#I don’t remember the name of the guy and his cockroach wife but I hope they have a very happy marriage living in France or whatever
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Between jame prentiss, that cockroach guy, and Tim “worm scars” stoker i’m convinced that everyone in tma just thinks bugs or holes or whatever are hot.
#tma#the magnus archives#tma jane prentiss#jane prentiss#tma tim#tma tim stoker#tim stoker#tma corruption#the corruption#I don’t remember the name of the guy and his cockroach wife but I hope they have a very happy marriage living in France or whatever
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Sacrifice you for nothing
Tubbo and Ranboo get a history lesson
title from Ain’t No Crying by Derivakat
"Damn" Tubbo says, staring up at the ceiling. "That chandelier really is fighting you every step of the way, huh?"
"And it's winning" Ranboo adds.
Foolish, hanging from the ceiling as he fixes the corner piece, glares down at him. "It is not winning" he hisses "I won't let it win." That declaration would have been a lot more solid had he not squeaked as the chandelier rocked dangerously.
If that fell and broke he would actually lose it.
Tubbo has no mercy for him. "You must hate that chandelier right now" he mocks "must be your least favourite thing in the world."
"Nah" Foolish grips a small chunk of gold carefully in his teeth to avoid breaking it "that would be cults" he mumbles. There's a brief bit of quiet below and then;
"Oh yeah, I heard that the Eggpire wrecked your buildings or something."
Chandelier finally fixed (for now) Foolish drops to the floor, a fall that would have shattered anyone elses ankles but just leaves him slightly winded. "Nah" he says "I've run into cults before; one's way worse than this one."
"Worse?!" Ranboo exclaims "worse than the parasitic chicken embryo?!"
"Far worse" Foolish confirms body language completely relaxed despite such a dark topic
(but outside the seas begin to froth and bubbles, rapids forming and pushing and pulling, crashing against teeth sharp rocks and punching away at the cliffs surrounding it.)
"they seem to keep popping up wherever I go. I-
(hate them hates them with everything he is and everything he is supposed to be divine blood in his body but he can't save them can't protect everyone can't heal everything some things can't be reversed)
"really don't like them. They suck."
(I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so so sorry, I can take your broken pieces and stitch them back, back together and it won't be the same but it will be similar and that is all I can give you)
(the totem in Ranboo's back pocket begins to burn)
"I'll say" Tubbo agrees, then, with childlike curiosity and teenage macabre "which one would would you say is the worst?"
Foolish falls still.
(the sea falls still. the totems stop burning.)
(it is somehow worse)
"Probably the one made for me" he says at last.
The story goes like this; there's a village that prays to him daily. It's not that uncommon really; he's the God of the Ocean and the Undead. People pray to him for safe passage on the seas or to help them find a totem.
But the people in this village are- to put it bluntly- really fucking annoying.
It's not uncommon for people without totems to pray to him for hours on end, begging him to revive their loved ones, but these guys have turned it into an art form, any and all hours of the day, banging around in his head.
And when words don't work, they turn to physical ways to show their devotion to their God.
Silly little mortals, trying to gain his favour with dead animals and trinkets, trying to gain his favour. He already gave them a way to cheat death, all they have to do is grab a totem. Why do they want another?
They have all they need to survive. He painstakingly carved those totems. He will not give too much of himself.
(lord foolish please my mother is gone i want her back lord foolish you can bring my husband back lord foolish fix this fix her i know you can)
So he ignores the animal sacrifices and the pretty trinkets offered to him in exchange for reviving a daughter, a son, a wife, a husband. He cannot revive the long dead, he learned that a long time ago.
The only real bearable one in the village is the child, and he doesn't even think the child knows what he is the God of, really, which is odd considering the inordinate amount of statues in the town. Whenever the child prays to Foolish, it's never about a dead loved one or the sea, it's always about what the child did that day. Foolish feels more like a diary than a God in those moments.
And at least that's interesting
(mister foolish i learned how to spell flower the other day f-l-o-u-u-e-r mister foolish i saw a dead cat on the side of the road the other day)
(mister foolish are you ever lonely)
The humans grow more and more frustrated with his complete and utter radio silence, and while he's out their festivals to him grow more and more complex, the animals growing bigger, rarer, more impressive.
(i offer you this ender dragon egg this elytra this nether star this emerald ore this music disc)
He's not gonna lie; the person who built that beautiful cottage had him for a solid minute.
But he's not really paying attention to any of that; he's not the only God to have festivals and sacrifices in his name. Definitely not gonna be the last.
(what do we have to do to bring back our loved ones?)
He's just happy to build.
Bargaining is a stage of grief, but so is acceptance, and they must learn to accept this.
(except their not accepting it, the town is just growing angrier, more desperate, going bigger and bigger, hunting animals around them to extinction.)
The first time they kill a human, he's pretty sure it's an accident. An old man, long past his time, probably just died from shock or disease.
They put his body on the altar and offer him up to him, not to revive but as a sacrifice. He arrives, cloaked in illusions as thick as the fog around the town. He still sees Death though, watching sedately from where she's sitting on the wall, her angel beside her.
They're gone in the next moment.
The town never buries the old man, keeps him on the altar, and, after three days, Foolish takes him, takes him far away to an old field and buries him there.
(the leader of the town finds the missing body and smiles. their god has accepted their gift)
He hopes it's a one time thing
(because what did they do to that man how could they these humans these ants small and painfully easy to kill but flocking together working together how could they turn on one of their own)
(because what would he do then?)
(after the man disappears from the altar, the child prays to him again, telling him the man's name, and how he once stopped the child from getting a rash from poisonous flowers. he liked violets the child tells him)
(maybe the child really does know what he's the god of. maybe the child's just lonely.)
He doesn't know what exactly triggered it. Maybe they saw the child trying to make conversation with a God instead of praying to one. Maybe the child, in the way all children are, said something controversial, maybe about the man who was left on the altar to rot.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
He isn't there when the child is dragged out onto the streets, and dumped at the feet of the altar in front of the whole town, trembling and shaking. And the child is a child but is no fool, has seen the sacrifices has seen what has happened, and does what any scared child will do-try to run.
And at the same time the child tried to back away, the leader swung his sword, and the whole town watched as the child screamed, eyes bloodied and slashed from the blade.
(he had been aiming for the neck)
(not a fighter, that leader)
"A life for a life!" The leader exclaimed and swung again.
(the child collapsed on the floor and the crowd pressed in, eager to watch as they choked and gagged on the blood spilling out of their torn open throat, arms scrabbling into the ground like a beetle like a cockroach like an ant whose colony had turned on it)
And- and then-
And at the same time the child tried to back away and the leader swung his sword, the child had had one last panicked, desperate thought.
(mister foolish, they're gonna kill me)
And at the same time-
And at the same time the leader slit the child's throat, a golden clawed hand grabbed him by his.
"So yeah" Foolish says. "Cults are, like, the worst."
Ranboo and Tubbo continue to stare at him. "Uh" Ranboo says, then promptly stops talking.
"Did you . . kill them?"
He nods, bouncing on his feet a little. "Yeah" he smiles "good times."
The two teenagers both look like they don't know what to do with that.
"Well, at least they deserved it" Tubbo offers up attentively, and Ranboo nods
"Can't believe they executed a child. Nobody deserves to die like that" Ranboo mutters and Tubbo winces beside him.
"Y-yeah" Tubbo agrees nervously, twining his hands together "that poor kid. Hope it was peaceful."
Foolish blinks at them. "Wait, what?" Then he replays their entire conversation and laughs.
"Laughing at a kid's death" Ranboo notes, before turning to Tubbo "why are we letting him near Michael again."
"No, no" Foolish waves his hands "you misunderstood me; the child didn't die."
"You guys do remember I'm the God of Undying, right?" He raises an eyebrow at them both. "I healed the kid's neck wound right up." Ranboo just blinks at him in that slightly unsettling way that only an enderman can do.
"I thought you didn't revive people personally."
Foolish glances outside, past the both of them. "This was different" he says "this was-"
(my fault my fault i turned a blind eye i could have stopped this sooner you choked and gagged and cried out for anyone to save you but in the end the motivation for your murder had to step in.)
"-an exception."
"Good for you!" Tubbo cheers, shooting his hands in the air vehemently "the whole stinking town is gone and you and the child lived!"
Foolish makes a noise in the back of his throat. "Except the other towns had heard about the towns rituals. And it began to spread."
Tubbo's hands drop. "Oh."
"Yeah" he agrees "oh. But the worst part was the damage done to the child."
"Let me guess" Ranboo says, dry as Egypt. "Traumatised?"
"To put it mildly."
(the child had turned blind eyes towards him, and when he had reached out to grasp the pudgy hand it had recoiled, the small body curling up away from him and he had burned)
(the child hadn't seen or felt the tsunami that destroyed the entire town. but the screams- they had ears)
"But uh" he shifts awkwardly from foot to foot "not just that. I'm the God of Undying, so I can heal other's mortal injuries."
A long pause.
"Their mortal injuries" he repeats.
"Oh!" Tubbo jerks back "oh God! The child's eyes-"
"I healed them" he says, then winces "tried to heal them" he corrects. Better. "But uh, because they weren't fatal they weren't exactly, uh, restored."
(the mirror is broken and the cracks will show even when it's put back together and you'll never see the same way again my fault my fault i'm sorry i'm so so so sorry)
(this is all i can give you i am so sorry only child lonely child i cant take all you pain away but i promise you here and now you will be lonely no more)
"Damn." The closest Ranboo will ever get to a swear.
"It gets worse" Foolish chirps "the other towns found out that a child had been blessed by the Totem God himself. Were very interested in what exactly this child could do."
A long pause.
Then. "Cults" Ranboo says faintly.
"Cults" Foolish agrees cheerfully, thinking of a child screaming in agony with bloodstained eyes and a gashed throat as others looked on, indifferent.
Cults Foolish thinks grimly as that same child is dragged up to be executed by the Eggpire.
#dream smp#c!tubbo#tubbo#ranboo#c!ranboo#foolish gamers#c!foolish#mumza#philza#like#it's not explicitly said but it's implied#eggpire#eret#c!eret#dsmp fanfic#dsmp fic#dream smp fic
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You don’t like me when I’m angry (part 2)
Shangqi x Reader
A/N: Part 2 of <You don’t like me when I’m angry> Characters that I came up with are fictional and are not related to real people! I hope the flow is good as well! Did get some ideas from this webtoon, <Unholy Blood> that I was reading and I thought, hey why not right? Again, please enjoy! Hope it did not disappoint🙇🏽♀️
Genre: PG 13
Warnings: Maybe just watch out for a bit of detailed descriptions of injuries and the fighting. I tried to insert some themes like coping methods because honestly a superhero life isn’t all unicorns and rainbows - especially when most of them have morals.
‘When all this is over, I’m going to kill you!’ I scream over the bullets that were flying over our heads as we ducked behind the walls for cover.
‘Why me? It was Katy’s idea!’ Shangqi retorts back, clearly feeling the injustice from the death stare. ‘Ok fine! Kill me all you want after this but we have a big furry problem on hand?’ He takes another shot at the group of henchmen with the rings he had inherited from his father. I slowly loose my vision, as the iris in my eyes turned orange.
Shangqi sees you transforming into your alter ego and if you weren’t feeling murderous towards the mob boss, it was probably the most beautiful thing he saw. Skin ablaze, he wonders if that was the reason for your high tolerance in general. Meanwhile, more henchmen poured into the tiny hallway like cockroaches. Clearly he and Katy did not think about this in their plan - just how many of them were they?
‘I’ll cover you! Get to Gor before he kills the ambassdor’s family!’ He takes a deep breath, focusing all his energy on the rings to give the strongest blast he could. That was the signal. Breaking out into a sprint, I flew across the bodies that were stacked against each other before coming to a stop at the staircase where Katy was with the ambassador’s wife and child who were both inconsolable
‘Gor’s got the older kid!’ Katy yelled over the siren from outside. Shit. The police were here. ‘Get them out and help Shangqi, I’ll meet you guys as soon as I can!’ Heck with property damage, a kid’s life was at stake. Charging up as much energy as I could, I broke through the wooden celling, arriving at the rooftop in record time to see Gor dragging the poor kid by the collar.
‘Stop where you are RIGHT NOW!’ I threw a fireball at his shoulder as a warning. The werewolf stops, turning around menacingly to face me. ‘Let the kid go, they have nothing to do with this.’
Minus the kid’s sobbing, the atmosphere was deadly quiet. I didn’t dare to move from my spot least it triggered him. ‘Look, whatever you want, I’m pretty sure the ambassador has it,’ I tried a last ditch attempt reasoning with him, voice strangled in fear. ‘So please, I can stay with you until he gets here. Let the kid go.’ Why I was reasoning with a bloodthirsty werewolf, I had no idea myself.
‘You Avengers…’ Blood was dripping from his fangs. ‘Always so noble. But you see, do you really think that money was all I wanted?’ He pushes the kid over the ledge, cutting their right arm in the process.
‘NO!’ I ran towards the edge, thinking of the worst. I think of Katy’s words back in the sanctum. More like the Avengers causing an international incident. Instead I see Shangqi carrying the confused kid who was covered in foam - from one of Katy’s trick arrows. The ‘chains’ are no longer holding me back. Gor laughs behind me. Now he’s really done it.
‘I don’t know why you think this is funny,’ both my fists turned into fire. ‘But that’s ok. I’ll wipe that smirk of your face myself.’
The werewolf crazed look tells me that Gor is long gone together with the concept of reality. ‘You should have seen them... ha! The screaming men, women and children... their young blood doesn’t fail to disappoint...’
My fist came into contact with his jaw, breaking a few bones along the way. The large figure flies back and slams into the entrance of the staircase. Not giving him a chance to react, my arm replicates a sword on fire. ‘You... you killed children... innocent lives and FOR WHAT!’ I felt my body temperature going past the normal range, heart about to beat out of my chest. ‘I’m going to make you feel what they felt.’
Plunging the sword into his chest, the werewolf thrashed around violently, howling in pain. Screams echoing around me, it only made me dig the sword in deeper. ‘You won’t die, you’ll just experience what you did to them but ten times worse. I told you. You won’t like me when I’m angry G-’
‘(Y/N)!’
I wanted to stop but this odd thrill told me to continue. Shangqi places a hand on what used to be my forearm, bringing me back to my senses. ‘He killed children.’ My voice came out in nothing more of a whisper. ‘HE KILLED CHILDREN FOR SPORT!’ My rage about to hit the roof.
‘I know and I’ll probably roast him alive if I could too,’ he makes an attempt to soothe my anger. ‘But we’re done here. Please don’t do anything you’ll regret. Please.’ My vision slowly returns to normal as I look into his brown ones, removing the sword from the half conscious Gor. I signaled for Shangqi to give me a few more seconds as I bent down to Gor’s eye level.
‘Remember my face. Remember my name. Because you won’t like me when I’m angry.’
I allowed myself to be led away by Shangqi as the cops started to storm the building. ‘Remind me to never get on your bad side. Like ever.’ He gives me a small smile.
We made our way down to meet Katy at the back alley. ‘I can never get angry at you Shangqi in case if you haven’t noticed yet.’ I put my hood up, walking into the open. ‘Katy on the other hand...’
‘THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH BOTH OF YOU?’ She jabs her finger into my arm. ‘I have to take care of one reckless idiot already I don’t need another one.’ As if forgetting that she was mad at me a few seconds earlier, she launches herself into me, giving me a bear hug. ‘Please don’t do that again,’ she mutters into my shoulder as I patted her head, looking at Shangqi quizzically. Just go along with it, he mouths.
On queue, the golden portal opens with Wong waiting on the other side. He takes a moment to register our disheveled appearances, including the bloodstains on my face.
‘Please just ask the spider kid to do it next time,’ Katy dumps her gear unceremoniously onto the sofa. ‘Nearly tore my ligament trying to fight Gor’s right hand man.’ Again, Wong doesn’t say anything, staring at me as I focused on my hands.
He’s going to tell me I shouldn’t have lost my cool. The gravity of the situation finally had set in. Great, I won’t be able to go on missions with Shangqi and Katy next time. Maybe I should tell- Shangqi’s hands quietly wraps around mine, somehow knowing the chaos that was happening in my brain.
‘Right,’ Wong coughs, breaking the silence. ‘Go home, get some rest, see you back here tomorrow morning.’ The two were about to retort back, but quickly clamped their mouths shut when they saw Wong’s expression. It wasn’t open for negotiation. He creates two separate portals, one for Katy and Shangqi each.
‘(Y/n), a word please.’ Shangqi grips my hand, as if asking if I wanted him to stay. ‘It’s ok, go back and get some rest. I won’t be long.’ He hesitates for a moment, before going back home. ‘Call me.’ And the portal closes.
‘I saw what happened today.’ My eyes widened in surprise. Crap, there was no escaping this one. I bowed my head in shame, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have lose my cool. It was completely unprofessional of me but please don’t take me off missions with Katy and Shangqi.’
‘Take you off?’ Wong starts to chuckle to my bewilderment. ‘No (y/n), no one is taking you off anything. Maybe you should have kept your anger in check, but no one under your circumstances could have kept their cool. Just take a look at Strange.’ I unknowingly let out a snort.
‘What I do want to tell you is that if you have anything… even if you don’t wish to tell me, you have Shangqi and Katy. Good communication is essential for good teamwork.’
Wong was right. Whatever demons that I had inside of me, I projected them onto Shangqi. Given my abilities, it’s downright dangerous. Who knows what would have happened if he didn’t manage to defuse the situation as quickly as he did. I could have killed him and maybe everyone around the vicinity too.
Wong starts to create a portal back to home. ‘I shall not hold you back any longer (y/n), get some rest and good luck.’ I stepped into the portal, taking a deep breath to prepare myself for what I’m about to do next.
‘(Y/n)! Are you alright?’ Shangqi gets up from his bed while Katy snaps out of her trance. ‘What did Wong ask you? Don’t tell me he chewed you out for what you did back there?’ The questions came in a flurry. I look at their anxious faces, confident that my decision was the right choice.
‘No he didn’t, it’s all good. But maybe I just want to tell you guys something that I’ve been waiting to tell for a while.’
No doubt, it was going to be a long night. But rather than running away from today’s situation, I knew that I had to face it head on. And if it was of any comfort, one thing that I was sure about -
Is that I would never be alone.
A/N: Hoho~ part 2 is done! I have no idea what is that ending but it was the first thing that came to my mind so…😅 I think the whole premise of this two part story is essentially a reminder not to keep things to myself and know that there are loved ones who are supporting and cheering me on. And I don’t know… I think it’s something we could all use in this day and age! Again, thanks for reading both parts and please like and comment if you wish!🥰 More content and possibly different characters will be coming your way soon!
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ancient names, pt. xvii
A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic
Ancient Names, pt xvii: what the wolves taught me
Masterlink Post
Word Count: ~6.9k
Rating: Explicit.
Warnings: mentions of gore and blood, like a LOT of mentions of blood, mentions of self-harm, shower sex without Reasonable Protection, also like kind of dubious if you squint because John is tripping, bad decisions are made as well as some questionable dirty talk (John really likes that she beat a man to death). Elliot kind of has like one (1) tiny power trip. Idk man just like proceed with caution??
Notes: A little bit of an interlude chapter, this one! Last chap was a bit intense, so this one's more of a transition--not a lot happens in terms of plot movement, so everyone can go ahead and catch your breath. ♡ As always, a big and huge thank you to everyone who reads and comments, has come and said hi to me on my tumblr. This fandom has been so incredibly lovely and welcoming and just understanding of my general chaos and my inability to bend to canon at all. I'm just so grateful to each and every one of you! Thank you thank you thank you!
Big thank you to @shallow-gravy for lending me their eyeballs and for making me this GORGEOUS moodboard for Elliot. When I say that I like died inside when I saw it, it's because my life became complete and I was ready to ascend. Thank you so much!!
And of course my angel @starcrier, my lover my life my shawty my wife, who proofreads all my garbage even though she doesn’t even go here but she goes here for me! ILY ♡
As always, I hope you enjoy and thank you again! ♡
John felt pretty good, all things considered.
Yeah, he was probably going to feel like shit when came off of his high; yeah, kissing Elliot did smear blood all over his mouth, but when he spotted the two of them in the reflection of the truck’s dark windows, Elliot’s face and hair splattered in crimson and the very obvious incrimination on his mouth, he thought, well, don’t we make quite a pair?
Everything blurred and pulsed pleasantly around him now as he sat in the passenger seat of the truck. The crash of the drug wasn’t really much of a crash at all—idly, John wondered how it was they got the downturn to be so easy, so slow, so mild. Each time he took in a breath it felt like the car expanded with him. There wasn’t anything the world, in that moment, that wasn’t for him, not a single thing that didn’t sway and pulse and beat in time with the rhythm of his own heart.
Except for Elliot. When he looked at her, red sparked off of her in violent waves to their own metronome, mimicking the dashes of crimson on her face and in her hair; the bruises welled red and blue along the pillar of her throat, her jaw, one on the corner of her mouth. She looked wild; her eyes moved with a sharp clarity that had him wondering how long that Wrath had really been sitting inside of her.
Not a good girl, he thought, watching Elliot drag her thumb from one end of her mouth to the other, wiping the blood their liplock had smeared around. He could still taste it in his mouth. Not anymore.
You couldn’t be good and bash a man’s skull in, could you? And it was bashed in—John had gotten one single good, long look at Kian’s face, and there was nothing of it left except bloody mush and two battered eyeballs barely stuffed into his skull. Gruesome. Well past the point of killing him.
“They attacked the compound,” Jacob was saying from the driver’s seat, pulling out onto the highway with a not-so-kind lurch as they hit pavement. “About an hour after you took off. I bet they were waiting. Fucking cockroaches.”
John glanced into the rearview mirror. He meant to look and see if he could catch any movement in the trees—anything that wasn’t Eden’s Gate—but he just looked at Elliot. Sharp-eyed, bloodied, fingers knotted into Boomer’s fur as the dog lay with his head in her lap. It wouldn’t have done any good, looking back there; everything was moving. Everything was breathing.
“Drugged me,” he offered helpfully, his tongue feeling a little too big for his mouth. Jacob looked at him through the sides of his eyes and hit the cruise button. “Got a radio back, too. I tried calling you guys, but—”
“But not Elliot,” Jacob said, less a question and more a confirmation of what he believed to be true. John shrugged idly.
His eldest brother glanced back at Elliot then, but she was silent for two heartbeats longer than what it should have taken for her to answer before she replied, “Wouldn’t have been fun for him if I was.”
“Yeah, well,” the redhead muttered. “You sure made...” His voice trailed off, and his eyes fixed on the road again. “... Work of him, didn’t you, deputy?”
Elliot sighed. That Jacob said you made work instead of you made quick work made John painfully, delightfully aware of how many times and how much effort it must have taken for Elliot to cave Kian’s face in, and that knowledge writhed pleasant and desirous in his stomach.
But Jacob didn’t sound pleased. John supposed that he wouldn’t be, all things considered. Kian was dead, sure, but the rest of the Family had almost certainly scattered like rats to whatever corner of Hope County they could reach. They would be a problem. By now, they were all supposed to be hunkering down in the bunker to outlast the End Days, and instead, they were contesting with an entirely different pest.
Maybe Elliot was right; maybe without Ase and Kian, they would just leave. Go and kill some other tiny town of people. Get their skin melted off by the nuclear war.
In fact, if John really thought about it—and it did take work—he didn’t think that the Family was much of a problem at all anymore. The only thing that remained questionable, and up in the air, was Elliot herself.
My wife, he thought, his brain ticking and idling like an engine cooling down, wading through the neck-high water of his thoughts. Each leap from one thread to the next felt sugary-slow. Little killer, aren’t you?
He didn’t think that she would be content with hunkering down in a bunker. That would take some time to warm up to, probably—and, John reasoned, he would have to first broach the subject of their legal binding. But that was another problem, for another time, and right now all John wanted to think about was getting home and enjoying his high while he had it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
When Elliot was very young, she remembered coming across a snake coiled on the hot pavement of the path up to their front door. It had been after school; her mother had had the windows of the kitchen open, playing an old song, something about a dream, and she could hear it from all the way down at the road. The snake was basking—drinking in the sunlight, mottled in shades of brown and copper, flecks of white highlighting the prettiest parts of it. The snake had been a dream to a girl who ran wild and barefoot through every inch of the Hope County wilderness she could reach; the speckled pattern begging for a touch, it’s elegant coil beckoning for attention.
The window to the kitchen had been open, and the second her mother had seen her staring at the snake, she’d come sprinting out the front door. Her mother had never liked any kind of animal that didn’t have four legs and wouldn’t fall under the “fluffy retriever” category, so at first, she had thought it was just her mother’s aversion to the scaly members of the animal kingdom; but after her mother’s insistent shrieking that she give the rattler a wide berth on the way up to the front steps, she’d thought maybe it was actual danger worrying her mother.
Of course, Scarlet had called the sheriff’s office and immediately demanded someone come and get rid of the snake (even though you weren’t supposed to call the sheriff’s office for that kind of thing, there was animal control) while she made herself a vodka soda.
“He’s pretty, mama,” Elliot had said, staring out the window at the snake. “Did you see his spots?”
“Pretty.” Scarlet had never sounded more displeased. She squeezed her lime into her drink, muttering furiously. “All those spots mean that ugly thing would kill you with one bite, bunny. Do you hear me? Venomous. Stay away from it.”
Now, sitting in the back seat of an Eden’s Gate truck, her face mottled with a dead man’s arterial spray, she felt like that prairie rattler, her spots belying a poison and vicious bite.
Pretty, she thought tiredly, combing her fingers through Boomer’s fur. Pretty venomous.
Her gaze drifted absently, away from the landscape blurring past them as Jacob cruised back to the compound and instead onto the occupants of the car. John was leaned back in his seat, eyes fluttering shut occasionally like he couldn’t keep them open very well, and Jacob had a tight grip on the steering wheel. A pack of cigarettes sat in one of the cupholders in the center console, and she reached for them on autopilot.
Jacob’s gaze flickered down to her hand snaking between them. For a second, he looked like he’d been about to grab her hand, like maybe he thought she was trying something—but his fingers stayed on the steering wheel, and he said, “Probably a lighter in the console.”
Elliot snagged the cigarettes and then fished around in the console until she found the lighter. The cotton fabric of Ase’s high-necked dress felt sticky on her skin, like she was in the middle of a summer storm; chill seeped down into her bones, and her skin bloomed feverish, and she thought this is when the crash happens, but it didn’t hit. She lit a cigarette and rolled the window down before she took a drag and felt the tiredness pull at the corners of her vision.
The song from her memory played on a gentle loop in her head. Leisurely, lulling. So dream, when the day is new; dream, and they might come true. Her mother had listened to that song so many times, growing up. She wondered, briefly, if her mother was alright. If she’d gotten out. If she’d gone with the resistance and fled, or if she was still here somewhere, or if she was dead.
“Anyone get hurt?” she asked after a minute. “At the compound?”
“A few,” Jacob replied. His eyes narrowed. “None dead, though.”
Elliot exhaled smoke out the window. She thought she would have felt dirty, now, sticky with Kian’s breath and his fingers and his mouth against her skin—but she didn’t, not right away. She just felt—
“Sure that’s disappointing for you,” Jacob continued.
—tired.
“Eat shit, Jacob,” she muttered. “I just solved your biggest problem.”
“No, you didn’t,” he snapped back. “Not by a long fucking mile, deputy.”
The redhead eyed her through the mirror, but she didn’t say anything to that—and for the rest of the ride back to the compound, it was blissful, empty silence.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
John thought he must have certainly fallen asleep in the car, because one second he was blinking through Jacob talking about how the compound had been attacked, and the next they were parking.
The compound looked a little worse for wear, but it was quiet; if not for the bullet holes in the walls of buildings, and the occasional blood spray dried nearly black with time, he wouldn’t have known anything was amiss at all. He would have thought it was a regular evening—but was far from it.
At the very least, John felt a little clearer now. His high was slowly cruising down, and he’d probably feel all of his bruises once he sobered up, but for now he buzzed.
Jacob climbed out of the driver’s seat beside him, and his body operated on autopilot to do the same. He saw Boomer drop from the truck and stick his nose to the ground instantly, eyes wary and waiting to see if any danger still lurked. When Elliot’s feet touched the ground, the Heeler did a single loop around her legs and then nosed her hand.
“John,” his brother said, his voice clipped. “Chapel.”
“Right,” John replied. He glanced over his shoulder and then looked at Elliot; she took in a little breath and waved her hand.
“Gonna shower,” she told him. “I’m good.”
John reached for her, fingers itching; Elliot caught his wrist before his hand could land on her shoulder, or her face, but she used it to pull him closer, and then she kissed him—leaned up and pressed her mouth, tasting like wild copper and a little like ash, against his. John’s brain fizzed white static and he sighed against her kiss, and he was reminded of how electric she had felt back there in the forest with the buzz of her kill still sitting under her skin.
“John,” Jacob insisted, louder this time, “now.”
“Okay,” John said, but he said it into the kiss, sliding his hand from Elliot’s grasp. “Okay, I’m—”
And like that she had pulled away from him; she whistled for Boomer and set off across the yard for the bunkhouse, and he turned and forced his legs to move towards the chapel. I’m good, she’d said. What did she mean? What did “good” constitute?
His brain felt too muggy for him to contemplate whether or not he was spiraling on a thought because it had some other meaning or because he was high, so he just pushed aside as he walked into the chapel, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Joseph was there, sitting beside Faith; their heads bowed in silence, only disturbed when the sound of his and Jacob’s footsteps echoed in the quiet.
“You’re safe,” Joseph said, sounding relieved. As John came closer, his older brother lifted an arm; beckoning him, and he went instantly. Joseph’s hand cradled the back of his head and pressed their foreheads together in an embrace that was far softer than anything that had occurred between them as of late. It felt like John’s entire body sighed in relief. “We were so worried, John.”
“And high as shit,” Jacob replied as they neared. “Tripping fuckin' balls, aren’t you, Johnny?”
“It’s fine,” John insisted, though he could hear the words slur a little even as he tried very hard to punctuate them on their way out of his mouth. “Not so bad.”
“You look awful,” Faith murmured. “What happened?”
“Um,” he said.
“Kian’s dead,” Jacob explained helpfully.
Joseph blinked. His expression was guarded, but hopeful. “Good news, then.”
“Deputy Honeysett bashed his skull in with a shotgun.”
Faith said, “Oh.”
A moment of silence stretched between them. Jacob paced to the front of the chapel; Joseph absently scratched at his cheek, his hand having withdrawn from John as he took in this news from his brothers. John tried not to shift too much, but the silence was killing him—he didn’t know how Joseph was going to feel about that. If he would still want Elliot with them.
“Was she?” Joseph asked after a minute. “Drugged?”
“No,” John said. “Not—I mean, she said she wasn't.”
“So she did it on her own,” he continued, “without being influenced by anything that could arguably… Cause a hallucination which would make her do that.”
“I—” John’s brain struggled to keep up with Joseph’s train of thought. “I—guess—”
“This is good news, then.” Joseph’s voice bloomed with warmth. “Don’t you see? There is no person more in need of us,” he continued, “than someone who has nowhere left to go.”
“And where would she go,” Jacob muttered, “that wouldn’t commit her to a psychiatric ward.”
Joseph nodded. His hand returned to the back of John’s neck and gripped there, firm and steadfast.
“You’ve done so well, John,” he said, “but our time is running out. You know that, don’t you? We are borrowing it now, from God himself, and I don’t intend to go into the next phase of our lives with a debt to pay.”
John blinked through the fog in his brain and swallowed thickly. He thought he knew what it was that Joseph was telling him—but before he could think too hard on it, Jacob interjected, “John hasn’t told the deputy about their blissful union.”
“What?” Faith asked, head snapping to look at him.
“Well,” John began.
“Actually,” Jacob continued, “he lied about it.”
“Well,” John tried again, irritably, “it had already been done, and she didn’t remember it thanks to Faith’s handiwork, and at the moment in time I thought—maybe—it would be worse off to tell her rather than…”
He fumbled for the words he wanted to say; the truth was that there were no good excuses. He just didn’t trust Elliot not to go absolutely feral when she found out, because she certainly didn’t remember it which meant she certainly was going to have feelings about it. And that was a problem.
But a problem for another time. Right?
“You’re gonna stick us in a bunker with her,” Jacob snapped, “and let her lose her shit on us while we’re trapped.”
“I won’t,” John insisted.
Joseph exhaled softly. “John—”
“I’ll—I’ve got it under control!” he exclaimed, looking at Joseph. “I know Elliot better than any of you, and I’ll find the right way to tell her, and it’ll be fine. I know.”
His older brother watched him with a pensive gaze. For a moment, John thought he saw regret flash across Joseph’s face—maybe for praising him too fast, maybe for entrusting this to him at all in the first place. But if he let someone down, that wasn’t his fault, right? This shit was so far beyond the plan of attack—so far beyond what they had anticipated, that there was a margin for error.
No, John thought, no, there isn’t. I know better. I’m better. I know.
“Borrowed time, John,” Joseph cautioned at last. “We’ve got to get rid of these locusts, and then we will be retreating for the End. You understand?”
John steadied the breath that tried to slip out of him. I don’t want to go into the next phase of our lives with a debt to pay.
“Yes, Joseph,” he replied. “I understand.”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The stinging shower water ran pink to the drain. Elliot dunked her head under the water and passed her hands over her face; she stood there for a moment letting the water pool in the cups of her hands until her lungs ached and she had to let it go, spilling over her neck and shoulders. The dark dress, wretched thing, had been discarded and tossed into the trash; she thought if she had to look at herself in it for one more second she was going to come fucking undone, and that just wouldn't do.
The door clicked open; a brief moment of hesitation sounded before she heard footsteps coming inside. “El?”
She turned in the shower, wiping water from her eyes before tugging the curtain back. John regarded her with eyes only half-intoxicated, more clarity about them now than there had been in the truck.
Elliot watched him for a moment as she considered. The chill hadn't left her bones, even in the scalding hot water.
“Are you getting in?” she asked, watching his gaze flicker absently before landing back on her.
“Are you inviting me?”
Elliot pulled back from the curtain and ducked back under the water. “I’ve never known you to need an invite.”
“Fair enough, I won't disappoint.”
There was the gentle rustle of fabric, the push of the curtain, and then she wasn’t alone in the shower anymore; but it was fine, because she didn’t want to be alone anymore, because it felt like her entire body was vibrating and she couldn’t get it to stop. Unlike John, who she guessed was cruising down the same gentle crash that she had felt when the Family had drugged her with their weird shit, there was nothing inhibiting her body now. Only the quick, sharp, violent buzzing of blood on her mind, under her fingernails, between her teeth.
It felt good, too. An adrenaline high; the fall, right before impact.
John’s hands slid along her hips. The calloused pads of his fingers—fingers meant to hurt, to twist and coerce—skimmed the scars along her abdomen, sloping across her hip bones; she didn’t have to glance down to see that’s what he was doing. You’ll tell me, he’d said that morning. Eventually.
“I did them,” she said around the dull roaring in her ears. The words tasted strange on her tongue. A verbal admittance was very different from scribbling it into a journal. But the catharsis had begun; with Kian’s collapsed skull imprinted into her mind forever, it felt as though a tension had released in her, pulled taut and sharp and finally ripped free.
“Did what?” he asked, nosing past wet hair to glide his mouth along the pillar of her throat.
“The scars,” Elliot murmured. “I did them.” To feel real, she wanted to say, I did them so I could know that I was still real, but the words wouldn’t come. Maybe they didn’t need to.
John’s thumb swept along the one that stretched over her hip bone. He hummed, low and hungry, into her skin. He might have been coming down from his high, but it didn’t seem to be pushing him into sleep; he was enjoying it, the gentle careening to sobriety.
And maybe tomorrow she would regret telling him. Maybe tomorrow she would feel dirty for the way that she killed Kian, instead of intoxicated with her own magic. Maybe, maybe, maybe—but that was a thing to think about when the time came, and just like she had done everything else about herself that she hadn't liked, she would strangle it and move on.
John turned her around so that he could pull her against him. He said, “I thought so,” like he had recognized it in her, and she thought about that dream. Just like me, holding her blood-covered hands in his. You’re just like me.
Lifting her arms, Elliot carded her fingers through his hair and then gripped, pulling him in to press her mouth against his. She kissed him the way that she wanted to; no time for shyness now, she thought, no room for hesitation. John had watched her cave a man’s face in, and he was still here and hungry, so she kissed him hard—dug her teeth into his lip and revelled in the way that he moaned and leaned into her.
He’d kissed her frantically, too, back in the clearing and with Kian’s body just a foot away from them. Kissed her with blood in her mouth, greedy and insatiable, and frenzied, like he’d wanted her right then and there and wasn’t willing to let her go until he absolutely had to.
The raised skin of his Sloth scar dragged under her fingers. She dug her nails into the soft expanse of his shoulder, and he made a low, delicious noise against her mouth. I could give him more, she thought, dizzied at the idea of it, at this sudden humming, heady power she felt had become hers. This something that had become unlocked inside of her. I could give him more, and he’d thank me for it.
“Elliot,” John began, hands gripping her hips as he nudged her back against the shower wall. But he didn’t follow it up with anything; he just kept her there, skin on skin, heat bleeding out from every inch of him. His hand drifted up above her head, fumbling at the window, trying to push it open. “Fuck, it’s so fucking—hot in here—”
I want to be yours. I want a home with you.
Briefly, she wondered if that dream had been as wishful as she’d thought. John had been exactly what she wanted him to be—just the color, just the shape, everything in him built to lure her and keep her there like the most perfect predator. It was easy to forget that she had never known that she wanted a man whose hair was dark and his eyes a little cruel until she had looked at John Seed. But now it was impossible to ignore; she pressed to him, craved him, this delicious anchor of hers.
He could be cruel, if he wanted—he’d considered drowning her to death. He’d been greedy to mark her skin forever with her sin. He’d littered his body with markings and scars, testaments to his devotion, just like he had done every other conversion.
Yes, she thought absently, against the stifling heat of the stinging shower and John’s own radiating warmth, feverish from the hallucinogen seeping out of him. He is cruel. But maybe I—
And then he murmured, against her ear, “Want you,” hazy and buzzing and warm. His fingers slid down between them, gliding along the curve of where she most wanted his attention, and she felt her breath hitch in her throat. He buried his face into her neck and sighed, pressing into her and eliciting in her a spark that traveled straight down her spine; and then, almost as though he wasn’t thinking too hard about it: “Would’ve—back in the forest—”
He cut himself off and his movements stilled, just for a second. Elliot tilted her head to look at him through her eyelashes and canted her hips to gain some friction against the heel of his palm; she wasn't bothering anymore to stifle the stuttered, half-breath-half-whimper that came out of her as slick pleasure pooled in her stomach, the feeling of his fingers dragging a delicious, heady burn through her.
Elliot heard him swallow back a sound over the white noise of the shower. It was a wicked kind of thing, this watching John as she leaned down into him; watching the muscle in his jaw tense and flex just before he beckoned his fingers against her and bit out a swear between his teeth when her body tensed and arched prettily into his touch. Needy and wanting; just the way that he liked, she was sure.
“Would’ve what?” she prompted breathlessly. John’s lashes, long and darker still from the shower spray, flickered. He seemed to be weighing it in his head, the pros and cons of what he had been going to say, but Elliot was no longer in a place of wanting to wobble. No floating, no drifting between ethereal and corporeal—she didn’t want to have to wonder, to have to piece together what it was he was thinking with the crumbling threads she could scoop up.
He didn't answer her; instead, he dragged his mouth along the slope of her neck, teeth digging against her pulse point. Elliot moaned, choking the noise halfway out of her spitefully, because she wanted him to earn it, and he did it again—harder this time, less like he was testing and more like he knew that she wanted it. The sting rippled heady anticipation straight to her brain, sparking through that hazy fog in her mind.
She sighed, "John," just as he dragged his fingers out slowly, torturously slowly, not enough to give her even half the friction she wanted and not so little that it didn’t make her suffer in the best sort of way. As soon as they didn’t return, but rather traveled the expanse of her abdomen, a quiet complaint slipped out of her; John kissed her, his tongue gliding against hers, his teeth nipping and biting as he dragged her leg up around his hip.
Everything felt like it was happening between breaths, between heartbeats, her pulse moving so sluggishly it was lava spreading through her body. Stifling, so hot, too hot, too much, but John’s mouth over hers pushed and pulled the breath out of her, guided the currents of her like the moon. Elliot tried again, giving the words more punch on their way out, “You would’ve what?”
She thought that she knew what he was going to say, and she wanted to hear him say it, that he would’ve—
“Fucked you,” John managed out hoarsely, just as he rocked into her. “God, I—”
Yes, she thought; the word left her mouth in something close to an exhale, and she didn’t know if she was responding to what he’d said or to the way it felt like he’d set a wildfire going racing along her skeleton the second they connected. He managed out a half-moaned swear and shifted into a slower, more leisurely paced as he sighed, “I would’ve, El— fuck , you’re so tight— ”
Pleasure wrenched in her stomach and writhed, hot and wicked. John’s pace was halting; he was trying not to go too fast or too hard even though he wanted to, but then he said things like how he wanted to fuck her while she was covered in blood and—
And she felt seen, and wanted, and she thought this must have been how they did it: took all of the grit and gore of someone and worshipped it, like something holy.
Biggest fucking Peggy-killer this side of Hope County, he’d spat at her that day they’d found Waylon’s body. But now? Now, it was all, so tight, El, want you, would’ve fucked you right there.
His hands grazed the bruises on her body before stopping at her hips again. He pulled back to get a good look at her, and then reached up, cradling her jaw with his left hand and dragging the pad of his thumb across her lip. A thrill crawled up her spine, hot and searing and latching onto her; she thought, this magic is mine now, too, and she parted her lips obediently to drag him into her mouth just so she could watch John just about come unglued.
And never before had she felt like this, wicked with John’s eyes blown wide and dark with want as his gaze fixed on her mouth and moaned, “God, Elliot—”
She wanted to forget about Kian’s hands on her body, his mouth on her skin, his words ringing in her head. So she did; she indulged in the feeling of John’s breath trembling as her tongue flickered against the pad of his thumb and the way he hissed as his pace changed.
“Should have,” Elliot managed out when his thumb slipped from her mouth so that he could press his hand against the wall by her head. She said it between dizzying, radiating pleasure dragging through her body, devouring her, dragging her further and further toward the edge. “Should have—fucked me then, John, I—”
“F-Fuck.” The swear left his mouth wrecked, his movements stuttering. “Fuck, that’s so— filthy.”
He stopped tempering himself. If he was doing it because he was worried about whatever injuries she’d sustained, she was glad that he’d stopped—each haphazard, frenzied connection of their bodies sent her rapidly hurtling towards her finish, his fingers digging and dragging against the parts of her that craved him the most. It wasn’t fair, really, that John could rumble a few dirty things about wanting to fuck her in the woods and get her so close: but he did, and she was, and that was the end of it.
She breathed out, “Close, John—I’m—”
“Liked that, did you?” He sounded awfully pleased with himself, even as each of his breaths were punctuated with a desirous sound. “Liked me telling you how badly I wanted to push that dress up and fuck you right there? You get s-so —fucking tight when I say that—c’mon, El, let me hear those pretty noises—”
“Yes,” Elliot moaned, hazy with want, desperate and still trying to swallow some of it back, so close so close so close. “Yes, yes, I— John—”
John said something into her mouth; she couldn’t have said what it was, because all of the blood went rushing through her head the second her climax hit. There was a strange, suspended moment of nothing before it ripped straight through her, every neuron firing off rapidly as she buried her face into John’s neck and dug her nails in hard while the wave washed over her, wicked-hot and nearly too much.
Nearly, but not quite. John’s teeth on her lip dragged her back, and he moaned, “Holy shit, fuck yes —fuck, El, I’m gonna—let me—”
He couldn’t quite get out what he was trying to say, but Elliot thought she knew; it wasn’t hard to guess, anyway, considering the way he was gripping her like he’d fucking disappear if he didn’t. And she felt a little wild, a little wicked, only a vicious desire left before she hit empty, so she managed out, “Beg.”
John pulled back a little and let his gaze rake over her. His movements slowed, just enough that she could tell that he was pacing himself, holding back the same way he had that first time when she’d dragged him through his own climax. Though his eyes were blown nearly black, the clarity about them made her want to squirm—that she knew he wasn’t quite so high as he was before, that he was going to remember this.
“Wh—” The brunette swallowed thickly; his hands skimmed absently across her skin, like he didn’t need to really think about it to do it anymore, but that they did it of their own volition. “What?”
With that same kind of recklessness, Elliot knotted her fingers in his hair and said, “ Beg to finish inside me.”
A short, breathless laugh barked out of him. He said, “Fuck you. I’m not—I don’t—”
Elliot squirmed, pulling on his hair until his lashes fluttered and he was leaning back into her on instinct. “You do now,” she replied silkily against his mouth. And then, in an attempt at graciousness: “Didn’t you want me to be loud, John? To hear me?”
He groaned. “Y—Yes—”
“So beg me,” she bit out, canting her hips against him and feeling his breath stutter and hitch, “and I’ll be as loud—”
“Fuck—”
“—as you want—”
“— yes —”
“—tell you how much I want it—”
“ Please,” John moaned as he slotted his hips against hers, unable to hold still any longer. He made a low, wrecked sound, and by the time the adrenaline rush from hearing John Seed say please to her had hit her brain he was foregoing all pretense. “Please, El, let me finish inside you, I’ll—fuck—make you feel so good, baby, make you mine—”
Elliot kissed him, hard and punishing, and moaned “Yes—yes, John, so good ,” against his mouth until he was driving into her like a man incensed, frenzied, each desperate dig of his fingers against the bruises in her skin delivering a different kind of delicious pain; and when he came, panting, yes, fuck yes, don’t stop, El, please, fuck, she held onto him tighter.
Anything to feel whole. Anything to feel safe. Anything to forget, even for a moment.
“Don’t move,” John managed out unsteadily. “Don’t—Jesus, fuck, it’s so fucking hot in here.”
“Don’t know where I’d go,” she replied in a murmur. Her brain felt foggy now, delicious sliding down from her high, remembering the surge of delight she’d felt when John had said please, El. The water had since gone lukewarm, and she wasn’t sure she even got all of the blood out of her hair, but it didn’t matter; pleasant after-currents rippled through her, and all she could think about was how little of her brain was being spent on churning around the Family.
John’s mouth traced a bruise on her neck—either from him, or Kian; she didn’t know—and his breath slid across her skin.
“Viper,” he murmured huskily, admiringly. “Aren’t you?”
“You said it yourself,” she replied tiredly, eyes fluttering as the desperate need for sleep finally registered in her brain; no more adrenaline to keep pushing it away. “More devil than woman.”
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
It was the second time waking up next to John, and the second time of having to try and brace herself for some kind of impact after.
That is to say, Elliot thought that maybe fucking John Seed felt a little bit like throwing herself off of a cliff, and so every time it happened—she thought, as though it had been more than twice—it was the same sensation of falling. The feeling prevailed over any other logic in her brain: upon waking, she thought very little of the sensation of his arm draped over her waist or his face buried into her hair and only of the sheer blast of panic that raced through her.
I smell, I feel, I hear, she thought, closing her eyes tight, but when she did, she saw Kian—blood streaming down his face, gripping her jaw, will you feel guilty about this too? And the panic shifted into dread, knotting tight and hard in her stomach.
She forced her eyes open. Sheer exhaustion had pushed her through a dreamless night, but that didn’t mean that her nightmares were confined to sleeping hours only.
When Elliot shifted, John stirred; his fingers skimmed up the back of her shirt, palm flattening at the spot between her shoulder blades, and she winced. Everything hurt. Everything ached. She wondered what was worse; nightmares, or this?
Definitely the nightmares, she thought, each breath a labor of her bruised and battered body. Right? Has to be the nightmares.
“Stop moving,” John muttered against her head.
“I don’t know why you don’t get the concept of a twin bed,” she snapped. “Fuck, my body hurts—”
“Well.” He was clearly trying not to sound smug, and failing; she could feel his grin into her hair. “I do recall you spurring me on—”
Oh, she thought, reminded of their shared shower. That.
A problem.
“Not from that, fuckhead.” She squirmed back from him, back pressing against the wall. “Feels like someone tried to curb stomp my ribs eighty times.”
“Probably did,” he replied. John tilted his head, wincing a little, and then nudged the blankets back from her body. His gaze was admiring. “Christ, you bruise easy, huh?”
“A fucking van t-boned us in a truck that spit out pitiful, half-functioning airbags, ” she bit out, “and then I got tossed around like a ragdoll, so—yeah, I guess if you consider battery and assault “easy”, then—”
John’s hands came up to her face and he kissed her. It lacked the same kind of urgency that it’d had last night; this was John taking his time, savoring her, parting his lips against hers and sighing into the kiss as he carded his fingers through her hair. The gesture itself was so unexpected that Elliot could do nothing but reciprocate, and the breath hitched in her throat as he tugged her back against him—part in pain and part because of the way he did it, like he just couldn’t get enough of her.
“So ungrateful,” he said against her mouth, “after I gave you what you wanted so badly last night.”
“I’m not the one who begged,” Elliot replied sharply, “am I?”
John’s hand skimmed the slope of her hip, and he made a low noise, thumb digging past the top of her underwear to press lightly into a bruise that she thought his fingers had left. She sucked in a sharp breath as a familiar heat sprinted down her spine and squirmed.
“Worth it,” he replied after a moment, teeth catching her lip, “to have you say how much you wanted me in you.”
He flashed that half-cocked, shit-eating grin that she could feel against her mouth, and she swatted his hand away from her hip. There was, perhaps, a part of her that regretted goading him like that—that regretted spurring him on—but there was no point in lingering on it now. As much as John might want to. As much as, when he looked at her with those too-blue eyes, she might want to.
Elliot opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, there was a soft, quick knock at the door. Boomer, curled up on one of her sweaters by the door, immediately pricked his ears and barked at the intrusion.
“Elliot?” It was Faith’s voice. She felt her stomach somersault, plunged into—well, it wasn’t quite shame, but maybe a little bit of embarrassment, in the way that it was to have the little sister of the man you were currently entangled with knock on your door while you were still in bed.
“I’m—” Elliot sat up, slapping a hand over John’s mouth when she saw him start to say something. “I’m getting dressed, what is it?”
“Joseph wants to talk to you,” Faith called back, pausing. And then, perhaps with a bit more slyness than Elliot liked: “And John.”
Fuck fuck fuck. The last thing she wanted was for Joseph to know . There was probably a ninety-eight percent chance that Joseph was going to be flashing that psychotic smile the second she walked in, knowing that she and John were—
“W—I’m coming,” she said, as John gripped her forearm and pressed his mouth to the pulse point on her wrist, letting his teeth drag there. She yanked her arm out of his grip and hissed, “Stop , you fucker, or I’ll pick my teeth with your fucking bones.”
“Okay,” came Faith’s light-hearted reply. “See you soon!”
As soon as she heard the footsteps receding, she turned to John. “What the fuck does your brother want with me, John?”
John shrugged. “Contrary to what you may believe about me, I am not entirely all-knowing.”
“As usual, you are stunningly unhelpful,” she muttered crossly, sliding out of the bed and over to her bag of clothes. Now, she really felt it—each impact had been dulled by the adrenaline at the time, but as she shimmied into her jeans, every inch of her body screamed in pain and her vision fuzzed around the edges.
John had gotten out of bed as well, but he departed to the bathroom and returned with a bottle of aspirin, which he shook two pills out of and held in his palm for her.
“You might consider something with a higher neck,” he suggested lightly.
Elliot snatched the aspirin out of his hand and swallowed them dry. “My teeth,” she said, jabbing a finger into his chest, “your bones.”
“Just trying to be helpful.”
“Suggestion box is closed,” Elliot snapped. “Now—”
Her eyes flickered over him. It was very easy to disassociate John’s personality from his physical body, but harder when he was half-stripped-down in front of her, scars and tattoos on display and reminding her how intimately familiar she was becoming with them.
“Now put your clothes on,” she finally said, somehow managing to keep her voice mostly steady. “I want to get this done as fast as possible.”
The brunette flashed her a cheeky smile and gave her a two-finger salute that rang sardonic at best.
“Anything you want, baby.”
#john seed x deputy#john seed x ofc#ch: elliot honeysett#otp: death keep off; i am your enemy#fic: ancient names#my writing#far cry 5#fc5 fic#i'm not tryna be out here like have sex after you kill a man but if the mood fits u know#per usual john's hardware is on the fool setting only
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this was surprisingly hard because half of them I wanted to throw in f, but then felt guilty about it so here’s where we are. explanations under the cut to be nice (fair warning: I’m writing this while tipsy so this is a journey)
S-tier
Old Fritz: look me in the eyes. look at me. are you looking? good. where else was I was going to put him? where? in C with the other losers? foolish. I am ruining my life for this man, I’m going to go into debt so I can be moderately qualified to write books on him so Tim Blanning and Christopher Clark don’t boo my off the stage. I sit here sometimes and I’m like ‘y’know, I would start a podcast to talk about his life’ as if I’m some straight white guy who thinks any of you want to listen to me for an hour. he’s a bastard, a smug bastard, and is the epitome of self-destructive tendencies. and, honestly, I wouldn’t mind if he wasn’t so fucking misogynistic all the time. ‘oh women aren’t fit to rule’ shut up Fritz before I time travel to fuck your wife and make her have one night where life feels worthwhile. but he’s funny, I enjoy how he does foreign policy, and he’s unfortunately relatable to me. cheers, Fritz. here’s to never being satisfied from one gay disaster with anger issues to another. may we burn in hell together
A-tier
Friedrich iii: “Suzanne, he was only on the throne for 99 days!! how can he be this high up when some of these bastards refused to die?” I hear you, my friends, and I have answers. I’ll tell you two words you’ll be shocked to hear put together: liberal Hohenzollern. a rare breed, isn’t it? imagine, friends, a world where he got over his throat cancer because he listened to a doctor and we get through the 1910s, 20s, even the 30s without Wilhelm II Electric Boogaloo being in power. Prussia is still on the map, the Anglo-Prussian alliance is strong, and I live in peace. but no. this stupid man had to keep smoking. because he’s selfish and doesn’t care about my needs. you know, he actually loved his wife. rare in this family. loved her and wasn’t abusive. the bar is so low, guys. and his wife is amazing too, Victoria. the world would’ve been in competent hands if they’d been in power longer (and Bismarck would’ve been out of a job still but at least these guys are smart. their son inherited grandma Vicki’s IQ). I would sleep with both of them and would thank them for the honor (when it should always be the other way around, remember that)
B-tier
Friedrich I: if your name is Friedrich and only Friedrich, we’re buds. that’s my rule. I have to give him credit where credit’s due. he was the first. while I agree with Fritz in his proscription that he was ‘small in big ways and big in small ways’ (I may have flipped that around), he wasn’t a bad guy. he just was born into the wrong job for him. I appreciate that he rode on his father’s coattails of proving useful to the Habsburgs and did a little himself to get that sweet, sweet kingship. smart move. I also like that he saw Louis XIV and said to himself “I stan, I kin, on God we’re gonna do that’ and tried. only for have his stupid, ungrateful, unclassy son to do away with that. I, too, am a woman of luxury and self-indulgance and if I had all the riches of Brandenburg and Prussia at the time (not much), I would spend them ridiculously on outfits and music and art. now, what did he do as king? what policy legacy did he leave behind? that’s a good one :)
C-tier
Friedrich Wilhelm III: now as a king he sucks. and I stand by this because, you know, he lost to him *imagine me pretending to be short and saying ‘oui, oui’ in a bad french accent*. and as any proper Englishwoman I can’t support a monarch who goes around losing to the French unless their name is Mary I. but, he’s a pathetic little man. he really is. so indecisive, so unsure of himself. what are you doing little guy? you think because your last name is Hohenzollern, God thinks you’re a good king? well it is like 1805 and, while divine right isn’t really being used as much, it’s as good as any reason on why you’re the chosen one and my family is eating dirt in Sicily and on the Scottish border. he’s really just a dude, nothing extraordinary about him except that his wife was the only one with brains and was the first to establish that (sorry Wilhelm I). he cried when he found out that his children didn’t call him ‘papa’ and went into a deep depressive state when his wife suddenly died. he’s an average man, of average abilities, but of big heart. and the big heart is what bumps him up, for me, from his old place as an F to a C. though, his moralizing is tedious
Friedrich Wilhelm II: this man should have partied with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. everyone’s got that one ruler whose all about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. for the US it’s JFK, for the UK it’s Margaret Thatcher Charles II, France has Louis XIV. Prussia has this guy and we should thank him. so many mistresses, so much sex, so much revelry and debauchery and sin! this guy’s personal life is like a treasure trove of political and sexual intrigue. if you’re into that - as I am as a town gossip - you’ll love him. I am constantly amazed by the fact that some STD didn’t kill him. syphilis, herpes, crabs. something, man, anything. but he didn’t. he’s a shit king though. absolutely horrible. all he did was whine that he didn’t get taught anything by Uncle Fritz and, yes, that’s not good if it’s true (but it’s not completely because the treatises are detailed but I guess he didn’t have time to read) but c’mon. actually apply yourself and learn on the job. I know that would’ve required him to not be balls deep somewhere, but unfortunately he’s not Dorian Gray. there’s work that needed to be done and he didn’t do it. boo!!
D-tier
Wilhelm I: apparently he was a good guy, unlike the other 3 who populate the lowest rungs of Prussian kinghood. so I give him that and I can respect that. but what did he do? what were his own ideas? I thought about putting Bismarck as king instead because, really, he was. Bismarck was a minister who ran around the king’s back to set things up exactly as he liked and it fucking worked because he was the brains. his wife was intelligent too, but theirs wasn’t a wamr and loving marriage. and Bismarck worked to get Wilhelm to distrust her because she was liberal and the fact that Wilhelm would listen to Otto even if it meant allowing himself to be drowned in the Rhine is pathetic. fun party at Versailles though. hope it was worth the war reparations
F-tier (bastard time) I’m going in a different order because I want to go from the ones I hate least to most xoxo
Friedrich Wilhelm IV: “I won’t accept a crown from the gutter” then you won’t accept a crown at all, stupid idiot! god, the smugness. the authoritarian impulses. I know it was the cool thing in 1848 to put down any revolts/protests with as much force as possible, but man, at least the Habsburgs were transparent. homie was like “yeah guys lol I’ll make a constitution and it’ll be epic! you’ll have so many rights! xoxo gossip girl” and then...nope. and AND he wanted the Habsburgs in charge of things too! Mr. ‘I’m Nostalgic For When HRE Was Great And We Blew Austrian Dick!’ grow up man. it’s Prussia time buddy, Austria is beginning to fall apart. don’t look to the past, look to the future, but you didn’t have that vision did you?
Wilhelm II: *banging pots and pans* I blame this man for everything! now, intellectually, does Germany take all the blame for WWI? no, that’s foolish and propaganda of the Allies only. if you’re a European power in 1914, you get to share the blame (ex: why did UK need to make this a naval arms race? Austria should’ve declared war on Serbia sooner if that’s what it wished to do. Russia, please stay out of the Balkans then and forever). but does my irrational hatred of Wilhelm blind me to this truth when I see his stupid face and that ugly fucking mustache that I wish to yank off? my god, yes. I see him and Rule Britannia and The Yanks Are Coming start playing so loud in my head and I’m like ‘yeah, the kaiser’s gonna pay.’ I’m sorry that Bismarck’s ego was bigger than yours but did you have to prove him right by getting incompetent buffoons who were playing checkers when he set the board up for chess to replace him? Did you have to prove Freud right by displacing private problems onto public life with your little tit-for-tat with George IV (VI?) because his mummy loved you more? Why did you need to fuck every naval vessel you saw like an inferior of Peter the Great who believed he was Sir Francis Drake? but that’s just the first war and he lived to see things setting up for the second. wasn’t in convenient for you to be close with the N@zis when you thought they might want a king back on the throne and you could reclaim your little tyrant. like every goddamn Prussian conservative or Junker, you thought you could play the tyrannical cockroach. sure, you figured out earlier that he was no pal, but you still collaborated and you still allowed yourself to get played like the weak man of conscience you are. cheers!
Friedrich Wilhelm I: ladies and gentleman, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! the biggest bastard straight outta Berlin, FW1! and who doesn’t love an abusive father? who doesn’t love a man, so insecure and pathetic, that he needs to terrorize children to be able to look at himself and have a little pride. I understand that it was because he wanted his kids, specifically Fritz, to be best. but being best and perfect meant being miniature versions of him and aren’t we supposed to want our children to be better than a carbon-copy of a small man? honestly, I could live with the occasional smack for this time period. it’s within the norm and, while horrible, isn’t irreparably damaging. this guy really had to beat the shit out of Fritz and Wilhelmina and I’m sure Augustus and Henry and Amalia and all the others (so many kids) didn’t get spared either because if you hit one, you’ll hit ‘em all. and I judge them for their flaws all the same but, for some of them, it gets hard to. because what fighting chance did they have when their father was telling them how worthless they were and beating them senseless and threatening death and life imprisonment on some? I’m constantly impressed by Henry and Fritz and Wilhelmina for amounting to any semblance of maturity, even though it’s always fleeting, because this man didn’t give them the tools to be functioning adults. but each of them managed to be greater than their father, as did Amalia managing a really cool coup in Sweden. and what did FW1 get? he built up his army, had a tall guy fetish, increased the treasury, and made the cabinet and executive offices more efficient. there used to be this one guy on here that would argue that that was all a good king made and that this lowlife didn’t deserve the contempt he got by some on here (an obvious vague of me) for his behavior as a father. and maybe I’m a crackpot, but I believe the quality of a man outshines all those other achievements and that that’s meaningless to me, in my personal life. and when I get to hell, before I go to any of these other men, I’ll go to him and ask him how hell’s fires feel because, if his God was real, it would never love him. and that’s beautiful
#i just wanted to give you guys the mental image of ol maggie doing lines of coke#i dont like her i just like to give nicknames to all my enemies#makes them uncomfortable#im very tipsy so this is weird#i apologize#but i hope its kinda funny and enjoyable#frederick the great#old fritz#the name frederick officially looks meaningless to me#frederick william i#frederick i#frederick iii#frederick william ii#frederick william iii#frederick william iv#wilhelm i#wilhelm ii#prussian shitposting
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My Review of Angels of Death
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do whichever ones you want obvs: top 5 farscape moments, top 5 w359 episodes, top 5 times black sails invented gay rights, top 5 colors, top 5 poems as of right now-ish
lkajsdf you KNOW ME these are literally all so good
i’m just gonna do the first two rn because this is already. very long.
top 5 farscape moments:
welcome to my cold war! peak john crichton/john crichton manifesto. i know i’ve already made approximately 200 posts about this specific scene & there’s not much more i can say about it without sounding like a broken record but oh i adore it so much. all those shots of him from below, the camera distorting his height, obscuring his face, letting him have the power back, if only for a moment. even when the national anthem plays it isn’t mocking him.
in the first part of “into the lion’s den” when braca’s giving crais shit about being a defector (kinda. i think the peacekeepers’ cruelty to him in ITLD is less about Betrayal and more about Failure but that’s another post.) and crais just goes “you are a consummate peacekeeper.” i think you can draw a straight line from the look on braca’s face when he says that to his decision to remain loyal to scorpius, even long after there’s ceased to be anything in it for him. like you don’t expect him to get it at all, but he does, he takes it exactly how crais meant it, and then like half a season later scorpius is the one who’s fallen from power and braca’s staging a coup against pk leadership. “you are a consummate peacekeeper” is braca’s “you can be more” and if that’s not the saddest fuckin’ thing you’ve ever heard. god.
…and maybe it was a kind of catalyst for crais, too. i’m obsessed with the scene right before he suicide-bombs the base, when he tells john what he’s going to do. “i do. i will. i hope you can believe that.” i love it when john’s torturers fall in love with him. (honorable mention is the crais/aeryn scene in “the choice.” the way he looks at her and the way he looks at john… the way he closes his eyes when she touches him, every time. i want to claw my eyes out.)
“everything old is new again.” i have this thing about how the ending of “la bomba” should’ve been the last scene of the entire series. not that there isn’t shit that i love in pkw, but there’s something really perfect about john confessing his sins to aeryn like he’s asking for her forgiveness—except he isn’t, they’re on totally equal footing, there’s not even such a thing as the moral high ground in their world anymore. this is just… who he is now. what he is. and she loves him; that’s his happy ending. that’s all you get, and it is still the last thing in the universe left sacred.
every single time chiana and john stand close to each other i feel like i am staring into the face of god.
top 5 w359 episodes:
VARIATIONS ON A THEME. lovelace back in that same old haunted house with a brand-new haunted body. she’s basically just raised a middle finger to the universe and yelled ISABEL LOVELACE WAS HERE! and resurrection is a curse, a fuck you right back. lovelace is crichton at the end of the line, she’s ripley in Aliens, she’s everyone’s final girl—bluebeard’s eighth wife, the one who figured out where all the ghosts were hidden and even now still hears them beating against the walls. the only part of her story that survived was the monster; everything else is just… static.
HAPPY ENDINGS. guys, this episode fucks. it has everything. lovelace pumping iron at 2 in the morning. hilbert being like “i found the bomb you’re secretly building on the space station we’re all trapped on. do you want some fertilizer?” when she calls him a cockroach and he calls her Isabel. more Farscape 359 #cinematic parallels: hilbert “begging” for her forgiveness a la scorpius in pkw; cutter’s fake personality chip unveiling the w359-verse version of the Aurora chair. “this is a dark room. if you put a gun to my head i might even say… a very dark room.” exactly the kind of brutal tragicomic character-driven “holy shit, what’s that noise?” episode w359 excels at.
DIRTY WORK. easily the worst thing about jacobi is that in a lot of ways maxwell was the best thing that ever happened to him, and this is the episode where they just completely pull back the curtain and force you to deal with that, and not even in like a cutesy “banter between bad guys played for laughs” way, but in a much deeper, sadder, “he loved her so much he can’t even justify to her killer what his grief for her makes him do” way. it’s actually also one of my favorite minkowski-and-lovelace episodes, even tho their relationship isn’t the focus: “oh, i knew we forgot about something!”
MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION. the return of captain isabel lovelace. she didn’t ask to be this horror story’s beating heart, but the simple act of her survival blows the narrative wide open. nothing was ever the same again. the fact that it’s a very deliberate homage to the aforementioned “welcome to my cold war” scene from Farscape is something i’ve been working into every conversation i’ve ever had since the november of 2015.
THINGS THAT BREAK OTHER THINGS. approximately once a month i remember “who wouldst thou serve?” / “you.” and i just go absolutely apeshit. kepler thinking he’s fuckin 007 bribing the bartender to get jacobi’s attention. jacobi: “sir, you left your card here! with your name and number on it!” [minkowski in Constructive Criticism voice] “hey, jacobi, how did you end up in the terrorism division of the world’s most evil megacorporation?” jacobi [vivid flashback to kepler hitting on him at a bar and jacobi drunkenly trying to impress him by telling him about how good he is at mass murder] “…i’m not at liberty to say.”
#toomanyfeelings5#welcome to my cold war#mankind's greatest contribution to the absurd#thank you!!!!
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MH: Irreplaceable
Was bored, so I wrote my first MH story in a long time. I'm going to be fleshing out Penny and Tucker's every-day lives for a while now. I hope you guys enjoy. The story Butterfly is telling came from a comedy show I heard on youtube once. Credit goes to the guy who actually lived through this nonsense, but it sounded like something Penny would get into. Hope you guys enjoy this silly drabble. It was just a normal night at the townhouse, a bunch of girls sitting in various places in the living room. Everyone swapping stories, having drinks, it was all good. Penelope Stone, better known by her street name ‘Butterfly’, was full of stories. Mostly of her childhood. “Another story I’ll never tell my parents..” Penelope began, holding her bottle on her knee. “This all happened in high school. The redhead leaned back on the stool she was sitting on, her knee high boots stretching with the strain. “I had this teacher in high school, whose kid actually went to our high school, the teacher’s name was…” she thought a little “Mr. Alberquirq and his son was Max Alberquirq. He was a sophomore, when I was a…a senior so he was two years younger than me.” Two fingers were held up, more reaffirming herself than anyone else. “And well, Mr Alberquirq…” Penny smirked, as if amused by her own thoughts “was, an asshole. And one weekend, he and his wife decided to leave town, which you should never do,” she looked around the room, slightly leering at everyone “if you’re an asshole.” “The thing was, Max Alberquirq, decided to throw a party, at his dad’s house…yaaay.” Fake cheer, Butterfly knew sarcasm that was topped only the group leader “He wasn’t all that popular, you don’t get very popular when your dad is both a teacher..” she put a little emphasis on this one, using one figure in a forward and upward motion “and an asshole.” Most of the girls laughed, they knew what it was like. The lot of them were social outcasts, fed up with society. Labeled ‘mean girls’ by kids and grown-ups a like. Assholes were part of the trade. You dealt with them every day. “So most kids around town got invited to this Saturday night party, and each and every damn kid..” she paused again, this time for effect, her voice slightly rising in pitch “I swear to you, thought individualy ‘Alright, let’s go over there, and trash the place.’” She made a sneer at the last three words. This was rewarded by more laughter. Only one girl was keeping quiet so far, that was Merrianne Enin. Her street name was ‘Mercy’; hers wasn’t even a street-name that was just what everyone called her. No one called her Merrianne and survived. She had always been a hard-ass. But Butterfly respected her. So far, Mercy was just sitting in her chair, sewing something and not saying a word. After a sip off her beer, Butterfly continued her story “I walk in through the front door, and every person I ever knew was there. And they were all drinking like it was the end of the world.” Laughter broke out here “We were drinking like it was the civil war and we were all about to have our legs sawed off.” The laughter got louder; one girl caught her breath long enough to put a log on the fireplace. “It was totally unsupervised,” she flung her arms out “we were criminals off parole,” she bounced her shoulders, while slightly shaking her head “it was insane.” Now Butterfly stands up and starts to walk a little ways, making gestures as she tells her story “I make my way down to the basement; they got a pool table in the basement. Some dumbass took a running start, threw his body on to the fucking pool table and broke it in half.” She took a drink here before continuing. “Another kid found out which room was Mr. Alberquirq’s, went upstairs and took a shit in laptop case.” The girls really started to laugh here, that would be something one of them would have done. Even Mercy had to chuckle at that one. Butterfly made her way back to her seat. “So the party was going great.” An almost placid ‘this is fine’ smile on her face, as if to downplay the whole situation. “I’m in the basement, holding a red cup like you see in the movies.” She holds up her bottle in the same sort of way “So, I’m standing there, holding a red cup and I’m starting to black out. When suddenly someone says ‘something, something, police.” She sort of shakes her head as she said this, unable to remember the exact words. “And in this bleary, brilliant moment of intoxicated word association, I say ‘FUCK DA PO-LICE!” She suddenly stands, yelling “FUCK DA PO-LICE!’ and everyone joined in.” she looked very surprised, the other girls were too,. “A hundred, drunk, white children, collectively yelling ‘Fuck. The. Police. Butterfly was almost laughing herself as she said this “It was like a bunch of guys who had already, like, been to jail and aren’t afraid anymore, like ‘I served my sentence, you can take me if you want to!’” she did laugh a little here, and then said “but, drunk children.” “As it turned out,” she sat down again” the reason someone yelled ‘something, something, police, was because the police were there.” “So this middle-aged patrolman comes down the stars to the basement, and he looks out over a sea of drunk toddlers screaming ‘fuck the police’ in his face.” The girls all gasp a little at this, even Mercy seems interested by now, still not stopping her sewing though “And he’s almost impressed, he’s like ‘wow..’. Then he leans into his walkie talkie and says” Butterfly used her best ‘NYPD voice’ for this “‘Get the paddy-wagan’” There were a few chuckled, a few ‘oh my gods’ here and there. Butterfly continues. “And my buddy Poppy, she’s a mother now, this woman now has a baby. She grabs a forty, smashes it against a wall and yells ‘SCATTER!’” More laugher came from the girls settled in the room. Butterfly had to laugh herself, Poppy was a good kid, nothing like Butterfly. Poppy was a trouble-maker, but she was never really into crime the same way her childhood buddy was. Poppy got into trouble for fun, Butterfly did because it was just what she did. That had been the first and only time Poppy had ever drank, underage. Butterfly, by then had made it a bad habit, among other things. “And we all ran in different directions.” Her voice picks up speed as she talks, once again using hand gestures for emphasis “We all ran in different directions, it was like a hoard of cockroaches when you turn on the light and they all race away, yeah we all ran in different directions.” “I ran into the laundry room, jumped up onto the wash-machine and crawled out a window into the backyard and I start running through the backyard and there was this big chain-link fence and I was like ‘I’ve never climbed a fence this high before!’” Her voice dropped and she said flatly “and then I woke up at home.” One of the girls, a young Korean lady named Nari, street name ‘Bloom’ asked “How on earth did you get back to your house?” Bloom had an ‘American’ name that she had been given when her parents immigrated to America. But with this support system of friends she had made, she proudly bore her original name. Butterfly shrugged “No idea, I asked my brother the next morning what had happened, all he said was ‘You came back at like 4:00 am, Poppy fell asleep in a chair while you crashed in your bed.’” “I ask him ‘Where are the old men?’” “‘Well Dad #1 took Poppy home, Dad #2 asked why you were out so late last night, I told him you guys went to go hang out at the park with some friends and it got dark so you came back here. Next time you go out and get drunk, don’t expect me to cover your ass.’ I was lucky his did that time” Butterfly had to admit, her older brother may have been utterly useless in 90% of cases. But when it came to blowing smoke up her parent’s asses, Tucker was the master. He was able to sweet talk every adult in their family to this day. He was the only person able to schmoose even aunt Alexa. He’d pull that goofy smile and say something that sounded really cute and sincere and give one of those gushy bear-hugs of his, and they were putty to him. Tucker never used this talent for anything useful though, mostly for getting sweets after Dad #2 had clearly told him no more. Tucker was the #1 ass-kisser. A bunch of usual inquires followed. Till Mercy asked “Did you ever busted?” those were the first words she had spoken in an hour. Typical of the hard-ass to ask something like that. “Well,” Butterfly said “A caught up with Max a few days later and I denied ever going to his party. He recapped everything that had happened, but then he said “Worst thing is, someone stole my baby-picture from when I was still in the hospital, and my parents are kinda freaking out about it.” “I got that feeling, that only black-out drunks, and Steve Irkle could get. ‘Did I do that?’ But I told myself I wouldn’t do something like that, I wasn’t a sticky finger drunk.” Then she kinda shrugged “But I was never sure, until a two years later.” The girls all started mumbling amongst themselves “Hey! Relax” she said. “I was chilling with one of my cousins, this chick named Molly I went to school with, she was the same age as me. And we were playing video games and stuff like that, she was a lot closer to my brother than me, but he was off at college by then, so we started hanging out. After a few rounds she looks over at me and says ‘Come here, I wanna show you something.’” “She leads me into her bedroom and then into a secret crawl-space she found inside her closet one day, never a good thing. She turns on this electric lantern, and I shit you not” she paused here for a moment and said “it was wall to wall, with stolen hospital baby pictures.” “I look at her and I go ‘why…why are you like this’. She looks at me and she just says” Butterfly looked right over at Mercy and said “‘It’s one of those things that you can never truly replace’”
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It has been a week since I finished RE7...
YET I’m STILL obsessing over Ethan Winters, goddamnit. Granted, I haven’t played that many horror games and this is my first Resident Evil experience. But I DID survive Outlast and its DLC.
Here’s the thing: I didn’t find Miles and the IT guy (forgot his name already lol) as fascinating a protagonist as Ethan. In my hopes of understanding this uncanny attachment to a videogame character, I’ve written below points. It’s a working list that may or may not end to a hundred if this continues.
1. His crisp-white dress-shirt looks so damn out of place. Come to think of it, did he make the effort of dressing up because he was meeting Mia? That’s cute. And oh, those folded sleeves were probably superglued or something.
2. He has the same taste in cars as I do. Hail, vintage! Too bad, it blew out.
3. Dude probably has asthma. I find it funny that Ethan seems to be breathing right beside my ear.
4. This is an FPS game so I can understand the too far-in-between lines, but his saltiness and sass give me life. If I were in his position, I would never have thought of reacting to a leach monster with a “This is getting old, Jack” nor utter “That’s special” like I didn’t just see a giant spiderwoman crawling through a creepy hellhole. The voice belongs to a sarcastic individual who is simply done with hillbilly bullshit.
5. I like that his strongest reactions were drawn by bugs. Remember those cockroaches in the guesthouse kitchen and Marge’s centipedes? The special “fucks” were for them. Never mind rotting meat. Or creepy cow-leg decorations.
6. Dude can reload a handgun with 1 hand! And he knows how to fire grenade launchers too. Funny coz you don’t get to shoot something like that in ranges, right?
7. A huge nerd, Ethan probably got straight As in college biology. He can understand fancy “sciency” terminologies for “head" and “arm.” Even had to comment that the combination didn’t seem right.
8. “Kiss my ass.”
9. HOLYCRAP ALL THIS TIME I WAS CONTROLLING A BLONDE GUY JESUS. And he has nice shoes.
10. OH HIS WIFE IS A FUCKING BADASS WITH A MACHINE GUN.
I can’t.
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Chapter 90: "LIKE A COCKROACH."
#Paula reads SBR#Chapter 90#so Sandman gets retconned and dead and gone#but THIS dick is back for more#thanks Valentine#I wish his death had hurt a lot more#Steel Ball Run spoilers#Part 7 spoilers
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SE4SON: Chapter 14
Nick, donned in his suit of armor, was now outside of the border, riding on Butterscotch's back. They were now on their way to find the mine. The two have been on the trail for almost 50 minutes. Nick was starting to grow bored. He was very tired from waking up so early, and hungry, since he skipped breakfast too. He sure feels sorry that Jimmy, Diana, and Rodent Girl will have to eat whatever Benson cooks up for them. He hates to just leave his best friend without telling him, but maybe Diana will cover for him. No longer wanting to bear with his hunger, he took the apple out of his satchel, then lifted the visor of his helmet. But before Nick could take a bite, Butterscotch came to a stop.
Nick clumsily fell off the horse, and dropped his apple. He slammed face first into a wooden sign that said "Jewel Mine. No Admittance." The armored boy looked out into the distance to discover the mining cave ahead, guarded by a lonesome, chunky, yet muscular, man playing an accordion. Butterscotch helped Nick up by biting hold of his plume. As thanks, he gently stroked the stallion's snout. He took a deep breath, then closed his visor.
"This won't take long, boy. Well, I think it will. I have no experience in mining. But I do have experience in sneaking into places I'm prohibited from."
The young boy then marched towards the cave. As soon as they parted, Butterscotch ate the apple that Nick had just dropped. The Keeper of the Mine stopped playing his instrument when he saw a miniature knight heading his way to the mine.
"Halt! Who dares to set foot into the King's royal treasury mine!"
"You mean, you don't recognize an authority of the king when you see one?"
Nick withdrew the fake badge from his satchel, and presented it as proof to the Keeper. The man walked up to Nick, so he could observe the small knight further. From the inside of the suit, Nick's eyes read "fear," and he was sweating like a hog. For a split second, he pictured a noose in his head.
"How old are you, son?"
"I'm 45! Midgets deserve proper representation too, ya know!"
"That so. Then why hasn't your voice cracked yet?"
"*Gulp* It's a stable vocal condition!"
"You mean you're ill?"
"No, I'm not sick, and nor can this even be cured! I have no control over how I sound!"
"You're trying to tell me... ...that YOU'RE HEXED?!"
"No, NO! Magic, witchcraft, or cult stuff, is all just fictional! The reason I sound like I'm twelve is that a condition... It's similar to an illness... No, I don't think they're the same. It's sorta a medical thing... Or a science thing... I wish I haven't slept through most of my biology periods."
"You sound worse than I thought! You really must be ill! Or hexed! Come! I shall take you to a specialist-"
"Can a 45 year-old man just do his job in peace so he could feed his wife and 16 children?! I came all the way out here to fill-in a mineral inspection for the king, not to be pestered by the likes of a measly peasant! Either you let me in, or I'll report this rubbish to King Jason himself!"
Despite how confident Nick's voice came out, he was still afraid behind that helmet.
"Oh. OHHHHHHHHHHH. Why didn't you say so in the first place?"
"(I literally came to you in a suit of armor with a badge!! Isn't that enough to convince you?!)"
"Enter, as you wish."
"Thanks. You know, King Jason has been talking about you lately. Did you know you're one of his favorite guys?"
"('One of his favorite guys,' bah. The only thing that old tyrant can do to make me happy is by hanging from his own noose.)"
Nick let out a mental sigh of relief. He thought it'd be more of a challenge to get passed him. Bless Diana for the costume, and the badge. The entrance to the mine was a downward, sloped path. Just by taking one step, Nick, again, clumsily fell down.
"You need some help there, sir?" Asked the man.
"I'm an adult! I can take care of myself! Don't worry about me, Old Timer! Man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." Replied Nick.
After getting back up on his feet, he grabbed a pickax that happened to be lying around, took the lantern out from his satchel, then wandered deep into the tunnel. He's gonna do this for Jimmy. He's gonna do this for his home. The boy's not gonna rest until he brings back some quartz.
...........................
[*Back at the hut*]
"We're just about done! Not quite what I was hoping for, but... Boy, that glue really sticks!" Said Jimmy.
"Yep! I told you we didn't need to waste more planks!" Replied Diana.
The time machine was rebuilt back in one piece, only this time, Diana and RG ended up making it look like an outhouse. Jimmy tried to be avoidant on any remarks that would offend his team. Speaking of team, he wonders how Nick is doing. It has been an hour already, and Jimmy hasn't heard from him since that issue with the cockroach.
"Nick's been really quiet lately." Said Jimmy.
"Well, you know how tweenagers are. I certainly don't." Replied Diana.
"I wonder what's keeping him busy, and why hasn't he left the hut yet?"
"Well... You know how tweenagers are."
"You've already said that."
"See! I told you I don't know anything about them!"
"I'm gonna go check on him-"
"NO! I--I just remembered! After I splattered that little pest all over the floor, the young lad decided to take a nap!"
"I suppose that does make sense. Nobody awake can be quiet for that long, except Sheen during an Ultralord rerun marathon, and he has woken up much earlier than on schedule. Now that I think of it, *Yawn*, sleep's starting to get to me, too."
"And maybe you can get some, now that all the work has been done! You deserve a nice, long, rest!"
Benson eventually came out of the house, with a tray of muffins.
"Anyone care for a poppyseed muffin?" Spoke Benson.
"Did Nick make those?" Asked Rodent Girl.
"No. I did, of course."
"Pass!"
"How's Nick doing in there, by the way?" Questioned the tired genius.
"Nick-?"
Diana quickly changed the subject.
"Hey, BENSON, look what we just repaired! I know you weren't awake to see it broken, but we fixed it! Just thought you'd like to see what we accomplished!"
"Oh. My."
Benson walked up to the time "outhouse" to get a better look. It was frankly hideous, and hilarious you might add, but just like Jimmy, he kept his unpleasant remarks to himself.
"It really is... ...something! Oh well. It's the thought that counts, right?"
Benson patted on the machine two times, and it collapsed back into debris, but in smaller pieces. Jimmy almost fainted for a second. He was looking forward to that long nap, and now they have to start all over.
"Alright. I surrender. I'll get the wooden planks." Said Diana.
"I'll get some more coffee." Said Rodent Girl.
"I'll... ...try to leave you three alone. I'd help, but there's much cleaning to be done." Said Benson.
...........................
[*Back in time*]
Sheen and Libby were walking together, following an address written on a tiny sheet of paper.
"This is it, Sheen. We here."
The two reached their destination: A commoners' apartment building, or as Nick likes to call "home." Sheen never expected Nick to live in somewhere so rundown. Nick's popular, used to be anyways, so he envisioned him to live in some condo, or at least a normal house like all his other friends. Popularity doesn't mean rich, Sheen! At this time and place, by sheer coincidence, they met up with Carl, who was attaching more flyers, along with Goddard.
"Came here to highlight more of my pain?" Carl whined.
"What are you talking about? We're just here to look for any clues about Nick and where the heck is he." Libby responded.
"You'd rather look for him than your own friend?!"
"We're looking for both, Carl."
"Technically, she's looking for both. I'm just looking for Nick." Said Sheen.
"What?! I-- Why, Sheen?! I feel like I don't know you anymore! How can you care for him more than Jimmy?!" Again, Carl whined.
"One thing for sure: He's more nicer to me than Jimmy."
"You two aren't even friends! He hasn't gotten your name right yet!"
"Buuuuuuuuut, he's never picked me last in basketball!"
"You know what, Sheen? If you don't wanna consider Jimmy as a friend anymore..."
A long silence paused between them.Libby looked at each of them awkwardly, back and forth. What happened between them, and what does it have to do with Jimmy? Sheen sounds like he has lost his respect for Jimmy. The boy genius sure gave himself an infamous reputation for making more enemies than friends. Libby feels she should have a say in this, but the trouble is, she doesn't know what to say. Her words could make it worse, anyways.
"...I don't think I wanna be yours, either!!"
"No, no Carl! You surely don't mean it!"
"I DO! ANYONE WHO'S NOT A FRIEND OF JIMMY IS NO FRIEND OF MINE! C'mon, Goddard!"
"W-Wait! Carl! CARL!"
Carl refused to listen to Sheen furthermore, and decided to take his flyers someplace else. Goddard followed him. The robotic hound turned his head towards Sheen and Libby, hesitated for a bit, then tagged along behind Carl.
"I think you should-" Said Libby, before Sheen cut her off.
"Nah. I think it's best that we let him be. Give him time to blow off some steam, er. He'll come crawling back eventually. He always does."
The duo entered the building, took a lift on the elevator (with a creepy man holding a poodle), then walked down the aisle to look for Nick's apartment number. When they found the door they've been searching for, Libby rang the doorbell. Nick's mom answered right away.
"What can I do for you, children?" Asked Nick's mother.
"Huh. So that's what his mom sounds like! I had no idea she had an accent." Said Sheen.
Libby nudged Sheen for being rude, even though he didn't intend to.
"*Ahem* Good evening, Mrs. Dean. We were hoping you could let us in so we could invest for clues that might give us answers to the disappearance of your son. If you don't mind."
"Oh, I know you two! You go to the same school as Nick! Let me see here... Libby! ...and Shine!"
"Sheen!" Barked Sheen.
"And as a matter of fact, I don't mind at all. Nice to find more people who actually care to help find my son. Go on right in! Just don't disturb me too much. I'm trying to print more flyers."
After Libby and Sheen stepped in, one sentence, said by Mrs. Dean herself, crossed Libby's mind. Mrs. Dean mentioned Libby and Sheen as the "more people" who actually care about Nick's whereabouts. Where are his friends? Does he have any other relatives in Retroville? As a matter of fact, all the kids have questioned about where Nick has gone, but never bothered to look for him. The same applies for Jimmy.
The two looked around the apartment for a short while. Sheen looked at some random objects that had nothing to do with the case, and then raided the fridge. Libby looked at a couple of photos. Some were of Nick in his current age, and some of Nick at a younger age. He had the same curtain hair style back then, only a more shorter cut. All of them had Nick smiling in each and every picture, except the ones where he's with a man she's not familiar with. It's more likely that the man in the photos could be Nick's father, especially since he bears some of his features. He probably isn't such a good father, judging by how sad little Nick looks. Whatever he has done to his son, now she figured out why Nick never wants to talk about his dad.
Another photo Libby came upon was an adorable shot of Nick, possibly around 9-10, decorating a cake, and next to it, a shot of Nick mixing a big pot over a hot stove.
"That's cute. Does Nick help you around the kitchen very often?"
"Oh, no, he cooks himself."
"Nick... ...cooks?"
"Uh-huh. He makes his own meals, and sometimes he shares them with me. The food always taste better than how I prepare them. Heh-heh."
"Nick can cook?!" Sheen asked, a little late.
There seems to be a lot about Nick they don't know, but how deeper will they dig? To investigate further, Libby and Sheen decided to check his bedroom.
"Promise me you won't make a mess. I just cleaned two days ago." Said Mrs. Dean.
"No promises!" Replied Sheen.
Sheen shoved half of his body under the bed. Libby looked around the room, opening drawers. Sheen found a few things under the bed that couldn't interest anyone. He found lint, laundry that hasn't been washed for months, and DVDs of old 80s cartoons and anime.
"Poor kid. Still watches DVDs. And cartoons from 100 years ago."
He also found a stuffed teddy bear. Big bad Nick, in possession of something soft and cuddly? First the 80s toons and anime, now this. Sheen took out his phone and began taking pictures, for blackmail use in the future. As the boy continued searching under the bed, the last thing he found was a sketchbook. All the drawings were lineart of happy things in gloom, such as a melting rainbow, and an alcoholic bunny rabbit. Nick must've had an emo phase, Sheen thought. The only non-depressing sketch in the whole book was a huge heart, with "ND + JN" written in the center.
"Don't know anybody named ND or JN, but it's good to know that Nick supports them! Wait, isn't JN that same clown who put the notes all over Jimmy's lab? I wonder what this ND person has in store for me."
Back to Libby, she looked through Nick's drawers to find any clues. All she found were clothes, underwear, and socks. She decided to check the closet next. As always, she found more clothes, and shoes. But, far in the corner of the closet, she noticed a cardboard box. She reached out and grabbed the box. When she opened it, it was full of The Amazing Insect-Man comics. ...the old-school kind. Libby never thought of Nick being into comic books about superheroes in tights. He said so himself that he finds them to be dweeb-ish. Well, guess he's a closet comic book fan. Get it? Get it?
"Oh. Insect-Man. The inferior one in contrary to the awesome might of Ultralord. Ugh. Why does Nick have such bad taste? No wonder he's become washed up!" Sheen commented.
Curious, Libby looked into the comics to see why Nick finds interest in them. There were so many things to list that Nick could see himself in. 1. The title character is a Brazilian American (Well, Afro Brazilian American, but still). 2. Insect-Man/Frankie Fender didn't have a girlfriend like most superheroes, and sought no attraction in any of the female characters. 3. Frankie prefers being Insect-Man more than his real identity. As Insect-Man, he has crowds all around him, and he is loved by most. As Frankie, he is just everybody's least favorite geeky loser. People don't love you for yourself, depending on who yourself is. As quoted by Frankie Fender (aka, Insect-Man).
The last place neither Sheen or Libby haven't checked yet was Nick's writing desk. Agreeing to improvise, Libby went to check the drawers, while Sheen went into the waste basket, which was full of crumbled up paper. Libby happened to discover a picture of Jimmy hidden away. Why does Nick even have this picture? He does respect him more than anybody else, but she didn't know he was that fond of him. Jimmy keeps Nick's phone number on him, so does he feel the same way? Libby can't imagine these two as besties. They don't have anything in common, aside from they both take their hair seriously. Wherever they be, maybe they both opened up a salon together, somewhere. Then, abruptly, Libby heard Sheen crying.
"Sheen? What's wrong, baby?"
"I take back what I said about Nick having bad taste. That boy is a literature genius! Look at this! I haven't cried this much since the death of ToyBoy, and Ultralord #68 volume 2 where Ultralord meets his long lost deceased father only to find out he's been reincarnated as a fascist politic!"
"Where'd you get that?"
"From the trash."
While Sheen continued to weep his eyes out, Libby observed the sheet of paper from him. He was right. The writing was beautiful, and tearjerking. This short story perfectly draws out the experience of having an unrequited crush, and accepting the fate that you two will never be together because you hasn't the chance. Libby has been on that road long ago. But then, she stopped indulging into the story when she re-read it and found Cindy's name mentioned. She put the paper down on the desk to look for anything else connected to this writing. The top drawer contained an envelope with Jimmy's name written in cursive, addition to a heart shaped dot over the i. She examined the three pieces collected: The envelope, the picture, and the short story.
Having a brain blast of her own, it turns out the short story isn't a short story at all, but a love letter. Libby thought this was just a dumb theory, but looks like her theory was true. It has all made sense since the beginning. Nick hardly talks to girls. Whenever he's asked on a date, he'll only accept it if they're offering free stuff, or if they're paying for his meals. Cindy once tried this with concert tickets, until ruined by Jimmy. He doesn't mind performing with girls, but only because it's beneficial. He does flirt with girls a bit, but gives them the cold shoulder afterwards. Back when him and Betty were dating, due to pressure pushed upon him by his male colleagues, the pairing had absolutely no chemistry, which resulted in them breaking up. No doubt about it: Nick Dean is gay.
"Did you find anything yet?" Asked Sheen, still sobbing.
"Uhhhhhh.... Nope! Didn't found nothin'. This is a waste of time! Let's just go home." Replied Libby.
Nick's secret is safe with her. Libby and Sheen have already snooped through all his personals, but she didn't wanna go that far as to snitching on the poor kid.
..........................
[*Back in medieval*]
Nick can't tell by now, but the afternoon is slowly arriving. The boy has been prying apart any rock face he came faced with. His arms were starting to hurt and he just wanted to rest, but that didn't stop him. No such luck, but that didn't mean he didn't find anything. Earlier, he struck some diamonds, but then he threw them out because they weren't what he was looking for. After that, he registered gravel, which piled all over him. Some of it got into his armor. Then 10 minutes later, he got chased by bats (and screamed like a girl again). Nick was making no progress, but that doesn't mean he's ready to give up. All of a sudden, Nick then stopped at his rock prying. He forgot...
"I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT QUARTZ LOOKS LIKE!"
Nick dropped the pickax and sat himself down on the cold floor. He knows for a fact that quartz is suppose to be a gem, but he's never seen one. He's only familiar with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, but they don't really qualify as quartz, according to Jimmy's knowledge. Is quartz a type of gem, or does it come in many varieties? It could probably take him months before he could get his hands on some quartz, and Nick's not gonna stay in this clunky and smelly armor for that long. Now might be the best time to throw in the towel.
Although, Nick is not prepared to go back to the hut and face Jimmy. He'll just make himself look like an idiot to him. Continuing to do good deeds for Jimmy when he told him not to, and then coming home empty handed. Maybe Jimmy hasn't noticed that he left yet. Maybe Nick could just take off the armor, and pretend as though he never left. However, that will never get the failure off his conscience. All he wanted to do was show Jimmy he is worthy enough to him. Eh. Maybe he's just overdoing it. The boy genius appreciates him enough already. No need to be perfect.
“Tsk tsk tsk, pathetic.”
Daniel had then reentered Nick's mind.
“I always knew you couldn't do it. And you should know that, cuz I'm always right. I'm always better than you. Face it, Nicky boy. If you were meant to surpass my standards, your whole image wouldn't have gone downhill. You couldn't hold on to your popularity because the only thing you're good at is failing. You're a born loser. Bastard children are suppose to be losers, for it is punishment by God to kids he had no intention of creating. The poor, worthless, lonely, f*ggot. Is worthless from the start, and will be worthless to the end. Good luck trying to impress a boy who doesn't want your d*ck.”
Nick got up and angrily bashed the rock face with his pickax to cope with his rage.
"It is all your fault. You manage to make me care about how much other people would think of me, even when you're not here! You're the reason why I became so unhappy with myself! I could've had a normal childhood with real friends, but all I got was stress and depression! Worse, you made me feel afraid of my own sexuality, because you convinced me that my way of love is wrong! Disgusting! Abnormal! And I believed you! I'M F*CKIN' TIRED OF HIDING OUT! LET ME HAVE MY LIFE!"
With all his strength put in, he dug himself a deep hole, while jabbing his pickax hard enough for it to stick there. Nick paused for a moment, taking deep breaths. That was all he needed to let out his anger. Now's the time to just head home, without claiming his prize. But...
As Nick retrieved his pickaxe back, some glowly, golden light shined out from the hole. At first Nick thought it was just regular gold, which would make no use to Jimmy. The boy opened his visor and poked his eye into the hole. Gold is most known to be conceived as metal, but this type of gold had more of a shiny, rocky substance to it. Nick crossed his fingers, and then pried at the hole, to reach towards that golden light.
.............................
Later, Nick crawled out of the mine, and ran straight to Butterscotch.
"The king will be very proud, good sir! Perhaps he'll give you a bonus!" Shouted Nick, to the Keeper.
"(Bonus, huh. What I really need is a decent day-off.)"
When Nick had reached Butterscotch, the horse had fallen asleep. Nick wasn't gonna wait until this dumb stallion wakes up, so he took the carrots out of his satchel, and hung them in front of Butterscotch's nostrils. The horse opened one eye, then closed it again, ignoring the carrots. He was tired, not hungry.
"C'moooooooon, Butterscotch. If you wake up and take me back to Diana, I'll play checkers with you!"
The horse continued to slumber.
"How 'bout I bake something for you instead? Huh? Would an oat cake sound nice?"
Nick has finally came to Butterscotch. The white stallion fully awakened, standing on his two hind legs, and neighing at the top of his lung so that everyone could hear him.
............................
[*At the hut*]
Diana, Jimmy, and Rodent Girl finished rebuilding the time machine, except this one looked like the one Jimmy and Nick built together, as if it were never destroyed. Rodent Girl eventually passed out when her caffeine rush worn off, and the boy genius was ready to collapse any second now.
"wE dId It. It LoOkS gReAt. We DiD gReAt. CaN't WaIt To FiRe Up ThIs BaBy." Said Jimmy.
"You don't look too good. I think you better sleep it off and restore your strength." Replied Diana.
"bUt... I wAnT nIcK tO cOmE sEe It."
"I'm sure he can go look at it on his own. Rest now."
"nO. i WaNt To ShOw HiM mYsElF..."
Jimmy was about to fall, but Diana caught him in time. She carried the sleepy little boy in her arms and took him into the barn. She set him down on the hay bed, then put the blanket over his body. Poor little fella has worn himself out, but still yarns for Nick's presence. Speaking of Nick, he has been gone for quite so long. Diana thought she should go check on him, to make sure he's okay.
"I HAVE RETURNED!"
Nick, riding on Butterscotch's back, burst through the door of the hut, like a hero back from the war. Nick? When Jimmy heard his best friend's voice, he shot out of bed and ran outside. As Nick caught Jimmy in sight, he got off of Butterscotch, then opened his visor so that the boy genius could recognize him.
"Nick, what are you wearing?"
Instead of answering Jimmy's question, he walked right up to him. He got down on one knee so that he could face Jimmy eye-to-eye at his length. Nick took out the tiny sack from his satchel, then the tiny box, and opened it to reveal the treasure Jimmy's been seeking to. By the angle Diana and Benson gazed at them from, the scene resembled a man making a marriage proposal to his partner. Jimmy's blue eyes marveled at the golden rock. It was rutilated quartz.
"This isn't one of those good deeds," Nick lied, "I just wanna go home as badly as you do, so I thought I'd save us time."
Jimmy grinned, and stared at his friend dreamily. He should be upset with Nick for going out there to the mine without him, but by this certain way he feels towards him, knowing he did it out of an act of care, he somehow couldn't. The real important thing that matters is that Nick's back okay. Jimmy threw himself at Nick, again embracing into another hug. Nick wrapped a single arm around his friend, returning the hug back. Diana and Benson were both touched by this warm moment. Jimmy and Nick's relationship reminded Benson of this certain duo from a long time ago, but he can't seem to put his finger on it.
#Jimmy Neutron#Boy Genius#Nick Dean#Cindy Vortex#Libby Folfax#Carl Wheezer#Sheen Estevez#Season 4#fanfic#romance#adventure#TVverse#TVEE#Happy Pride 2019!
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After Five Years Of Unemployment, I Finally Found A Dream Job!
I remember going to Airbnb’s Friday afternoon happy hour back in 2012. My college buddy’s wife worked as an assistant chef and invited me over.
The office wasn’t very large and Joe Gebbia, one of the founders, was horsing around with a wig held together by a white headband. After speaking to Joe for about five minutes, I decided Airbnb was a great place to work. I applied for some random finance manager job, and got rejected. Undeterred, I proceeded to apply to three other Airbnb positions because I strongly believed it was going places. No luck.
To put things in perspective, in 2012, I had just left my corporate banking job of 11 years (13 years total with two firms). My severance took care of my living expenses and I was making a livable income stream from Financial Samurai. All I wanted was to try new things and joining a tech company in San Francisco seemed like the logical next step. I had no tech skills, so I knew I had to take a step down in pay just to get my foot in the door.
If I got the job, I’d be a rich man now because back in 2012, Airbnb was worth $2.5 billion. Now, Airbnb is worth somewhere around $30 billion, and Joe alone is worth close to $4 billion! Realistically, I would have probably earned a modest (for SF) ~$100,000 a year salary and received a standard $100,000 – $150,000 option package that would now be worth $1,000,000 – $1,500,000. Not bad when the company finally goes public.
Since my Airbnb rejection, I’ve applied to around 200 Bay Area tech jobs. Company names include Google, Apple, Facebook, and Uber. I even applied to a dozen Series Seed and Series A startups. None of them were ever the right fit. Although I’ve done stints as a consultant for three fintech startups, I’ve never once been offered a full-time job.
It’s one thing not being able to find a job during a recession. But can you imagine going for five years during a bull market, spending a hundred hours applying and interviewing with companies and never succeeding in getting one of them to love you enough? You start questioning what’s wrong with you. Granted, I probably didn’t show as much enthusiasm as a regular job hunter.
Accepting reality is a tough cockroach to swallow. But facing reality is what we must all do to survive and improve as people. Don’t give up. Keep searching for the right fit. If somebody doesn’t believe you’re good enough, try to understand why and consider creating your own destiny instead.
One of ~200+ rejection e-mails I’ve kept as a reminder that nothing good comes easy.
Related: Career Advice For Those Interested In Joining A Startup
A New Job Awaits
As luck would have it, I got an e-mail from a tennis club buddy of mine whom I’ve been playing doubles with for the past five years. He said there was an opening at his son’s high school for an Assistant Varsity Tennis Coach and wondered whether I was interested.
What’s nuts is that I had just written about how I should become a USPTA certified tennis instructor to see if I can add value as an assistant tennis coach at one of the private grade schools in Honolulu in order to increase the chances of my unborn child getting in. Ever since I lived in Manhattan in 1999, I’ve heard so many war stories about how admissions is simply impossible at the grade school level.
I can’t expect my child to be smart, talented, and hard working. But I do expect to do my best to help my child get the best education possible. One way to improve my child’s chances of getting into a school is to see if I can add value to the school in the field of writing, online media, online entrepreneurship, or tennis since I can’t compete with most families on money.
Eager to learn more about this new opportunity, I followed up with my friend’s referral and applied. After a two-hour long interview with the Athletic Director and the team’s co-captains, I got a phone call the very next day with the job offer! My work entails coaching the singles players, providing strategic advice during a match, and instilling in them a FIRE to never quit due to a lack of effort.
They can lose to a more skilled opponent who is bigger, stronger, and faster. But they will not lose because they didn’t drill enough cross court backhands or hit enough serves.
Why I Accepted The Job
Assistant coaching pay isn’t lucrative – about $5,500 over a three month season that entails 1.5 hours of practice each day, travel time, and team matches that may last as long as three hours. But, I’m not doing this for the money. I’m doing this because:
1) I love tennis – everything from playing, to watching, to figuring out strategy. I’m a guy who went to the U.S. Open alone one year and watched tennis from 11am to 11pm for four days straight. I spent $800 for one second round French Open ticket, and $1,200 for one second round Wimbledon ticket to fulfill my bucket list of seeing both Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer play on center court before they retire. I’ve played three times a week for the past eight years and won’t stop until my knees break or my shoulder falls off, whichever comes first!
2) Help make a difference in a young person’s life. Playing a sport teaches a kid how to work hard, compete, adapt, lose graciously, and win humbly. These are key attributes for success in any professional endeavor. I want to be there to help kids grow up to be awesome members of society. Everything starts with how we nurture our youth. One of my 2017 goals is to “really make a difference in 12 people’s lives.” I originally measured this goal by the number of out-of-the-blue e-mails or comments I’ll receive from readers telling me that so-and-so article really helped them be happier or financially more secure. With 12-14 members on the varsity boys tennis squad, maybe I can now make an impact with at least three or four of the players!
These type of reader thank you letters mean the world to me. I safeguard each and every one of them in a private folder.
3) See what it’s like to have a teenager. I’m a preparer, mostly because I realized long ago that I know very little about how to do anything I’ve never done before. The key to never saying, “if I knew then what I know now” is to simply seek advice from someone who’s been there. When I write about having kids or getting an umbrella policy if you have a teenager, I’m pontificating. By coaching these young men, I’ll get a better idea of how teenagers think and how I can be a better mentor and parent in the future.
4) Decide whether private grade school is really worth it. I’m a big proponent of public school, having gone to public high school (McLean), public college (William & Mary), and public graduate school (Berkeley) after spending the first 13 years in international private schools. But I’ve come to the conclusion that if you can afford private grade school (gross income = at least 5X annual tuition), you might as well send your kids to private, despite everything being free online. I want to see with my own eyes the value of private school now as an adult, by the way they teach their kids. I’ve already read all their course catalogs, college placement statistics, and took a tour of the campus. The tuition is $48,150 a year, which makes the Hawaiian private schools at $20,700 seem like a bargain!
5) Build a network. Relationships are everything. People simply want to do business with people they know and like. I would never have been considered for this job if I didn’t hang out with the University of San Francisco’s head men’s tennis coach for hours at a tennis tournament one day. We just bumped into each other one Wednesday and he observed my enthusiasm as we got to talking about everything tennis. The USF head tennis coach so happened to be giving my doubles buddy a lesson recently, and my buddy asked if the coach knew anybody who would be interested in the high school varsity assistant tennis coaching job. Both men knew the Athletic Director at the high school and recommended me. Of course I still had to interview, but it helps when you have strong referrals.
The other cool aspect of this job is that I get to meet the ~60 other coaches who work at the school. It’s a completely different world from the financiers, rideshare drivers, startup workers, and online media friends I know. I’m excited to learn from veteran coaches and hear their stories. Just like that, I’m part of this great organization which has produced wonderful alumni for several decades. Perhaps there will be great insights I can share with all of you in the future as well.
6) Enhance a resume. I’m never too proud to start at the bottom and work my way up. And if you are too proud, please read: Spoiled Or Clueless? Work A Minimum Wage Job. Let’s say I do a good job as an assistant coach for the next three years. Maybe I’ll be considered for a head coaching position one day from this school or another school. Or maybe by then, I’ll have a pre-schooler and we’ll want to move back to Honolulu to be closer to family. Perhaps Punahou or ‘Iolani might think I can add value to their tennis programs given my CPR training, concussion training, and three years of varsity tennis coaching experience. With such value-added services, perhaps my kid may have an easier time getting in.
7) Experience new challenges. There’s a fun saying, “If you’re coasting, you’re going downhill.” I’m determined to build Financial Samurai for two more years so that I can have 10 years of entrepreneurial online media experience under my belt. After that, who knows. But I’ve found myself faltering in entrepreneurial intensity ever since I took a month long tour to Asia in 2015. So many people were happy with so much less, the trip reminded me to focus beyond online traffic and revenue.
I am admittedly nervous about my first day on the job. It feels exactly like the first day of school. I hope the kids like me. And I hope we can have lots of fun!
8) Another incentive to stay in shape. A main goal for everyone who has achieved financial independence is to try and stay as fit as possible. To die young after building enough passive income to permanently pay for life would be a crying shame. Having a job that makes me run around the tennis court and be surrounded by athletes is very motivating to stay healthy.
Think Near And Far
Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path.”
When I look back on my life, it’s crazy how so many things happened without my anticipation. For example, by getting waitlisted at UVA, I never would have met my wife whom I met at William & Mary. I couldn’t imagine my life without her! She got into UVA and thank goodness, decided not to go.
If my net worth hadn’t gotten slaughtered during the financial crisis, I never would have started Financial Samurai and left the corporate world in 2012. I’m so thankful I was never promoted to Managing Director in 2011 either. Otherwise, I would have absolutely stayed on for at least five more years, if I didn’t get laid off before then.
The only consistent attributes I can think of that have helped all these years are:
Work ethic – never fail due to a lack of effort.
Always looking at the positives of failure.
Adopting an unwavering belief that everything will turn out OK.
Focusing on helping others first before asking for anything.
Being mindful of the suffering of others.
Showing gratitude.
Always think about how your actions today might affect you in the future. It’s helpful to think in 5 or 10-year blocks. By thinking near and far, good things will eventually start happening.
Related:
Some Things Money Can’t Buy: A USTA 5.0 Rating
A List Of Career Limiting Moves To Blow Up Your Future
Readers, have you ever found a job out of the blue that just fit? Do any of you do similar types of long-term preparations for the future? Who else has been long-term unemployed? How did you cope and what made you keep on going? Any athletic coaches out there have any tips on doing a great job?
from http://www.financialsamurai.com/after-five-years-of-unemployment-i-finally-found-a-dream-job/
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