puff of hot air when Copia breathes: 

“May I?” 

Dew nods again, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows as a silent duh. Copia chuckles at that, scooting a little closer. He smooths his other hand up the fire ghoul’s thigh, up, up, up until he stops at his hip and rests his palm there, forearm dropping to sit on top of his leg. Dew’s stuck watching its ascent and misses the moment the anti-pope reaches for him, wrapping his fingers gently around the base of his cock and stroking upwards. 

“Lucifer,” he chokes out. He snaps his gaze to where their skin meets and watches his dick kick hard in Copia’s fist, more precum welling up in the slit. 

“Ti piace?” Copia continues to stroke slowly, not immediately translating as earlier. His accent curls around Dew’s eardrums, the Italian twisting with foreignness and short-circuiting his language synapses. He shakes his head, begging the small box of Italian in his brain labeled ‘Papa’s Nonsense Words’ to make sense of the phrase.  

He blinks at Copia’s expectant gaze. “Huh?” he asks eloquently, forcing the word through an embarrassing moan.

“Does this feel good?” he supplies, nodding toward his hand. 

The fire ghoul stares at the man’s hand, now wet with his own slick as it glides up and down. When his brain finally catches up to him, he barks a bewildered laugh. “I’m gonna have to learn more fuckin’ Italian for this,” he mumbles.

“Oh.” Copia laughs too, realizing his little slip-up. Dew’s shoulders shake with his own renewed laughter. Giggles passing between the two as if they were twelve-year-olds who just pulled off a prank on their teacher, not a fifty-something leader of a Satanic church jerking off a near immortal hellbeast turned quasi-human. 

But the shared laughter is familiar. Comforting, in a way. Something to dissolve that final layer of caution that sat like oil on water between them. 

“You are an endless delight, my ghoul,” Copia sighs, huffing out a last chuckle. 

“I’ll give you an endless—uuh-nholy ff–fuck.” Copia runs his thumb over the slit of Dew’s cock, and his sentence is reduced to an eye-rolling moan. He grabs hold of the anti-pope’s forearm that rests on his leg, fingers digging into the muscle as he drools out a fat roll of precum. 

Copia hums and smears it around the head, pulling down the foreskin to rub at the sensitive underside. It’s all the courtesy he’s granted before the man goes back to stroking him in earnest, skirting over the head with each downward pass and tightening around the base when he pulls up.  

Dew grips his forearm tighter, thighs jumping with each tease of his frenulum. “Faster,” he begs. “And tighter. Fuck, feels s’ good.” 

“Merdaccia infernale, are you always so . . .” Copia shakes his head, letting the room fill with the lewd, creamy sounds of Dew’s slick-soaked cock.

“Wet?” Dew supplies as a choked-off noise. “Not al–hah–always. Not since—” his eyes roll back again, too caught in pleasure to be completely coherent. “The–shit–the—” Dew flails his hand in some nonsensical gesture. 

“Si, si.” The man understands without further elaboration that he means his elemental transition. That, despite the effective evaporation of his water, the born-again fire ghoul still carries traits from his original alignment—including dribbling pre like a leaky tap.

But Copia knows, doesn’t need him to explain or elaborate. Just tightens his grip and speeds his hand, looking up at Dew with a gaze that cuts him right down to the core. Intense, yet soft and admiring. Desire flickering just behind that. 

“Shit,” Dew hisses, letting his eyes close fully. Sinking into it. His hips are moving of their own accord now, little twitches that meet each downstroke, just barely fucking into Copia’s fist. It’s so much better than it has right to be, but Dew doesn’t care. All he cares about is the way Copia’s hand feels on his dick, the way his other hand grips his hip, the way his breathing grows heavier and tickles the fine hairs at the base of his dick, how it chills the wetness at the tip only to be warmed by his fingers within the same second. 

“Oh, oh, ohhhh fuck, Papa, fuck.” His pleasure heightens suddenly, the backs of his thighs going pleasantly tingly and his toes curling in his boots. He can feel it starting to build, balls drawing closer to his body with every stroke. 

“Close?” Copia whispers, gripping Dew’s hip tighter and shifting in his chair. He grunts a little, no doubt filled out in his slacks too. Dew can’t confirm from this angle, especially not with the way his vision blurs, doubles even. But he has to be, if his wavering voice is anything to go by. 

Dew throbs at just the idea of his cock straining against his zipper, balls heavy and squished between his thighs as he watches the fire ghoul come apart. Neglecting it as he showers Dew with undivided attention. He’s assaulted with the mental image of Copia in those tight, white pants from his Cardinal days, absolutely everything on display, and he groans. 

He’s shaking now, stomach jumping as his breath starts to quicken. He’s sure his eyes are wild as he looks at the man below him, whining through his teeth as his hand moves faster, faster. Dew watches Copia bite his lip and look down at the movements of his hand, and the sudden fantasy image of that mouth kissing the tip of his cock makes him grip the anti-pope’s forearm until it threatens to bruise, nearly doubling over with the swell of impending orgasm.

Dew needs him. He needs him so badly. 

“Gonna cum—fuck, please,” he moans, breath quickening to shortened gasps. “Kiss me—please, m’ gonna—Papa—” Dew grasps at the man’s shirt collar, pulling at it to get him to stand. Dragging him in by the shoulders and kissing him fiercely, whining when Copia groans into his mouth and pumps him even faster. The scent on him is instantly intoxicating; notes of neroli and patchouli, dull wax from the black patches of makeup, the barest hint of incense smoke underneath. All pressed directly into his nostrils where Dew’s nose smushes against his. 

“Proprio così,” Copia mumbles, encouraging. His other arm loops around to cradle him between the shoulder blades, hand threading through his hair to grasp and hold as he kisses him deeply. That little bit of tension on Dew’s scalp sends a zing of heat right to his dick, and he’s moaning like a whore as he scrabbles at Copia’s shirt, ready to fall over the edge.

“Fucking. Fu–uhh, uh, uhh—” Dew loses all sense of words as he clings to him, mouth dropping open and tongue drooling over Copia’s lips. He cums hard, spilling over his hand with a shuddering groan, bucking into that wet fist until he’s risking sliding off the edge of the desk. He doesn’t, of course, braced and embraced by Copia’s body as he is. 

Dew’s head drops to his shoulder as he rides out the seemingly endless spasms. Far too many for a handy, if he’s being honest. But the anti-pope works him over until he’s milked dry, whispering more words into his hair that he doesn’t understand and rubbing a soothing hand over his back. 

“Shit,” he rasps. After a few more moments he peeks down at his lap—lucid enough now to mind his horns—where his black pants are now streaked with white, Copia’s hand resting on his fly also coated in the stuff. He shakes his head softly and laughs. 

“Got me good, old man.”

“Dewdrop . . .” His tone is pleading, breathless. Dew lifts his head and the hand on his back migrates to the side of his face, caressing softly. He leans into it as he looks at Copia, his face flushed and a look of pure want and adoration in his eyes. “Please, caro.”

He doesn’t need to ask what he needs, eyes flicking down to the tent in his pants and back up again. Dew nods. Moves the hands around Copia’s neck to the back of his head, pulling him in. 

It’s less feverish this time. Softer and slower, but far from chaste. Idly he wonders if any of the others have had him like this: privately in his office, a mere exchange of something fleeting, or hot and heavy in a storage closet after a show, frantic and adrenaline-fueled. 

If any of them have, they’ve never told. He’ll go back to the ghoul wing smelling of him, unless he runs straight to the shower. Douse himself in scalding hot water until he can barely smell himself.

But he won’t. 

Dew slides into the space in front of Copia, ignoring the mess on his dick as he presses close to the man. Licking into his mouth and sliding their tongues together as Copia’s hands start to roam. The fire ghoul slots a thigh between his legs as his palms reach his waist, pressing against his crotch. 

Copia whines in his throat, twisting his fingers into the fabric of Dew’s shirt. He’s hard as steel against his leg, throbbing when Dew presses harder and tugging at him like he could still get closer than he already is. 

“Sit down,” Dew rumbles. He breaks the kiss and holds his gaze as he presses on his shoulders, easing him back into the desk chair. Down, down, down until Dew looms over him. He smirks slightly, confidence and ease returning to him as their positions switch. Running his thumb along the painted upper lip then dragging down to the bare one. 

Wordlessly, the fire ghoul sinks to his knees. Scoots Copia to the edge of his chair so he can spread his legs. He smooths his palms up his thighs, his infernal heat seeping through the trousers. He watches Copia’s face as he pets at him, cupping and rubbing at his cock through the layers of fabric. The man’s chest heaves. Hands gripping the wooden arms of his chair. Exhaling shakily as Dew traces a claw around the button on his fly.

“Allow me,” Dew purrs.

#the band ghost #fanfic #the band ghost fanfic #ghost fanfic #dewdrop ghoul #cardinal copia #papa emeritus iv #copia x dewdrop #dewdrop x copia #papa x dewdrop #dewdrop x papa #copia/dewdrop #dewdrop/copia #papa/dewdrop #dewdrop/papa #CORRECTLY translated italian #dews gonna go back to the dorms and theyre gonna smell copia on him and then EVERYONES gonna want him

[jimblejamblewritings]

Hey, you could do an Edward Cullen x reader where the reader is his blood singer but, unlike Bella, isn't obsessed with him? As if he really had to work hard to win her over? (sorry if i wrote something wrong, english is not my mother tongue)

Taking It Slow

You dropped Jessica and Angela off at Jess’ car still in the parking lot of the dress shop. They were leaving Port Angeles early while you were going to meet your brother for dinner later. Sometimes you wondered why you agreed to move in with your brother. Well, you knew. It was either go live with your older brother or move to Portugal during your last years of high school. You learned French in school, not Portuguese. Forks, Washington was your only real choice. 

There was still some time before your brother got out of classes and met you. It was nice of him to let you use his car, stating he could take the bus instead. With time to kill, you decided to grab a coffee and just walk around. A gasp left your mouth when you ran into someone. 

“I’m so sorry. Oh, hi, Edward.” 

You looked up to see Edward Cullen, your… you didn’t know what to call him. You guys weren’t really friends. But what exactly were you supposed to call the vampire you knew who claimed your blood was made for them? Aside from telling him that it wasn’t exactly a compliment you were a blood singer, you didn’t know what to do with Edward. He wasn’t mean. On the contrary, he was a decent guy. But you weren’t the type to just fall for someone because they were hot and nice. Plus, you didn’t like your guys having all the girls falling for him. 

Edward scratched at the back of his head. “Hi. Oh, I wasn’t following you, by the way.” 

You pursed your lips for a moment. “I wasn’t exactly worried about that.” 

“Right, sorry, I’m kind of guessing. I promised not to read your mind so I’m not really sure anymore.” 

“You could just ask.” 

“Right, right. Uh, right, do you want another coffee?” 

“I’m actually meeting my brother for dinner.” 

“Well can I walk you?” 

“Sure.” 

The two of you were side by side with each other. You could feel Edward twitching next to you. The vampire wasn’t sure what was going on with him. He had never planned on getting close to you but he couldn’t help it. It was impossible not to want to be near his blood singer. He felt awkward and unsure about everything he did when it came to you. He wasn’t even sure if you were still single because you knew of his feelings for you or if you just didn’t like any of the boys that asked you out. 

Your brother raised an eyebrow when he saw you coming up the street. A sigh left your mouth. He was going to ask about Edward and you just didn’t have the patience to answer anything. You gave a wave to your walking companion and entered the restaurant. Like you expected, your brother didn’t stop asking questions. He wouldn’t even give it a rest when he dropped you off at school. 

You always got to school a little early because of your brother’s classes. You blinked in surprise at a very tall and rather pale man standing next to your locker. Awkwardly, Edward stuck out a hand. He was clutching a small bouquet of flowers. 

“I don’t know what your favorite is but I thought these daisies were nice.” 

You took them from him. “Thank you, Edward.” 

He nodded, walking off. You held the bouquet in the crook of your elbow as you grabbed some books. Not even a minute later, Edward came back. You watched him take in a breath he didn’t need. Edward pointed at the flowers until you got the hint to give them back. He thrusted them out in front of you once more and you had to stop yourself from laughing. How was a century old vampire so awkward in life? 

“I want to ask you out. Do you want to go on a date with me?” 

“Where?” 

“I… I haven’t thought that far.” 

“Well, when, then?” 

“I haven’t thought that far.” 

You took the flowers back from him. “It’s a Teacher Work Day on Wednesday. You pick me up at seven, we drive to Seattle. Breakfast at the Original Starbucks and then we go to the waterfront.” 

Edward was flustered, muttering a small okay. You laughed as you watched him walk away. This was certainly going to be an interesting date. 

PERMANENT TAGLIST:

@venomsvl @peaches-n-sunscreen @summerellaz @supernaturallover2002 @sambucky8 @9daykrisr @thebitchinleo @23victoria @scarlets-widow @pagetpagetpagetpaget @lovexnatasha @awesomebooklover17 @1234-angelika @imatrisk @blackreaderatrisk @princess-jules47 @alexloveskili @a-marie-a @siriuslysirius1107​ @i-have-no-life-charlie

#my requests #edward cullen x reader #twilight fic #twilight #edward cullen

[byghostface]

//long rambling

There is a vent in the last part (about pro ship:/+ wired shipping + block list) it's naturally negative so reading at your own risk.

So in the new Batman and Robin issue #7 Nika's sister making an appearance, got me thinking of other possibilities for sibling characters to come back.

Mostly I’m thinking about Respawn since he is Joshua Williamson's own character. And He made Respawn appeared in the last issue of Robin(2021), he also brought back Mara in that run too (just some appearance in the later issue).

And now Joshua Williamson is writing Batman and Robin, so naturally he can bring some characters back in this run. He had said in an interview that he might have figured out a way(try) to bring back Maya.

Throwback to 2022 of this old wip/art I made, is about what I think the emo teens of Lazarus squad dynamic would look like.

I imagine Nika and Respaw are irritated/tolerate with each other but would stay for Damian because Nika is Damian's girlfriend and they want to stick together. Meanwhile, Damian likes to include his half-brother in some fun activities (Respawn is acting reluctant bc of his own issues but he actually likes to have friends and feel include).

I haven’t finished this art bc I was going to add more wips (with other characters like Rose and Hawke) to make it a post. I didn't finish this art back then bc I was afraid Talia fans would be mad at me for drawing Respawn.

Trust me, I hate that Talia gets associated with Deathstroke like this, but I think Respawn is a confused/mistreated teen character and Damian (bless his heart and soul) still wants to be his brother regarding the whole mess. I will explain/talk more about my thoughts on Respawn as a character and his situations once I finish these drawings and get ready to post them.

Writing/typing words is harder than drawing for me personally. Drawing is like channeling my energy into a picture and forming an atmosphere and hopefully people will understand what thoughts and feelings I was trying to convey. Writing is using more brain powers to choose the correct and cohesive words, so people would not misunderstand what I'm talking about. Especially when English is not my first language, and even so I normally don't talk(write) much in my mother tongue either…(I'm not a quick thinker, it took me a longer time to think things through, writing literally exhausted me physically and mentally more than drawing.)

It doesn't mean I don't enjoy writing, it's just not my first choice to convey thoughts… but considering I can't draw everything I have in my mind and it takes even longer time to finish any art, I just need to write down things first from now on. Tumblr is the only place I can think of that has this longer text feature blog post and I'm more familiar with this platform format. So I will still be here posting my fan content.

.

(↓Vent, if you want to avoid being block by me then read down below.)

I must say I will forever hate respawn x flatline as ship, cus I know who started this ship and their reasons behind it—Don’t let the new character develop naturally as the story goes, let’s put them in made-up weird situations first so I can prop up my own ship!😍 And get both of the new characters out of the way, since no one would defend them so I can fanon the hell out of them by making them look bad all around!🤞 (What if I stone you first hand🪨🪨💥)

And I will continue to dislike/against any shipping Damian's sibling to Nika. I simply don't like the unnecessary sibling conflict just for romance tropes! So go away boooo I hate you‼️ Not to mention the ignoring of different age range multi-ship hide behind poly… that's straight up proshipping I hate you even more!!👎

Also for people who said Nika should be crush on Damian's mother instead of him… I hate you twisted proshipper rotten smooth brain‼️‼️ She dating a boy her age and has mutual connections with him, why would she crush on her boyfriend's mother instead?? Just because Nika is a big fan of Talia??? So you telling me young ppl can't idolize adults normally without being labeled as romantic nowadays huh??( Not saying you can't crush on adults, but why crush on your boyfriend's mom? ) Your weird ass mind is showing with this ass hc be fr. Again, why would you imagine that? You just wanted to push a fake narrative of Nika being wired so you could have an excuse to make Talia and Damian dislike her (which is not true), but in fact is YOU are the weird one projecting your twist thoughts/hate onto Nika‼️💥🪨🪨

I will start to block ppl who are shipping/liking respawn x flatline (+proshipper) and STILL interact with me, read the room!! My art is not for you weirdos‼️Go away BOOOO💥 🪨🪨🪨💥💥

Can't believe I need to type this all out cuz some of you weirdos will still do these things and think is okay to interact with me and my post/showing in my notifications BOOO👎🪨🪨💥🪳🪳🪳🩴🩴🩴

(sorry for venting about random weirdos/Nika haters again, and thanks for reading.)

#siblings #sibling characters #writing and drawing #flatline #nika #flatline dc #mila #talia #damian #maya #mara #respawn #respawn dc #anti respawn x flatline #anti respine #anti proship #block list #dc comics #born to draw but was forced to write to be better at defending my favorite characters #/j about being forced to write cuz I do like writing #it's just more difficult than drawing for me

[yunaanoona]

Dirty secrets~

Read at your own risk. I won't be responsible for any actions you take!

Characters: Xiao, Childe (separate)

synopsis: Maybe your lovely boyfriend, are not so innocent afterall

CW- Dacriphilia (childe), Panty sniffing (xiao), mention of sex (childe),

A/N: awful english, bad grammars, english is not my first language bare with me- :-;

.

.

Xiao

Panty sniffing/stealing

•This man is pure and innocent, he is new to all of this dating things. He doesn't really know how body hormones function.

•As that said he is 100% a virgin

•You may find it weird even he does. But he can't help himself. Another part of him is needy but another one say that this is so wrong.

•It happened one time when you were showering, him seeing your dirty clothes laying on the ground infront of the bathroom door. Of course being the nice boyfriend he is, he picked it up and about to throw it in with the dirty laundry. Until his eyes landed on your used panties. He doesn't know why but he feels the urge to sniff it. Like some horny 14 years old boy. He almost does it before you open the door.

• "Xiao?-" you were confused, why is your adeptus boyfriend standing like a statue with his back towards you. Before you can question him any further he throw your clothes in your face and disappeared in a blink of a green flash.

Tartaglia/Childe

Polaroids/Lewd pictures (whatever idk-)

•Oooh this man, this motherfucking mann! Dude this fucker is dirty.

•He have a little lewd polaroid of you that he took while you're at 'it', and the truth is you never even know he had it. You're too fuck dumbed to even realized what is going on. Tongue lolling out as you grip the sheets. As he snap the picture, he look down at you ang let out a chuckles. "Oh you're far gone~" seeing you just nods without even knowing what he said his smirk grew even wider. Increasing the pace as his hips snap with yours.

•Definitely place it in his wallet,

•He's just going to the store to buy something, when he was lining up to pay the person behind him took a glance and saw the picture. They just clear their throat and look down at the floor (suddenly its so pretty), and the truth is he knew and is smug about it instead of being embarrass.

•Have jerk off to it and will do it again-

•When he is stress at work he would lock himself in the bathroom and get off to your picture. Hand on his cock, head lolling back, biting his shirt. As he imagine all sorts of things he want to do to you. Oh how pretty you would look, tears streaming down your face, on your knees, as you look up at him with your gorgeous eyes. His grunts and moans echoed through the stalls, cum spurting out. You bet he's going to make his imagination come true once he got home.

#childe smut #xiao smut #genshin men #genshin impact smut #genshin fic #Smut #Dirty secrets #Aether smut #zhongli smut #al haitham smut #genshin fluff #writing #author #fanfic #genshin impact #first smut #aether #headcanons #Genshin head canons #Lemons #Cyno smut #zhongli x reader #xiao x reader #xiao x you #childe x reader #childe x you #dom male reader #sub character

[sleepingdeath-light]

escape artist darling hcs ; yandere clotted cream cookie

requested by ; 🇧🇷 anon (02/07/22)

fandom(s) ; cookie run

fandom masterlist(s) ; hub | specific

character(s) ; clotted cream cookie

outline ; “Hey!!! How are you?

Warning: I'll use female pronouns (she/her) for Reader/Darling (does this REALLY need a warning?)

Can I request yandere Clotted Cream Cookie with a Darling who is a master at escaping? Like... She's pretty smart and can all the time use those techniques to get rid of handcuffs/ropes/chains and open doors without needing a key

Sorry for any spelling mistakes or wrong use of expressions, I'm using Google Translate because my first language is Portuguese and I don't trust my English writing skills

And taking advantage of this ask... Can I be 🇧🇷 anon?”

warning(s) ; yandere!clotted cream, kidnapping, obsessive behaviours

clotted cream cookie had gone to extreme lengths in order to facilitate your observation, capture and containment as his partner — so to have you outsmart and evade his every technique was, to say the very least, something of a slap in the face

rope, chains, hand cuffs, doors locked in seven different ways, guarded rooms around the clock, bars on the windows — no matter what he does it’s all for nought as you always manage to escape him somehow

you outsmarted his coded locks, snuck tools past him to help you break through his equipment, outran the guards he assigned to your room, and managed to hide in plain sight for weeks at a time before he caught up to you again — it seemed the only thing you were unable to do was leave the republic, but even that was because he forced the council’s hand on tightening exports

he loves the chase, loves knowing that you’re able to match and undermine his efforts with your sharp wit and quick thinking, but it was starting to get old — really old, if he was being completely honest with himself

why couldn’t you understand that he just wanted what was best for you? he loves you, wants to protect you, and you running away from him and throwing all of his efforts back in his face wasn’t doing either of you any good

silly girl

his girl — even if you refused to acknowledge as much with all of your rebelliousness

because no matter how many times you escape, no matter how much you try to flee, you’ll always end up back at his home in the end — you’ll give up eventually, it’s just a matter of time

for now he bites his tongue and softens his blows as he punished you for each transgression, sating himself himself that it will all be worth it one day

it will be worth it when you’re his beautiful smiling wife waiting eagerly for him to return home

when you’re there to willingly smother him with affection whilst a small army of little one run about your ankles

when you call him ‘my love’ instead of ‘monster’

when he no longer has to cuff and smack and scold, when he gets to see you smile at him with all of the love he holds for you without any threat or intimidation

when you’re his — and you could have it all if you just stopped running away

don’t you want to be happy?

#sleepingdeath #female reader #yandere x reader #yandere hcs #yandere crk #yandere crk x reader #yandere cookie run #yandere cookie run x reader #yandere clotted cream cookie #yandere clotted cream cookie x reader #clotted cream cookie x reader #crk x reader #cookie run x reader #🇧🇷 anon

[gabessquishytum]

people keep sending in vampire aus and I Cannot Resist

so there is this terrible, terrible YA series called House of Night about an academy for teenagers that were Marked and are turning into vampyres(that's how the authors chose to write it, okay), who are also refered to as the children of Nyx

(tw a little gore and minor character death)

please imagine Surly Teenager Morpheus, freshly Marked, rolling up to the House of Night in London and already Hating Everything.

The Director Dealer's Choice, but why not make it Lucifer? gives him the rundown of how everything works before explaining that every fledgling vamypr gets assigned a mentor

in walks Hob Gadling, who among all those other supernaturally good-looking vampyres looks like Just A DudeTM. He even says "Hey, you already look the part! You're way ahead of me there."

Morpheus doesn't say anything. Partly because he is still grumpy. Partly because Hob Gadling seems strangely familiar.

they leave on their tour of the school which is filled to the brim with stray cats btw. one of them hurls itself into Hob's arms and Hib barely reacts, only curling his arms around it and petting between its ears. "Meet Daniel", Hob says, "He comes and goes as he pleases, but he's friendly."

Morpheus stared into the cat's green eyes, wondering if he'll get scratched if he tried anything, but Daniel lets himself be petted and even purrs for a good minute before running away as sudden as he came

they finish the tour, Morpheus meets his roommate and slowly he settles into his new routine of night classes and trying to get along with a slew of new acquaintaces

there's a few awkward moments during Hob's lessons- like the time he spoke about meeting famous vampyre poet shakespeare and the words "it wasn't like that" sat on the tip of Morpheus' tongue until he nearly bit through his cheek, or when Hob read them a passage from the Canterbury Tales in Middle English and it felt more familiar than the modern one

things are good until a few weeks in, one of Morpheus' classmates' body rejects the change

in the middle of class, they start coughing up blood. it starts pouring from their nose, their eyes, even their ears

they collapse and the teachers have to carry them to the infirmary

it's a harsh reminder that as much as Morpheus has been getting used to this new life, it could end just as quickly

but the worst part?

their blood smelled amazing

vampyres drink blood, that's a fact

but developing a taste for it is something that happens in the third to fourth year. not barely three months in

understandably, Morpheus freaks out. and because he is Morpheus he Does Not Talk About It

not talking about it doesn't help with the hunger though

which may be why the next time someone's body rejects the change, he hides in a janitor's closet

his heart pounds in his chest. the mark on his forehead burns. his stomach is tied in knots

there's scratching at the door- one of the cats- before there are footsteps

"what is it, Daniel?" an all too familiar voice asks

there's nothing Morpheus wants less than to face Hob right now, not when his mentor has been trying his best to get Morpheus to open up, make friends among his classmates, he'll fit right in!

before Morpheus can try and get himself together the door opens and he finds himself staring up into the unfairly handsome face of Hob and a lap full of Cat

"Oh, love", Hob says and folds down next to him

Morpheus should bristle. stand up and leave with his head held high because he is a Son Of Night and is Completely Fine

instead he leans into the embrace Hob offers him, taking in greedy pulls of his scent (sunshine and grassy hills, the musk of an old forest. "not ancient greece", he'd said that first day, "but i like to think 600 years is still quite a respectable age")

Hob nudges him until Morpheus sits between his legs and pulls up the sleeve of his shirt

again, Morpheus should bristle, should fight the arms wrapping around him, that's his teacher for fuck's sake

but he's just so hungry that he lets Hob press a wrist to his mouth and drinks

Oh yeah that’s hot, kinda love the idea of an eldritch teacher/student relationship??

Morpheus being such a precocious little vampire baby who already craves blood, of course he needs a little extra care and attention from his teacher, right? And yeah, Hob starts to pay just a little closer attention - checks in with Morpheus, even comes to see him in his room. He’s coaching Morpheus through the first stages of consuming blood, making sure he isn’t going hungry. Truth is, nothing has tasted as good for Morpheus as Hob did that very first time in the closet. He’s craving blood and specifically he’s craving Hob.

He’s developing quite an embarrassing crush on Hob. And Hob, well… he’s trying to be a good mentor. He’s concerned by Morpheus’s rapid development. And there’s something about the young student that seems kind of familiar to him. When they talk together it’s like they have a history, and it feels weird but… comfortable. Not to mention, Hob got genuinely and uncomfortably turned on that night when Morpheus drank from his wrist. It felt like something hot and powerful was tingling through his entire body, and he’s never ever felt that way before.

Then there’s the time when Hob finds himself really incredibly hungry, he was dumb and skipped a meal. Morpheus doesn’t hesitate: he crawls right into Hob’s lap and tells him to shut up and drink. He can take it. And Hob knows that he shouldn’t take advantage, but he never claimed to be a good man. It feels… so. Good. Like coming home. Holding Morpheus and drinking from him greedily. Like they’ve… done it before. Hmm.

In any case, as much as Hob tries to hold himself back, it’s probably only a matter of time before the mentor/mentee develops into something. A lot more.

#the sandman #dreamling #nsft #cw age gap #cw blood

[oumaheroes]

I'm gonna send you a few, lol. But if you hate the ideas you can just delete them, np. #1: Matt's old iPod from 2008 is full of Nickelback music and Alfred tries to tease him for it. But Matt isn't ashamed bc Nickelback is great and y'all are haters.

I'm not sure this counts as fluff, Anon, but I hope you enjoy a real quick drabble of some bros being bros

Characters: America, Canada

.....................

‘Move.’

‘What?’

‘Move.’

‘Jeez, snippy much,’ Alfred sat up from where he was sprawled along the entire length of Matthew’s sofa and instead twisted to prop his feet on the coffee table, ‘Where are your manners, boy?’

‘Dad doesn’t sound like that.’

‘And who said that was supposed to be the old grump?’

‘The terrible English accent you just did?’

‘Damn. Guess my inner dick head voice is English.’

Matthew sighed and placed the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, where it stayed for merely a second before Alfred grabbed it up, ‘That’s not funny.’

‘Then why’d you smile?’

‘I didn’t smile.’

‘Aw, got gas then?’

Matthew somehow refrained from punching his brother on the arm and flopped heavily down next to him.

‘Woah woah woah, watch the landing there, Rocky.’

Matthew grabbed a handful of popcorn and popped a kernel into his mouth, ‘So what’d you pick next?’

‘The Martian.’

Matthew groaned.

‘Hey! What’s wrong with that?’

‘It’s terrible.’

‘No it isn’t? What’s wrong with you.’

‘Al, it’s a shit story.’

Alfred gave an exaggerated gasp and held a hand to his chest, ‘It is an awesome story, number one. Number two, people who have an iPod full of Nickelback don’t get an opinion on what’s shit and what’s not.’

‘How do you know what’s on my iPod?’

‘You left it at mine and I looked.’

Matthew blinked, ‘When? I don’t even use an iPod anymore.’

‘I dunno like... ten years ago?’

Matthew was thrown, ‘Wha... what’s that got to do with anything?’

‘You’ve got shit taste.’

Alfred gave him a sympathetic look and clucked his tongue, ‘I know it’s hard to accept, don’t worry. We can talk about something else.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Nickleback.’

'So you still listen to them, then?'

'And?'

‘They’ve done some great songs.’

‘Sure they have.’

‘What are you, a walking naughties meme?’

Alfred shovelled a handful of popcorn into his mouth and dug around in the sofa cushions for the remote, ‘They’re bad.’

‘Tell me why they’re bad.’

‘They’re corny.’

‘And how are they corny?’

‘I dunno, they just are.’

‘You’re corny.’

‘Yeah.’ Alfred gave him a dazzling grin, ‘And even I think they’re bad.’

Matthew huffed and grabbed another handful of popcorn from the bowl, ‘Well, I like them.’

‘And I like The Martian.’ Alfred flicked a popcorn at his cheek, ‘Now shut up and turn turn the lights off.’

‘I’m picking the next one.’

‘If you can stay awake.’

‘I’m staying awake just to make you watch some French surrealism.’

‘Ugh.’

#aph america #aph canada #hws america #hws canada #aph na bros #hws na bros #heroes writes #fizzy im so sorry this took so long

[visualtaehyun]

Hey, I just wanna know from where did you start learning thai? Also, what advice do you give to those who wanna start learning it

Hiya anon ✨

I'm not sure how much help I can be, considering I'm not doing a course or following an app or anything people usually do for language learning 🥴 I've been learning mostly by immersion tbh - I've been almost exclusively watching Thai series for over a year now, plus interviews, variety shows, youtube content, songs, so many songs lol, tweets, etc.

My personal learning approach is pretty loose and chaotic lmao but here goes:

1) The biggest hurdle for me was the script. Apart from already having started to notice recurring words being said in the Thai BLs I was watching at the time, I also wanted to be able to read people's tweets! In the end, it was a combination of 1) an app I happened to find (Pocket Thai Master for Android, it's free on the Play store!) and 2) the Wikipedia article on the Thai script that both helped me to understand and start reading and writing. Coming from a non-tonal mother tongue, learning the script early on really helps to understand the tones in Thai so it's something I would for sure recommend!

2) I started keeping a lil vocabulary notebook (you know those two-column ones?) shortly before my Bangkok vacation earlier this year. It not only helped with new vocabulary but also kept me practicing writing! Anytime I encounter a new word, I look it up on either or all of the following online dictionaries: thai-language.com, thai2english, Longdo Dictionary (which I literally just now realized can be set to English in the upper right corner, I've just been using it in Thai ever since I found it djsjdh), Wiktionary in Thai, or if all else fails I google it and might find an old forum entry or maybe an article if it's a slang word or idiom. I recall having dinner in a Bonchon in Bangkok and brokenly asking the waitress for chopsticks so, while waiting, I looked up and took down the word's spelling and pronunciation and when she came back and saw me copying all the info into my little notebook liKE A NERD she laughed and complimented me for the effort haha

3) If I hear a Thai word I'm unfamiliar with that I can't look up because I don't know the spelling, there's a few approaches. If I have context for its meaning, for example subtitles, then I look up the translation instead and hope I find it. If I don't, then there's the option of using thai-language.com's Reverse Phonemic Transcription function (this site in general is my holy grail tbh, it's why I mostly stick to its romanization style for any of my #local woman harps on about linguistics posts). Another option is using the papago app's speech-to-text function. Yes, you read that right. A Korean translation app, that I previously used when I was learning Korean and thus still had on my phone, proved to be useful for me to make sense of the spelling or pronunciation of Thai words. At the beginning, I only used it to read me homonyms out loud so I could parse the difference in tones lol but then I realized it wasn't half bad at rendering an accurate transcription! Sometimes I use that feature to check my own pronunciation or remind myself of the spelling of a word.

4) I always like to recommend @lurkingteapot's comprehensive Thai language learning resources post (it's far more coherent than my post here lol). And shoutout to @recentadultburnout for posting about Thai language and culture as a native speaker (both on tumblr and on ao3)! 🙏

5) This might be minor or self-evident but ya know- install the Thai keyboard for your devices! You're gonna need it sooner or later anyway if you wanna actually use the language. And if you're a keycap and keyboard nerd like me and happen to fall in love with a keyboard in a Siam Discovery store ehem then I do recommend getting a Thai layout keyboard (or keyboard stickers!) because that has proven to help me a lot in terms of ease of learning on desktop and familiarizing myself with letters I don't often encounter. Throwback to that one time I was on the train, revising consonants and their tone classes, and indignantly texted a very confused yet amused family member a photo of my hand-written copy of the Thai consonant table, asking how I'm ever supposed to differentiate between ฎ and ฏ!! Even now, I have to lean in and squint like an old lady to see the difference on desktop. 😭

I hope at least some of this proves to be helpful in your quest to learn Thai! In any case, you're not alone on tumblr or in our little BL/GL/QL fandom bubble - I know of several users who are learning Thai, like @airenyah and @philologique and the aforementioned @lurkingteapot, just to name a few I personally follow and who I'm sure all have their own advice to give if you shoot them an ask~

สู้ ๆ นะ :) /suu suu na/

#inquiring minds.txt #local woman harps on about linguistics #thai

[sharloola]

ODE TO THE SALON (BLUE MAGIC)

Washed, stretched, no oils— all plans cancelled for today. 

You trek to auntie in old trackies and a beanie with your survival kit: 

Earphones and snacks shoved into a bag,

Next to 4 packs of 1b and clear gloss.

The marketplace is only a skeleton of itself when you arrive,

You pass by crates of fresh fruit and fake fendi as the streets pulse to life.

The vendors nod at you as they chat in the frosty morning glow 

and you smile back, praying you don’t run into someone you know.

Auntie’s late (but that goes without saying). 

You’re seated at her altar, neck braced, playlist loaded.

She turns moses, parting 4c with a rat tail comb 

And your open palms face the sky with synthetic hair laced between your fingers.

The small girl next to you marvels at how you stay x-pressionless throughout.

She has not yet learned to swallow pain so yelps and cries, 

Envying her brothers who have turned the shop floor into a wrestling ring.

They roll around on a sea of knotted hair, in dishevelled uniforms and overgrown taper fades.

Their mother tries to scold them for half an hour before giving up, 

Instead focusing on the tv as her red-black hair is layered and smoothed with molten tongs.

Tendrils of smoke are released with each sizzle and clink,

Curling between her and the pixelated faces of nollywood on the screen.

The smell of burning is a comfort to you now,

Child embraced by the warmth of a village who sets itself alight.

Even fire can be a kindness when welcomed, 

She heats hair masks under plastic bags and sears coils straight when asked. 

Someone is playing music from home and it rings out tinny from an old samsung.

Lingala, yoruba, patois— bodies sway to the beats regardless.

Your hips are all polyglot in rhythm, 

And somehow the crying baby drifts off to this and the sound of a blow dryer.

Auntie says you’re tall and quiet, like her daughter back home.

You realise then why her hands are so tender on your head 

And wonder if she always looks for her babies in the scalps of strangers, 

Sees a mirage of them in oil flecked reflections as her bones twist coarse tresses day after day. 

The blue magic your own mother cast when you were small still lingers.

You notice the teenage boy getting cornrows can’t understand the sorcery in this place.

He stares at the floor as his head is pulled and frowns at all the shouting, 

Unburnt ears alien to these sharp incantations of love.

You were the same when first you sat in the chair, 

Milk teeth of a wide tooth comb and nintendo to keep you busy.

You flinched at the raised voices, gazing at girls on pretty n silky boxes,

Secretly hoping pink lotion might make you look like them.

You’d sit patiently by the nail bar as your mum retouched, 

Nose crinkled at the chemicals while she assured you she’d be done soon. 

Sweet fried dumplings and curry goat from next door were your reward and sometimes, 

The man selling watered down perfume would spritz the air just to humour you.

Your mum always announced if something hurt her,

And swatted the acrylic capped fingers from her head like mosquitos.

You used to wonder if your voice would grow in after your big teeth did, 

But you still hold your tongue when pain comes from hands that could love you. 

Now, the cacophony of the salon is a familiar melody and you know the choreography. 

Eyes plié when the husband-landlord walks in heavy and italic, 

Lowering all chatter to a murmur as he demands cash from his wife.

She hands it over with a painted smile and he slams the door on his way out.

The stony interlude is short-lived because we practise alchemy through laughter here:

Auntie makes a quip about his bad breath and tension surrenders to joy.

In this coven, mens anger is snuffed out like flyaways under clouds of mousse,

Rendered lifeless by protection runes hidden in the creases of weathered palms.

The women swap stories over your head in kintsugi english, 

Kissing teeth and gesturing wildly with dollops of shine ‘n jam on the back of their hands. 

You understand now that wisdom is being sewn in as well as tracks,

And tuck their fables behind your ear for times yet to come like seeds in damp ground.

Finally, when the sun has melted to dusk, the water is set to boil. 

You are placed under the dryer and stretch out your stiff fingers.

Auntie swoops your baby hairs after the sweet olive spray,

And warns you that it’s berry cold outside as you hug.

You leave: braids dripping, scalp sore, 

Kink in your neck and pep in step.

At school, your friends would marvel as you showed off the clean parts, 

While the other kids asked to pull and prod.

For the next two weeks, you’ll be vigilant with the scarf at night

And not think about the next style until new growth turns the knotless to a blur.

A few months from now, the man in the hair shop will follow you down aisles

And you’ll call up auntie again to hear her psalm, words a mosaic with veins of gold: 

I’m fine. How’s mummy? 

(I love you)

Which hair you want? 

(I love you)

Send picture. 

(I love you)

You have the hair? 

(I love you)

Ok, come 9. 

s.o.

#original poem #poem #poetry #writing #black poetry #black poets on tumblr #spoken word #afro hair #black girl magic #black culture #4c hair #black women #sharloola

[difeisheng]

i.

It's only on the third day of passing neverending yellow-green fields wavering in summer heat, windows down in this pickup truck that must be decades old with its glossy paint and chrome and proud growl of an engine, that Wu Xie finally asks Hei Xiazi where they're going.

"There's a map in the glove compartment," Hei Xiazi says, tapping cigarette ash out into the wind, other hand on the steering wheel. "You said your English is good, right? Read it and find the towns we've been through."

Wu Xie fishes out the map, tattered and deeply creased, apparently kept without use. A pen is always with him; he circles each town or city whose name he recognizes, memorized from the flickering signs of motels or general stores they've stopped at, or welcoming boards along the highways that are probably intended to be cheerful but only bear worn-down facades of optimism in their neglect. Analysis kicks in next, attempting to piece together the logic from the locations he's marked. The pattern he finds is—

"There is no pattern." Wu Xie looks up. "We drove east after going south, but you're just stopping in random places."

"Congratulations, you get a prize," Hei Xiazi says, semi-deadpan, hair flown loose from its knot whipping into his face. "Can't have your future actions be predicted if you don't know what they are, either."

"But that means you don't know when we're going to stop," Wu Xie says. The wind bites at him all of a sudden, despite the temperature outside. He pulls his flannel more closely around himself.

Hei Xiazi, still wearing only a tank top, tan lines at his wrists fading out of contrast, shakes his head. "Keep moving and we'll figure out the rest later. We don't know how far behind they are."

"Do we really have to be this paranoid?"

"You haven't even been able to see your enemy, or what it is. Do you want the monsters to catch up to you, or would you rather be safe than sorry?" Hei Xiazi flicks his cigarette butt out the window.

Wu Xie thinks of the shadows, the closest way he can describe them, that he'd seen on the last night in his own home, and shuts his mouth. He settles instead for noisily stuffing the map back into the glove compartment.

"So if there's no end to this, why would you help me?" Hei Xiazi, as far as Wu Xie has gathered, is a man who's lived from job to job, whatever's in between not enough to keep him still. "I don't even know when I'll be able to pay you, if that's what you want." The money on his cards has been going toward gasoline, food, the motels they can find that are cheap but clean and won't care about faces or what's left of Wu Xie's accent before the fact that he can pay.

Hei Xiazi snorts. "You didn't think about this earlier?"

"I wasn't in the mood to be asking questions." And Hei Xiazi had told him not to, anyway, those few nights ago when Wu Xie woke up to half of his house in flames and something at his door, swallowing the light, and in the smoke had appeared Hei Xiazi, duffle bag in one hand and the other grabbing at Wu Xie's wrist, ordering him to run.

He'd bit his tongue, one of the rare occasions where fear had well and truly drowned his curiosity, and followed. From foot, to car, to across a border, and now to this truck.

Hei Xiazi reaches for the box of cigarettes in the cupholder. "Light me another one, will you?"

Wu Xie grabs the lighter from the inner pocket of Hei Xiazi's leather jacket, fallen to the floor, and touches it to a fresh cigarette. "You didn't answer my question."

Hei Xiazi just sighs, blowing thin smoke out and away, so Wu Xie continues: "You're just a work friend of my uncle's and you barely know me. Why would you care this much about saving me?"

"Know you?" Hei Xiazi leans back and laughs, softly, dog tags clinking against his chest. "Maybe I don't really know you, but I know about you. I know you're naive, and you've never had to pay the price for learning too much. I know you looked into secrets about your uncle's work that you shouldn't have. I know you still don't understand what you saw and you're desperate to find out, but you dread looking back. And most of all, I know you don't want to die. Is that enough?"

He glances at Wu Xie. "You don't want to die, do you, Xiao-sanye? Tell me now, because it'll save me a lot of trouble if this isn't something you want to fight for."

"I-" Wu Xie stares at him. "No, I don't want to die," he says, quietly.

"Good." Hei Xiazi jabs at the volume dial on the dash. Rock music blares out from the speakers, from whichever cassette was left in there from the box of tapes in the backseat. "Glad we're clear on that. Communication is key."

"For the third fucking time, why are you helping me?" Wu Xie reaches for the dial, turns the music off again, glares. This time Hei Xiazi doesn't react, staring ahead at the road, lined pavement flying past in the lenses of his sunglasses.

"If I said it was boredom, would you believe me?" he says, after a minute.

In this moment maybe Wu Xie almost could, listening to the level current of Hei Xiazi's voice. How old is he? If he were a stranger Wu Xie would place him in his mid-thirties, perhaps, but the impression of a man in black and sunglasses smeared across the borders of his memory reaches too far back for Hei Xiazi to be exactly as old as he looks.

At what age can you possibly begin to treat running for your life like this with indifference? With amusement? Wu Xie is twenty-six, and the world is huge. The world is mysterious. The world is fracturing and he's trying not to cut himself on the shards.

"No," he tells Hei Xiazi. "it can't just be boredom. But it's not money, either."

The corner of Hei Xiazi's mouth tilts upwards.

"You're smart." He pauses to take a drag from the cigarette. "Believe what I said anyway. You're better off like that."

"What's that supposed to me—" Wu Xie starts, before Hei Xiazi cuts him off, waving a hand dismissively.

"Believe that, or make up your own reasoning because I know you'll die without it. Either one will do." He adjusts his sunglasses in the rearview mirror. "But what matters, for you, is that you trust me to keep you alive regardless. Trust me completely, or else I won't be able to. Can you do that, Xiao-sanye?"

The evening Hei Xiazi tossed their bags into this truck, retrieved from a seemingly innocuous lot in an industrial suburb, Wu Xie caught a glimpse of the box concealed beneath the panels of the bed. If Hei Xiazi wanted him dead, he'd have had the tools and chances to do it at least several times over already.

Wu Xie nods.

Hei Xiazi smiles, wide enough to catch a glimpse of a crooked tooth, and turns the music on once more.

The road rambles on.

#hi everyone i don't know what's going on #making it up as i go! #this is not supposed to be a supernatural au but i guess. it is not entirely Not a supernatural au god help me #dmbj #heixie #wu xie #hei xiazi #hei yanjing #ashton writes fic #heixie hunter roadtrip au

[v-era-18]

HoneyBee

(Bumblebee x Black Reader)

Prologue: Bittersweet

‘The driver doesn't pick the car, the car picks the driver’-Bobby Bolivia

“Please! Please! Please tell me the story again! I even brushed my teeth without you asking!” The young girl hopped on her bed, the bedsheets were a print of stars while the soft blankets were black in contrast to the white. Her smile showed the missing tooth in the top front, hair styled in twists with barrettes adorning the ends. “You promised if I was good you’d tell me again!”

An older dark skinned man walked in, his hair gray with strays of white. His smile was straight and genuine, pulling up at the corners of his eyes. He seemed to have come home from work, tie undone with brown slacks and suspenders over his dressed shirt.

The room itself was something to behold, a treasure chest filled with teddy bears were at the foot of the queen bed , the frame was metal, old style in white. By the window in place was an old bronze telescope, the girl had a habit of staying up at night looking at the night sky. Not only was she able to identify all the constellations, she was able to tell you how far each one was. The room was decorated in astronomy paraphernalia, for a moment you’d think all of this was for a teens room at first glance. However one look to the left and you would see the array of child drawings that belongs to the ten year old.

“Hold on, I’m coming hold your horses,” the man went to the bookshelf by the other window and pulled out an old notebook, withered and torn. “I’ve told you this story so many times, I’m sure you could tell the story to yourself in order to fall asleep.” He teased.

(Y/n) stuck out her tongue at the man playfully, letting out a yelp when he casted her a warning glare before sitting at the side of the bed. She made herself quick to be situated under the covers, her lamp illuminating her brown skin in honey hues as her smile never left. These were the nights she looked up to the most. After a long day at school annoying the english teacher about the galaxy, she'd eat dinner and listen to her favorite story.

She glanced down at the leather ripped book, “Can I have it?,” Her question was a bit hesitant, afterall her grandfather told her the notebook had been with him since he was eighteen.

Each time he pulled the book from the high shelf she felt a bit of jealousy yet curious as to why he always had it out of her reach; It wasn’t like she hadn’t glanced in the book before. There had been many times where she sat back and looked at the side notes outside of the lined margins. It was a shame it wasn’t in english. The letters-or what she assumed were letters-look weird from what she was used to.

She guessed it was either French or Japanese, since her grandmother spoke fluently in both. Nana taught her the basics of the languages with writing and speaking, but not reading, it would take her a while to learn. So for now, she'd have to leave those notes unread.

Her grandfather looked at the girl, a soft look taking on his features, “(Y/n), there's so much I will leave you besides this dear book,” He took his time to run his thumb through the pages with a quick move of the wrist, “It holds a lot of history. Stories have history that must be told so that they are never lost, and the life lessons that it brings along with it.” The smile was gone, instead replaced with a grime expression as he looked down at a certain page he never read from, it was at the very end.

“It’s best to never read an ending. After all you can determine your own ending if you so desire.” He said that so many times to her when reading this story, not only did he do this with this one, but the larger notebook as well. The larger book was one for occasions when she felt down or out of place at school.

It was hard being different at her school. Not only was she not interested in certain aspects girls liked most of the time, but she was outcasted after expressing her love for robots. The teacher was even a bit concerned, calling her Nana after noticing she started to show ‘boyish’ tendencies instead of hanging around the girls. It wasn’t like she didn’t try , she was only expressing her love for the unknown. Not only that but the stories she would tell had the kids on the edge of their seat-that was the time her classmates loved her; The stories stopped abruptly the teacher said they were too violent and stopped the evening story times she had with the class. Talking about war in a story wasn’t something a kid should be telling, especially when it came down to a planet possibly dying due to destruction.

Her grandparents didn’t yell at her, in fact when they left the office they took her out for a nice dinner; and instead of her grandfather telling her a story, for the first time her Nana did. Instead of the book she was used to, her Nana held a larger thicker leather bound book with weird lettering on the cover.

The story was different hearing it from her Nana, it was empowering to say the least. It was at that time she wondered how her parents might have read to her if they were still alive.

“History is boring!” The childish demeanor was back again, a frown placed at how serious everything seemed, “Especially since it happened in the past, how could it really impact our future?”

“It can in many ways. I hated studying history growing up, but over time you realize how important it really is in everyday life.”

He grabbed her nose, cutting off her full exhale of attitude. She giggled and tried to swat the hand away at the teased punishment. Once she settled down the book was placed in her lap for the first time. She gasped in excitement, hesitant to place her hands on the worn leather, she looked back up at him in surprise.

“Let's try something different tonight sweetpea,” he scooted her over a bit in the bed and sat right beside her, gesturing to the book. “I've read this book to you enough times by now for you to read it back to me with no problem-hell you even-”

“You said a bad word-!”

“I did?! PopPop is sorry.”

She bubbled a laugh as he looked at the door hoping his wife didn't hear.

“As I was saying, this story is your favorite amongst the others I've told you. And I'm glad as this story is very important to this family,” He rubbed her head with endearment before gazing back down at the book, “It's time for you to be the next storyteller, let's start practicing now.”

With an encouraging smile from her pops (Y/n) placed her hands on the book, it felt wonderful against her small hands that would soon grow accustomed to the feel as if it was second nature. At last she opened it, the words of the first page were unreadable, all scripted in a different language, she took notice of the letter-like sleeve on the left side against the book's backing. Ignoring it for now she turned the page finally seeing the fist of letters that she could read. She looked back up in excitement, her grandfather matched her smile, a look saying ‘go on’.

She did, saying the first lines of the book that would change her life forever.

“There once was a planet by the name of Cybertron-”

~✯~

The class was silent for a moment, listening ast the girl finished her story with great suspense. It was one of the stories about a knight falling in love with a woman who resembled his late wife, the time period was one that resembled King Arthur. Since it was fantasy and only gave off an allegorical narrative she really couldn’t provide an actual period of when it took place.

The tone was filled with sorrow and despair as she read the final lines. After all, she wanted this A. They asked for a geology report of her family, and so she gave it with pride.

“His breath was taken with the wisp of the cold cold air, as Anna's cries could be heard on the battlefield. The cries were short, a man who dealt the blade within her lover's chest would soon succumb to the same fate. A butterfly landed on the decapitated head of the red haired girl, the soldier muttering one thing , ‘pretty’” (Y/n) looked up, closing the brown leather storybook with the letters ‘(L/N)’ engraved. “This concludes my report on my grandfathers-”

“You can’t end it like that!”

Her head shot up at a girl's statement in the back, she wanted to shrink under the popular girl's stare. She clearly enjoyed the story, but did not like the ending. The girl had her arms on the desk, long hair cascading down her shoulders with a tank that showed off a bit more than what (Y/n) was confident enough to show in a school setting.

Ah, Mikaela. The girl everyone found to be a mystery.

“You killed both of them-!”

“It's based on historic events,” Y/n got down from the desk she sat on top of, adjusting her lowrise jeans and harley davidson shirt she thrifted not too long ago, it was cut into a crop top that rested right along the waist, “Not everything back then was fine and dandy. Many people-including lovers-died horrendous deaths due to suspicion and fear. When me and Pops decided on the plot it started to make more sense to end with the lovers in a tragedy, after all-,” she looked the girl in the eyes, gaze never wavering, “the best stories are ones to learn from.”

Mikaela sat back in her seat, a bit of a pout laying her lips, “You do have a point, if Layton never told his friend about Anna they both would have never been followed by the groundskeeper-”

A cough cut off their conversation, (Y/n) looked back at her teacher who was clearly trying to get the last presentation over and done with.

“Thank you so much Miss (L/n) for the amazing presentation as always, I would prefer however that you try to keep the stories to the very end of class to avoid so many questions about the characters you've created,” He was giving her that look again, scanning over her posture before landing direct eye contact with a smirk. She instead looked away and tried to focus on the applause she received for her presentation, “Not that I mind them though, I encourage you to bring them and read to me-me and the class more often when your not as busy-”

“Well sir that would be possible if this wasn’t my last class with you since we’re graduating this year-”

“Ah yes, I forgot for a moment,” The class erupted to a fit of whispers and giggles, it was no secret, this man had no shame. He had a habit of flirting with the girls in the class and unfortunately she was one of them. She hurriedly grabbed her notebook and beat up sling bag before heading to her seat.

“Witwicky! You're up!”

(Y/n) smiled as her childhood friend walked passed in order to get in front of the class. She took the time to adjust her scarf on her head positioning the high afro puff to sit nicely. It took most of the morning to look this good, sometimes she'd just let the afro be and cover half of her face, but since today was the last presentation before graduation she had to look as good as possible. Although she did get some unwanted attention, Trent was basically gesturing to his friends about her the whole time she was speaking.

Usually she wouldn’t care, however the way his girlfriend and the class took notice had her on edge. To be honest (Y/n) hadn’t expected Mikaela to even acknowledge her existence after gaining her boyfriend's attention, but instead she seemed genuinely interested in her story.

Maybe Sam was right to like her a bit, she was being too overprotective of her friend, afterall out of the two of them; (Y/n) was always the responsible one to her dismay.

(Y/n) watched as Sam dumped the contents on the desk in front, “Sorry I have a lot of stuff…” she sighed a bit anxious as she watched Trent whisper something to Mikaela before flicking Sam in the face with a rubber band. A scowl made its way on her face, leaning back in the seat.

‘How old are we?! Six?!’

“Who did-who did that?! People. Responsibility.”

Sam took a breath, looking around the class before landing his eyes on his friend, “Um-so for my family's geology report I decided to do it on my great-great-grandfather-” a few chuckles could be heard as he looked around again, hands sweaty and all, “He was a famous man-Captain Archibald Witwicky. Very famous explorer-in fact he was one of the first to explore the arctic circle, along with a young man by the name of (GG/n) (L/n)-which is a big deal!”

Many people including Trent and Mikaela looked at her in shock. (Y/n) simply stared back with a coy smile edging it’s way on her face. It was no surprise that Sam included both of their grandparents in the report, after all that’s how their friendship began, through family relationships.

Sam shot her a smile as he grabbed the map and showed it to the class, “In 1897, he took forty-two brave sailors to the arctic shelf,” (Y/n) remembered when she was eleven-Sam twelve- as her grandfather told them about how both their great grandparents tried to get through the ice. The way he put it about hers is that he simply hated being in the cold ,but since Archibald treated him so well as his assistant he managed even in the worst times, “That’s the story right?”

(Y/n) nodded her head, internearly pleased that Sam summed it up pretty well from what they practiced. “-And here we have basic instruments and tools used by nineteenth century seamen-“ the class broke out into laughter, even though she tried her best not to indulge in the immature nature of her classmates-a hit of a smile wobbled on her lips.

The teacher flashed a ‘stop’ sign silencing them, “- And this here is the quadrant which you can get for eighty bucks-this is all for sale by the way! L-like the sextant here-“ another round of laughter, this time she let out a giggle, “-this is a bargain, everything is pretty cool. These are my grandfather's glasses, I haven’t quite got them appraised yet-but they’ve seen many cool things-“

“Are you going to sell me his liver? Mr Witwicky, this isn’t ‘show and sell’ in the 12th grade. I don’t think your grandfather would be particularly proud of what you’re doing-“

“I know I’m sorry-you know this is all towards my car fund. You can tell your folks it’s on ebay! I take PayPal, hard cash works too-a-and it makes a g-great gift for Columbus Day-“

“Sam!”

(Y/n) held her hand over her mouth, trying so hard to stop the eruption of laughter to spill from her throat.

‘He can’t be serious right now! This wasn’t the plan!’

“-S-sorry um, unfortunately my great grandfather-the genius that he was- winded up going blind and crazy. He ended up in the psych ward saying he saw strange symbols, and going on about some giant ice man that he thought he saw-,” The bell cut him off before he could finish much to her dismay.

Her grandfather never told her that part, he always told them about the travel through the arctic, but not Witwicky seeing a ‘giant ice man’. She’d have to ask more later about that and the symbols on the papers he held up that she was all too familiar with.

“Okay! There might be a pop quiz tomorrow! Might not! Sleep in fear tonight!”

The class started to clear out, she got a few murmurs of compliments about her family’s history as she packed at her desk, throwing the bag on her shoulder as she watched Sam still trying to sell those damn glasses.

‘Give it up Samuel, you know no one is going to want that damn thing.’

To be honest she found it disrespectful, especially since he knew she basically incorporated most of her grandfather's clothes into her everyday life. She even made her own quilt out of his shirts for her Nana not so long ago. The patches on her old bag were one of his dress shirts.

Sam stood in front of his teacher, an awkward smile playing on his face, “Okay? Pretty good right?” (Y/n) slowly came back up to the front, but not too close to give them enough space with their conversation.

“Uhhh, I’d say a solid B minus.”

Sam dropped the act, “A B minus?!”

“You were hocking your great-grandfather's crap in my class-“

“Kids enjoy-look could you do me a favor please?! Look out the window for a second and see my father. He’s the guy in the green car,” The brown skinned girl followed the teacher's gaze outside where Mr. Witwicky was waiting for them, “okay-let me tell you about a dream. A boy's dream, and a man’s promise to that boy. He looked him in the eyes and said ‘son imma buy you a car, and I want you to bring me two thousand dollars in three days’. Okay? I had two thousand in two days.”

“Now here’s that two thousand and here’s that B minus-“ Sam made an explosion with his hands, (Y/n) trying her best not to clown him and decided to leave . “Dream gone.” The teacher looked back at Sam after he watched Y/n close the door behind her.

“Sir, just ask yourself. What would Jesus do?”

(Y/n) made her way towards the green car outside, her notebook in hand ready to jot down the new symbols she saw from Sam's report today. She looked up and saw her friend's dad, arms crossed as he sat in the driver's seat. “Afternoon, Mr Witwicky!”

Ron let out a sigh at (Y/n)’s greeting, “ (Y/n) how many times have I told you? Please call me Ron?”

“Sorry sir-Ron, how was work?”

“It was alright, not too busy today, I’m ready to go home and lay around on the couch. Unfortunately for me if my boy comes out with an A my bank account is gonna bleed.”

The girl laughed lightly before shaking her head, she turned her attention back to the entrance where Sam came bounding out with a big smile.

“Looks like it’s gonna need stitches”

“ Yes!” Sam hoped in the car, (Y/n) following suit in the backseat, she made sure to put her pencil and book away. Last time she let her pen out she accidentally scratched the leather seat, Ron said it was okay but she felt like he was only trying to be nice since he saw how much it scared her.

“I got an A minus!” He showed his dad the paper as he looked at it in confirmation, “good?”

“You’re good.”

Sam pumped his fist into the air in triumph, he looked back and flashed her a smile. She gave an encouraging thumbs up. “Finally, you can drive me around, so I won’t bother your dad anymore-“

“How many times have I told you, you’re not bothering me young lady!” Ron glared at her through the rearview mirror.

“Right, sorry!”

“Didn’t you say you’re looking for a car with me?” Sam questioned.

It was true she saved up eight thousand dollars for a car so far. She was really proud of herself and the amount of discipline she had to endure. However she was hesitant due to Nana growing older, she wanted a form of comfort for her grandmother while she was away. She thought of getting her a service dog with a low temperament, and not too big. But they always seemed so expensive, especially to get them trained. So she wanted to work some more, but if she saw her dream car today? She’d drop the check on the salesman’s desk.

“I am. I’m just thinking about saving a bit more, but if I find one today that’s good too.”

The drive wasn’t that far, in fact (Y/n ) wanted to exhale the moment they didn’t stay at the expensive dealership. The joke Ron pulled earlier was hard not to laugh at, she knew first cars weren’t supposed to be a luxury. However, taking a look at the car's disheveled appearances at the one they pulled up at, she understood Sam's frustration.

“Here?! No no no, what is this? You said half a car not half a piece of crap dad!”

“When I was your age I’d be happy with four wheels and an engine.”

(Y/n) looked around, spotting a black and yellow camaro pulling into one of the parking spaces. She looked on in envy, whoever had that one was so lucky.

“Okay let me say something to you. Have you seen a forty year old virgin?”

“Yeah.”

“That-that’s what this is,” he gestured over to one car, “and that’s fifty year old virgin”

“Okay.”

“You want me to live that life? Hm?”

“To be honest Sam these cars are not that bad,” (Y/n) spoke up, he looked at her in frustration, “They just need a bit of tlc. Plus if the girl doesnt even have her own car, what right does she have to complain about yours?”

“You're supposed to be on my side! None of these are going to get me any girls-“

“Look at all of them before drawing that conclusion. No sacrifice, no victory. ” Ron cut in.

“Yeah yeah, the old Witwicky motto.” Sam waved him off.

“Gentlemen and my dear sister! Bobby Bolivia, like the country except without the runs!” The African American male laughed upon his greeting shaking Ron’s hand, “How may I help ya?”

“Looking to buy his first car, and she’s looking around as well.”

Bobby turned his attention to Sam, “You came to see me?”

“Had too-“ He jerked his leg back after (Y/n) kicked his ankle, a silent ‘don’t be rude’.

“That there makes us family. Uncle Bobby B baby! Uncle Bobby B!,” he held out his hand, Sam took it and told his name.

Bobby looked at her , “And you sister?” She took his hand in a firm handshake, “(Y/n)”

“Aight, let me talk to ya! Sam, (Y/n), your first day of freedom is right there underneath,” the girl focused on the cute yellow beetle in front, missing the black and yellow camaro pulling in right beside it , “Let me tell you something son-sister; the driver doesn’t pick the car ,the car picks the driver. It’s a mystical bond between man and machine.”

‘Can I befriend a robot PopPop?!’

‘You can, there’ll always be a bond between man and machine’

“Son-sister, I’m a lot of things, but liars aren’t one of them.”

“I believe you.” The three men looked at the girl, her gaze excited from the words he’d spoken. How could she forget something her grandfather expressed frequently when she was younger? She was practically waiting for this moment.

She looked from the beetle as she saw Sam head towards the black striped car with a yellow base. (Y/n) left the beetle, the adventure she once pictured long forgotten, and a new picture emerged with her reading and writing in the black leather seated vehicle.

“This one got racing stripes.”

Bobby sounded confused at Sam's words as the two of them examined the car. The boy looked over at her, cocking a brow. “What do you think?”

“I love it.” She whispered, peering her head through the open window. The interior was a bit dirty, but she knew how to get stains out and a good day of washing will do them good.

(Y/n) opened the car door and got in, ignoring how Sam listened in on Bobby’s and Mannys conversation about it. She gripped the handles of the car, running her hands up and down, getting a good feel. Looking up, a signature disco ball and bumblebee hung over the rearview. It was fitting for the car, the colors were practically the colors of the insect adding character. She paused looking at the logo in the middle, rubbing her thumb over the horn she gasped.

(Y/n) shot out of the car as if it was hell itself, her breathing was labored, eyes frantic as she stared at the wheel through the car door. She’s seen that symbol so many times, her lips wobbled as if she wanted to cry. It was a wave of nostalgia that scared her to hop out of the car. There was no way the old owner had heard the story before, unless they had and wanted the car to remind them of it each day.

‘the driver doesn't pick the car, the car picks the driver’

Sam looked at her for a moment, before getting in himself , getting a feel before asking the winning question, “How much?”

Bobby put his hands up on the roof in thought, “Well considering the semi classic nature of the vehicle, with the slick wheels and the custom paint job-“

“But the paints faded.” (Y/n) interrupted.

“Y-yeah but it’s custom.”

“It’s custom faded?” Sam questioned backing her up.

“Well this is your first car so I don’t expect you two to understand.” Bobby looked at Ron then (Y/n), “Five grand.”

“Naw I’m not paying above four sorry.” Ron responded.

(Y/n)’s heart soars, sure she’d want a smaller price ,but she had the money. She dove in for her checkbook in her backpack .

“Kid, comm’ on get out the car.”

“No no no, you said the car picks the driver!”

“Well sometimes they pick a driver with a cheap ass father out the car.” Bobby went over to the beetle she was looking at earlier. “Now this one here for four gs is a beauty!”

She felt a little bad after seeing Sam's dejected expression. He saved up and tried so hard for a car and the one he liked she might take home. She eased her hand from her bag, there had to be another shop that could customize her steering wheel the same way.

‘No. It’s not fair to leave with it, especially if he clearly wanted it first. Let’s look at the cute beetle again.’

Sam angrily got out of the car.

“There’s that fiasco with racing stripes over there?” Ron tried to joke.

“No I don’t want a fiasco racing stripes”

“This is a classic engine right here. I sold a car the other day-“

(Y/n) shot back in shock as the camaros car door hit the beetle a second after she came over to look at it. She looked at Sam and Ron seeing them hold the same expression.

“Jesus! Holy cow, are you alright?”

“No no no worries! I’ll have Manny bang this right out! H-hey Manny! Get your clown cousin and get your hammers and bang this stuff out baby!” Bobby laughed it off.

Walking back over to the camaros window she watched as the radio started to change between stations. She watched in fascination, her lips curving up to a dorky smile.

“Whoa-“

“Now this one’s my favorite! Drove all the way from Alabammy-!”

None of them could’ve prepared themselves for what happened next. An ear piercing sound erupted from the car, glass shards from windows blasted everywhere as they got down to take cover. (Y/n) was the most unlucky as she was right by it, ducking right against the car door trying her best to block out the sound with her hands.

The sound stopped, all of them got up looking at one another. Bobby was the most devastated, she was pretty sure they’d be banned from coming back however the next words that flew through his mouth left her stomach twisting.

“Four thousand!”

‘I guess the car really does choose the driver after all’ She looked back at the camaro, it seemed to be staring back at her, ‘and I guess I’m not that driver’

It was bittersweet.

#bumblebee x Black reader #bumblebee x reader #transformers #honeybee #sam witwicky #mikaela banes #storyteller #transformers x reader #Spotify

[factorialsotherfandoms]

XCOM AU, like 11/12 years prior to Felps getting defrosted. Read on for unethical military and prison systems! More unethical than usual! And massively unreliable narrator because jfc it's funny with the context this is actually Felps trying to sell Cellbit out, not help him. Still, it is genuinely the start of their friendship. Ish. It's where Cell decides to cling to Felps, anyway. Vice versa takes longer.

Cell has no idea how long it has been since the door to his cell last opened. After those fucking assholes abandoned him to die, the guards had found him. They threw him into the prison hospital, then into solitary, and he has not seen another person since. Food and water get shoved through a hatch in the door, but that is it.

He talks to his guards, sometimes - talks to, screams at, threatens… It is all the same really. They don’t respond, beyond an occasional yell for him to shut up.

They are not always there, either, but that’s to be expected - Cell has been thrown into the deep depths of the prison, and left to rot.

The first few months he threatened and snarled and plotted, but now… Something in him has broken, now, some part which once promised to fight and keep on fighting has torn away. He survives, because he is human, but it’s hard - so hard to plot an escape, when all he can think of is burning hunger.

It is a surprise, then, when one day his cell door opens.

And in steps a man Cell is absolutely certain should be dead.

But, then again, he probably thought the same of him.

“Oh hello,” Cell greets his old ‘friend’. His lips are genuinely dry when he licks them. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again. Come back for another round, did we?”

Slipping into the threats is so easy, though he has to wonder… Felps was rid of him, and the blackmail counts for very little now. So why, oh why, did the man come back?

“I have a proposition,” the guard says. “A way out for you, maybe.”

“Oh?” now that does spark Cell’s interest, though not as much as he expected. Whatever spark is still there… Cell has to put effort into fanning it, to remember who he is and how he acts.

More than truly interested in escape, Cell is /bored/, and bored is a dangerous thing to be.

The bite scars in his own arms are evidence enough of that.

“Right,” Felps seems… A little too cheerful about this idea for it to have merit, but maybe Cell can work with something. “What do you know about aliens?”

Okay, that? That was not what Cell expected. He has to give Felps some credit for a genuinely funny idea, and knocking him so far out of line. It’s a curveball, one which Cell fails to catch and leaves him struggling to make it back in time to catch the next.

“What?” he asks, leaning into the joke. “Are you going to get your little green friends to abduct me and do experiments? Don’t be ridiculous.”

Two can play at this game, and Cell does not have anything but his claws to kill him with. And he’d really rather not be stuck with the blood on his hands, when all he has to clean himself is an extremely unreliable sink.

“I’m being serious. Actual genuine flying saucers have been dropping aliens and these weird devices in major cities all over. Abducting people - but not just that, they’ve been bombing places, too.”

What.

“Felps,” Cell plays with the name on his tongue, watching the flinch as he does. “Felps, Felps, Felps - what have we learnt about lying to me?”

Felps does not reply, instead he tosses Cell a newspaper. It’s in English, but Cell can read it just fine. The front headline reads ‘ALIENS OVER NEW YORK’, with screenshots from security cameras showing… About what Felps described - small pink aliens, big eyes and all, chasing people down, and others trapped in some sort of gooey green netting. In the article itself are a whole host of other cities attacked, statements from the US Minister for Defence, smaller ones listing other countries who have suffered the same problem…

Page two is interviews with various conspiracy theorists, including some appropriately named Ohian fool.

Page three has two thirds taken up by a photograph of some mostly naked celebrity Cell has never heard of before.

He goes back to page one.

Reading over the article a few times, it looks too elaborate for an idiot such as Felps to have put together. Still, faking a functional newspaper is something he has seen plenty of people attempt. Either it is real or Felps has people with him, and Cell is not sure which option is more terrifying.

But how would he check…?

…

Felps probably has a phone. Cell isn’t sure if he can steal it - and if he does, he’s keeping it - but… He can try, right?

And, hey, Felps is being /cooperative/, so might as well ask first.

“Too easy to fake. Give me your phone - let me check the news sites.”

There’s a long pause. Cell did not really expect to be given it, but it is good to set the framework for an interaction down properly. Especially with something like this, where Felps is bringing up aliens and all sorts of crap.

He is getting ready for a fight, or Felps leaving, or something.

He is not ready for Felps taking a deep breath, walking to the middle of the room, putting a phone down, and stepping back away.

Cell… looks at it.

Cautiously, he approaches. Why… Why would Felps…?

It has to be trap, right?

…

It isn’t.

Cell picks up the phone and nothing explodes, and he opens it to find it working.

What a stupid, stupid display of trust.

And yet, Cell navigates to the internet browser anyway. He types in the name of one of the major news sites, and waits for it to load.

There, as headline news, it talks about alien abductions just the other side of the Argentinian border.

He tries another. It takes another minute or so and, this time, something about aliens attacking Berlin.

Foreign sites, other places - even conspiracy boards get checked. All agree, all match.

Cell does not know what to think. He… He doesn’t know what to do. This isn’t like the war, just a bloodbath of everyone against everyone where he fought tooth and claw for survival. This isn’t the streets, or the apartment he stole, and it’s barely even about the prison any more.

Suddenly, his very dark, very quiet, lonely cell seems so much better than anything outside it.

Something like fear settles in Cell’s dead heart. Carefully he places the phone back on the floor, and retreats back to sit on his bed.

Felps does not get up to take it again. He does not even look at it

“Oh,” he whispers, when he can find his voice again. And then, a little louder, “but, what the fuck does that have to do with me?”

“The government’s putting together a special task force - military unit, basically, but with its own science team and funding and shit,” Felps seems a bit distant as he talks. “They’re looking for people to do the actual fighting. I… Might have put your name forward?”

Fighting?

Cell knows how to fight.

Aliens, people, what is the difference?

But… Why would Felps give him an out so easy to escape from? Because he could. He knows battles, knows bloodshed like the claws in his hands. Get into a fight and it becomes so, so easy to slip out in the chaos.

His mind feels distant, but he still asks, "why would you even ask that for me? Aren't I too dangerous? I did nearly kill you, you know - and I ate those other men."

Felps makes the mistake of making eye contact. It makes it so much easier to see a conflction.

"Because I think you’d be a good match for it - you clearly have the skills, why not let you use them?" Felps tries to be nonchalant about it, but Cell can see the something more in his eyes. “Knife, alien, death. So long as you get some samples back to the lab, they probably wouldn’t even mind you snacking.”

That something is fear, or so Cell names it. Felps might be sat on the floor of his cell and doing everything to look calm, but Cell can see the touching and the twitching and the tapping. It only gets worse as the silence drags, and slowly, slowly Cell begins to laugh. The fear is… He likes the fear.

Or, at the very least, it is familiar.

"You're scared of me. You claim the high ground, but you're scared of me."

It’s not literal, though, the bed is definitely higher than the floor.

"Yes. But that doesn't mean you can't do good in this world, it just means I'm afraid."

Cell looks and assesses, and holds Felps in eye contact. No matter what he does, no matter where he looks, Cell… He can find hidden truths, more complicated aspects to the statement, but he… Felps actually believes that tripe?

Felps actually, genuinely believes that Cell has the capacity to do good, when all he has ever done is soaked people in blood.

Oh, the poor fool, thinking he can be better. Giving him a way out.

It is… Hilarious, honestly; Cellbit cackles, and it becomes a laugh, echoing and deadly in the silence of his cell.

“Me? Do good?” The laugh only grows more as Cell asks that and, perhaps he’ll keep Felps around, because this is a very very good joke.

… Cell sort of wishes it were true, but it is a very, very good joke.

“Why not?” Felps asks him, as though it is the simplest thing in the world to just /do good/. “Why can’t you do good, if given the chance to?”

Oh so so many reasons, not in the least that Cell has no fucking clue what he would do with it. His memories begin on that battlefield, desperately hungry and resorting to eating a corpse only to find it healing the gaping wounds all over him. Every second since has been paid for in blood and a pound of someone else’s flesh. Felps doesn’t understand that, and Cell is not sure he ever could.

"I'm a murderer, a serial killer, a cannibal - what makes you even think I'd even want to help?"

There’s hysteria in his tone. How dare he, how dare Felps - a man he as good as killed - believe he can do good? He’s seen the worst of him, how dare he say these things?!

He has no knife to clutch to, no sense to be found, but his fingers find the bedsheets and they try.

"You could say no,” Felps offers. “But then you’d still be here, and sooner or later someone is going to fashion a shiv, break into this cell, and kill you in your sleep - you’re not liked, you know?"

And Cell knows - he knows that. He wants out and at this point death is a perfectly good option.

But Felps…

How can Felps just offer him an alternative escape? He doesn’t… All this talk of doing good means nothing, when Cell has already proven that he /cannot/ be better, that he’s just a bloody corpsemaker through and through.

“Isn’t that what you want?” Cell asks, knowing he sounds as desperately confused as he feels. “Me dead? Seems like it’s a very complicated way to go about it, with this alien bullshit; as soon as I’m taken past this door I could kill everyone in the unit and flee."

“Or maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you want to change.”

Felps does not skip a beat in answering and Cell…

How the fuck can Felps sit there and say he believes in him? How can he do that, how can he do that to him?

How can Felps offer him a change to be better, when Cell is already damned and runed and condemned to the bloodiest of hells?

Cell feels something inside him break, and a whine take over his tone.

"You believe in change for people like me?"

“Why not?”

And Felps says it like it is obvious, but Cell begs and begs him to understand - it is not obvious, not at all, or rather every reason why this is a stupid idea is! Because, because… “because I’m evil” Cell answers, knowing it true with his entire fucked up soul.

“Now, sure,” Felps shrugs as he says it. “But you don’t have to be.”

And Cell… Cell has no idea how to argue with that. All he can do is sit, and stare, and he can’t - his brain will not even begin to process the ridiculous nature of this situation.

It sits, uneasy, until Felps stands.

He picks the phone back up, and replaces it with a flask, and leaves.

… The door locks, and Cell realises… All he had to do was open it, until then - it was never locked when Felps came in.

He hesitates, and cautiously approaches the flask.

It contains nothing but fresh, black coffee.

#qsmp x xcom #qsmp fanfic #qsmp au #qsmp cellbit #qsmp felps

[bluegekk0]

9 for any character(s)

i'll go with the assumption that whatever swear words they have in their language can translate to english swears

9. Do they swear? Do they remember their first swear word?

fpk - before hibernation, he would only occasionally swear whenever he was alone. most of the time it was him saying "shit" and similar swears whenever he bumped his head or dropped something. but he was very careful not to do it around wl, as she made it very clear that she isn't fond of swearing and sees it as beneath her, and by extension, beneath him. she was definitely quite controlling towards him the more i think about it, and this was just one of the ways that became apparent. he was scared of upsetting her, so he avoided saying any bad words whenever she was present

post hibernation he swears a lot more often. mainly because he feels more comfortable doing it, as it's not as frowned upon in the dirtmouth community. everyone does it to some extent, so he finally feels like he doesn't need to constantly watch his language. grimm's influence also had an effect on him, though fpk definitely swears a lot less than him (or hornet). once again, he usually does it as a response to accidentally doing something he didn't mean to, but it does sometimes creep into his every day dialogue. he tries to keep it down around lewk, the same way he did with baby hornet, but it's nowhere close to how careful he was with wl

i don't think he remembers what his first swear was. it was too long ago, and too inconsequential for his brain to keep it on the surface

grimm - if he's being polite, he avoids swearing. so to anyone who simply knows him from a distance, be it as the star in the troupe's performance, or as the leader of the troupe who assigned you with helping him with the ritual, it would come as quite a shock that he has quite a foul tongue otherwise. in casual situations, swears are just like any words to him - if he feels they accurately represent his feelings, he'll see no reason to not say them. and he has quite a library of such words in his head, so he can get creative with it. of course, he does keep it down around lewk, but it's a rare exception. and i wouldn't say he swears constantly either, like i said, he just uses them very casually. more often when he's a bit drunk, and significantly more whenever he's angry (that is where he whips out his most devastating material)

just like fpk, he doesn't remember his first swear either. he's too old and does it too often

hornet - she swears all the time, even more so than grimm. it started as her just letting her anger and frustration out, but she got so used to it that it just became a part of her language. i do think she became better at controlling herself over time, the period between finding fpk and them settling their differences was definitely the most rocky for her - she was very prone to getting irritated, all the emotions she had to suddenly process turned out to be quite an explosive combination. she still swears now, but it's very similar to how grimm handles it. though she tends to be a lot more explosive than him, so on average she definitely swears more often

i think her first swear word was "shit". she heard it as a kid when fpk dropped a book and a quick "shit" slip out of his mouth. he tried to explain to her why it's a bad word so she wouldn't say it around wl, but unfortunately you can't stop a kid who just got a new toy, especially if the kid is rebellious in nature and the toy is a newly discovered inappropriate word

holly - they don't really swear, and not just because they don't talk. it's just something they don't feel like doing even in writing, i suppose. if it's to vent out anger, they tend to do it through doodling on a piece of paper instead

they may not have a memory of their first swear word, but they do remember hearing fpk swear whenever he thought he was alone. he apologized to them every time (a subtle sign that even then he didn't truly see them as an emotionless object like many others did), so that made the memory even more embedded in their mind

i wanted to say a bit about zote and lewk, but i couldn't think of much. i know that zote likes to swear cause he thinks it makes his insults hit harder, and lewk only repeats some words he hears occasionally (but unlike baby hornet, if he's told that they're bad words, he'll stop). idk what zote's first swear would be, but for lewk it was "fuck" (he heard it from hornet)

#ask stuff #feral pk au #ask game

[aegor-bamfsteel]

Sorry if this sounds racist, english isn't my mother tongue so somethings can sound very insensitive or harsh, but know this isn't my intention!

The Velaryons (in hotd) are black, and we know they came with the targaryens from Valyria (who are like the ultimate white people) the thing is; since they have a history of marrying with them before the dance shouldn't they be more light skinned? Or the targaryens more dark skinned?

I’m hardly the arbiter of what is and isn’t racist, but in the words of GRRM: “It’s two variations of the same story, or a similar story, and you get that whenever anything is adapted. The analogy I’ve often used is, to ask how many children did Scarlett O’Hara have?” The Velaryons are black in HOTD because HBO cast Barbadian-British actor Steve Toussaint as Corlys Velaryon, and cast other Afro-British or biracial actors to play his family. The Targaryens are white in HOTD because HBO cast white Irish and English actors to play them. It’s a choice the people behind the casting made, so no questions about genetics (which are very strange in GRRMland anyway) are likely going to be answered.

Now for some wank under the cut:

Both Targaryen and Velaryon families are white in the books and have intermarried because they are both of the “blood of Old Valyria”, with the pale skin/hair/eye coloring that comes with it. HOTD gives this lip service by putting even worse white wigs than usual on their Afro-British actors (that were promptly torn to shreds on Twitter, as it seemed the wigmakers hadn’t consulted with anyone with experience working with Afro-textured hair). But in my opinion, it undermines a large part of the Targaryen ethos; the reason why they married the Velaryons when they had no available marriage partners among themselves was because they were so closely related as to be basically indistinguishable (people couldn’t tell if Alyn and Addam were the 100% Velaryon Corlys’ or the half-Targaryen Laenor’s children). They were also descended from Valyria, and thus were not considered “lesser men” that Aegon and onward refused to marry. A lack of diversity, of respecting other people’s opinions and boundaries, is one of the chief downfalls of Targaryens. Having the Velaryons be played by Afro-British actors undermines this message, by saying the Targaryens respected and mingled with those of different races even before their dragons died and they were forced to negotiate more. It completely misses the point of “the Targaryens considered themselves above the laws of gods and men”. The fact that the Velaryons are shunted off to the side in canon—with Laenor being killed possibly on Daemon’s orders, and Laena dying in childbirth 10 years before the war even starts, and middle aged Corlys’ unsavoryness wrt teenage girls—in addition, casting Japanese actress Sonoya Mizuna to play Mysaria, a character who ordered the murder of children and was stripped naked and whipped to death—makes this casting even more problematic. Had HBO wanted to keep the blood supremacy message intact but still have major characters of color, they could’ve cast the Hightowers with Afro-British actors instead (it makes possibly more sense than the Velaryons due to the relatively cosmopolitan Oldtown), because then you still have the scandal of Viserys being the first Targaryen to marry a non-Valyrian, of the Hightowers being outsiders to the Doctrine of Exceptionalism, as well as some real life racial parallels considering recent events (the reaction to the Prince Harry Windsor/Meghan Markle marriage, which severely harmed Meghan’s mental health)

Anyway, I’ll say that returning to book canon, GRRM throws genetics out the window when he wants to make a point. Hence all the Great Houses have a signature look that doesn’t vary unless it’s significant. Hence the Lannisters can stay blonde and green eyed, the Tullys auburn and blue eyed, and the Targaryens silver and violet eyed for millennia despite none of these traits being irl genetically dominant. The modern Targaryens (as in Dany, Viserys, Aegon) really should have some traits from their Blackwood ancestress (who had black hair and dark eyes), or their Martell ancestress(Es) (presumably having black hair, dark eyes, olive skin), but instead look classically Targaryen. Even among Myriah and Elia Martell’s children, all but their eldest (Rhaenys and Baelor) are portrayed with Targaryen coloring. So it’s not completely out of the question, following book logic, for the Targaryens and Velaryons in HOTD to stay so visually distinct until Rhaenys/Corlys’ children. However, I’d just consider it a casting decision from people who don’t care about the Targaryen Exceptionalist Doctrine and call it a day.

#ask #anti targaryen #anti got #opinion

[procrastinatingsoicanreadfanfics]

ch. 4 — timbran (to build)

summary: the arrival of princess kwentrith only brings chaos

notes: cw for graphic violence, drinking

tagged: @levithestripper, @demon-of-the-ancient-world

series masterlist | general masterlist | ao3

Alethia

The arrival of Princess Kwentrith was of such staged grandeur that Alethia almost had to laugh. She knew her kind of nobility - the one that grasped for power where it was not the right place to do so. When she looked at Kwentrith, she saw a flicker of madness.

Alethia was not sure what to think of it.

Still, she smiled at the other woman courteously as she joined King Ecbert for dinner. Seated next to Athelstan, Alethia knew she was only there because king Ecbert planned to soon make use of her. Threats surrounded Wessex, and Ecbert had already poked holes into her when it came to strategies. 

The king seemed to like what she said, but Alethia was always careful not to say too much. He knew that she had lost her child, and was not happy with it - it gave him one less thing to control over her.

“A monk amongst Northmen.” Kwenrith began, amused. “How interesting.”

The princess leaned towards Athelstan, smirking at him with a lazy smile. Alethia grabbed her knife a little tighter, reminding herself that this Kwentrith was seeking allies in every opportunity.

“Indeed.” Athelstan replied. “I learned a great deal.”

“I hear Northmen do not believe in marital fidelity.” Kwentrith continued, and Alethia watched as Athelstan grew more and more flustered. The Mercian princess did not seem to care. “It seems much more natural, no?”

“I do not know.” Athelstan replied curtly.

“But isn’t it?” 

“Their way of life is simply different.” Athelstan forced out, and Kwentrith rolled her eyes.

“How boring.” she said, and Alethia thought the discussion would end there. Instead, the princess’ eyes landed on her. 

“And you are?”

“Alethia Stahl. The woman that arrived in Wessex one day?” Alethia suggested.

“Arrived? From where?”

“I do not remember.” Alethia replied smoothly. “Many details of my home remain foggy to me until now.”

“But the English tongue is not your own.” Kwentrith noted. Alethia looked to Athelstan, who smiled in reassurance. She hoped her accent was not too strong.

“No.” Alethia admitted. “I have been learning from Athelstan.”

Kwentrith glanced back to him, and Alethia forced herself to breathe. Why was this princess so interested in Athelstan? She was staring at him like a piece of meat.

“How do they love where you are from?” Kwentrith asked in a sardonic tone. The bishop at the table cleared his throat, but Alethia ignored his pretentious holiness.

“We choose whom we love, and we can love whoever we choose, as long as they are old enough for that love.” Alethia explained curtly. Kwentrith smirked.

“What does that mean?” she inquired, her hands traveling towards Alethia’s. She drew her fingers back, forcing a smile onto her face.

“That I bed whomever I please.” Alethia replied. The bishop choked, and she thought she heard King Ecbert chuckle. “But I must disappoint you, princess. I am a widow.”

“God, how old are you?” Kwentrith continued.

“Eighteen.” Alethia said calmly. “But I have the wisdom to not throw myself into reckless danger.”

“That is debatable.” Athelstan mumbled next to her, and Alethia elbowed him playfully. She hated that Ecbert noticed the movement.

“I was shocked to hear of the death of your brother.” Ecbert said quickly, redirecting the attention of the restless princess.

“Don't worry about my brother.” Kwentrith replied. “Did you know that the Pope

has already made him a Saint? Saint Kenelm! Apparently, he lived an exemplary life!”

“Do you mean to say that he was not altogether virtuous?” Ecbert asked carefully.

“Well, he raped me when I was about 12, so you must make up your own mind.” Kwentrith said, too casually if anything. There was another choking noise from the bishop, and Alethia suddenly understood the madness in the eyes of the Mercian. She remembered when it had been reflected in her own.

A woman’s grief, a woman’s pain.

“I am sorry, princess.” Alethia said. “What was done to you was entirely and utterly wrong. If there is a hell, I would hope your brother burns in it.”

“Thank you.” Kwentrith said. “I do not think anyone has ever apologized to me for what happened. Yet, I tell so many people! They all do not seem to care!”

Kwentrith laughed again, and Alethia looked to Athelstan worriedly. She let the evening conversation trickle on for a bit longer, and when there was a small pause, Alethia took her chance.

“I am quite tired. This evening has been so eventful. If I may be excused, I wish you all well for the negotiations.”

“Of course, Alethia. You may go.” Aethelwulf said, before his father could speak. He was trying to get her to leave, and Alethia was glad for it.

“Me as well.” Athelstan said quickly, getting up too. In her mind, Alethia cursed him a bit. Could he not try to make them look a little less like they were leaving to fuck?

As soon as they were out of the room, Alethia turned to Athelstan.

“I don’t like the way she looks at you.” she said.

“Why?” Athelstan asked, walking next to her quietly.

“Because… do you really not know?”

“No… what is it?” Athelstan continued.

“She wants to fuck you. That’s why she was asking about the Northmen.”

“Really?”

“Yes!”  Alethia said, exasperated.

“Well… alright. I won’t.” Athelstan said slowly. “There’s a whole vow I am keeping to, after all.”

“Good.”  Alethia replied.

“Does it bother you?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.” Athelstan observed.

Alethia hated that he was right. She shouldn’t care, really. Why did she care? “It’s disrespectful.”

“To who?” Athelstan replied. “She’s just a little insane.”

“First of all, so am I. Respect that please. Second of all, I find it disrespectful. To your… vow.”

“Alright.” Athelstan said slowly, staring at Alethia with confusion. “I won’t sleep with her, just like before.”

“Please, stay away from her.” Alethia sighed tiredly. Perhaps it was fatigue that was driving her crazy like this. Perhaps it was simply the fact that Athelstan was her only friend in the whole entire world. 

The weight of being alone made Alethia feel like something was crushing her soul.

“Alethia?”

Athelstan’s voice brought her back to reality.

“Goodnight Athelstan.” She mumbled, turning away already. All she wanted was to bury her face in her pillow and sleep. Hopefully for a long time.

Behind her, Athelstan sighed in defeat. Alethia wanted to run to him and apologize. Instead, she went to bed.

The next morning, she ate her breakfast alone.

Athelstan

Whenever he thought he understood Alethia, she wiggled out of his grasp, changing again. It was as if she was not willing to be understood.

As if she wanted to hide herself from the world by always changing, always becoming someone else. The things that did not change about her were few. 

Her scars, her quiet smiles, her teasing jokes. Her will to learn, her eagerness to understand. That certain something in her eyes he still could not place. 

The territorial understanding of him, that was new. Athelstan thought he understood. He did not like her speaking with Prince Aethelwulf or King Ecbert either. It made sense though - they were both outsiders here, her even more than he.

Still, it hurt that she was distant after the day of Kwentrith’s arrival.

It took Athelstan a week to gather up the courage to ask her about it.

“Why does her being here bother you so much?” Athelstan asked towards the end of one of their lessons. Alethia was still struggling to understand the grammar of the Norse tongue, and Athelstan could not blame her. She mixed it up with English grammar quite often, and that was how he could tell she’d learned uite a few languages in her time.

“A Mercian princess seeking an army to win a civil war? As a woman? This means war.” Alethia replied gloomily.

“I thought you would support her claim.” Athelstan said carefully.

“I do. But the Mercians will never accept her as their ruler, not if she is a woman. Her life will not end well, and her legacy pulled through the dirt for generations to come. And I do not wish to fight in a war that is not my own. Why should I?”

“You serve the king, so you must fight for him. That is simply how it works.” Athelstan shrugged.

“Will you?”

He did not have an answer for her.

“I’ve had my share of war.” Alethia replied simply. Her green eyes looked everywhere but at him, and he knew she had gone to another place in her mind.

Athelstan returned the scrolls to their proper places in the shelves, watching as Alethia did not move from her seat. Suddenly, he noticed that she had begun to braid her hair more tightly ever since Kwentrith arrived, making it form a crown around her head. What was more, she hadn’t worn a dress since that dinner, and a knife was secured in her boot.

She truly was preparing for war, then.

Still, Alethia stuck to Athelstan like a shadow as he climbed the stairs to the main hall of the villa. 

“I am sorry for the way I’ve been treating you.” She said suddenly. “It isn’t right.”

“It’s alright.” Athelstan replied.

“No it’s not. It won’t happen again.” Alethia promised. Athelstan smiled softly. The words were kind, and had not been spoken to him often enough in his life. He reminded himself that this was what he was supposed to hear sometimes.

“Do you need me to forgive you?” He teased carefully.

“Yes, please.” Alethia replied snarkily, a smile reappearing on her face.

“Then, my lady, you are forgiven.”

“I am not a lady.” Alethia laughed.

“Oh Alethia. I knew you were one the moment you stepped foot into the courtyard.” Athelstan sighed.

“What do you mean?”

“Just… the way you act. You set boundaries some of us could not afford to set.”

“Oh. Well, I suppose I’ve always been a bit stubborn.”

Athelstan laughed. “A little?”

“Maybe a bit more than a little. Is it very bad?” Alethia asked.

“No, I like it. You know who you are and you aren’t afraid to say it.” Athelstan replied.

Alethia smiled at him, her ears turning a little red from his words. The way she looked at him made his stomach flutter uncomfortably. 

“Thank God for my stubbornness then.” She mumbled. As the two of them rounded the corner into the Great Hall, Athelstan froze. Someone was speaking Norse, just a few paces away.

Alethia had noticed it too, and it did not take Athelstan long to recognize the voice.

“Torstein?” He asked, and the Viking man turned around, a wide smile appearing on his face.

“Priest! ” He called loudly. Athelstan could feel Alethia tense behind him, her hand wandering towards her sword.

“And who are you, shieldmaiden? ” Torstein continued, speaking to her. Looking at Alethia, Athelstan knew she had understood Torstein.

“Good job.” He praised, and Alethia blushed.

“She is not a Viking woman. ” Athelstan replied. 

“What a pity. ” Torstein laughed, and Athelstan felt his hands ball into fists before he could stop the action. 

“Has Ragnar returned, then? ” Athelstan asked, and Torstein nodded.

“He sent me as an envoy… ” Torstein began, before he trailed off, staring at Alethia again. “ So, you and that woman, priest? ”

“She is my student. ” Athelstan replied calmly. “Are you still following, Alethia?”

“I am trying. I think he thinks we are together.” Alethia said. “Why does everyone seem to think that?”

Athelstan could only shrug in response.

“Torstein, what is your purpose here? ” Athelstan asked again, but before the Norseman could reply, King Ecbert strolled into the Great Hall, his son in tow.

“Athelstan, translate.” King Ecbert said, turning to Torstein. Next to Athelstan, Alethia snorted quietly.

“Earl Ragnar, Earl Ingstad and King Horik wish to negotiate terms. ” Torstein said.

Athelstan translated his words, wondering who Earl Ingstad was. He had not heard of this ruler before.

“We should kill him and be done with it.” Aethelwulf said angrily. “These heathens should not touch our ground, much less raid on it.”

“Patience, my son.” Ecbert replied. Torstein looked between them nervously, and next to Athelstan, Alethia was almost holding her breath. “We shall not allow them to raid again. Athelstan, we will keep this Viking as a hostage while my son will go and negotiate with the Northmen.”

“Torstein, you must remain here while Prince Aethelwulf delivers the king’s terms to Earl Ragnar. ” Athelstan explained.

“How will the Northmen take your word seriously?” Alethia asked. “For all they know, Torstein may as well be dead.”

King Ecbert pulled something from his pocket, and Athelstan’s eyes widened.

“My arm ring!” He exclaimed. Had King Ecbert truly had it all this time?

“What is that?” Alethia asked quietly.

“It is a token of loyalty, to Ragnar. I thought I’d lost it, but evidently…” Athelstan replied.

Alethia said something in her tongue, and from her tone, it was evident she was cussing out King Ecbert in a way that she’d be able to keep her head.

“ Smart. ” Athelstan said in Norse. Alethia smirked. Athelstan really needed to learn her tongue. He could not imagine what it was like to not be able to speak your mother tongue for years on end. Living in Kattegat like that had been difficult enough, and Ragnar had made an effort to learn the language.

God, he would learn three languages for her. Alethia was so lonely sometimes, and Athelstan knew exactly how difficult that could be. If he could help her ward it off, he would. She was his friend, after all. 

In truth, Athelstan was not so sure all the time. She made him so nervous, so afraid at times. That was not the way friends were supposed to make you feel, right?

Athelstan could barely concentrate on his job as he thought about it, Torstein’s jabs not making the situation any better. He almost breathed with relief as it was done and Alethia disappeared towards the roman bath. 

“I want to go swimming.” She said, squeezing his arms gently. “Tell me if you need me to kill anyone for you.”

“What gave you the impression?” Athelstan replied lightly.

“You seemed stressed.” She shrugged.

“King Ecbert can be… intense.”

“Regicide. Haven’t had that one so far.” Alethia laughed. Athelstan looked around nervously.

“That’s treason.”

“Don’t worry. I’d only do it for you.” Alethia joked. Then, her expression grew more serious. “If someone bothered you, you’d tell me, right? I don’t know about regicide, but I’d do a lot to make sure you’re okay.”

“Why?”

“You’re my friend, Athelstan.” Alethia replied. “That’s what friends do.”

Athelstan shouldn’t have been disappointed at that, and yet, he was.

Alethia

The day was cold when Ecbert sent for her, a servant rousing her from her sleep and dragging Alethia to the library. She was still rubbing the sleep from her eyes, disgruntled to be woken this early on a Saturday when she heard Athelstan’s voice and smiled.

“ Caesar had sent his cavalry a little in advance, and was following with the rest of his forces. The battlefront was not formed according to rules of military theory, but as necessitated by the emergency and the sloping ground of the hillside. The legions were facing different ways and fighting different actions. The 9th and 10th legions were on the left,and discharged a volley of spears at the Atrebates." Athelstan translated, his finger brushing over the old scroll when Alethia slipped into the room. He looked up at her for a moment, giving Alethia a small smile.

“Yes. Always thinking, always using the terrain. Go on.” Ecbert mumbled, and Athelstan looked back down at the document.

"At the same time, the Roman cavalry and light-armed troops, seeming to appear from nowhere-"

“Ah! But he knew where. They were in here.” Ecbert interrupted. “And what of his person? What of he himself?”

"As the situation was critical, Caesar moved to the front of the line, addressed each centurion by name...And shouted encouragement to...The fragment ends here.”

“We can imagine how it really ends. We must do battle with Ragnar

Lothbrok and his allies.” Ecbert finished. “Alethia, what of your grandeur of knowledge.”

“Well, Caesar was smart to use the terrain. That’s why he’s such a decorated strategist. The terrain around the villa is not suited perfectly to the plan though. In this battle, Caesar’s enemy was at the bottom of a valley, surrounded by hills from all sides. This is not the case here.” Alethia pointed out, grabbing a map of the surroundings of the villa. She wished there was a physical map at hand.

“The villa was built atop a hill by the Romans. They considered the terrain when they did. The Northmen will be attacking from the shores, which are South. They will fight an uphill battle. Therefore, it would be smart to send the archers out first, attack them with a barrage of arrows before they can form their shieldwall.” Alethia explained. “They cannot march in that formation, so that is where they are most vulnerable.”

“I like that.” Ecbert said. “Quite a bit.”

“Well,” Alethia continued. “What we could also do is send the soldiers in waves. The Northmen may underestimate the forces the first few times, and then, if we keep sending in troops, it’ll be impossible to estimate the true size of the army.”

She shuddered involuntarily, remembering when Ramsay Bolton had used that strategy on her. “It will be difficult to surround them as Caesar did, but your men know the land. If they can figure something out, then it will be even easier to defeat them.”

“I cannot believe that Ragnar does not want to negotiate. I know him too well. He's looking for land, farming land, for his people.” Athelstan argued. Alethia suddenly felt bad, remembering that those Northmen she was helping to kill were his friends. Selfishly, Alethia also did not want to imagine how lonely she would be once Athelstan was reunited with them. She could not imagine he’d be spending much more time with her, then. 

After all, Alethia knew Old English with some sufficiency now.

“His men killed all of my envoys, sparing only my son, by which they sent me a simple but clear message.” Ecbert replied calmly.

“Why not send me to speak to him?” Athelstan suggested. Alethia knew Ecbert’s true answer. Athelstan was a hostage. She could not bring herself to tell him that.

“You are already too dear to me, and too important. Which is why, I think, they would kill you.” Ecbert lied smoothly.

“When? When will you attack?” Alethia asked.

“As soon as King Aelle returns with his warriors.” Ecbert replied, before turning to Athelstan. “I'm sure you would prefer that Earl Ragnar and I made peace. Perhaps then you could be at peace with yourself.”

Athelstan looked to the scrolls, not answering King Ecbert. Alethia made to help him clear his things, but King Ecbert stopped her.

“You will lead the attack of my men together with my son.” He said.

“I do not think your son or King Aelle would appreciate that very much.” Alethia said. “They are pious men, after all.”

“A pity I am well aware of.” Ecbert replied. “But you will do so regardlessly. Today, in the courtyard, my son will assess your fighting skills.”

And while Alethia did not want to fight a battle, she did like the idea of wiping Prince Aethelwulf’s awfully arrogant expression off his face in the yard.

She nodded.

“Will Athelstan be there?”

“Do you wish it?” Ecbert asked, a smile playing on his face.

“I do not care.” Alethia replied. “But if I am to put myself in danger, I would like one sane opinion to assess the risk of it. Athelstan has seen your men and the Northmen fight. It would be good to see what he thinks of my own capabilities.”

In the yard, Alethia secured her leather armor with one last pull at the strings holding it together. Prince Aethelwulf stared at her with narrowed eyes, twirling his sword in his hand. Alethia held her own loosely, letting it point to the ground.

She’d spent hours arguing with the blacksmith to improve the balance, and thanks to her tenacity, it was almost perfect now.

Soldiers were strolling around the yard, pretending to prepare themselves for battle, but their stares were quite obvious. Athelstan had taken his place next to King Ecbert, Princess Kwentrith whispering something into the King’s ear as Alethia readied herself to spar with the Prince.

He was good, supposedly. 

Alethia had learnt to fight in Westeros, in a time that, compared to ninth century England, was far more modern. She hoped that it would be enough, and that she would not utterly embarrass herself in front of the entirety of the court.

She wasn’t sure if her pride as a woman allowed it.

But when the spar began, intuition took over, and Alethia’s instincts emptied her head of any doubts. Athelstan was alright, a strong fighter when he needed to be, but Aethelwulf was his father’s soldier.

His fighting style was harsh, aggressive, and Alethia reveled in it. He fought with honor.

She did not.

Alethia was not herself when she fought. She felt nothing as she parried the prince’s blows and made him dance around the yard. Nothing at all.

She wondered if, perhaps, that would change should she kill the Prince. In the blink of an eye, her blade was at his throat. All she had to do was cut.

“Yield.”

Alethia stepped back. Ecbert’s sarcastic clapping brought her back to reality. And still, she could not breathe. She could barely hear what Ecbert was saying, only that she needed to go.

There was a pain in her stomach, there where her child should have grown to be born. It was always there when Alethia had difficulties with her emotions. No one knew of it, not even Athelstan.

She did not want to burden him even more than she already did. She could not meet his eyes, not even when the riders prepared themselves for battle.

Athelstan kept his distance in turn. The palpable feeling of guilt hung between them, heavy in the air as in Alethia’s limbs. How could she fight again?

And then, the battle. Alethia swore it was all condensed into one deep breath, all the mud, all the blood, all the death. The blinding pain as a sword sliced her shoulder open, hot blood drowning in her armor.

A Northman under her hands, under her claws, dead before she knew it. Alethia had lost her sword, she realized numbly, somewhere among the masses. Where was her sword?

Could she still kill without it? Would she live without it?

Alethia kept on fighting, ducking out of the way of swords and picking up the weapons of fallen soldiers. She kept going, always driving forward. Prince Aethelwulf was somewhere closeby, slaughtering almost as much as she. He was enjoying himself.

When it was over, Alethia watched the Vikings retreat. She had led King Ecbert’s troops well, but still, some of them had died under her command. They dirtied her soul.

“You fought well today.” Aethelwulf told her, patting Alethia’s injured shoulder. It was not on purpose, still, a hiss of pain escaped her. She nodded, sitting down in the battlefield. There, closeby, lied a brown-haired Northman with scars similar to her own.

“ Does Odin come for your souls now? ” she asked numbly.

“ Ours, shieldmaiden. ” the man rasped.

“ I am no Northman. ” Alethia replied.

“ You are not Saxon. ”

“ No. ” 

The man only stared at her with confusion. Alethia helped him drink. She did not have the heart to kill him, neither for mercy, nor for cruelty.

The Northman closed his eyes, his breathing getting more laboured. Alethia thought of what it would be like to lie down in the mud for a little while. A soldier walked up to them. Alethia thought she knew him. He was one of Ecbert’s.

He raised his spear, ready to kill Rollo, when, suddenly, Athelstan stopped him.

“No! Wait! Stop!”

“Athelstan, who is it?” Alethia asked.

“His name is Rollo. He's Ragnar Lothbrok's brother. We baptized him, but it made no difference.”

“It is unfortunate that he's practically dead.” Alehtia sighed.

“No. He's still alive.” Athelstan argued. “This is an important man. See what you can do to save him.

“He's badly wounded. There.” Alethia pointed. Athelstan nodded, instructing the soldiers, before he turned to her.

“You left.”

“I did.”

“Come back.” Athelstan said. He held out his hand. All she had to do was take it. Alethia stared at the scars of his crucifixion. Then, she took it. It was firm. Safe.

She returned to the villa for Athelstan.

Athelstan

He stayed close to Rollo, afraid to leave him. What if they ended up killing him anyway? And yet, Athelstan was torn. Alethia was somewhere closeby, getting her injuries cleaned. He didn’t even know what had happened to her, only that he should have tried harder to keep her from the battlefield.

“ Athelstan ?”

Athelstan turned back to Rollo. “ Rollo .”

“ Priest? Look at you. Horik was right. You betrayed us. ” he spat. “ These are your folk. Christians. You look like them. ”

“ What am I to you ?” Athelstan asked quietly.

Rollo only grunted in response.

“ You are my family .” Athelstan mumbled.

“ If I had enough strength to kill you now, I would. ” Rollo spat. Athelstan felt his heart sink, and he turned towards the Great Hall. The sounds of celebration were beginning to bleed out of the villa, and he was expected to join.

“Allies! Hmm!” Ecbert cheered as Athelstan entered. Alethia was seated next to Prince Aethelwulf, toying with a cup of wine. She was staring at the King, eyes dull.

“Allies and friends, huh?" Aelle continued. “When shall we attack again our wounded foe, huh?”

“And wipe them out? That might not be a good idea.” Ecbert warned.

Aelle snorted. “Of course it's a good idea. We've won half a victory. Now, with God's help, we'll annihilate our enemies, hmm?”

“Forgive me, King Aelle, but I might suggest that even the complete destruction of one Northern army will not lead to the end of their incursions. Probably quite the opposite. Motivated by greed and by the need for revenge, they're very likely to return with renewed strength.” Ecbert warned. Alethia took a heavy sip from her cup, and Athelstan noticed that she was shaking when she set it down. Ecbert did not. He continued. 

“And not just once or twice, but again and again, times without number. The only way to bring an end to these incursions is to negotiate an agreement that is good for both sides. But, in the meantime, King Aelle, buying the services of these Northmen as mercenaries will certainly help us to overcome Mercia.” Ecbert suggested. Aelle seemed to think for a moment.

“Very well. As you say. But someone has to take this offer to the pagans. That is if they have not yet already sailed away.” Aelle agreed. Alethia’s eyes shot up, suddenly staring at Athelstan. They were red, the only sign that she had cried. 

“Indeed.”

“Considering their treatment of our envoys so far, you're not going to have too many volunteers.” Aelle mused.

“I have a suggestion.” Ecbert began. “I think we should send Athelstan.”

He looked up at Ecbert at the mention of his name, and yet, the tick in Alethia’s jaw did not escape him.

“But they may kill him.” King Aelle noted, staring at Athelstan as well. Athelstan wanted to run. There were entirely too many eyes on him.

“Oh, I doubt that.” Ecbert reassured. He was about to open his mouth again when Alethia suddenly stood. She swayed where she stood, and Athelstan noticed that there were winestains on her sleeves and the table.

How drunk was she?

Then, she stumbled past the men, all of them taking their eyes off of Athelstan and gluing them to her. Athelstan only gave King Ecbert an apologetic nod before he followed her out of the Great Hall and outside. 

Alethia still swayed unsteadily, back to Athelstan, before she steadied herself against a fence and emptied her stomach out onto the wet ground. Athelstan hated the noise of it, and yet, he rushed to her side, pulling her freshly washed her away and almost automatically rubbing her back.

When she was done, Alethia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Athelstan could feel his face wrinkle in disgust, no matter how much he tried to hide it.

He hated it when people vomited. It had bothered him so much when the Vikings had feasted, never disturbed by their own actions.

“M’ sorry.” Alethia slurred, her words flowing together. “Too much. Lost [...] blood too [...].”

She managed what he presumed to be a curse, before she turned back towards the ground and hurled again.

“You’re alright.” Athelstan told her. “Let it out, you’ll feel better.”

Alethia began to say something, interrupted by her own stomach again, white-knuckled hand curled around the fence.

“Ecbert’s sending y’to [...]. I don’t [...]” Alethia continued, and at this point, Athelstan was not sure what language she was speaking, if any at all.

.

He practically carried her to her room, the stench of wine clinging to Alethia. In that moment, Athelstan found it hard to be close to her. Still, he made sure no one saw Alethia, and when they were in her room, he helped her clean herself.

“Go sleep.” he said, wiping the vomit off her hands and mouth.

“M’alright.” Alethia replied. Athelstan still tucked her into bed like a child, right after helping her change out of her dirtied clothes. He did not even see the beginnings of her form, and yet, he was ashamed.

It felt like he was taking advantage of her.

“Bertie wants t’send you as an envoy.” she said, and Athelstan had to smile at the King’s new nickname. 

“I know.” Athelstan said softly.

“I want to accompany you.” she managed, her voice almost masterfully even. “Protect you.”

“Sure.” Athelstan lied. There was no way in hell she was coming with him tomorrow. He would not risk it, nor would she be in shape for it. Athelstan turned for the door when Alethia stopped him again.

“Athelstan?” she asked.

“Yes?”

Alethia hiccuped. “Stay?”

“Why?” Athelstan asked carefully.

“Afraid of the dark sometimes. Bad dreams.” she replied, patting the side of her cot. She missed, her hand slipping. Alethia sighed, before she giggled.

“I can’t. You’ll be fine.” Athelstan said. Of course, he did not know that.

“Why? Do you have a wife you didn’t tell me about? Or a husband. I don’t really care. Or I do.” Alethia mused.

Why did she care? Athelstan shook his head. “No, I  don’t. Have you ever seen me with a wife?”

“No. But you are a nice person. And handsome.” Alethia said, before she burst into a fit of giggles.

“Handsome?”

“Yeah.” she replied, before she blushed furiously. “Gosh, you have nice eyes. Has anyone ever told you you have nice eyes, Athelstan?”

“I’ll stay until you fall asleep.” Athelstan assented, sitting in her chair. Alethia waved him closer, and Athelstan obliged, chair scraping across wooden floor. She took his hand, head buried in her pillow. 

Athelstan took a few moments to gather the courage up before he asked his question. “You think I am handsome?” he asked finally.

No reply.

“Alethia?”

She was fast asleep, snoring softly. Athelstan shook his head. Gently, he pushed her nightgown out of the way where the wound on her shoulder had already soaked through bandages. Athelstan worked quickly, replacing them.

He saw the other scars, far more than Ragnar or Rollo had had. Athelstan ignored them. It was not his place to see, or to know.

And yet, he left her room with a heavy heart. A part of him wished that he could have stayed and soothed her scars.

#alestan #heorte til heorte #alethia x athelstan #athelstan x alethia #vikings #history vikings #athelstan #alethia stahl

[the-orange-tabby-cat]

Wings Of The Dawn | Chapter 6

AO3 link🐾 | chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

GIF by sweeetestcurse

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pairing: joel miller x fem!reader Rating: 18+ (light smut in this chapter) Tags: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Slow Build, Friends to Lovers, Age Difference, Small Town Dynamics, No use of y/n Word count of the chapter: 5,4k Next chapter will be posted: October 21th (You can find a sneak peek of the next chapter at AO3)

A/N: This is a shorter chapter after the heaviness of the last one. Consider it a little breeze because in 7 we will get right on track with the heavy plotting. See ya!

Summary of the fic: You are Jackson’s librarian, a doll with a good heart, that has your life changed when a handsome man decides to take his kid and start again in your small town after completing their cross country journey. Having a hard time ignoring Joel’s dark brown eyes, you find yourself wishing to have him close as you both navigate through love triangles, teenage drama, city gossip, and ghosts from both of your pasts. This is a comfort fic filled with slow burn and small town dynamics. Chapter summary: Joel confront his troubled past as he visits you.

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CHAPTER 6

Life path is designed through choices. We can choose ourselves: where to travel next summer or what flavor of pie to bake. Sometimes, unfortunately, others can choose for us like when you have to stay in the city during summer because there was heavy traffic on the way to the airport or having to eat meatloaf instead of pie because your roommate forgot to buy sugar.

It's all about choices. There are those we can have a final word on it, what newspaper to read, for example. When we talk about heart, we choose, but most of the time we have no idea of why we did it in the first place. Alfie, however, knew why he chose to love you.

He had been living in Jackson for a little over two years, his English was getting more natural now that Cata had interaction with kids her age. The town had almost 200 citizens, but a big part of them pretended that he didn’t exist.

The root of it was simple: Alfonso wasn't one of them. Nobody had openly treated him badly or said what was that made them avoid him, but he could see in their faces whenever he misspoke an English word. He was fine with it if it meant that Cata could have a normal life after so much time craving it.

It was afternoon when the city gate opened to reveal two men and a young woman. Maria was speaking to the three explaining the next steps of their residency at Jackson. The two ex-fireflies, Eugene and Tommy, would follow her to meet some of the patrollers, while you were a little out of place at the main street.

"I will wait for you here," you said to Eugene. Walking nearby, Alfonso noted how tired and scared you seemed to be.

“Aw, aren’t ya a doll? We might take longer than you expect. Take a tour, Dolly.” Eugene shouted as he followed Maria and Tommy.

A doll. Alfonso could see how you wanted to bark something back at the old man but controlled your tongue before doing anything. Even with dark circles under the eyes, dirty matted hair, and stained clothing, you still had tenderness in you.

He recognized the softness in your gaze. You seemed to have been through hell and back, but haven’t lost hope. Trying to keep the hope in you, he decided to help.

“Hi, I’ve hearded the conversation. Sorry. I can help you with a tour, if you want to.” He said without thinking too much, a strange man approaching you out of nowhere? Not a good start.

"Hum, hi. She told us that there is a place where we could eat before a communal dinner…?" He knew what you meant, the desperation behind your words.

He tried to maintain a distance from you as you strolled by his side on the sidewalk, you were listening carefully to a broken English explanation of the town structure. You looked directly into his eyes, even laughed when he made a joke. After so long sitting in the shadows, he was seen and heard.

As you entered the Tipsy Bison to order a sandwich, you put a hand on his forearm before he left the bar entrance.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” you smiled and introduced yourself.

“I’m Alfonso, a pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine. Thank you for the tour, Alfie.” As you entered the bar, he chose that he would stay close to you, he ached to be seen by you in his wholeness.

You chose to not reciprocate the feeling. Two years later, he was inside your house, you were wearing that dress that ended at the middle of your thighs, the one he had seen only once and dreamed of sliding it out of your body. It was supposed to be his time with you, but you were obviously waiting for another man.

The softness of your gaze was still there, but so far from the woman he met at the gate that day.

“Tell me everything you know about Maria’s plan. Please,” you tried while sitting in front of him in a chair. Alfie took the sofa, keeping a distance from you.

"She came to my house a week or so ago asking for help with her last council meeting before Esther showed up." The orange tabby cat nested in his lap, at least someone was happy to see him there. "The election will happen in two weeks, she wants to move Nath’s place to Esther. Asked me to vote for her in her proposals.”

“Just that? A vote?” You asked frowning your brows. Alfie shook his head.

"No, Dolly. It isn't about voting or not for her proposals, is what they will propose. They want to close the bar permanently and have no more local alcohol being produced here in the city."

You got serious for a second and then laughed. A smile wanted to form on his lips, but he avoided staying on the same tone as before. You saw him as a joke instead of a friend, someone who cared for you.

"Alfie, no offense, but it is impossible. Most people here drink her beverage or use the Bison as their hang out place. There is no way they'll be able to do it." Getting on your feet, you had a smile of relief on your face.

"Maria knows Nath has some kind of scheme. She caught underground drinks with some kids and will use it against her, trying to say that Nath is using minors in her operation. We might be inside the town's walls, but everyone is still a little paranoid about safety. She'll prove that Nath is using the kids regardless of the town's rules."

That took your attention. Opening your mouth, Alfie saw your eyes scan the surroundings as you tried to find an argument that could contradict what he had just said. Finding none, you limited yourself.

"Shit. Has she mentioned the kids' names?"

“No, but she thinks I’m on her side. I’m not, I’m at yours.” You avoided his eyes for a moment just to look back at him with the tenderness he knew.

“Thank you, Alfie. Will they propose it already at the next meeting?” Sitting again in your chair, you were chewing your bottom lip in a rushed manner.

“Not yet, but they will start to create alliances with Chad and Edwin as well. I came here so you could be prepared.”

A smile appeared on your lips and Alfie couldn't hold back his grin. Your eyes were looking at his with kindness, no more the avoidant stare that you gave him since Joel entered your life. He wished to keep you like this, before having your feet swiped by that man.

“I know I’ve been acting a little weird with you, I’m sorry. I’m still true to my words: I’ll be here if you want me or not, Dolly. We’re friends, I would never hurt you.”

Alfie’s words hadn’t a hint of malice behind them. You felt guilty for having chosen to ignore his honesty with you by not giving him a heads up about Joel, he had said to you that he wanted you to think about him not to treat it as if he was an asshole. Even the orange tabby cat was purring happily at his lap, why should you run away from him?

"Thank you, Alfie. I'm sorry for the last days as well." Placing your hand on his shoulder, his green eyes flashed at you with the usual light. Oh boy, you were in trouble. "See you at the council meeting, okay?"

Walking him to the door, Alfie said his goodbye with an unexpected hug. Not feeling any resentment towards him, you hugged back for a second before closing the door. The orange tabby cat was sitting at the tapestry with his tail tip wiggling back and forth, his yellow eyes slowly blinking at you.

“What? I can have friends other than Nath.” With raised eyebrows, you spoke to the cat.

"Meow," as a cat, he couldn't give much of another response.

"Shut up. I can be friends with him. And I hope to see you on Joel's lap too, you don't fool me."

With your finger pointed to the cat, you took a deep breath and plopped on the sofa. The orange tabby cat yawned at your threat, unbothered. You went back to wait for Joel and his dark eyes, wishing for the warmth of his embrace to empty your mind.

-

Could it be considered a date when you would show up at his house from time to time and he spent most of his free time at your library? Joel hadn't had a date in so long that he forgot the unspoken rules of it. You invited him to listen to music at your house, not for dinner or a night out. Maybe he was seeing too much in it.

He was dressed as always, just a nicer flannel shirt. He let his hair dry naturally, not putting too much effort – you had said you liked it before. The last thing Joel wanted was to make a fool of himself for trying too much.

“Woah,” Ellie exclaimed as she opened the door of her guest house. Joel raised his eyebrows at the kid.

“What?” He wanted to act natural, as if it was an ordinary thing not an actual worry inside his head. Did he try too hard?

“Nothing. You look so… Put together?” Maybe he did try too hard. “Is good, though.”

“I’ve worn this outfit before, I’m not more or less put together.” He grumpily mumbled, but Ellie wasn’t fully convinced, still looking smug about it. “I’m heading out, might take a few hours. If you need something cross the street to Tommy’s, okay?”

“Tell Dolly I said “hi”,” the kid smiled and he groaned in response. Of course she knew something.

As he walked out of the house, a part of him was happy that Ellie liked you. He wouldn't dare to say it out loud, too afraid to break it, but he cared for her as his daughter. If Sarah was here, he would have prepared her to meet you and wait for her approval. Ellie was the same, if she didn’t like you he would have swallowed his interest and let it die.

If he wanted to be honest with himself (something he rarely did), you weren't supposed to reciprocate. It would have been easier. Romance was something he spent so much time of his life having trouble with that now, at 56, he had no idea of where to start.

He was too deep in mourning and his worry for Tommy that he didn’t care enough for Tess the way she deserved. She slept by his side for over 10 years and he never managed to name what he felt for her. Tess treated him like someone worth coming home to after a long day, he treated her as a warm hole whenever she tried to speak about them. She was the one who kept him sane for all that dark time before Ellie's arrival in his life. His longest relationship and yet, he felt ashamed whenever he thought of her.

Before the outbreak, he stayed almost 12 years in on-and-off soon-to-be relationships. Joel never really liked the idea of casual or one night stands, but the women in his life would show no interest or disappear after a while when he got comfortable to reveal more of him. The longest he got with someone was around six months, but she fled after meeting Sarah.

The root of all these problems? Her. Sarah’s mom. Her name was almost forbidden, such a taboo that even inside his head he wouldn’t think of it. Senior year high school sweethearts, they graduated and moved together right away. For a while it was all good, he was working nonstop to make ends meet while she would be studying to join a university.

“Our sacrifice will pay off when you see me with a diploma making six figures," she would joke to him and he would believe.

He was so proud of his girl that he didn’t notice when she started to get cold at him. The realization that she would never be as rich or be able to achieve her dreams with Joel by her side infiltrated their lives. He was holding her back by existing next to her. Not having a university diploma in his name and working through the strength of his body had a bigger weight than his love for her. She was ashamed to be with him. It only got worse when she gave birth to Sarah.

She ripped him from the inside out, stepped on all his self-steem. He couldn’t see himself as interesting or that good looking after her, always with one of his foot by the door waiting for a “no”. His loneliness wasn’t by his choice, was by fear of failing expectations. Tess made it work because, at the end of the world, crumbs tasted like a whole damn meal.

Joel didn’t want to serve you crumbs, he would make it right this time.

Somewhat near your house, a panic came rushing inside his chest. Having a hard time breathing, Joel stopped at the first lamppost and waited for it to go. It could have been five or ten minutes, he had no clue. Shit, the last panic attack he had was at his first visit to Jackson, he thought it was long gone now everything was good.

Swallowing his fear, he was able to arrive in your street in time to see you and Alfie hugging. For a second he felt stupid and thought he misunderstood your signals, but it all came down when he looked at your face.

You hugged Alfie with your eyes open. You had closed your eyes the first time Joel kissed your cheek. Whatever had happened for you to hug the man, it wasn’t desire that fueled. Getting more comfortable in his skin, Joel crossed the street and tapped at your door after a minute or so.

“Hi,” he said a little more awkward than wanted. Should he kiss you? Wait for your move?

��Hi there,” you smiled at him, taking his hand in yours as you pulled him gently into the house. He was at ease again under your touch.

The sundress you wore was so casual that he felt better by not putting too much thought into his clothing. Blue as the sky, he tried to not stare at it, but he was a little too obsessed by the view of your bare legs from your shorts to this. You noticed, painfully obvious by your soft chuckle.

“Are you still tired? I can make you coffee or get something stronger,” you asked holding his hand still. He was tired but didn't mind if it meant spending more time with you.

“Do you want something to drink? I can tag along,” caressing your palm, he replied.

“Have you already tasted Nath’s wine?” He shook his head just so you could point to the sofa with your head and move to the kitchen. “It’s made of cherry, her best creation so far.”

Joel started to look around your house trying to connect the dots of who you were in his head. Maybe you were similar in more ways than he originally thought: most of the decoration had been there before the outbreak, looking more like a family house than yours. All of it, except for a huge pile of CDs at the coffee table.

Lowering himself towards the CD pile to look closer to its covers (with age his vision was far from what it used to be), he backed instantly as an orange cat came from under the table hissing at him.

“Don’t you try me, we have just spoken about it!” You ran from the kitchen shooing the cat. With a smirk, Joel looked at you.

“What did you say the poor cat?” Your cheeks went red, only making his curiosity bigger.

"He knows what I've spoken to him," picking up the cat, you left the room and came back to the kitchen. Joel followed you.

“What’s his name?” He asked leaning at the wall. You had been in his kitchen two times already, it felt like a regular space for chatting with you.

"He doesn't have a name. I was afraid of naming when I found him on my back porch. It was my first week in Jackson, couldn't name a cat that might not even stay with me."

“What do you mean?” Joel could see some tension on your shoulders as you searched for something in the cabinets. He saw the careful ways you handled your life, it was unusual for you to behave like that.

“I was afraid people would ask me to leave the town. Guess part of me is still afraid of the rejection. I like living here, it's better than anywhere I've ever lived, anyway." You avoided Joel's stare while sucking on your bottom lip. If you only knew how afraid he was of being rejected by you.

The cat was glaring at him in some kind of “fuck you” stare as if Joel could do something to worsen your fear. He wasn't much of an animal lover before the outbreak, he made a note in his mental list to learn about cats if it meant to visit you more. He would try to make you feel at home and maybe, at some point, to change the décor.

“Sorry, the house hadn’t any wine glass, had to pour it in a regular one.” Two glasses with wine were at the table. He made a motion with his hand to shut it. There wasn’t a bone of fancy inside his body, you would soon realize it.

After giving the cat some food, you pass Joel a glass. Sucking on your bottom lip, you waited as he tasted the wine. To his surprise, it was delicious.

“So?” You asked timidly. Behind you, the cat still glared at him.

"Good. Not too sweet, just right. Does she craft it by herself?" Your face of relief was enough to get his head floating. At least this is what he hoped: he drank through the cross country journey a few times, but back in Boston he used alcohol to cope with his shitty life. He couldn't get back to heavy drinking, not with you and Ellie in his life.

“Yes, Seth helps too. Ready for some Springsteen?”

  You turned on the CD player and put it on a low volume, as Born In The U.S.A. intro started Joel couldn't stop a grin. The lovely smile dimple on his cheek appeared and you controlled yourself to not kiss it right away. His arm stretched at the sofa backrest, you sat at his side with your head resting on his arm.

With him so close, you kept staring at the small details of his face. The colors of his beard and the little empty spot shaped as a heart next to his chin. Lifting your fingers, you traced the heart shape in a soft motion. The comfortable silence was filled only by the music, Joel the most relaxed you ever saw.

Cupping his cheek with your hand, he kissed your palm as he hummed Cover Me. He was so handsome when he didn’t have a care in the world.

“If I knew Springsteen had this effect on you I would have invited you sooner,” you teased him, who looked at you with tenderness.

“I was 17 when this album came out. Brings back good memories.” You tried to picture a young Joel listening to the music as he drove around when you realized something.

“You were at high school? Bet you were a troublemaker.”

“I wish, it woulda been better.” His face got serious out of nowhere. His dark eyes became glossy, getting worried you kept caressing his cheek.

“Not sure if I understand it,” Joel’s eyes found yours in confusion. “I never went to high school, the outbreak came first.”

Like a spell being broken, you could see your age flash behind Joel's eyes. You didn't mind the age gap but hadn't spoken about it with him yet. A fear of saying something wrong started in your stomach, sitting a little more firmly on the sofa, you tried to keep it cool.

“You didn’t miss much. It was a little shitty, no one was nice like you.” His hand was at your neck, the callouses of his fingertips making small circles at the base of your spine. His eyes were back to the same intense gaze he had seconds before you kissed him.

There it was again. The same impulse as last time, you wanted to kiss so badly. As if reading your mind, Joel guided your head in his direction. You kissed his lips which tasted like cherry wine in slow moves, savoring him. It was a chaste kiss, testing the waters still.

You wanted more. Your hand went to his hair, playing with his curls between your fingertips. Joel pulled you closer, interrupting the kiss to give a peck under your ear. Raising goosebumps over your whole skin, you closed your eyes focusing on the way his mustache tickled you. He was everywhere and not close enough.

He brought his forehead to yours, as you opened your eyes. His eyes found yours and went back to his lap, feeling confused you realized what had happened: the chaste kisses were enough to get him hard.

“Gimme a second, darlin’,” he whispered while trying to cool it down.

Instead, you kissed him with urgency. Fuck it, you wanted it too. I’m On Fire playing in the background, you sat on his lap and pushed your whole body on his. It took a second, but his hands found your waist as you ground your hips with his.

Your body was on fire as he dropped his hands from your waist to your ass, squeezing and holding you tight against his crotch. You moaned a little in his mouth, dry humping him as you felt your panties getting soaked. He responded by lifting his hips to meet yours.

Stopping the kiss with a gentle bite at his lower lip, you locked eyes with him as your hands traveled to his belt. “Can I?” your voice rushed with desire. Joel nodded fast.

Your hands moved quickly, in urgency to feel him. Getting his jeans opened, you started to palm his cock through his underwear while peppering his neck and beard with small kisses. Something in the way Joel looked at you made you believe he wasn't used to being showered with love.

Finally, dragging his underwear down you freed his cock and started to play with it from the base. Joel closed his eyes and rested his head back on the sofa, mouth still open. Finding a rhythm, you whimpered a little when he squeezed hard your ass with both hands, lifting your dress and digging his fingers at the outline of your panties. Your clit was pulsing for more friction.

“Keep goin’,” he blurted out with a hoarse voice.

And you did, until something sparkled inside you. Kissing him one last time, you started to move towards the ground. Nesting between his legs, you sank to your knees just like every Sunday before the outbreak, but this time it wasn’t for a prayer.

Making faster moves with your wrist, you admired the red skin of the head leaking and the weight of his cock at your palm. As you went to open your mouth and take him, something changed.

“Shit,” he muttered and you felt some softness in his cock. He had lost his erection.

Biting his mouth corners, Joel was ashamed. His eyes avoided yours, who only wanted to help. Moving from the ground to the sofa, you placed a kiss on his jaw, forcing him to look at you.

“I still want you, just like before." You helped him to close his buckle and belt, with a smile on your face.

He was still uncomfortable, you knew it, but you kept looking at him as if he was the best damn thing.

“I’m sorry. It’s been a while.” He confessed as you locked hands with his, not letting him go.

“For me too. We can find our own time.” He kissed you sweetly and you hoped that he believed in you as you poured your whole heart in his lips.

-

“He lost his boner, so what? I find it kinda sexy,” Nath started as you rolled your eyes. “I’m not joking, I do! There’s something about the desperation of it that makes me horny.”

It was late at night, the next day after Joel’s visit. You were sat in Nath’s bed with her, a white sheet above your heads and a flashlight in the middle. Two cold beers, one for each as well. It was a vent ritual and at that moment, you needed to vent about how it went.

“Can you focus? I was fine at the time, but now I think maybe I did something wrong…" You felt a little guilty of sharing such intimate details with her but knew she wouldn't judge (too hard) or tell him about it.

“Why would it be something you did? It's his dick, not yours." She stated while taking the sheets from above both your heads.

You bit your lip avoiding her stare. Why were you making a big deal of it?

"Are you a virgin? You shitting me?" Nath screamed at you, leaving her beer at the table. Of course, she would make a drama of it.

"No, stupid. Not every Mormon is an angel, you know?" You took another sip of your beer, maybe with enough alcohol you could take this conversation. "It's just... I haven't done it in such a long time and don't have that much experience. I don't want to make a fool of myself."

Nath furrowed her brows and looked up, pondering about your statement. Having sex isn't a priority when you don't have a safe place to live or could die at any moment from a runner's bite. Your first time was more of a "fuck you" to Albert than a product of romance.

"Let me get this straight: are you asking me for sex tips?" Nath gave you a shit eating grin. She wouldn't let this die. "You're getting down and dirty with the cowboy, huh?"

“At least trying to,” you retorted and she laughed.

"Want my honest opinion? He's an old man. Sometimes old men get trouble to pump up the jam." You looked at her confused, what was she talking about? "Not into eurodance? Fine, it’s natural. Old men have penises problems!”

“So I haven’t done something wrong?” You passed the whole scene again in your head, trying to see if you lost some detail. Nope, nothing.

“You were about to suck him off. I can guarantee to you: you aren’t the problem.” Nath finished her beer and went back to be under the sheets. You gave a final gulp in your glass and joined her.

“If I’m not the problem, how can I be the solution?”

This made Nath think a little further. Joel wasn’t close to her and Ellie hadn’t necessarily spoken about her surrogate father’s sexual behavior. You were in the dark.

“Honestly? I had two boyfriends and they were our age, I don’t know much about hot silver foxes. What I do know is that you lassoed the cowboy. He went to the library today, right?”

He did. Not only had lunch with you but also kissed you deeply between the bookshelves. Your arms were looped around his neck, hands on his curls – your new favorite spot. Joel was smiling on your lips.

“You seem too happy,” breaking the kiss, you asked him with curiosity.

“I like when you touch my hair, it feels good.” He said without thinking, kissing you again.

“I wanted to touch your hair for the longest time.”

Putting a small distance between you, Joel caressed your cheek and analyzed your face for a while. Getting suspicious, you pouted at him. He seemed to be lost in his thoughts, too far to reach. His dark brown eyes a little hazed.

"Joel?" You asked unsure, he blinked back at you, his thumb on your cheek again.

“Sorry, what did you say?"

Sucking your bottom lip, you felt a little weird. Was the hair commentary too much? What if it was too soon? You never had a boyfriend, Joel had way more experience than you. Jesus, you didn’t even know when someone would become a boyfriend, let alone the steps to it. Getting self-conscious, you let go of his embrace going back to work.

"Nothing, don't worry," you put on your best fake smile hoping he wouldn't notice it, but of course he did.

Not having it, Joel followed you to the other shelf and tried again. He asked one more time what had you said to him, this time you went behind the counter and spoke the truth.

“Good ‘cause I wanted for you to touch it for the longest time too," he smiled at you in a boyish way. You couldn't help but smile back.

The bliss was short lived as the library bell rang. Esther came inside with her raven hair and blue eyes, always impeccable, always beautiful. You knew that she was about to start at the council, but seeing her next to Joel made you feel small.

“Hey, Dolly. Do you mind if I interrupt to speak with Joel?” You did. A lot. Instead, you just shook your hair and went to your board. "Maria asked me to come find you to remember that tonight we'll eat at her house, not the mess hall. She wants to make a special dinner for us. See you there at 8 p.m.?"

“Ah, yeah. 8 p.m. it is.” Joel kept short, but the idea of her having dinner with him was still too much for you.

You weren't jealous, but your insecurity made you put yourself lower than it was. Joel was kissing you not even five minutes ago, hinted that he was also thinking about you with the same intensity, Esther wasn't even close to him. Stop. Being. Jealous.

“Are you alright?” Esther asked. Joel furrowed his eyebrows as they both watched you hold a broken chalk in hands. Oh.

“Yeah, I wanted to make it smaller.” You smiled trying to pretend as if nothing happened.

Esther said goodbye a few seconds later, leaving you and Joel alone again. He got closer to you, his hand at the lower of your back in a cherished manner. He was showing you how much he liked you, but you were thinking about him leaving you with a stranger woman. Stop. Being. Jealous.

“He went to the library and walked me to the Bison after it. Am I overthinking?” You groaned, Nath looked up searching for an answer.

"Maybe, but Esther stinks. She was alright before being Maria's friend, now she is just as bad." Nath rolled her eyes in anger.

“About that… Alfie came to my house and said we have some problems.”

“What kind of problems?” Her blue eyes focused on you, who took a deep breath before spilling it out.

-

Ellie was leaving the garden, ready to say goodbye to Chad when Nath came and pushed her into an alley. Making a “shh" sign at her, Ellie couldn't understand what was happening. The blonde woman showed her a piece of pink paper with the number 11 written on it.

“Who's Jesse and why are you trading my beverage with him? Don't test me." The blonde woman grunted politely, if there is how.

"He is my friend. How do you know that?" Ellie panicked. If Nath already knew, maybe more people knew about the secret place.

“Congratulations, you proved your nickname and got me in real trouble this time. Meet me in my backyard, 9 p.m. Tell Joel you'll be with Dolly." The same way she came, Nath left a confused Ellie behind wondering how much she truly knew about her underground operation with Jesse and Dina. Blinking her brown eyes at how fucked she was, Ellie took a deep breath and braced herself for it.

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