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#all this is mixed and taken from the pallete

georgiedoodles · 19 days

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📚Broppy CollegeAU | "Campus Days"

Part 4: Locker Buddies

Thursday, Week 2 of 16.

Branch and Poppy are walking together this morning, making their way to class through a path framed with lush green bushes and trees. A fresh cool breeze, the sound of birds singing, and a friend to share this moment with is one they both bask in. Branch holds open the door for Poppy, walking in after her.

“Alright class” The professor begins, leaning against the front of his desk. “So, if anyone hasn’t paid enough attention, there are flyers talking about locker registrations. They begin giving lockers and the codes next week, so pick your partners now before they all get taken.” He waves his hand and begins to gather his memos.

Poppy glances at one of the flyers tacked to the left side of the classroom, wondering who a good partner would be to share a locker with. She played with her polished fingernails, ’None of the snack pack members are in any art classes this semester, so they’re out of the question. Viva majors in business, not art, so it would be pointless to have a locker across the campus.’ Poppy’s thoughts were interrupted with the professor’s booming voice, he’s beginning today’s lecture. She saved her ideas for later.

A little while later, the class was busy painting. Suddenly, Poppy had a lightbulb moment. She looked up towards Branch, with a twinkle in her eyes she grinned, biting the bottom of her lip with eagerness.

“Psst, Branch!” She waved her hand in front of Branch to grab his attention, he slid his headphones off to listen, “Yes Poppy?” He continued mixing paint on his pallet.

Poppy sprayed her pallet to keep the paint fresh, “Will you share lockers with me?” Clasping her hands under her chin, she pouted and gave Branch her best puppy eyes. Branch could swear he saw sparkles in her eyes from that move, a blush crept up to his cheeks. ‘How could she look so...’ He blinked the thought away, and after a moment, he composed himself. Grumbling under his breath, he looked at Poppy,

“Okay… But only because I need one.” Branch looked to his left, practically burning a hole in the wall.

Poppy gasped with excitement and nearly jumped across their carts to hug him by the neck. “THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!” She loudly whispered repeatedly into his shoulder, nearly crushing him with her arms.

Poppy and Branch go back to painting. Branch had to compose himself, the hug did a number on him. He sits down and adjusts his apron, continuing to mix his paint. Poppy sits down in her chair, looking down she noticed the paint smeared on her apron and uses a towel to clean it off. After a moment, Poppy speaks up.

“Hey Branch?” She’s still cleaning her apron and quickly glances up to see him. “Yes Poppy?” This time, a tone of endearment is in Branch’s voice. Poppy’s smile seems to falter a bit, looking down again, her motions slow, “I just wanted to thank you... When I learned about those assaults, I couldn’t imagine what it would’ve been like for those trolls.” Her voice cracked a bit, her hands began to tremble.

Branch noticed the change in her words and stopped his work. Slowly, he rolled his chair around their carts and stopped to her left side. He slowly reaches for the towel in her hand, setting it down on her cart, and carefully taking her hands into his.

“I want to open up to you about something... or someone to be exact.” Poppy’s eyes pricked a bit and her eyes looked glassy. Branch gently rubbed circles on the back of her hand, grounding her from the memories she seemed to be reliving, he waited patiently for her to continue. Before Poppy could finish her thought, the ringing of a distant bell signaled their break. She freed her left hand to rub her eyes dry.

“Actually, let’s go get something to eat, I’ll tell you after we’ve had some food.” She gave Branch a weak smile and squeezed his hands, her heart swelled from his kindness. He nodded and returned her smile, guiding her to stand up. Together, they left behind their aprons and took their wallets, walking out of the classroom.

The air outside was warmer, not too hot, and the occasional breeze was still cool. The pair walks side by side, still holding hands, it seems to be the only thing keeping Poppy from spiraling down. In peaceful silence, their hands swayed with each step in a rhythmic motion. Eventually making it to the café, Branch was first to break the silence.

“Poppy, I’ll buy you your snacks today.” His thumbs gently caressed her knuckles, he received a squeeze from her hand, and a weak smile on her face. “Thank you Branch.” Poppy looked up from her shoes to meet Branch’s eyes, her mind was at ease again.

“My treat princess.”

Branch held the door open for Poppy, she walked out with strawberries and cream milkshake in her left hand, her pinky holding a bag with a sandwich inside. Branch Followed behind, his left hand holding her free hand, and a cold brew expresso in his right. They only walked a few feet when Poppy freezes in her tracks. She was staring off into the distance, watching a couple in the cafeteria being friendly. Branch takes notice, following her gaze.

Two trolls were sharing a single seat, a lady on the man’s lap. His purple complexion and blue teal ombre hair ringed alarm bells in Branch’s head. Quickly, he gently pulled Poppy away from the scene, sitting her down near their classroom building. The tree above provided a fresh shade on the cold concrete benches. Branch sat to Poppy’s left side, facing his body towards her, and waited for her to calm down. He rubbed soft slow circles on her back, to bring her back to reality. She takes a deep breath and stares off into the distance.

“His name is Creek… That guy you saw, with the lady on his lap” Her voice strained a bit, “He’s my ex.” Her lips pursed. After a moment she continued, “We dated for a few months, but they were the worst months of my life.” Poppy squinted, questioning Creek’s actions, “To this day, I still don’t understand his intentions, he would stalk me after we broke up.” Her hands waved around, emphasizing her frustration. “I literally had to call the police on him, which spooked him, and I hadn’t seen him until today.”

Branch noticed she couldn’t finish her thought; she slumped her shoulders a bit and stared up to the clouds. All he could do was sit with her, supporting her, “Need a hug?” He opened his arms. Poppy practically threw herself into his embrace, shallow breaths, and quiet sobs are all Branch heard. He held her firmly, providing a warm cocoon for her, keeping her safe from any pain in their own little bubble. After 10 minutes, Poppy pulled away, gazing into Branch’s eyes.

“Poppy, it’ll be okay, I’m here for you whenever you need a shoulder to cry on.” His voice was like honey that melted her fears away, he carefully cupped her face and wiped her tears away with his thumbs. “Now, let’s have you take a sip of your milkshake, a bite of your sandwich, and then we can head back to class when you’re ready.” Branch sits back a bit, encouraging her to eat, and waits for her to lead them back to class.

Outside of the classroom, Poppy pulls Branch into an embrace, and takes a deep breath. “Thank you for that Branch, I’m not ready to go into everything today but, you helped me remember that I’m safe again.” She pulled away to smile at him, her bubbly persona was back, and the sparkle was bright in her eyes again. “Anything for you princess” He gave a shy smile, his confidence from earlier had disappeared.

Poppy giggled at the nickname and playfully punched his shoulder. “I didn’t realize we were at the nickname level of friendship.” She gasped, pretending to be shocked. “It- it just came naturally.” Branch could only hide his blush before they headed back inside and ended the day with a walk back to Poppy and Viva’s yellow Beetle.

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#broppy #trolls branch #trolls poppy #trolls band together #trolls world tour #TrollsCollegeAU #trauma #fanfic

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ducks-and-stuff · 4 months

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Wings

Trigger warning for blood

Grian no last name provided opens the door to the sheriff’s bedroom at 8:25pm with a slack jaw and something unreadable darting around his eyes.

He’s not supposed to be there- obviously, because no one invited him and there’s no big teasing Jimmy get together but the Hermits are visiting and he opens the door and-

Jimmy Solidarity is stood in the middle of the room, mid-anxious pace, with two ugly feathered things that should definitely not be there according to the established lore protruding from his back.

Grian’s hand is still wrapped around the brass doorknob.

The window is still open.

Grian does not have mixed feelings about the snow.

“Jimmy you’ve-“

He begins because someone has to and, finally- finally looks up to meet his eyes

“Got wings”

“No”

Jimmy says on instinct, and because that is most obviously a lie even for his standards,

“Maybe”

Grian inches forward rather than responding. Softly padding across the floor while gently flapping his own multicolored apendeges in intrigue and Jimmy backs away.

It’s understandable, he reasons, because Grian is being weird and nice and a multitude of other out of place things that they should chuck in the garbage along with the bandages. It’s understandable, except Grian pauses and trills softly, something Jimmy recognizes it as something along the lines of ‘you are totally cool and alright and safe with me my dude’ and Jimmy doesn’t say anything back because he isn’t and doesn’t speak bird.

He doesn’t back away this time either, when he gets closer, when he runs his fingers along the not-feathers completely transfixed and mumbles,

“They’re beautiful”

Which is only a little weird because Grian is usually known for his good taste when it comes to things like builds and details and color pallets. “oh Jimmy these are beautiful!”

and Jimmy doesn’t say much, because he doesn’t know which exactly of the million of things he should say in response to that:

‘They might be evil’

Is to confusing

‘stop touching them’

Is not the type of thing best friends say to each other.

‘they aren’t wings idiot- I know that they have feathers and all but- don’t look at me like that I don’t- I don’t know what they are, and it scares me, and I think they might’ve been a gift or a curse or something in-between but you weren’t around to ask and sometimes when you look at me like that it scares me’

Is maybe a little bit too honest, so Jimmy doesn’t say anything, and Grian asks about a washcloth.

I- what?”

He responds, Grian slowly pushes him down onto the mattress in the middle of his room. The mattress is connected to a bed by the way and everything it’s just-

“a towel”

Grian repeats, studying him carefully, like he’s the one doing something wrong here instead of the guy who goes around breaking into other’s houses.

“you- the blood Timmy, and the pain you- you just grew wings.”

“What?”

The only sane person in a hundred meter radius repeats, and before he has the chance to explain that, ‘oh no don’t worry the blood he’s currently drenched in isn’t actually his’ Grian takes the time to incorrectly figure what has happened is that his best friend has gone into some sort of wing related shock.

“Hey Tim, Tim look at me, it’s going to be alright, okay? I know this might be a lot right now but trust me, we’re gonna get you all taken care of, want me to call Joel or someone for you?”

Except Joel would laugh because he doesn’t know Martyn’s stupid canary joke had been rooted in some sort of truth this entire time. So, ‘no’ would be the answer there, probably, because Jimmy is the guy who smiles and can take a joke and deals with his very concerning problems all alone.

“I’m going to call Joel”

Grian decides after he is given no answer which is a fair thing to do, even if it really doesn’t feel like it.

“I’m going to call Joel, and then we’re going to get you a towel okay? Just- sit tight, alright, I don’t- you- you just grew wings Jimmy!”

and it’s all a bit frantic when he first says it, except then he pauses, and smiles, and repeats:

“you grew wings!”

Like this is something they’re all excited about. Like Jimmy hadn’t been twenty and almost gone and completely and entirely alone when it happened, and the window isn’t open, and Joel isn’t coming over to laugh at him.

Grian never notices the binding in the garbage. Jimmy doesn’t point it out.

Nobody is supposed to have mixed feelings about the snow.

Hiii, so this is like, an au of an au I guess? Like everything I’ve written so far on this site is snippets of the whole Jimmy and the Importance of Saying Goodbye story (I don’t know how to put things into like a section based on hashtags) and the backstory Jimmy slides to is definitely part of what happened but I don’t suppose this version of the present would be possible in that universe. I don’t know, Tumblr is a weird place. Also Joel would not laugh actually he would totally immediately panic and try to help.

#jimmy solidarity #grian #empires smp #wing fic #evo smp #fandom #mcyt #mcytblr #creative writing #Jimmy and the Importance of Saying Goodbye

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rosanna-writer · 9 months

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we said hello and your eyes look like coming home (9/?)

Summary: A canon-divergent AU where the bond snaps for Rhys on Calanmai, Feyre unwittingly accepts it, and Fire Night magic proves to be more transformative than anyone bargained for. Feyre drags a mate she hardly knows out from Under the Mountain, then puts him back together as war with Hybern approaches. Warnings: dubious consent, canon-typical sexual violence, canon-typical violence Rating: Explicit Chapter Word Count: ~3.6k

I'm not quite sure how to tag a trigger warning for this, so just a note that in this chapter, Rhys uses his daemati ability to force someone to vomit.

Some dialogue and the riddle are taken directly from ACOTAR book one.

Read on AO3 or you can find the ninth chapter below the readmore.

ch. 1 - the altar is my hips | ch 2. - an arrowhead leading us home | ch. 3 - by the way, i just may like some explanations | ch. 4 - can't not think of all the cost | ch. 5 - honey i rose up from the dead | ch. 6 - this mad, mad love makes you come running | ch. 7 - therein lies the issue, friends don't try to trick you | ch. 8 - it's not his price to pay | ch. 9 - is it chill that you're in my head?

There was a note of anxiety mixed in with everything else that leaked through Rhys's shields this time. My own heart hammering seemingly in time with his and my stomach churning, I paced the cell and counted my steps in a vain attempt to occupy myself. I nearly ripped apart the pallet of hay just to have something to do with my hands. Wisely, the guards hadn't left me anything sharp, but I longed for a rock or something I could use to scrape artwork onto the wall and settle my mind.

Eventually, Rhys's side of the bond quieted, and I suspected he'd fallen asleep. It seemed cruel to wake him if Amarantha had wrung him out so thoroughly. I left him alone.

When the dungeon was this silent, I felt the echo of the stag's magic inside me more strongly. It hadn't faded the slightest bit since Calanmai. The few times I managed to stop worrying about Rhys, my thoughts drifted back to the new immortality I'd been left with. If I ever got out from Under the Mountain, I'd watch my family get old and die while I stayed looking exactly the same. The few decades I had left with them seemed impossibly long to me now, but in a few centuries, it would feel like the blink of an eye. Wrapping my mind around it was nearly enough to give me a headache.

When Nuala and Cerridwen appeared an hour later, I nearly wept with relief that I was finally getting a change of scenery. I might have gone mad otherwise.

Completely silent again, they brought me to the same bathing chamber and repeated the process of stripping me down and painting me, this time extending the paint all the way down to my fingertips. The twins couldn't possibly know it, but the paint would obscure the tattoo if the glamour failed. And again, I let them work.

But this time, the bundle of fabric they held out for me could barely be called a dress for completely new reasons. And I really, really wished Rhys had warned me better.

Thin panels of gauzy white fabric barely covered my breasts. They flowed into a single panel at the front and back of my legs, secured by a gold belt that didn't give me much confidence I'd stay covered if I moved the wrong way.

Nuala brushed makeup over my face as Cerridwen did my hair, coiling it around a gold diadem she placed on my head. I took deep breaths and tried to curb my rising panic as they worked. By the time they finished, I was nearly unrecognizable. Rhys had mentioned potentially dressing me up during our first conversation in my cell, so this didn't come as a complete surprise—it was not knowing the full details of what was happening that was eating at me.

"You look horrible in white."

The twins faded into the shadows as I turned to see Rhys leaning against the doorframe, hands in his pockets and his face twisted in disgust. He was so still and silent that I suspected he'd been watching me for a while.

I expected to see hunger as his eyes swept down my body and he took in all the exposed skin, but there was nothing but revulsion. I didn't mind; it was better than being leered at. And then I realized I'd only ever seen him slide his hands into his pockets when he was making a show of something.

I saw through the act—Rhys was nervous.

I just raised my brows, resisting the urge to cross my arms and attempt to cover myself. He'd seen all of it before anyway. "Should I take that to mean you weren't the one who picked this out?" I said, my voice sharp.

"I was. You looking horrible and making a mockery of your so-called virginity was the point." I bit back a retort that I could have figured that much out for myself and just waited for him to explain. He didn't seem the least bit frantic, which could only mean we weren't in a rush. He continued, "We're exploiting the loophole that you never had to be sober when you heard the riddle."

That explained the instruction not to drink anything that he didn't hand to me personally—I understood where he was going with this. "But you're not actually giving me anything stronger than water?" Somehow, the words came out calm and not like the desperate plea for reassurance they were.

"Precisely," Rhys said, and I let his apparent confidence steady me. It might have been an act, but it was a good one. "The evening's entertainment will be humiliating the drunk human. Amarantha will taunt you, saying it's such a shame you can't handle faerie wine because the riddle was so simple. I couldn't see another way she'd give you something easy."

The revealing dress made it obvious enough what sort of humiliation was in store for me. I'd force myself through it if it meant another shot at the riddle—I could guess what it had cost Rhys to change Amarantha's mind so quickly, and I wouldn't let that go to waste.

There was just one problem. "Rhys, I— I've never actually been drunk before," I said, cheeks burning.

His eyes went wide with shock, and he swore under his breath. Perhaps I'd said the one thing that could shred his cool demeanor to ribbons. "How old are you, Feyre?"

"Nineteen." I still didn't quite know him well enough to read all the emotions that crossed his face in quick succession, but now really wasn't the time to discuss this in detail. We had work to do. "But that doesn't matter, I'll be able to pretend. I just might need a bit of help."

He took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly gathering himself before looking at me again. "I won't let you fail."

I considered that for a moment, wondering if it was just reassurance or there was something else he was getting at. "If the performance isn't convincing will you…step in?" It was vague, but I wasn't sure how exactly to ask.

"Step in?"

"Take over with your daemati abilities. Unless…the Night Court won't let you do that to me?"

Rhys stilled. Voice soft, he said, "You would trust me enough to do that?"

"Yes. Without hesitation." I thought it was obvious—if I didn't trust him, I wouldn't have been nearly so composed after being forced with no explanation into a dress that left me so bare and exposed.

His throat bobbed. He reached for me, then glanced at the paint on my body and dropped his hand, as if thinking better of smearing it. "I thought you might hate me for planning this without asking. I wanted to explain, but she was….demanding last night. I managed to steer the conversation back to the riddle, and I took the opportunity while it was there."

If he'd done the opposite—given up a potential advantage to spare my feelings—I might actually have hated him. Flinching away from hard choices would damn us all.

"I can handle anything as long as you're on my side."

"You shouldn't have to."

I felt myself tense up—that was a dangerous line of thinking, and one I was too familiar with. For a moment, it was as if I was back in the cabin, slinging a quiver over my shoulder even though I shouldn't have to be the one to feed my family. My hands seemed to curl into fists of their own accord.

We would not fall into that particular trap today.

"You didn't answer my question. Will you be able to take over if I need you to?"

Something in my voice made Rhys stand a little straighter, and I caught the briefest flash of the soldier he'd been centuries ago, before becoming High Lord. I'd never seen it before, but it seemed to be exactly what we needed from him to get through this.

"I will. Daemati abilities aren't connected to the Night Court."

It was exactly the answer I'd been hoping for, and a bit more of my nervousness faded. I even managed a smile. "Then let's solve a riddle and get home tonight."

I watched the smirk bloom on his face as he ceased to be the male I knew and became the Lord of Nightmares. The mask was firmly on as he purred, "The festivities await. Allow me the honor of escorting you."

I followed Rhys through the halls, walking close behind him but not touching. With him near, the mating bond seemed to uncoil again. Despite being about to enter a lion's den wearing nothing but scraps of too-sheer fabric, I hardly felt any fear.

It didn't keep me from shivering in the cold, though.

My feet were half-frozen from the stone floor, but I gritted my teeth and waited for them to go numb. It was better this way—no one would think I could possibly be a threat if I couldn't run. I just kept my hands at my sides and attempted to look as unbothered as I could. As we passed through the doors, I opened a crack in my shields for Rhys.

The same music from when I'd first arrived Under the Mountain was playing in the throne room again. It was as crowded as I'd ever seen it, though everyone gave Rhys—and by extension, me—a wide berth.

There was something satisfying about being the only one in Rhys's orbit, in a strange, instinctual way. It was probably just due to the mating bond, but I liked being the only one close enough to touch him in a crowded room. At the very least, it made all the gawking easier to ignore.

I followed him to the dais where Amarantha sat, Tamlin at her side as always. I half-listened as Rhys bowed and wished her a good evening, just watched Tamlin for a reaction again. He continued staring straight ahead as if he'd been turned to stone. Coward.

I schooled my features to look faintly bored as Amarantha took in the sight of me. She broke into a cold grin. "Rhysand, you must get your eye for fashion from your lowborn whore of a mother," she said.

I didn't fully understand the insult to his mother, but Rhys just inclined his head and said, "I'm flattered you think so." Polished as ever, he sounded as if it didn't bother him in the slightest. But I felt the truth of his rage through the bond.

"Feyre dear, turn around so we can appreciate the view from the back as well," Amarantha said, making a show of holding her hand out so the ring with Jurian's eye pointed at me. I bit back a retort about how kind it was of her to ensure that everyone here had an unobstructed view.

I stepped out from behind Rhys and did as she asked. He took advantage of the brief pause in the conversation to slip into my mind and answer the question he must have heard. She was an extraordinary seamstress.

When it became clear she wasn't getting much of a reaction from anyone, Amarantha dismissed us with a flick of her hand and an irritated, "Enjoy my party."

Rhys walked over to a table laden with food and drink, and I followed at his heels like a dog. The faeries that had been standing around it cleared out quickly. He reached for a bottle, seemingly at random, and filled a goblet.

"Wine?" he said, offering it to me. In my head, he added, It's safe. I shook my head anyway, trusting he understood I was just doing it for show. He pressed the goblet closer to me. When he spoke again, Rhys dropped his voice low in that way that had heat pooling in my lower abdomen, even though it was very much not the time for that. "Try it. I think you'll like it."

I gave him one wary look before snatching the goblet from him and chugging it. The liquid inside tasted of nothing but water. As I swallowed every last drop, I tried to ignore the chuckles of the faeries who were watching us. When I lowered the goblet, I wiped at my lips with the back of my hand. The smear of liquid from the goblet was dark red.

But my head was still perfectly clear.

I forced out a giggle that sounded nothing like me at all. It must have been convincing because there was a flicker of Rhys's approval down the bond as he poured another glass. But instead of passing it to me, he placed his free hand on my lower back.

I let him herd me towards a chair and perch me in his lap. It was a relief to finally get my feet off the cold floor, and more than anything I wanted to press every inch of skin to him I could, even if it was just to leech some warmth. I kept my back straight, shrinking from his touch, but it was so damned difficult not to give into the urge to do the opposite.

As much as I appreciate hearing those thoughts from you, please refrain from shouting them at me when we both need to concentrate.

Even in my head, his voice sounded a bit strained. I was seated too close to his knee to feel if he was hard or not, and before I could dwell too much on that particular line of thought, he was pressing the goblet to my lips again. I let him pour water down my throat until I'd drained all of it.

When he lowered the goblet, I took in the stares and the giggles from the partygoers. Amarantha was leaning over and whispering something to Tamlin, whose blank expression hadn't changed. I didn't want Tamlin to want me, but it enraged me to see no signs of remorse for starting the chain of events that led me being a plaything in his worst enemy's lap.

I held onto that anger as Rhys wrapped a possessive arm around my waist, let it help me look indignant instead of comfortable. I went stiff, and he chuckled in a way that sounded so utterly unlike him that I shivered.

But the discomfort I felt from his side of the bond was the farthest thing from amused.

Feyre. Amarantha wants to make you dance while you hear the riddle. Will you be able to? The music will pick up soon.

Rhys didn't need to specify what kind of dancing it was. I didn't hesitate to say, Yes.

His mind wrapped around mine again, just as it had when he'd forced me to lick his shoes. The apology didn't come in words, just another wave of feeling down the bond, wrapped up in his own sense of self-hatred for not preventing this and territorial anger at everyone leering at me.

I didn't blame him in the slightest.

The strange, otherworldly music got louder, and that was my cue. Rhys said something smug that was more for the benefit of the crowd than me, but I was so focused on keeping up appearances that I barely heard it.

I stood up, trying to look unsteady on my feet. Another spark of approval down the bond told me it was working. The increased stares made me flush deeper, which could only help make this convincing.

I turned to face Rhys as he spread his legs wide and leaned back in the chair. He tucked a hand behind his head, and the lazy smile on his face might have been the most obnoxious thing I'd ever seen in my life.

I pretended to stumble, reaching out and grabbing the top of the chair to steady myself in a way that pushed my breasts towards his face like an embarrassing accident. Rhys laughed, and others followed.

My focus narrowed to just his violet eyes, and everything else fell away. I canted my hips towards his and started to move, letting myself believe we were the only two people in the world. The mask on his face didn't slip, but I saw the truth of him under it.

His mind curled more tightly around mine. I didn't have words for what passed through the bond in that moment, but I could sense the way his entire being was poised to catch me if I fell. I might be the one dancing, but we were in this together.

Feyre, you look too coordinated. Move less in time with the music before they suspect something.

I adjusted as he said, and another flicker of relief down the bond let me know it was enough. The music was already off-kilter, distinctly faerie in a way that set me on edge. I wasn't sure how much longer I'd have to keep this up.

Do they expect me to vomit, Rhys?

Possibly.

Then use your abilities to make me. It will be suspicious if I don't.

Thank the Mother, Rhys didn't hesitate. His talons plunged deeper into me, taking complete control. I couldn't move of my own volition—breathing, blinking, and even the beating of my heart only happened exactly as he willed it.

I was an observer in my own body as he moved my legs in shaking steps around to the side of the chair. There was no nausea as invisible hands bent me over, just the burn of bile Rhys forced up from my stomach. I threw up on the floor.

Amarantha was saying something, but it was a struggle to focus on her words and not the sour taste left in my mouth. But as soon as the thought crossed my mind, the taste disappeared—also Rhys's doing. A few more wobbly footsteps, and I was standing between his legs again, facing the crowd.

She's getting ready to give you the riddle. I'll keep hold of your body so you can focus on what she's saying. Is that alright?

Yes. Thank you.

My ass jerked backwards towards his groin as I writhed again, clearly on display. A few faeries here and there looked faintly sick, but most seemed amused. Amarantha smiled right at me and said, "Don't let it be said I don't hold up my end of a bargain, Feyre. Here's the riddle I promised you." Her grin went wider than I'd ever seen it as she added, "It's a shame faerie wine is too strong for you to remember it tomorrow."

I cleared my mind, focusing and memorizing every word as she spoke, even as Rhys made my hips move in slow, inelegant circles.

There are those who seek me a lifetime but never we meet,

And those I kiss but who trample me beneath ungrateful feet.

At times I seem to favor the clever and the fair,

But I bless all those who are brave enough to dare.

By large, my ministrations are soft-handed and sweet,

But scorned, I become a difficult beast to defeat.

For though each of my strikes lands a powerful blow,

When I kill, I do it slow…

As she sat back and laughed, I'd never felt more useless. Rhys had said this was supposed to be simple, yet I couldn't think of anything that resembled what she'd described, not in the slightest. Mother above, if this was supposed to be easy, I shuddered to think what else she'd had in mind.

Rhys's hands were on my waist again as he pulled me back onto his lap. I let his touch ground me. His talons pulled out of my mind gently, returning the control back to me without it being so sudden I'd react involuntarily and give the ruse away.

Despite having no idea what the answer could be, I let myself bask in the victory for a moment. Just having the riddle in my head meant that Rhys and I had won, and we'd done it right under Amarantha's nose.

Perhaps Amren had been right when she said my mate and I should be unstoppable together.

This time, the brush of Rhys's mind against mine felt like a friendly cat rubbing affectionately against my legs. I took that to mean he'd heard my thoughts and agreed. Now it was just a matter of enduring the rest of the party. All things considered, it didn't seem like too much of an ordeal if it meant I could stay this close to Rhys for a few more hours.

I turned the riddle over in my head as Amarantha went back to taunting Tamlin instead of me. Rhys continued to smirk and poured a few more glasses of "wine" down my throat. I did my best to look like I was struggling not to fall over.

I'd truly thought the worst was over until the throne room doors slammed open. The crowd murmured as the Attor dragged in a sobbing faerie and dropped him right in front of the dais. The faerie didn't even get up off the ground.

"I caught the summer lordling attempting to escape through the caves to the Spring Court lands," the Attor said. It sounded positively gleeful, its tail twitching with excitement like a dog's. "What would you like done with him, my queen?"

Amarantha's eyes snapped to Rhys as she commanded, "Find out why, so I can decide."

I'd been a fool to think the night was anywhere close to over.

#feysand #feyre archeron #we said hello and your eyes look like coming home #posting fanfic from the airport on a business trip like the girlboss i am lol

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sacrificialblood · 2 years

Note

ok ok i ask

teehee 😜😜

It started with good intentions really. You were struggling to open a jar of jam and he was just passing through, on his way out to the yard to start his morning chores, and he almost just leaves you to it — everyone has to pull their own weight and you’re no exception to that.

He’s still getting used to you. Still doesn’t trust or even like you. But Mama does, so it has to count for something, right?

You look so pathetic trying to open up that jar and he just snatched it right out of your hands, even as you cry out indignantly that you did not want or need his help, and he pops the lid immediately, shoves the jar back in your hands and turns back toward the door.

“I loosened that up for you!”

He’s already out the door.

It happens often. A lot of foods are preserved and pickled to extended shelf life for when hard time fall on the Hewitts. You struggle with the jars that have been freshly sealed and somehow he is always on scene when you’re prying at the jar and tapping its side on the edge of the counter or slapping the bottom of the jar to get the lid to pop. And each time he manages to open it for you.

You don’t ever ask for help, he just does whenever he’s close.

So when you do ask for help, he’s almost wary of entering the kitchen, even as you hang your head and hold out the jar for him to take in complete and utter defeat.

To his shock, you kiss the cheek of his mask and shuffled back to your work, pointedly ignoring his stare and questioning mumble.

He just leaves you alone, doesn’t go to help you when you don’t ask for it. Thomas doesn’t understand why it was so different, why he was given a reward for his help that time and not some snappy remark.

He doesn’t understand but he respects the boundary.

You don’t ask for help often, but every time you do, he answers the call without fail and comes to expect a kiss. Thomas sure does love positive attention from you.

The more it happens, the more he realizes it doesn’t happen enough for his liking.

He starts tightening the lids on the jars you use the most at night before he wanders on up to bed. A ritual for him that continues even after you become partners.

He stopped using the bedroom upstairs when he was a teenager. There’s not much in there, just a bed and night stand and a tall dresser. It’s all shrouded in dust and bed made up with stale sheets.

He sleeps in the basement, in a little corner he made up for himself with a mattress stacked on top of a few wood pallets. He enjoys the privacy. The basement is his domain, no one in the Hewitt house dares enter his space. Only Charlie’s ever gotten as far down as a few steps before turning back up and shouting down at him from the doorway. The family may be involved in killing but he’s the one that butchers.

When his room upstairs turns into yours and then by extension both of yours after a few months, you turn it into a safe haven. You fill it with color and creature comforts. Blankets and pillows taken from victims and piled high up on the mattress even though at night you can really only sleep with a flat sheet and all but two pillows get flung off the bed.

You make shelves under the guidance of Monty and fill them with records and books and trinkets from tourist attractions you’ve never been to. You decorate the walls with little paintings of chickens you saw out in the yard or of cows and pigs. Simple little paintings of everyday life out on the farm, scenes that make you happy.

All that color and life and the unabashed way you express yourself through your belongings makes him happy and begins to add his own decorations to the mix.

They clash but you never say a disparaging word, only encourage him because this is his bedroom too, he should have a say in what it looks like, let him fill it with things that make him happy too.

You don’t realize that all your things, all those little reminders of you in the room make him happier than he’s ever been.

There’s often not a lot of livestock on the Hewitt farm. Maybe a few chickens and a handful of pigs at a time. Rarer are cows. Those aren’t as easy to steal. Still, Hoyt and Thomas are able to swing it on occasion. You live for the days when animals are slaughtered for food, excited at eating meat that doesn’t make you gag or push your meal around on your plate.

That being said, since it’s so rare, Luda Mae and Thomas teach you how to use every last bit of the animal.

You’re squeamish at first, seeing Luda Mae cut the head off a chicken or Thomas draining the blood from a pig. But you have to learn and show that you've learned and before long, you’re the one cutting off chicken heads and you’re the one making cuts along arteries to drain the blood.

You learn how to make bone broth, how to suck the marrow out of bones for broths or sauces or on top of bread, how to skin an animal’s hide or pluck a chicken’s feathers.

Thomas is quite proud that you catch on so quick. He huffs and puffs and rolls his eyes at first when the knife shakes in your hand. He wraps his hand around yours to steady it, walking you through where you need to cut. It’s simple to him, something he’s done thousands of times, second nature to him since he was a child working down at the slaughterhouse. He has to remind himself that it’s all new to you, that you didn’t grow up the way he had to.

If there’s not much to do, no meat to butcher or no chores to do, you’ll sit out on an old porch swing together, watch the sun go down and see the fireflies come out at twilight.

He likes when you read to him. When he was in school, he struggled with reading but he enjoyed story time. Sitting down on the class rug and listening at his teachers feet to the story of the day. He’s never heard of a lot of the books you find and neither do you, but on occasion you stumble upon a few classics. He prefers the schlocky pulp magazines and books you find to anything else, especially ones belonging to the western or science fiction genres.

It’s peaceful ending the day with you sitting between his legs, pressing yourself against his chest while he reclines against the headboard. You prop the book against your stomach and read to him in a soft voice so you don’t wake anyone up with your late night read aloud session. When you get too tired to hold the book, he will do it for you.

He’s a messy eater, hardly, if ever, uses utensils, licks his fingers clean and wipes his mouth with the arm of his shirt. It’s not a pretty sight. No amount of pleading or coaxing will get him to have proper table manners.

He’s the last one to sleep, first to wake up. While family dinner is never to be missed, breakfast has looser rules around it. People come and go as they please, grabbing whatever Luda Mae made and getting on with their morning. With all the chores he has, you’re not likely to see him much during the day, you’re luckier when he doesn’t have work to do down in the basement.

His hair is a damn hassle. No amount of brushing or washing or styling will prevent the birds nest that appears by the end of the day. You’ve come close to cutting it out of frustration one night while you were brushing his hair, you sitting on the mattress and him sitting on the floor between your legs. He doesn’t care much about it, he’s never held as much concern for his hair as he does his own face. Be that as it may, you don’t think he’s be too fond of your decision to cut his hair without telling him. You just stick to dutifully brushing out his hair, trying to get it manageable. Your hard work is always ruined though.

Rarely do you ever see him without a mask. It takes a long time for him to trust you enough to sleep in the same room together, let alone show you his face unobscured. He gets comfortable changing masks in front of you and sometimes you can glean a sliver of his mouth or cheeks or what’s left of his nose. You try to be respectful but your curiosity gets to you and you’re able to push it down, most of the time.

He catches you looking once and he freaks out. He doesn’t hurt you, he scares you, but whatever turmoil he’s feeling he turn in on himself, usually in the form of self harm. There’s not much you can do to calm him down and if you try to intervene chances are he will only get angry at you. His safe space is the basement, where he feels like he’s in control, a room that’s all his as grotesque and macabre as it is, it’s his. He will hurry through the house to get behind the heavy sliding door and to his sanctuary where he will not emerge for several hours. No one goes near him, least of all you.

He comes back up when he’s ready, cradling new wounds that you clean and patch up. You apologize and he accepts.

You learned your lesson for when he eventually comes around to taking off his mask around you for more than a few seconds. You look down at your feet, turn your body to face away from him.

You don’t know his true face for years. He has to bring your chin up to look at him and even then your eyes are closed. The o oh thing that gets you to open them are his fingers quickly skimming over your eyelids. It’s a leap of faith, the biggest one he’s ever take.

#thomas hewitt x reader #thomas hewitt x you #thomas hewitt x y/n #slasher x reader #my writing #🌙

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rlbbackup · 2 years

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Cooking (a LoidYor vignette)

The tantalizing smell of cooking food filled the Forgers’ apartment, welcoming Yor home as warmly as a greeting from a loved one.

Her cheeks darkened at the word choice of her mind as she carefully closed the front door and hurriedly put her jacket on the nearby hook. “I’m home!” She called into the space, though she was sure at least one occupant knew of her arrival.

Two faces popped around the corner to the kitchen, Bond worfing at her in greeting and Loid smiling at her. His blonde hair, usually lightly styled, was hanging limply in front of his brows. He had taken off his suit jacket and vest, replacing them with a blue apron over his white dress shirt. The top button was undone and she assumed his sleeves would be rolled up since he was in the kitchen.

“Welcome home, Yor-san,” He greeted warmly, a smile pulling nicely over his white teeth.

“Thank you,” She replied as she walked to the kitchen doorway so he didn’t need to lean out a moment longer. Bond sat in the way of her entering the kitchen proper, but she didn’t mind. It looked (and smelled) like Loid had everything under control. She would be content to just watch him…Watching him cook, she instantly corrected her thoughts. Unless he didn’t want her to, of course. “It smells delicious! What are you making?”

Her husband turned his attention back to the stove. “I thought I’d try my hand at Chicken Tikka Masala. I’ve made a simple curry before and Anya liked it. On my way home, I saw that the market had chicken on sale and thought today would be the best time to try it out.”

Yor leaned silently against the doorframe, a soft smile pulling at her lips. He’s so attentive to what Anya likes. It’s good that he’s helping her expand her pallet. She thought as she watched him mix the orange colored sauce once before picking up a pair of oven mitts.

“Yor, can you keep Bond over there please? I need to open the oven.” Loid called, pulling her from her thoughts.

“Oh, yes!” She leaned down and wrapped her arms gently around the fluffy dog. “We mustn’t get burned, right Bond?”

The dog’s tail was wagging pretty fast, but he stayed with her until Loid finished pulling the cooked protein from the oven. Once the door closed, she released him and the hound continued to block her route. The secret assassin patted Bond’s head with a light chuckle. “Well, if it tastes half as good as it smells, I’m sure Anya will love it.” She bit her lip slightly before looking around. “Is she home yet?”

“Not yet,” Loid answered, carefully scraping the cubes of chicken into the orange sauce. “The bus should be arriving soon, though.” Placing the pan on a dish pad, he lifted his left wrist to his face, before muttering something she couldn’t quite hear.

“Would you like me to get the table ready then?” Yor asked, shifting slightly. She was sure Anya would be hungry after a long day of learning and a good meal before studying always seemed to help her.

"That would be very helpful, thank you," her husband quickly moved to another cabinet and pulled out their dishes before closing it and pulling out some utensils. The items were passed to her carefully over Bond's prone form and she found herself smiling as she walked over to the table.

As she set up their usual placements, she could see Loid moving about the kitchen once more. He worked so efficiently in the kitchen that Yor couldn't help but wonder if he had worked as a chef while attending medical school or at another time in his life. He didn't discuss his past often (or at all really) but there were…things that he did that hinted at a broader background to her dear husband.

He had secrets. Definitely not like her own, there was no way his past was as checkered as hers. He was good, both at everything he put his mind to and in how he interacted with everyone he met or came across.

Warmth spread through her chest as she watched him finish up dinner preparations and was just about to ask if she could help with anything else when the front door opened.

"ChiChi!" A precious voice called, snapping Yor out of the warm haze she found herself in. "HaHa! Bond! Anya's home!"

Yor took three quick strides and made it to the hallway where her adorable daughter stood, giggling as she received a greeting from her hound. Once Bond had finished, she held out her arms. "Welcome home, Anya!" She called with a bright smile, sweet thoughts of Loid rapidly replaced by the love for their daughter, especially when the little girl launched herself into her mother's arms. "I'm so glad to see you."

#Rachel writes #Not sure if I'm going to put this up on AO3 yet or not #Enjoy!#spy x family #spy x family ficlet #loid forger #yor forger #anya forger #twiyor #loidyor #loiyor #Soft fluff

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alexissara · 8 months

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Baldur's Gate 3 - Amazing and Sometimes Awful [Quick Review]

Baldur's Gate 3 is a herculean feat of game development with amazing voice acting work spread across it's many many hours, fantastic character designs, interesting gameplay and more. It also suffers from D&Ds character progression systems, the way the games worlds are set up, and the system of true RNG that it is emulating. Beyond that the game despite it's own beauty is extremally buggy and faces significant late game performance issues. However, the game does some stand out things for queerness that a lot of other RPGs fail at. This game is a mixed bag that might also be game of the year.

With over 122 hours logged into the game I feel fairly confident in my ability to access what I experienced but given how big of an undertaking it is I genuinely think someone else's experience may be different. I chose to not side with either the grove or the goblins and moved onto act 2 without doing that and that may have added to the count of bugs but the fact that was an option means that it isn't "My fault" that I experienced so many bugs on my playthrough. I had party members despawning, quests saying I could do something that I couldn't do because the NPCs were not in the area they were supposed to be, getting ques for things that should have went into act 3 that were missing, in the end of act 3 characters missing from the end bits and at the very end textures just all vanishing for my last few hours.

I didn't really get to experience the romance the game had to offer. I started a fling with Lae'zel which apparently locked me out of most other romances but randomly gave me a Wyll Romance scene, a man I never deployed not once the whole game. I realized playing the game I didn't long rest enough and missed out on my chance to romance Shadow Heart whom I really wanted to romance and even though I broke things off with Lae'zel I could never progress a romance with Shadowheart, Karlache or Minthara. I want to feel this romances and see everything they have to offer but sadly the game denied me this.

The game lacks body diversity and the limited pallet of faces feels too limited in character customization. There is sadly no time in which despite being able to have a trans body I am able to talk to someone about being trans that I found not am I ever able to reject a romantic advance by stating my sexuality or disinterest in a gender. Instead it is taken as read that I am bisexual and that I am rejecting them for them and not because like from the onset they weren't on the table for my desires. I am however, not a bisexual but a lesbian and I would love to be able to say that.

That said this game does make strives to doing something I've not really seen other games do with playsexual characters which is to make them have queer history. I didn't get every characters backstories but I did get backstories for Astrian and for Shadowheart which both imply that previous to our adventures they had mostly been with their own gender. Astrian has a litany of male lovers which he courted and gave to his master, he seems to prefer men and he describes his attraction to them. Meanwhile, Shadowheart seems to have had a girlfriend before her memories were removed, perhaps an ex that was a Transgender Woman who turned to Sharr although this is more subtextual than Astrian's due to her memory loss.

These little bits of queer history make them feel much more lived and their sexualities not feel like it was because I am super special but because they are earnestly queer and I happened to have the kind of personality and body their attracted to. There is also some amount of queer NPCs not tied to our PCs although they are in the minority in a majority heteronormative cast.

The game does make some strives to fix some of the things that are terrible about D&D removing the alignment system allowing for characters to simply exist in a much more complex moral web than a box of 9 check marks for morality lets you do and a toning down of racial abilities which helps lessen D&Ds inherent eugenics. However, it does not escape D&D's racism problem with the game mostly having a lot of the characters be racist good and bad and not having counter examples of races like Goblins being good or like an important good drow or something. The companions "Racial" make up are very classic fantasy squad. 2 Elves, 2 half elves, 3 humans, 1 Drow, 1 Gith. In terms of race as we see it in the real world we got one black character and everyone else is pretty white or are a fantasy skin color and white coded maybe baring Lae'zel but idk what Lae'zel's culture is supposed to represent if there is a real world equivalent. Of course also everyone in the world able bodied and skinny or maybe if they are the right race buff. I haven't seen everyone fuck but it appears to me that everyone is cisgender. The game can't do everything but I certainty wish the game did more. The probably most offensive to me being the promoted and marketed Polyamory simply not existing and came from their own misunderstanding of the word, you can fuck around you at least in my experience can't be in multiple committed romantic relationships. That should be fixed given they marketed the game and I don't even need them to address each other just allow it to happen since it was sold to me on the idea I could kiss multiple girls romantically.

There is a total sense of wonder in doing the game thing in new ways and seeing all the ways you can handle situations and all the different outcomes. From multiple files to save scum stuff to hearing people talk about their runs I've seen tons of different ways even my highly buggy end game which did not run well I could see where if it wasn't having all the running issues I had I would have been blown away by all the options they gave me for the last 3 battles of the game. I still thought it was really cool even when it was bugging out. The game constantly threw fun new things at you, little challenges, great moments of roleplaying where it feels like your choices mattered and you could do something cool to get out of a situation. This game might be the game that has most successfully captured the magic of roleplaying in a video game.

The characters being a stand out factor in this in that I found several of the characters to be highly compelling even one man which if you know me is a massive accomplishment. I found Astrian's plot to be really captivating, I really loved Shadowheart's story, I thought some of the NPC stories were really well done too, as a character focused story teller I loved the character work that went into even characters I wasn't particularly in love with. Everyone feels like they can grow and grow in different ways too for bad or for good and often even pretending a pretty objectively bad choice can be flavored with enough deniability to understand why someone might make that choice as a character and not just like because video game let me choice bad choice. I think the characters stories make up a coherent theme I really wanna dive more into but will be restrained on here. They all deal with control. Everyone is dealing with different levels of someone's strings on them and a different relationship to those strings. How those relationships change and evolve over time is really compelling and how they compare to each other is really great. Overall, I love BG3, I think it might be my favorite game I played so far this year [but I do have a backlog, Stray Gods, En Garde!, Super Lesbian Animal RPG] and one of my favorite games in general. IF not for it's massive file size I think it's a game I'd keep installed all year round and just randomly jump into all the time. For now I am still playing, still enjoying but more than anything I am hoping by the time I beat the game a second time it is a lot smoother. If you enjoyed this kind of One Take review let me know, I wanted to try my Yuri manga format for a video game review because nobody reads my game reviews but I felt like I wanted to talk about the game. So instead of putting the huge amounts of work into the review like I normally do I wanted to just try this. If you did enjoy it one way to let me know is by supporting me on Patreon or Ko-fi or you can just reblog or comment. I might revisit the game with a more in depth review or looks more in depth at how it handles queerness or about the story and other stuff like that.

#BG3 #baulders gate 3 #Quick Review #Review #Game Review #Queer #Queer Review

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ask-de-writer · 6 months

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Return to the Master Story Index

Return to CLASSICAL FANTASIES

THE FISHERMAN'S LEG (Part 18 of 20)

A sequel to Dee 1/2 Demon

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

21738 words (work in progress)

TUMBLR EXEMPTION

Blog holding members of Tumblr.com may freely reblog this story provided that the title, author and copyright information remain intact, unaltered, and are displayed at the head of the story.

Fan art, stories, music, cosplay and other fan activity is actively encouraged.

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

New to the story? Read from the beginning HERE.

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

“An amputation! I only had a small cut! As long as three fingers are wide!”

Magistrate Lim raised a finger and bowed, saying sharply, “Minami! What have your ears been doing while Doctor Siani and the others talked to you? Your use of bandages taken from a man dead of gangrene gave you gangrene too! If it had not gone inside the bone, they would have amputated your leg at mid thigh!”

It was an angry Dee who answered, “Not listening! That is what his ears were doing! This is a wasted time. Let us hear his fantasy of Sorcerous murder and be done with his slanders!”

Minami snapped back, “These things that you are claiming have to be false! What you have said was destroyed by gangrene could not be healed! Some things cannot be fixed!”

Nodding agreement emphatically, Dee snarled, “Correct! Your mind is proof of that! When a good fish like a sand shark is before your eyes for twenty years, you never looked to see that the mud and sand were blowing out the gill slits, leaving only the clean prey to be eaten. For twenty years, you looked with your eyes and could not see!

“Now, here in this Tribunal your ears hear but your mind is deaf! You know that you went to sleep on the plains in front of Port Nanchee, which was under seige. Waking up in a Hospice in a different province, over a moon later, you still cannot figure out that something went very wrong while you slept!”

Doctor Siani interposed calmly, “Minami san, you were partly correct. These feats of healing had never before been done. These young ladies managed a near miracle to save what they incorrectly believed to be a friend.

“The soreness of your throat was a consequence of the tubes that I put there so that you could breathe and be fed while being kept asleep. They removed them when the main things were healed and they expected to finish remainder of the work with you awake.”

The Doctor shook his head in sadness and wonder mixed, “None expected that you would be so unwilling to listen and allow the healing to go on. You were very angry and demanded that they not touch you further. They did not and THAT is why you have that scar-like cavity in your leg. YOU AND YOU ALONE would not allow them to finish their work.

“Why you became so afraid of people that you had known for some years is something that none of us know.”

Minami snarled, “I would not let them touch me after I saw them murder the man two pallets over from me! I watched them and the other three women there gather about his bed like vultures. That evil oni's brat summond her vile flame between her claws and pushed it into him and he died of it!

“I saw it happen! It was murder! I cannot be wrong because saw them do it!”

It was Miko who brightly pointed out, “Exactly like you saw sand sharks EATING MUD. You could not be wrong because you saw it with your own eyes! If you had only asked a simple question, you would have known what really happened.”

“You cannot tell me that I did not see it!” Minami made claws of his hands, face contorted with anger! “You murdered him like the hundreds of others! More than two hundred men were slaughtered at HER deadly claws and fire!”

Magistrate Lim nearly choked at the accusation! He raised his hands and demanded, “Stop! I keep the records of the Hospice for Mortal Wounds! They are here in my files. Two hundred and thirty four of those sent to the Hospice died . . .”

“MURDERED! You admit . . .” shouted Minami triumphantly! Constable Canra clubbed him down so that the Magistrate could continue.

The Magistrate made a deep sigh before continuing, “One hundred and sixty three of the first two hundred died before these girls even knew of the Hospice. It was for MORTAL WOUNDS, after all.

“After their arrival, another six hundred and fifty four were sent. Out of that eight hundred and fifty four, all expected to die, only two hundred and forty three did. Six hundred and eleven men, all of whom were dying when they arrived lived.”

Dee slowly shook her head trying not to cry at the memories engraved on her mind two years past. “We tried so hard and we did save most of them, but some wounds simply cannot be healed. I do remember the man that you spoke of just now. His liver was deeply pierced and all that we tried was to no avail. All that I could do was stop his pain for short periods.

“He asked for us and Lord Umayu's wives to be with him at the end. He wanted to see us, thank us, and pass without pain. When he knew that he was about to die, he asked for my fire sight to stop his pain. He laid his hands in Lady Donatse's and asked of the war. She told him that Corutsu was ours and he replied that his life was not wasted. She replied that any life lost was too many and his memory will be treasured. He said thank you and he was gone.”

Magistrate Lim waited for Dee to compose herself and replied, “I believe that this disposes of the accusation. Minami san saw a thing that he did not understand and his mind fastened on it without questioning to be sure of its truth. Most of those he accused you of killing died before you even knew of their existence. The balance have a simple explanation. Mortal Wounds. In a war, no matter what is done, some wounds cannot be healed.

“The accusation is dismissed. No unlawful magics or Sorcery were involved in any of these cases.

“We may now get to the remaining business of this Tribunal.”

To be Continued

<==PREVIOUS ~~ NEXT==>

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to CLASSICAL FANTASIES

#THE FISHERMAN'S LEG #Part 18 of ?#Classical Fantasy #sequel to DEE 1/2 DEMON #WORK IN PROGRESS #Written by De Writer

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reesecomic13 · 1 month

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Shoulder Mates

Hi I’m shouting into the void an idea that I have been cooking up for a hot second:

The basic premise is that there are office spaces for the Angels and Demons on your shoulder. In order to run these companies (and also while being in competition), each decision made by their Shoulder Mate (the subject in decision) is sent to their space and is counted as a Clavicle Point. Each creature is sent to Earth by them going through a paper file created from their Shoulder Mate and they return the same way after completing the mission. If they fail to persuade the subject to their side, they get closer and closer to termination. If, however, a Shoulder Mate refuses both advice, a half a point gets sent back to the office.

This idea came about in this world because after becoming tired of helping mortals make decisions for themselves, Archfiend and Providence (basically the Devil and God but not exclusively a curtain religion) came to a mutual decision to create a division of immortals to do the job for them. In order for this concept to be integrated into society, they started to send out ideas to artists that made these ideas into stories.

Facts and Tidbits

Termination to the Angels is making them fall from their status and becoming a Demon. It’s their way of giving them a second chance while also making the Angel someone they despise. Demon Termination is being completely whipped off the face of the universe.

The style of workspace evolved with society (Currently it resembles an office cubicle). The styles of immortals also represent the art of different cartoons throughout the centuries.

The cartoon idea came about because the Angel/Demon Shoulder concept was popularized by cartoons.

Cartoon styles can mix together to create a unique look.

This was inspired by Good Omens, Monsters Inc., and Helluva Boss/Hasbin Hotel (Spite). I was inspired to redesign my old characters because a lot of artists were redesigning Hasbin characters.

In the Hell Office Space, fallen angels cannot be recognized not only because of how different they look, but because it’s part of the punishment. The only way they can be recognized is if someone starts to piece together their past life. Higher ups can instantly recognize one, however.

All Angels wear name tags as a way to help with names while demons don’t because they don’t really care about formalities.

Angel is on the Right, Demon is on the Left

Angels are mainly humanoid while Demons are mainly nonhumanoid.

If a Demon gets an Angel demoted, they instantly go up the ladder and join the higher ups in making the office decisions.

They were created to be Nondenominational (anyone can have them)

Fallen Angel Punishment typically includes: Ripped Wings, Shorting of Hight, Broken or taken away Halo, Hell Color Pallet, Elements added depending on what they did, Is no longer Humanoid, and an Animation Style Change.

Angels are under a filter, so they can not curse or say anything close to it. However, higher up Angels do not have a filler. Demons have no filter system at all.

Slogan of Both Sides: “Creators got tired of making decisions, so they created the Shoulder Devision.”

#oc #shoulder mates #original story #original premise #angel on your shoulder #demon on your shoulder #hazbin hotel #helluva boss

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builder051 · 9 months

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No black cats allowed

(Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise)

This is the We fit like an Enfit ‘verse (tube ‘verse)—HOWEVER, it is completely removed from the currently published timeline. I always mean to fill in the cracks, but I never get to it, so here’s what you should know. The story runs like this: Steve and Bucky were high school sweethearts, then Bucky went overseas with the Army, had terrible experiences, got hurt, and got shipped back home. He tried getting back with Steve when he first made it stateside, but things were a little rocky, and eventually they broke up. It’s then, post-break up, that Steve starts having his own health problems and winds up getting tubed. He tries relying on coworkers to help him, but his issues continue, and he desperately needs a caretaker, or at least someone who can spend time with him and drive him to appointments. He reaches out to Bucky again, and after a little getting used to each other again, they move in together (and with Bucky’s cat), and they’re back to their previous relationship situation.

This story takes place in the “right back home” period, when Bucky has returned from Iraq and is still dating Steve. It’ll make sense as a stand-alone story, but placing it in context might be tricky.

This fic has a lot of stuff regarding war, mental health, PTSD, panic, therapy, hospitals, gore al la blood and vomit, some truly disgusting food talk, superstition, a nod to the existence of sex. It’s the usual mixed bag; there’s a huge amount of backstory, then story, then a tiny wrap-up with an open ending.

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He probably shouldn’t have stacked the appointments. Looking back through the lense of hindsight, that’s exactly when things went wrong. It lies some three weeks previously, when he’d taken the return call from scheduling and neglected to note the dates and times in his planner. Bucky should’ve known the system would bite him in the ass. Again.

As much as Bucky hates to admit it, he’s probably the one responsible for the ass-biting. He shouldn’t take calls during his lunch hour. He tries, since that’s the only time he can slip outside the echoing warehouse. The stacks of cardboard and wood pallets do nothing to absorb the noise of crashing boxes and the temperamental swamp cooler. Signal’s always shitty, too, even on the outdoor loading deck. The building’s sad excuse for WiFi lies beyond possibility for the connection necessary for web calls. Regardless of means, the voice on the other end is crunchy and segmented. Bucky’s lucky to hear every third word or so. There’s just enough static to blur words out of meaning. Bucky isn’t quick enough to pack potential consonant blends into their respective gaps, and that’s his fault. His lapse in speech therapy practice. It’s his anxiety getting in the way of fulfilling every carefully noted point on his daily schedule.

Bucky didn’t used to have anxiety. Sure, he’d grown up with all the ups and downs of adolescence. He doesn’t like to think about the shameful day he’d ditched two final exams and barricaded himself in a janitor’s closet, puking up the previous night’s samplings of whiskey, edibles, and potato chips. But that happened to everyone, right? Through the rest of his time spent in secondary school, community college, basic training, Bucky remembers others laughing through self deprecating stories of the same.

It was just a universal thing, he’d thought. It had to be. Stress, probably. He’d had a lot going on during his seventeenth and eighteenth years. Football had him in two grueling practices a day, and the gods of senior year must’ve found his list of trespasses. Whether they were punishing him for his academic faults or general life choices, Bucky knew not. He had a feeling it was both; and he’s still sent reeling from time to time when a bad memory strikes. He leaves the room if anybody pops a bag of anything sour cream and onion.

Bucky had wanted to rush to the nearest exit when his VA appointed counselor gifted him the distastefully pink and quote-filled planner book. The dumpster out back would be a good place to stash it. Then he could hide out with an angry cigarette or two until he was calm enough to drive home. Therapy wasn’t for him, he’d decided, all in the same flustered moment. He’d just stop coming to his regularly scheduled appointments.

Halfway to the nearest gas station, though, Bucky had remembered his driver’s license was over a year out of date. The only valid ID on him was his base pass. It sometimes invited awkward conversations where people thanked him for his service. Truth be told, he’d rather have his arm back than any 20% discount. And the more he’d thought about it, the more he was sure that smoking tobacco would be a bad idea. It would probably have him honking up his breakfast before he could even inhale. He’d been forced to quit cold turkey somewhere in the Afghan desert. Taliban guards hadn’t been generous with their stashes of candy and drugs and diet soda. The same had been true for the nurses in any hospital he’s visited since. He should stick with weed. Edibles could certainly be obtained online these days.

That brought up the question of his ID again, though. Would some text bot in central Colorado rat on him for buying gum drops laced with delta 9? It would have to, if there was a subpoena. That’s stupid, Bucky told himself. It didn’t help much. When he arrived at his apartment, he was just keyed up enough to have the shakes and visual sparks that so often heralded migraines and bad memories. Once he shut the front door, Bucky grabbed an oxytocin from the bathroom cabinet and collapsed onto his bed. His jeans and boots didn’t matter. With any luck, he’d soon be having solely out-of-body experiences.

Bucky gets four hours of relief, no matter what he tries. Chemically negotiated sleep, alcohol-induced giddiness, a couple of chess games with Steve— his outlets, healthy and non, never bring him completely down. He’s never felt satisfied, never fully charged. His year in the desert stole more than just his body and mind; Bucky feels eternally depleted, like he can’t breathe in enough oxygen or drink enough water, despite his esophagus and lungs taking only minimal damage. The blisters from caustic smoke inhalation were completely healed, medical staff in Kandahar had informed him. Apparently mouths and throats and other wet, mucousy areas of the body have superior healing powers. None of it has convinced him to make an appointment with an ENT, an allergist, or a dentist, but Bucky makes a concerted effort not to discount the experts. At least not too much.

Bucky usually catches himself before he does anything too rash. Sometimes his excuses aren’t great, such as the time he used a hammer to smash open a jar of tomato sauce after an hour of fruitless one-handed twisting. The wrist ache and stubborn desire to put a cooked dinner on the table pushed him a little far, he’ll admit. But as far as he knows, Steve is still oblivious to the fact that he’d eaten pasta that was carefully strained to remove bits of shattered glass.

Bucky’s dissected the entire experience with his counselor over multiple sessions, and they’ve pretty much organized his breakdowns into different categorical reactions preceded by similar warning signs. Those urges to run, hide, throw rocks at the pigeons on his balcony— they should cue him to do something grounding. Looking at his planner would be an optimal choice. Breathing deeply and focusing on the pastel watercolors that border each page’s scheduling block. That might encourage him to reap more benefits of the fat spiral-bound book. If he wanted, Bucky could schedule his life from 6AM to midnight every day of every month of every year. Apparently the planner comes from a curated luxury brand, and a trip to its website could enable him to order complementary stickers and expander pages. The counselor cheerfully joked that he could go broke, the array of pastel and neon and vegan leather office supplies were so tempting. Bucky supposes it’s a success, then, that he’s never pulled up the site, let alone sit and browse with his wallet open.

Bucky likes planning his days more organically. He wakes up a solid four hours before he leaves for work, so there’s plenty of time to dress and shovel down some breakfast and call Steve’s office phone and plant an endearing message in voice mail box. They don’t live together anymore, technically, but their pair bond hasn’t completely disappeared. Bucky would lose his subsidized apartment if he put his name on a lease somewhere else. The rule runs the other way too, preventing anyone but Bucky’s solitary disabled veteran of a self occupied the blank-walled studio. It doesn’t keep them from meeting up from time to time. The times do seem to be falling a little less frequently as time stretches on, but thinks he knows why.

It’s Bucky’s fault, again. This time for falling into the greedy trap of bonus pay for work hours outside his regular shifts. He doesn’t want to buy anything with the extra cash, but the rotating schedule does give him something to jot down in his planner. Maybe he’ll get some outrageous stickers after all. Something loud and especially obnoxious, like glittery rainbows. He’d use them to mark special occasions. A dinner date with Steve, perhaps. At one of those nice-but-not-fancy places, like the diner that lights up the end of the block with its 24-hour incandescent window lights and perpetually flashing ‘fresh coffee’ sign. That could easily pin them down together for the four-hour stretch between the end of work and the beginning of Jack Hanna’s Wild Countdown at 11pm. Bucky has begun to recognize the reruns of the reruns, but he’s not in it for the fun facts. It’s the camaraderie he likes. His friend Jack keeping him from other, less savory companions like Jack and Coke.

The VA’s phone tree and call waiting systems haven't changed in the five years Bucky’s been subjected to them. The whole communication setup seems stuck in Windows 98. Bucky’s seen the telltale screensaver bouncing around on his rehabilitation doctor’s desktop. He’s fairly sure the hospital could afford to upgrade, though the staff probably hadn’t realized that patients glimpsing a monitor here and there could trigger memories of young recruits sitting in a sweltering tent and logging into the heavily filtered .gov email system on an ancient Macintosh. Sometimes a loved one sent a sweet message and a picture of a cat, which was always appreciated, even though the hard coded regulations reset the text to all caps interspersed with phrases like ‘censored’ and ‘jpeg not displayed.’ Just as often, though, a buddy with a satellite connection would dash off a succinct report of lives recently lost in the latest (redacted) mission. Harsh as they were, Bucky appreciated those notes just as much. His higher-ups rarely passed down accurate weather reports, let alone information about their brothers in other companies. Demoralizing content was cut more and more as the conflict in the desert stretched on. They said it would detract from the bravery of the young, impressionable troops. Bucky laughs now to keep himself from grinding his teeth. The policy won’t fall out of fashion any time soon, no matter where the army continues to send him.

If Bucky uses his morning free time to call any of the hospital’s departments, the nurse at the desk invariably tells him that they’ll take a note and pass it onto the next in the chain of command. An MA, an intern, some kid doing work study to earn his mess hall rations… As responsible as any of them may be, the note never makes it further than the trash can behind the reception desk. That’s what Bucky assumes, since he hasn’t received any communication back.

The same is true for his evenings; Bucky gets off work around 4:00 most days, and he’s lucky to be put on hold while the desk person searches down for someone with authority. The system shuts down promptly at 5:00, and the tinny classical medley of the hold music dies and gives him a dial tone instead. Some days Bucky steels himself and leaves his name and predicament with the voicemail, trying hard not to sound too angry or annoyed. He’s pondered on the idea of letting his emotions seep into his speech along with some heavy sighs, but he doesn’t want to risk it. The last thing he needs is for his counselor to find out and refer him to anger management.

What he’d needed, badly, was a follow up with audiology. The kind practitioner in plainclothes carefully helped him through the process of a complete ear health and hearing examination. The tiny booth for the beep and button test had given him pause, but, as with everything else so far, he’d survived. After the audiologist collected her data, she’d tried to interest him in filling out the form for his hearing aid order. The diagnosis of partial deafness had come as no surprise, but Bucky had declined to participate. “Whatever brand, whatever color. I don’t care,” he’d told her. Stress had been mounting, and the audiologist had let him escape the office with a fleeting, “See you later. We’ll call when you can come pick them up.”

The call had come, much to Bucky’s surprise. He’d felt his phone vibrate in his back pocket as he was pushing a refrigerator box across the warehouse. A quick glance at the screen had shown an unknown number with a local prefix, and he’d figured he should pick up. Maybe it was the front desk at Steve’s office. The community college puzzling over his student loan and GI bill. The local police, perhaps, trying to cite him for abuse of pigeons.

Surprisingly, though, it was the VA. “Hold on, hold on, I have to get somewhere I can hear you,” he’d barked over the rest of the caller’s sentence. Bucky had quickly ducked into the windowless closet they used as a break room before saying, “Ok, go.”

The quality of the call had been especially terrible. “Hearing aids”, Bucky was able to decipher. Then, “Schedule pickup.”

“In the morning,” he’d replied. “I work weird hours.”

“The thirteenth?” The caller had offered.

“What, like, tomorrow?”

“Next month.”

Bucky’d pushed his hair back off his forehead, wondering if he could pin down his work times that far in advance. “I’ll try to make it work.” That was the best he could offer.

“And PT?”

“What was that now?”

“Physical therapy,” the caller had clarified.

Bucky could’ve sworn he’d already graduated from the program. He’d been relieved when he’d stopped going. The humiliation of pedaling an arm bike with only one arm regularly took a chunk of his self esteem.

“No-show last session,” Bucky had managed to understand. “Reschedule.”

“Um…” He could’ve explained his understanding of the situation, but he’d already been eager to get off the phone. If anything, he could pretend to go to PT and really just use it as an opportunity to tell his therapist face-to-face that he was quitting. “Sure,” Bucky had sighed. The rush of air had reverberated through the call and caught him back like a waterpik to his eardrum. Hard of hearing, he was. Not hard of feeling. “Ugh, sorry.”

The caller had paid it no mind. “Nine o’clock for audiology and 9:30 for PT?’”

“Sure.” Now Bucky was cringing at the sound of his own voice. “Thanks.” Then he’d hung up, not waiting to hear a goodbye.

He’d meant to jot the appointments down in his planner. He’d amused himself with the thought that the thing might finally serve a helpful purpose. Bucky’s good mood had carried on through the afternoon. He was even inspired to pick up a box of donuts and drive over to Steve’s office, where he’d sat on the hood of Steve’s car and helped himself to a chocolate glazed. Steve had come out the door shouting at Bucky for defacing his vehicle. But then he’d eaten a sugar dusted lemon creme and inticed Bucky to lick the sweet powder from his fingers. The trip back to Steve’s place was a given. It wasn't the first time he’d given Bucky a lift to pick up his car in the morning.

The next few weeks had passed uneventfully. It was back to the mundane work/rest/tv cycle that drove Bucky’s life. He and Steve were a little tense again. He was living on cereal again. Bucky figured he’d work it out with his counselor at the next appointment. Until then, he’d cope. He hadn’t counted, but he knew there weren’t that many days left in the week.

Friday dawns grey and cloudy. Bucky’s scheduled to work a swing shift, so he doesn’t have to leave his apartment until the afternoon. He gathers the box of cornflakes and the milk carton, then sits at the kitchen table in his bathrobe. He intends to let his cereal marinate for a moment while he browses social media, but he doesn’t get that far. Bucky feels a jolt in his gut as squints at the expiration date stamped on the side of the milk. The thirteenth. Today, he realizes. Friday the fucking thirteenth. He should just go back to bed now.

But no, he has work later, and he rarely sleeps during daylight hours without the help of some chemical or other. Getting high would be nice, though. He could call in sick. The thought of the dishonesty hardens into a lump in Bucky’s stomach, though. On the other hand, he does feel a little sick. He doesn’t particularly want to slog his balding car tires through slick streets and mud puddles. No, he can’t do that. He’d run the risk of becoming the butt of somebody’s joke about being scarce on the unlucky day. Anxiety pits itself against anxiety, and the discomfort moves upward into Bucky’s chest.

Something else isn’t right. Bucky stands and grabs his planner from the top of a stack of phone books in the kitchen corner. The poorly bound yellow and white pages usually serve the purpose of sound damper when he has to resort to a screwdriver or hammer to bust open packaging. Otherwise, they’re a convenient shelf for stuff he likes to keep handy, which is really just a flimsy excuse for not tidying up.

Bucky flips the leaves of the planner. He’d left it open to some date last week, and, though he hasn’t written anything in the schedule blocks, he’s starting to feel positive that he’s missed something important.

Important. Bucky whispers the word under his breath until it slurs into something unintelligible. Appointment, Bucky realizes as he lands on the page for today. “Don’t let the rain spoil the sunshine” the inscription reads. It’s in a curly novelty font, and Bucky can swear he feels the eye strain crystallizing into a headache. Friday the fucking thirteenth indeed.

Bucky can’t remember the time he’s scheduled to arrive at the VA, so he books it, just in case. If he’s late, someone will cancel the appointments. Usually some front desk person, a scheduler or a receptionist, who seems to lavish in other people’s distress. If he’s early, well, he’ll sit and suffer in the waiting area, listening to the front desk person ruin other people’s day.

Bucky leaves his pajama top and hustles into jeans, then grabs his wallet and phone. He stuffs his feet into some clogs. Even slip-ons that require a manual heel adjustment are too much for him today. He’s almost out the door when he spots the milk and dry cereal still sitting on the kitchen table. Bucky falters in an anxious pause, then decides it’s not worth the effort to put them away. The milk is scheduled to expire today anyway.

Bucky pauses again outside the front door when he remembers that he needs keys. They live on a hook next to the door, so he only needs to open it as wide as his arm. He scrabbles at the wall with his fingernails, and the keys fall on the floor. “Fuck,” Bucky mumbles as he bends to retrieve them. The change in position kicks up a wave of vertigo, and he has to lean on the wall for a moment to stop his visual field from spinning.

Now flustered, Bucky races across the parking lot and jumps into his car. He backs up without turning his head, hoping Friday the thirteenth doesn’t bless him with a dent in his bumper. Luck wins, and he speeds toward the main road. He breathes deeply before turning at the stop sign. Getting out of his parking space must’ve been a false positive. He steels himself for whatever terror the hospital has for him today.

When he slides into the hospital lot, Bucky knows he’s pulled in crooked. He cracks the door, and once he sees that his tires are only a centimeter or so across the line, he calls it good enough. He slams the door, but when he goes to lock it, he realizes he’s left the keys in the ignition. Bucky begs the car not to auto lock, but it does anyway. The beep is barely within his range of hearing, but the high, tinny sound makes him squeeze his eyes shut. He has his phone on his body, so he can at least call roadside assistance when it’s time to leave.

“Fuck.” Bucky curses himself again before starting to hold his breath in preparation for the VA’s revolving door. If he’ll ever get stuck in it, it will be today. The door grinds and scrapes over waterproof carpet, but Bucky manages to shove it into working order. It spits him out in the middle of the overly lit entrance hall. Blast fluorescent lightbulbs. Bucky’s head gives a good throb, and he remembers to exhale. His heart’s going a mile a minute. He needs to calm down before some staff member sees him and decides to give him a piss test to make sure he isn’t misusing his amphetamines.

Lo and behold, a woman in scrubs crosses the hall right in front of him. She has her head down and her thumbs moving madly as she types on her phone. She pays him no mind, and Bucky’s glad for it. He hopes she doesn’t run into something, it being Friday the thirteenth and all. After a glance in both directions, Bucky heads to the audiology clinic. With the lights above reflecting in shiny puddles across the floor, he hopes he doesn’t run into something either.

When Bucky reaches the front desk, the elderly man behind the counter glares. “You’re a few minutes late,” he announces.

“Sorry,” Bucky gasps. He swallows and tries to get his diaphragm and lungs back into alignment. “I’m sorry. Uh, traffic, you know…”

The man nods. He knows. He probably thinks he knows everything. He might be a retired general or something; Bucky’s only seen this degree of hatred coming from the eyes of a higher ranking officer who’s dead set on stomping anthills.

“You’re late,” the man repeats. “I’ll have to call your practitioner.”

Bucky averts his eyes as the man picks up a landline and peruses the list of extensions on an index card taped to the side of a computer monitor.

“I can just go,” Bucky offers. Better to leave on his own volition rather than take the demerit and perseverate on it on the drive back to his apartment. No, rather when he loiters back in the parking lot waiting on a tow truck.

“It’s fine.” The doctor in plainclothes appears in the doorway adjacent to the reception desk. Today she wears a t-shirt bearing a stylized painting of a cochlear implant. “You’re picking up, right?” She glances at the back of the desk man’s head. “Appointments like that don’t take much time. You’re good to come back.”

Bucky’s relieved to avoid the tense session of waiting room sitting; he steps quickly through the door the audiologist holds open for him. Her office is the first door down the hall. Blessedly it’s carpeted, and the chairs for patients have real cushions on their seats. Bucky starts to sit, but the audiologist stops him.

“Here.” She grabs a small box off her desk and hands it over. “Just pop them in.”

Bucky takes it and does as he’s told. The box hinges open, and there are the aids. His aids, now. The part that sits behind his ear is metallic grey with a few bright, silver, and overly technical looking buttons. Dark red tubes secure to the slim side of the aids to navy blue molds, which Bucky assumes are custom cut and fabricated from the uncomfortable gel impressions he’d suffered through at his first appointment.

“Alright…” Bucky takes one and pushes the earmold deeply in his left canal. The soft silicone squishes slightly, but maintains its shape. It feels as if he’s shoving a bouncy ball into his ear. Once the aid is positioned, it completely blocks his sense of hearing. He’s reminded uncomfortably of the compressed foam earplugs he’d worn when he was training on the firing range. “Is it supposed to be quiet?” Bucky asks. He points at his ear, and, unable to hear his own voice, hopes he isn’t shouting.

“I’ll turn them on and tweak the programming once you have both in.” The audiologist speaks at what Bucky assumes is a regular volume, but she moves her lips in an exaggerated fashion. God, will he be happy to get rid of that problem. He isn’t good at lip reading. He can if he has to, but just looking someone in the face spikes his anxiety.

Bucky puts in the other aid. He’s disconcerted by the further silence, even though he’d known it was coming. He gives the audiologist a thumbs up. He’s willing to do anything to speed up the process.

The audiologist returns the gesture, then turns to her computer and clicks through multiple drop down menus. The aids suddenly spring to life, making Bucky cringe. The change from silence to sound is more abrupt than he’d expected. It’s as if he’s in the middle of the ocean, but without crashing waves to see and feel to ground him in the experience. Bucky wonders if the walls are moving, the painted cinderblocks rumbling against each other as the room closes in from all sides. The discomfort of his headache moves down to his sinuses and his jawline. No, not now. The last thing he needs is creeping nausea.

“How do they sound?” The audiologist’s voice rings out loud and clear.

Bucky can’t quite reason whether the aids are doing their job or if she’s still just speaking loudly. “Um.” Bucky swallows. “I hear you.”

“Good.” The audiologist moves her mouse and clicks a few more buttons, then presses a few keys.

Bucky hears the sound of her typing. Is it normal for typing to make such a clatter? The whole computer setup is as ancient as anything else in the hospital with a towering processor and large cube-shaped monitor. Old keyboards make a lot of noise, Bucky knows. And the audiologist has long fingernails.

She looks up at him, eyes full of pleasurable excitement. “How do they sound?”

“How am I supposed to know?” The words are out of Bucky’s mouth before he realizes he’s probably sounding rude. “I mean,” he tries to backtrack. “I think they’re ok?”

The audiologist nods, unperturbed. “Both sides sounding the same?

“Um.” Bucky tries focusing his attention to only hid sense of hearing. It’s a difficult feat, though. Nausea flares again, and his head gives an almighty throb. “I…yeah? I guess?”

“It’s challenging at first.”

Bucky wishes the audiologist had led with that. It gives him a granule of comfort, though his discomfort stays at the same level.

“The volume buttons are there.” She turns her head and points midway down her ear. “Definitely play with that. And if something feels off with the sound or the fit of the ear molds, just swing by. I do walk-ins.”

Bucky forces a smile. He knows he won’t visit again. He doesn’t want to know what the desk sergeant would say if he came into the clinic unscheduled.

“Yeah, ok.” Bucky nods, then regrets it. He becomes all the more aware of the tension in the back of his neck.

“Alright.” The audiologist stands and walks toward the door.

Bucky follows, highly aware of his clogs scraping the aged fuzzy carpet. “Bye,” Bucky says as he steps over the threshold into the hallway.

“Yeah, see you. Come in any time.”

Bucky makes no response. He hears her voice; the words come in clearly and sound clipped with precision, even though he’s already turned his back. It’s definitely an improvement, but he’s anticipating a learning curve.

With this potentially difficult done with, Bucky should feel encouraged. He’s done a thing; it was successful. His counselor and DBT workbook would want him to evaluate, then non-judgementally file it for safekeeping. He did something hard. Therefore, the next hard thing should be easier. He can’t quite feel the vibe, though. It might be the headache spreading its domination over more and more territory in his brain. He imagines double-masted ships bumping into the coastlines of North America and Africa, then spitting out little red-coated troops to run inland and raise the British flag. It could just as easily be a C-130 dropping off a fleet of Army-colored Jeeps in the desert, Bucky and his buddies lined up to sprint into the cargo bay and jump in the drivers’ seats to back them down the incline.

Great, that’s just great. Bucky grits his teeth. The stupid war that cost him his stupid arm and grounded him out of a career. And now he’s meant to live out the rest of his stupid life, full of stupid appointments and therapy, which keep jumping onto the stupid calendar whether he wants them or not. The sound of moving air in his ears is replaced with a cringe-worthy grind. Bucky stops in the middle of the hallway and looks around before realizing it’s his own clenching jaw. He brings his hand up to massage his mastoids. The pressure in his head and face rearranges itself again. Maybe he could just go home and leave a message with PT. He’d apologize for the last minute cancellation and say he got sick. It wouldn’t even be that much of a lie. Doubt raises its voice in dissent, though. Someone would probably recognize his car… For which he’ll have to call roadside before he can go anywhere.

For a moment, Bucky entertains calling Steve. He hates to look weak and dependent. He hates asking for things. Steve’s boyfriend had gone to Iraq, and this idiot with long hair and one arm came back. Bucky wants to slide back into place as the protective one, not the one needing protection. He can’t make up for the deficit with boxes of donuts, at least not all the time. Bothering Steve during work, for which he’s savagely underpaid and actually seems to enjoy… Bucky slogs on toward the therapy office. He’ll be a lone wolf today. Hopefully his position as the lame one far behind the pack won’t get him eaten by a polar bear or something. The PTs and their wall posters of bisected humans made of red muscle would be bad enough. They probably knew very well how to butcher him and roast his meat on a spit.

Bucky searches in his head for a thought that isn’t nauseating. His stomach feels knotted and lifted into his rib cage. Had he eaten this morning? Had coffee? Bucky doesn’t remember, nor can he figure which situation is worse.

The moment he reaches the waiting area in front of PT, the woman behind the desk tells him to go ahead into the exercise room. Bucky nods. Ordinarily he’d feel a little wary of the familiarity; he doesn’t care for situations when someone he barely knows has all his information. Some days he can’t recite his own social security number. On a day like Friday the thirteenth, he hopes he doesn’t have to sign any forms. He isn’t sure he’d be able to spell or even remember his full name.

Those thoughts disperse immediately when he walks through the door to the exercise room. He’s used to it smelling like rubber gloves and past its prime gym equipment. Today, though, the scent of potato chips is overwhelming. Just plain, salted, greasy chips. Bucky tells himself he actually likes regular chips. It’s kitschy flavors and toppings that set him off. He has to try willing away his disgust. It has to be the headache. Bucky likes food, at least better than the reflux of tube feeding formula. Even military hospital food outweighed the NG. Other people eat. He isn’t offended. He just doesn’t feel well. It’s completely his own problem.

Bucky looks around from the threshold of the exercise room, expecting to see his usual therapist. Natasha is unmistakable with her high red ponytail and chiseled musculature. She makes black scrubs look high fashion. Bucky hasn’t dated a girl since 8th grade, but he’s open minded. About friendships and things. He’s a little jealous of Natasha, when he gets down to it. Had he not been injured, he too might’ve maintained his shape and strength and social life. She’s alluring, but also intimidating. It seems as if every time Bucky comes in, he’s forced to remember how different things could’ve been. She’s successful and he isn’t, and that’s the way things will stay. He’s very set on his decision to quit. Then he might improve at talk therapy with the removal of Natasha as a trigger.

There seems to be no Natasha today, though. Two male therapists sit facing each other, one sitting on a desk and the other perched backward on the seat of a stationary bike. The one on the desk has the crinkling, yellow bag of Lay’s.

“Hey, sorry.” The man on the desk chews and swallows quickly before crunching the bag into a ball and shooting it into a trash bin. “My kids have me hooked on snack time.”

“Hm.” Bucky inclines his head and makes a sound of acknowledgment, trying not to react to the angry sound of the chip bag hitting the rim of the bin.

“Yeah, well.” The man on the bike stands up in one fluid motion. “Client’s here. Gotta pretend to go back to work.”

“M, yeah, I guess.” The one on the desk wipes his hands on his knees, chip crumbs and grease prints now adhering to his pants. He hefts a file folder. “Data entry. Super fun.”

The man now off the bike gives Bucky a wave. “I know you belong to Nat,” he says. “But they’ve got her running a training in Baltimore today.” He pauses a second, then asks, “I’m Sam. You mind working with me?”

“Um,” Bucky wavers. “I was, er, going to turn in my papers?” He’s met with silence, so Bucky goes on. “Like, telling you all I don’t want any more appointments?”

“Oh, sure.” Sam nods. “Yeah, we don’t have to reschedule you. I think you’re on the list of recurring clients.” Then he addresses the man at the desk. “Hey, Clint, while you’re entering data, can you put his name on call-to-schedule?” Sam looks to Bucky. “It’s James, right?”

“Yeah,” Bucky confirms. There’s no need to explain how he goes by his middle name, but also not really.

“Sure…” Clint squints at his monitor and scrolls slowly. “Yep, there you are. And done.”

“Thanks.” Bucky shuffles his feet. He wants to turn and run, but adding any kind of bounce to his gait will surely stir up his gut in the worst of ways. Maybe he can inch backward first to initiate a smoother exit.

“Do you want to do anything today?” Sam offers. “Legs or abs or soft tissue?”

“Uh.” Bucky feels called out. He still has every right to leave, but now there’s pressure. He hates not delivering. He hates giving up a challenge, knowing it contributes to his air of disability. Statistically, a lot of vets get caught up in PTSD and alcohol and drugs and wind up hibernating until they’re arrested or dead. Shirking commitments is a primary sign, and with Bucky’s awareness of his want to ingest substances and get horizontal… He has to remind himself that even trained therapists can’t read his thoughts. “I don’t know…” Maybe he should offer an excuse? “I really have a headache and I have to call to get my car towed…” he trails off, feeling much more lame than he had when he’d started.

“You’ve done soft tissue work with Natasha, right?” Sam points to the door of one of the small private rooms coming off the main. Bucky knows there are massage tables and rolling stools inside. He has done soft tissue work with Natasha, and it has alleviated his back and neck aches before. It’s overly personal, though, and awkward. Bucky’s never sure if he’s supposed to keep his eyes open or closed.

Honesty takes control, and Bucky answers with “Yeah, I have.”

“Might bring down the headache. I’m no magician, but I do know pressure points.” Sam grins at him. “I went through all this when I came back, too. PT saved my basketball game.”

Bucky knows he’s being kind, but he can’t help thinking of his unbalanced body trying to dribble and shoot lay-ups. He’d look worse than the last kid in gym class.

“Or you can just lie down for a while.” Sam laughs. “I don’t disclose what happens in there. HIPPA, and all that.”

And there, without even trying, they’ve formed such a close friendship that now they’re in the territory of dirty jokes. It’s stranger intrusion, one thousand percent, and even though it makes the hair on the back of Bucky’s neck stand up, he no longer has the choice to leave. Bucky wonders if this guy’s a master of manipulation, whether he knows he’s contorting the inner threads of Bucky’s brain and removing all traces of his own volition.

“Um, I guess.” Bucky’s voice is so loud in his own ears that it makes his head throb. Once the pain has reverberated to his stomach and back, he continues, “I guess we can try.”

“Cool.” Sam reaches for a clipboard and pen, but stops before picking them up. “No notes today, right? It’s your sunset session.”

“Right.” Maybe lying down would do Bucky some good. The sickness that’s been building in him is edging toward physical sensation. It’s no longer confined to his mentality, and any hope of thinking it away is far gone. Bucky walks toward the private room. He’d better not look as terrible as he feels. He doesn’t think he can take any comments of sympathy.

“Face up, ok?” Sam closes the door behind them and plants on a stool.

Bucky obliges and sits on the edge of the massage table. One of his shoes falls off as he’s lifting up his legs. He jumps at the sound of the clunk and quickly apologizes. “Oh, sorry.”

“It’s cool. Probably more comfortable to take them off.” The wheels on the bottom of the stool squeak slightly. Bucky both hears and feels Sam coming closer. His spine tingles and an ache starts up between his shoulder blades. There’s nothing like anxiety throwing spears at his body. Wholistic approach to medicine aside, Bucky swears his brain and body are egging each other on.

Once Bucky’s flat on his back, he combs his fingers through his bangs to keep the hair from sticking to clammy sweat. Sam will probably be grossed out before even touching him. He’s infinitesimally glad to see the therapist putting on exam gloves.

“Alright.” The stool squeaks again, and Bucky feels Sam slide his fingers beneath the arch of his neck. “We’ll start right here at the top of the spine.”

Two thumbs plant on either side, just below Bucky’s occipital lobe. The pressure brings with it a feeling of pain that’s just short of pleasure. If he didn’t have vertigo, Bucky might’ve thanked Sam for spotting a problematic area on his first go.

“Ok. And here…” Sam’s fingers rest lightly on the jaw muscles stretching under his chin and down his neck. He adds force to the pressure points behind Bucky’s head. His touch is light, and his fingertips stay still and professional. Natasha’s work on his tense muscles had been just fine. Maybe Sam had more advanced training? Or was he pushing a fallacious invitation of intimacy that comes when people mistake shared backgrounds for real empathy. The first and last time Bucky had tried attending a support group, someone who’d last fought in Vietnam had tried to give him a hug.

Sam slides his touch outward toward Bucky’s ears, and a horrific scraping noise resounds in the hearing aids, which seem to have barely escaped disturbance. “Turn your head to the side.”

Sam hasn’t stated a direction, so Bucky falters, and the weight of his head wavers to the right before he commits to turning left. Vertigo swells over all other sensation, and Bucky holds his eyes wide open, looking for a substitute horizon. There are subtle lines between the painted white painted cinder blocks of the wall. Bucky tries to choose one to lock his vision upon. He daren’t blink. The overhead light sears into his peripheral vision, though, and dark and light spots start to gather on both sides.

“Alright.” Sam puts his palm against Bucky’s jawline and directs his fingers to the tight muscle running lengthwise from his ear to his shoulder. “You comfortable?”

“Um.” Bucky can only stutter before he has to gulp down something horrible and sour. His thoughts run frantically. He hadn’t consumed the spoiled milk this morning; he remembers that for sure. It was probably treating his tiny apartment to dank odor of curdling dairy. The first day of his deployment, Bucky had learned not to leave a cup of yogurt outside in the sun. He’d opened it when he sat down at the outdoor table, then obviously misjudged how long it would take him to finish the rest of his meal. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes before it had developed a thick skin and gave off a smell of sweet rot.

“James?” Sam lifts his hand. The imprints of where his fingers had been develop a sensation of negative pressure. Bucky can’t remember which line he’d chosen on the wall. He blinks, and he’s disoriented even more. Bucky’s stomach races upward ahead of his heartbeat and turns liquid somewhere inside his esophagus.

“You ok?”

“I—actually—uh—“ Bucky’s entire body trembles, and it seems gravity has loosened its hold on him. He can barely feel the floor under his stocking feet when he pushes himself up on his arm and turns. “I’m going to throw up.”

“Sure, man.” Sam pulls his stool backward with the shove of one sneaker, then turns back to Bucky and proffers a small trash bin. “Here.”

Bucky holds down a retch long enough to get the bottom of the bin between his knees. The next heave is huge and convulsive. Bucky instinctively breathes in, then chokes when the air hits liquid resistance in his mouth and nose. He coughs hard to clear his airway. His vision swims and brings on another wave of sickness. Bucky doesn’t realize he’s leaning forward until his sternum aches from pressing against the bin’s hard metal rim.

It’s all Sam’s work keeping him stable, Bucky realizes. His mind would fall into weakness and stupidity if his body wasn’t already robbing every bit of his attention. It’s just his luck, just his Friday the thirteenth, pushing him into such a compromising position. What had he been doing, thinking about spoiled milk? Bucky’s mental image quickly replaces the milk with a rumpled chip bag. He’s never eating a potato again, whether it’s a chip or a fry or a baked potato with sour cream and chives…

“Ugh.” Bucky hacks again, feeling ropes of mucous and saliva sticking to his lip. He squeezes his eyes shut, and unintended tears roll down his face. They get caught in the scruff of his beard before passing his cheeks. Bucky wonders how soiled his mustache will be. And the hair on his chin. But those are small potatoes compared to his rushing thoughts of food. Fuck potatoes. Fuck cereal. Fuck donuts and starches and sugar.

“How’re you feeling?” Sam’s voice is uncomfortably close. Bucky assumes Sam’s leaning forward too, trying to bump their heads together or something. When he peels his eyes open, though, Sam’s still at a reasonable distance. His hands and knees hold the bin while his back remains straight and tall.

“I’m—fuck.” Bile runs down his tongue, and Bucky’s unsure whether he wants to spit or swallow. He tries the swallow, but his epiglottis refuses to close, and he winds up letting more liquid sick flow into the bin. “Sorry,” Bucky gasps. He wants to rake his hair back again, but he’s afraid he’ll fall over if he doesn’t keep his hand grounded on the massage table beside his hip.

“Hey, no big.” Bucky isn’t sure how Sam’s able to maintain such composure. Maybe he has kids? A loved one with cancer? Steve takes good care of Bucky when he’s exceptionally down, but there’s always a nervous jumpiness weighing in on the situation. It’s just Steve, Bucky thinks, who has a nervous jumpiness about everything. He stresses over other people’s stress, constantly puttering and hovering. It’s probably why he still looks like a skinny teenager; he burns so many calories with his perpetual motion.

“It’s ok,” Sam says. “Humans are messy sometimes.” He must’ve absorbed the entire DBT book, Bucky decides. Wise and observant and unemotional. He could be one of those kids unnaturally excited for Anatomy and Physiology Lab. Blood and guts might turn him on. He could be a CSI on the side. Or maybe a serial killer.

“I’m—god, I’m sorry,” Bucky apologizes again. He lifts his head an inch and catches a glimpse of Sam’s face, trying to reset his flighty sense of judgement. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Bucky says inside his head. Calm. Observe. Bucky shakes his head a little from side to side, but the world shifts on him again, and he wraps his arm around his abdomen. It does nothing to help steady him; his organs are still shoved up in his chest.

Bucky dry heaves. A rancid tasting belch pops in the back of his throat, but it brings nothing up with it. Good, maybe? He’s done? Bucky’s sure he’s empty now, at least.

“No, you’re good.” Sam pauses a moment. “I mean, I can’t imagine you feel good, but don’t rush. Try not to stress. It’ll make you tense up. Then you’ll have to come back to visit PT.”

Bucky’s never stepping foot in this office again. Not into the VA at all, if he can help it. He can push his meetings with his counselor back to Telehealth. He’ll figure out his hearing aids by himself. There has to be a website or something.

Now that he’s thinking about them, Bucky recognizes the swirling water sound coming in. It’s amplified enough to shake his eardrums. Bucky presses the balls of his feet into the floor and lets his arm free to pull the aids out of his ears. They make a high-pitched squeal as he holds them together in his palm, but Bucky depresses the off button on one, then the other. Bucky enjoys the blessed silence, but then Sam says something again, and Bucky’s right back with his original deficit.

“Those new?” Sam nods toward the aids in Bucky’s hand.

“These?” Bucky checks. “Yeah. This morning, actually.” He swallows a couple of times, hoping to kick the chafing and hoarseness out of his throat.

“Ah.” Sam gives a half smile. “I wouldn’t advise ophthalmology right after breakfast, either. Or load up on Zofran. You got a script for that?”

“One of the boxes on the bathroom counter, I think.” Bucky thinks he has a pack of the foil-coated pills. Or was that Xanax? No, Xanax comes in a regular prescription bottle. Either way, Bucky should probably carry both on his person at all times. He’s turning into a stereotypical civilian. Though jeans and shirts are severely lacking in pockets when compared to Army duds.

“If I had any, I’d give you a hit.” Sam’s smile turns mysterious. “Don’t tell anyone I told you that. No secret chat with someone at the pharmacy counter.”

“Naw, I’m good.” Bucky waits a tick, then says, “You’re not going to tell on me for this, are you?” He glances into the bin, then lifts his gaze quickly. “I don’t want to be called in for a flu test or anything.”

“No worries.” Sam looks toward the bin as well. “Done with this?”

“Yeah,” Bucky confirms. “Definitely done.”

“How’s the headache?” Sam asks before setting the bin on the floor out of Bucky’s line of sight.

Bucky wonders if Sam’s reading his mind again. But Bucky had fed him that intel, he remembers. And he’d spilled the beans about his car. He really couldn’t be caught any worse. “Eh.” Bucky shrugs. “It’s a pretty constant thing. On and off, I mean.” Everyone who’s read his chart notes knows everything about his TBI and its physical symptoms it causes. Most of the world could probably guess, too. The scar along his hairline is as good as poof. The crabby looking guy with a battle mark— his look is enough to turn people away.

Sam remains quietly engaged. He really could be a sociopath. No, Sam’s probably the normal person. Bucky might be the sociopath. He hasn’t really come to terms with the man who came home from the desert, despite Bucky’s inability to retain the identity he had before shipping out.

Normal people ask questions back when chatting with others, Bucky remembers. He should do that. “You, uh, you said you’d served?” Bucky thinks he remembers that too.

“Yeah. Air Force. Two tours,” Sam says with little emotion. “I thought being a PJ was all about jumping out of airplanes.” He averts his eyes momentarily before looking Bucky in the face again. “But it’s way more putting in IVs in the back of an H-60. Talk about turbulence. Had to grow an iron stomach for that.”

So that’s where he gets it. He got to load the wounded and dying into the bright yellow cage lift. Bucky hadn’t been conscious through his own medevac, so he has no triggers regarding bungee cords and helicopters, thank god. He wonders how Sam had managed to make it back stateside, but Bucky knows he isn’t allowed to ask. Bucky tries looking at things from Sam’s end, dredging through red blood and orange sand, looking for skin sticking out of singed uniforms. He probably hates Army green now. And maybe bright yellow bags of chips.

Bucky’s pondering has allowed the conversation to trail off again. Another fail on his part.

Sam seems not to mind, though, and as soon as Bucky’s mentally checked in again, he asks, “You ever been in a helicopter? In the seat, I mean?”

“Uh…” Bucky struggles to recall. “I think we did an aerial tour of the map once before I got assigned to a camp.” The memory comes back as he verbalises it. “I had the jump seat, and they didn’t give me any headphones. I think I looked at a bunch of piles of sand.”

“I wish I’d had a pleasure tour,” Sam replies. “I usually didn’t know where we were going until we were ready to repel. I guess it didn’t matter so much. Helped keep us focused, maybe? I honestly couldn’t point to all the places I’ve been if you gave me a map. I was just along for the ride, you know?”

“Every ride in a tank is just as long and bumpy,” Bucky tells him. “And hoping I didn’t draw the short straw and have to sit backwards.”

“Oh, yeah. Flight school, it’s a big thing.” Sam laughs. “Tank school, though? Drivers’ ed?”

“I never went.” Bucky puts up his hand to mark his innocence. “I can only speak for myself, though.”

“I feel you.” Sam takes the pause to switch subjects. “You said your car wasn’t working, right? Do you need a ride?”

“Oh, well.” Bucky bites his lip. “I locked the keys inside,” he admits. “It’s Friday the thirteenth. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Friday the thirteenth,” Sam repeats. “I actually had no idea. You’ve had a day, though, man. And it’s only…” He glances at his watch. “9:37 in the morning.”

“I better call the insurance. Can I come back in here if it’s raining?”

“Sure. Or we can walk together across the parking lot. I have an umbrella. And leather seats.” Sam rises to his feet.

“I should just bite it.” Bucky picks up his hearing aids and stands as well. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and slips the aids inside. “I mean, I should call someone. My boyfriend has a car…” As soon as he says it, Bucky knows he’s slipped. He’s stuck in non action again. It won’t be a big deal unless he makes it a big deal, and then there will be full-on tension.

“Can he come get you?” Sam asks, nonplussed.

“He works for a travel blog, actually,” Bucky says, hoping he isn’t disgracing Steve by talking about him and his work. “They’re in this old newspaper office. It’s kind of a cool place.”

“Sounds neat. Old places are nice. Unless they’re here,” Sam says with a laugh. “I’ll probably be old and grey before they give this place a facelift.”

“Oh, I agree.” Bucky laughs too, then averts his attention back to his phone.

“You still have more than twenty minutes of appointment time,” Sam says. “And I have a break before I’ll be needed here again. You sure you couldn’t use a lift? I don’t want you getting tripped up over a sidewalk crack and fall into a mirror or anything. Step in front of a black cat, probably get all hissed and scratched at.”

“I’ve been thinking of getting a cat,”Bucky says, somewhat seriously. Then, “It really won’t be a bother? I’d hate to give you and your car any of my bad luck.”

“Seriously,” Sam assures. “I’ve got to go do a weather check. Take out the trash, all that stuff.” He’s already bending to remove the trash bag from the bin. As he speaks.

“Oh, I can—“ Bucky starts.

“No, I’m good.” Sam twists the top of the bag and ties it off. The bag is a frosted clear color, so its contents are not immediately apparent. It has a liquid sag visually, though. Bucky feels an edge of sick guilt, so he engages in putting his phone into his pocket. It bunches up on top of his hearing aids, but he’s determined not to be caught picking at his ass and losing his last shred of dignity.

Bucky and Sam exit the private PT room side by side. “Here, we’ll go out the back door,” Sam says, pointing.

“You bringing back Starbucks?” Clint, still at his computer, raises his eyebrows.

“No,” Sam says blankly.

“Where you going, then?”

“Going to take out the trash and take this brother for a drive.” Everything Sam says is plain and glib, and his tone could’nt be mistaken for anything but the honest truth.

“Can you take my trash out?” Clint points to the bin behind the desk, which is overflowing with wadded balls of paper.

“No,” Sam tells him again.

“Come on.”

“I’m not catching the blame for putting sensitive material in the dumpster.”

“It’s not sensitive. It’s trash,” Clint tries to explain.

“I don’t make the rules.” Sam waves him off. “Check your calendar, though, I think you’re scheduled to have a bad day.”

“What?” Clint shoves a pile of folders to the side so he can scrutinize the desk blotter. He squints and looks closer, and the top folder slides onto the floor, absenting itself of all the paper within. “Fuck. Really?” Clint gives the mess a dirty look. “You really should pick me up a Starbucks.”

“It’s probably raining and the drive through’s closed.” Bucky laughs as Sam blatantly bull shits.

“Huh?” Clint seems to know he’s been insulted, but can’t see exactly where. “You haven’t done a weather check.”

“I’ll text you,” Sam offers. He turns the knob of the exit door and ushers Bucky to follow. “There’s an emoji for that, right? Happy cat for sun and crying cat for rain?”

“Yeah, text me.” Clint gives Sam a final unsure glance before returning to his calendar.”

“Roger,” Sam says as he steps out the door. As soon as Bucky is out as well, he says, “The dumpster’s just behind this wall, and my car is there.” He points to a shiny red BMW. A fine layer of miniature raindrops coat the hood and windshield. The air itself feels cold, yet muggy. Bucky feels slightly choked, and he’s glad he’s already emptied his stomach. With the weather and the remaining headache, it’d just be his luck to ruin some new friend’s upholstery.

Sam clicks the remote to unlock his car. Bucky doesn’t hear the beep, but the solid click of the two front doors alerts do the job to alert him that it’s time to open the passenger door. There are indeed leather seats. And it still smells like new car.

“One second.” Sam picks up his pace and disappears behind the edge of a grey and weather stained wall. There’s a moment of silence, but them Bucky hears Sam’s voice again, shouting, “Oh, shit, man, you’ve got to come see this.”

Bucky shuts the car door, wondering if he should be concerned. He follows Sam’s route around the wall, then laughs at what he sees. Two green dumpsters sit side by side, accumulated rain dripping down to the pavement. Sam must’ve already thrown the trash, and he’s pointing at an old wooden ladder leaned against the face of the far dumpster. Its bottom step is busted, missing a good amount of wood between the jagged ends.

“I’m not touching that,” Sam cackles.

“I can see why they left it,” Bucky offers, pushing down his own mirth. “You’d have to hold it over your head to toss it.”

“Yeah, I’ll be leaving that right there.” Sam walks toward Bucky, and they return to his parking space. “I’ll make Clint take his trash out later. I wonder, is there a ladder emoji?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky opens the front passenger door again. “But which cat are you going to use for cloudy as fuck?”

“I don’t know that either.” Sam slams his door and puts his key into the ignition. “Maybe somewhere there’s a black cat? Past the smiley faces and in the animal section?”

“That makes good sense.” Bucky takes his phone from his pocket again. He recalls his aids being in the pocket as well, and he takes the opportunity to get ahold of them before he winds up throwing them into the washing machine. The car is quiet, so Bucky cautiously turns them on and snugs the earmolds into his ears.

“Testing the waters again?” Sam asks, glancing Bucky’s way.

“Yeah.” Bucky ruminates on the sound of his own voice for a second. “No harsh lights. And your engine runs really quiet.”

“I really hope they run better for you.” Sam comes to a smooth stop and turns out of the parking lot.

“Yeah, I hear a difference already. Bucky catches his phone as it’s about to slide off his knee. “I would look up an emoji for you,” he offers, “But I don’t want to risk any consequences.”

“I trust your judgement.” Sam laughs and slowly brings the car up to speed.

“I—“ Bucky goes to say something else, but his breath catches in his throat. There’s something in the road several feet in front of them. It looks to be moving across the lane. “There’s a—“ Bucky hopes it’s not a cat.

“It’s a plastic bag,” Sam assures him. The object moves again and turns in a 180 as it enters the next lane. The huge, red Target logo stands out boldly on the other side.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes, relieved. “Those damn sneaky plastic bags…”

They stop at a light, and Sam says, “Just tell me where to turn.”

Bucky realizes he hasn’t given him a hit of a direction. He supposes he’d thought Sam already knew, with the ease of their bond and all.

“It’s up a little ways. On Sandersville.” Bucky pronounces the street name a little awkwardly. He finds it displeasing, since it doesn’t lead to a village or a sand pit.

“Oh, yeah, I know what’s around there. I’ve had a few buddies who’ve lived in the buildings.” Sam nods. “I’ll get you home nice and safe. And, here—“ Sam pops the center console and pulls out a business card. “It’s probably too formal, but it’s got my number. The work line and my cell.” He points out the bottom line as he hands the card to Bucky.

“Thanks,” Bucky replies. “I’ll text you when I’m all settled? Then you’ll have my number, too.”

“Yeah, exactly.” Sam offers him a smile. “Call me if you get on the wrong side of any more plastic bags.”

“Steve works till six, so I guess I do have a lot of bad day left.” Bucky recalls his former plan to get toasted and lie on the couch. It still appeals, but maybe he’ll do something a little productive first. He’ll download a user guide for his hearing aids. Maybe see what the cable channels play Jack Hanna during the daytime. And he’ll call for his car, when he’s up for it.

“You take it easy, now.” Sam looks at him again. “It’s good to get to know you, James.”

“I, um. I go by Bucky,” Bucky says, embarrassed. It’s a perfectly natural thing to tell a new friend, he reminds himself. Sam hasn’t had a reason to call him by his name yet, anyway. “It’s short for my middle name,” he says, hoping it’s a good enough explanation.

“Well, good to know you then, Bucky,” Sam replies without missing a beat. “Let me know when you’re all good. What do you think, the grinning cat with its eyes closed? To sound the all-clear?”

“Perfect.” It may be the worst possible day, but now that Bucky’s sealed the deal with a new friend and a secret handshake. “I’ll have to explain the cat thing to Steve, though. I don’t want him getting jealous or anything. I don’t think he’s a great fan of cats.”

“No worries,” Sam says. “Maybe you can introduce us later. Something casual, you know. Like at Starbucks. I do like coffee, and we don’t have to talk about cats.”

“We like our coffee, too,” Bucky laughs. “It would be fun to meet up later. On a nicer, luckier day.”

“Sure.” Sam reaches the light for Sandersville. “That is such an odd name for a street, especially for one all full of vets’ houses. Did they call it Sand Ville when you were over there?”

“Yup,” Bucky says. “My thoughts exactly.”

Sam brings the car to a halt when they reach the edge of the first building. “This you?” He asks.

“Yeah, right there.” Bucky points to his front door. He undoes his seatbelt and tells Sam, “Bye.”

“Yeah, text me.” Sam waves as Bucky steps out onto the curb. “I still have my med kit and my EMT license, if you need anything.”

“Thanks.”

“Back at you, man.” Sam waves again and does a U-turn in the street and heads off it the other direction.

It’s still cold and wet, but the rain seems to have stopped, at least long enough for Bucky to get back to his apartment. He stops dead at his front stoop, though. His keys are back in the car. At the VA.

“God fucking dammit.” He’ll call Steve. The upturn of the day has collapsed in on itself. He listens to the low sound of the wind for a moment. Everything sounds more balanced now. The hospital must just produce its own woeful environment. Bucky tries to reign his breath and focus on the principles of his DBT. He feels the weight of his phone in his hand. It’s hard and smooth, until he passes his thumb over the edge of the business card, which is a slightly different quality of hard and smooth. Bucky decides he can buy himself a few more minutes to think while he sends a text. He awakens his phone and dials Sam’s cell number into the top of a new message.

Hi, it’s Bucky, he types. No emojis. He presses send.

Barely a second later, the same number sends him a reply. Hi Bucky. Another second, and there’s a third message.

Are you locked out? Occurred to me when I got back to the corner.

Bucky feels his face flush with embarrassment. He backspaces through a few quivers typos before he manages to send back his undignified yes.

Bucky still has his eyes on his screen as it populates with another text.

Turning around.

Thank you.

Bucky’s day has reached uncertainty yet again. He feels like he has better odds now, though. If nothing else, he’ll live it out with his friend.

8 notes · View notes

liliallowed · 7 months

Text

tasting colors

(short symbiot au fanfic)

-flirting

-weirdass alien biology

-magic food

-benifits of sharing a body

-fluff

-slice of life ig???

premise: players are symbiots from space! vessels are hosts! sym killed the other one behind the loop and ate it to gain the reset, but then threw it away latching onto dust. sym also took him to the surface because it already had eaten a half digested human soul. after passing the barrier sym fully shattered the soul.

some time has past and these two have become very close! kinda skipped all the slow burn and angst lol. sym doesn't really have much history with dust to repent or seek forgiveness.

sym is just best boy/girl/thing. there for suppert.

"wake up sleepy head." it gently nudged his skull with it's head.

"mmmhm... five more minutes..."

he muttered furrowing his bone brows.

"want me to make breakfast?" it smiled enthusiastically.

"no humans ... taste gross" he frowned at last nights memory.

"oh stars no!" it gasped, slightly offended.

"you know I'm a cannibal with high standards. I wouldn't dare eat HUMANS or monsters~ not without your consent. wouldn't wanna upset your soul stomach. besides I didn't hunt today. you good with pancakes?" it grinned as sans could faintly feel himself being lifted from bed.

he instinctively pulled the blanket on himself only for it to turn into soft mushy matter.

he would have been taken aback but instead he insistently continued to fake his snoring stubbornly.

some time passed and he drifted back to sleep... how long had he been out?

he opened his eyes after the scent of sweet food brushed against his nasal cavity.

he was sitting in the kitchen with a neatly stack of fresh pancakes Infront of him... and ... ketchup instead of syrup.

"aw you made my favorite" he grinned lazily pouring the ketchup on the pancake.

sym let out an audible sigh shaking it's head. "rest in peace you sweet treat."

"hey, rude. my body, my food." he picked up another piece and took a bite of it.

"your taste buds are broken. your pallet is horrible." it retorted.

"how would you know? is it cuz you've borrowed my tongue?"

he smirked licking the fork.

it squeaked in surprise staring at him in silence, a red glow appearing on it's heart shaped eyes.

"... my tongue is better at detecting any physical flavor. magic food CAN'T taste THAT good."

it huffed in annoyance, trying to direct the conversation towards a more... scientific approved topic.

"should we maybe swap our taste buds?"

he chuckled..

"oh FUCK OFF."

its heart shaped eyes vanished as it hid it's face inside itself glowing bright red underneath the black mass.

he grinned playfully poking it with gentil taps as he muched on the food.

"aren't you curious? I know I am."

he teased, making it sound like he was eating the best thing known to man.

it perked it's face out, blowing a childish raspberry.

"yes but I'm not going to!"

it frowned while glancing at the corner of his mouth.

it really wondered if magic food would taste any different with using HIS mouth-

"want some?"

he smiled smugly.

it nodded timidly, shaking it's head from those thoughts.

he let it eat some of the sliced off parts where it wasn't DEFILED by ketchup stains.

it's eyes lit up like a small pup as it enthusiastically swallowed it.

"see? it's better without KETCHUP."

it beamed.

"nah." he replied lazily finishing his last bite but taking his SWEET time swallowing.

it could not resist anymore is HAD to know to satisfy it's curiosity.

a small tap to his soul and it felt... buzzy?

it tasted like tomato sauce but sweeter. a bit like the taste of the color green... no, redorange... wait colors weren't a taste? it could feel small tidbits of energetic particles around being absorbed into a nice blend of sweet and slightly sour fruity mix. felt actually refreshing. ice cold yet warm... electric yet awfully... crunchy groundyyyy. sweet mud after rain.

such a vague fascinating aftertaste...

"you finished the entire bottle. guess you like my pallet after all" he grinned.

it opened it's eyes to find it's head stuck in the ketchup bottle, chugging it like plain water.

"... "

it refused to pull it's head out, filled with embarrassment. this was it's life now. it was the hat of shame.

he snorted a small laugh pulling the tip off it's head.

"you like magic food huh?"

his smug grin sharpened.

sym let out a small annoyed huff.

"of COURSE I'd like anything your soul would like when I'm linked to it. that's not a fair argument."

it paused.

"but... yeah. it was... good."

"better than greasy human food even?"

he raised a bone brow.

"hrgnnnn" it let out a weird growling sound of refusal to affirm the question.

he rolled his eyes at it and sighed.

"you eat people, rocks, metal, and even your own kind but you're this picky? "

it looked back at him with a smirk.

"it's your body not mine. I wanna take care of it! of us! you rarely eat... and you're-"

he looked at it suspiciously crossing his arms, his playful grin widening even further.

"aw, getting sift in me now?"

"I mean ME! I want ME to be healthy so I'm making sure not to eat anything your body can't absorb. monsters have weak physical forms."

it glanced away the same red blush appearing on it's face.

"sounds awfully cheesy don't it? "

he wore the iconic shit eating grin as he held a flat piece of cheese on his hand.

"uuugghhhhh..."

sym face planted on his arm softly.

he patted it as he sat up stretching his arms.

"so what's the plan for today. any new targets?"

sym, now resting on his shoulder shook it's head.

"no. I don't sense any other anomalies. not yet that is. still! might want to keep an eye on the guy in the basement I think he lost his determination and the reset got passed to another random human."

"oh for fucks sake."

he grunted pinching his nasal ridge.

"it's okay. we'll find it!" it chirped as it disappeared from his side and proceeded to cover sans's eye.

"wanna go look for them?"

its red heart shaped eye flashed red in place of sans's right eyelight.

he chuckled as he infused magic into his socket. the blackness spread across his face charged with his own will.

a heart on his face slpit in two then both sides in three.

six mismatched eyes glistening with excitement.

"let's make this quick. it's risky in broad daylight." they muttered, disappearing in a flash.

#symbiot au #fanfic #lili writes

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shamanofthewilds · 1 year

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So part of the orc heritage armor was revealed today along side the human. There was a blue post stating there would be more variations. Right off the bat, I went into it with an open mind after hearing some displeased feed back.

My personal opinion is that this so far doesn’t look that bad. I also wasn’t as wowed as I’d hoped. I think the chest piece, shoulder and shorts are really nice. I just hope that necklace means we get better jewelry customization and its not tied to the chest.

I like the fur and Im glad it’s showing skin. I think its suppose to be an inspirational take on the Doomplate, but not too much where it looks like Thrall. It does read a tad Iron Horde unfortunately. The the dark metal color pallet against the black look seems very intimidating. The red spike also seems very Bleeding Hollow.

I’m curious to know what part of ‘Heritage’ this is meant to represent. Is it representing their state as a people now? The fact there is less of a nomadic clan structure and now a entire orcish people with clans intermixed? If we get homage to WCIII style looks, then I can only hope that one of the alternate looks is very WCIII Shaman in style. That would have been a better look to base it after. But I can assume this is heritage in the terms of who they are now culturally mixed in with wardrobe to what made them when they all first became the Horde.

It makes sense, but I think a lot of orc fans feeling over saturated in the metal and war aesthetic when that isn’t all they are. They are missing the chance for the orcs to pick up the pieces of what was taken from them and reeducate the orcs on true heritage, rather than one born from deception. Though, I suppose that could be seen as poetic that they made themselves into a thriving people regardless.

Still, more detailed natural orc looks with fur, leather and bone is more exciting than cold metal. Even armor made to look more natural would be cool.

#writings and such #orc heritage armor

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ginga-snappd-offical · 3 months

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I only found out about Cringetober AFTER October was over. What's more cringey than doing it three months later and also using my own list? Credits of the OG trend to @sleeprann on Deviantart, and Awestin Martinez.

Day 1: Heterochromia

I kept the heterochromia itself pretty basic and went all in on the 2000's aesthetic that was hyper cringey and self aware but also unapologetic and fun.

Day 2: Self Insert

I'll explain this one a little bit: I had exactly one self insert OC when I was a kid and it was for a short lived nuzelock comic. She would find the person I've become so cringey.

Day 3: Gary Stu

This started as a joke that no one knows what a Gary Stu is. When looking up examples, fucking SPENCER FROM ICARLY WAS LISTED. WHAT MALE POWER FANTASY DOES SPENCER REPRESENT??? SETTING RANDOM OBJECTS ON FIRE AND ONLY HAVING TEENAGE FRIENDS WTF? Anyways here's the Iconic Gary Stu Kirito from SAO doing that one spencer shay meme. Gary Stu and Mary Sue aren't valid terms, I'll get into this another time.

Day 4: Glomping

Thank god these days are behind us. Never hug a stranger at mach speed ever again.

Day 5: Furry OC

I do draw furries sometimes! I just don't do it often because I have a strict NSFW policy while living with others as a form of respect for our shared spaces, and every time I've accepted a furry commission or request I've been tricked into doing something fetishized or NSFW. Which has made me more than disappointed and frustrated. I like furry designs, I love playing with textiles and color pallets. So it's not off the table, I just need the NSFW rule to be taken seriously in the future. the last time was an obvious kink and it was a minor who requested it, off topic, but SUPER DON'T PUT ME IN THAT POSITION. You're way too young to be interacting with people in that way and I'm never going to enable that ever. I will find your mom and let her know. Anyways,

Day 6: Big Ass Sword

Big sword. Little baby.

Day 7: Crackship.

Does anyone here who likes the Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus series remember Jason X Brick? Or are you too young to know what I'm talking about? Or maybe I hallucinated that micro chasm of the internet. Anyways,

Day 8: Deviantart Base.

I didn't know how to interpret this one, so I did both things I figured it'd be. I found a base on DA and drew over it (base credit linked here,) And drew a base for people to use, I just did a similar style to the base I found. The OG artist does a mix of sfw and nsfw but the filter is turned on by default so you shouldn't see anything you aren't prepared to just opening the link passively.

Day 9: Nicktoons

Every actually good cartoon seemed to get banished to Nicktoonz, and it made me incredibly sad when it happened, but happy that I could expect something good to be playing during the block that something else I didn't like was going on the main channel. I decided to feature the ones that were my faves growing up, My Life as a Teenage Robot, El Tigre, and Danny Phantom (Butch Hartman DO NOT INTERACT)

Those are all the prompts that I've done so far! I'm keeping the styles simple and quick so I don't stress too much with other things on my plate. Here's the next items on the list:

10- Musical Animatics

11- Flower Crowns

12- Childhood OCs

13- Pokemon Gijinkas

14- Ponysona

15- Song Lyrics

16- Self-Shipping

17- Angel/Demon OC

18- Tumblr Sexy Man

19- Object Head

20- Lisa Frankification

21- Candy Gore

22- Impractical Outfits

23- Vine Animatics

24- MS Paint

25- Nyan Cat

26- Cyberpunk

27- Lolita Fashion

28- Rainbow/Black OC

29- Vocaloids

30- Warrior Cats

31- Cookie Run Gijinkas

#cringetober #cringetober day 1 #cringetober day 2 #cringetober day 3 #cringetober day 4 #cringetober day 5 #cringetober day 6 #cringetober day 7 #cringetober day 8 #cringetober day 9 #cringetober 2024 #It's january but idgaf

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hugthepanda12 · 2 years

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I was rewatching Lilith vs Eda fight in season 1 when a sudden realisation occured to me.

Given that the Clawthorne descendant, aka Evelyn and Caleb Wittebane are great great great parents of Lilith and Eda, it is safe to assume how certain characteristics were inherited by our Clawthorne sisters.

For example, it is my personal headcanon that both Eda’s and Hunter’s ‘byyyyyyye!’ came from Caleb. Moreover, when I saw how Evelyn was portrayed in ep1 of season3 I’m almost certain Eda is the perfect mix of Evelyn and Caleb. To be honest, if you look at Eda with grey hair and Caleb there is a certain resemblance. Of course, Evelyn’s personality traits prevail but Caleb and Eda share the same strong love to anything they love dear.

Fandom has already mentioned how strong these Lilith-Eda and Belos-Caleb parallels are.

‘ TWO WITCHES TORN APART NOW ALONE TWO HEARTS OF STONE A CURSE OF FEATHERS AND MUD A BETRAYAL OF BLOOD ‘

From this secret message from season one we deciphered that feathers represent Eda’s curse, while mud is a nice symbol of Belos’ powers.

Philip killed Caleb and Lilith cursed Eda - the betrayal of blood occured.

I know it would be cruel to compare Lilith to Belos. Hovewer, let’s do it anyway. And I’m not talking about their ill deads towards their siblings. It’s about the blue color symbolism.

You see, Lilith has blue-colored spells contrary to Eda whose magic is more gold (everytime Hunter teleports there are golden hues as well)

I thought it that pallete choice was made to make a contrast between the sisters and establish that they are in conflict. However, when the plot goes further we learn why Lilith cursed Eda and it was awesome to see her redemption! We stan Lilith btw.

But have you ever noticed Lilith and Philip have similar eye colors?

Although, Lilith’s eyes are greenish blue. I think it’s a nice touch because Gwendolyn has green eyes.

On a sidenote, Philip with a beard and Dell Clawthorne are so alike, it is possible that Dell and Philip are related. (seriously in eda’s flashback featuring her dad I was 90% sure i see a ginger haired Philip)

Let’s talk about Belos’ powers now. We’ve seen him using a staff numerous times and the staff emanated with a red light. It seems artificial magic relies either on red or golden light.

But the season 2 finale and ‘Thanks to them’ provided us with more blue imagery.

Belos’ monster form is comprised of many BLUE EYES. Hunter’s eyes, once Belos posesses him, become BLUE.

When Vee tried to ‘drain’ Belos, a blue light has escaped from him.

If it’s true that one’s magic reflects one’s very essense - soul... we could say Belos and Lilith share the same aura.

And if Yellow/gold is associated with either Evelyn or Caleb it means Eda inherited more traits from them. The same goes with Lilith. It seems she has inherited more of Philip’s genes.

The only difference is, Lilith has learned from her mistake, while Philip is blinded by his goal to exterminate all the witches. Lilith is a queen, while Philip is a jerk.

So, yeah. My intention was to only point that appearance/ magic detail. Thank god Lilith hasn’t taken after Belos his maniacal/jealousy tendencies. It seems the only thing that makes them alike is the fact they’re both book nerds and they give off that British vibe

#my rambles #it got me thinking ok #the owl house #toh #clawthorne sisters #lilith clawthorne #philip wittebane #lilith and philip parallels #eda the owl lady #eda/caleb and evelyn parallels #belos #toh analysis #hunter #dell clawthorne #gwendolyn clawthorne #the clawthornes and the wittebanes

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allclonesneedkisses · 2 years

Text

Summary: Boba gives you a surprise.

Pairing: Boba Fett x f!ArtistReader

Word Count: 974 Rating: PG

Tags: Fluff, artistic reader, just a soft sweet moment

Masterlist

It was actually Fennec who suggested it. She’d been watching you sketch for the last hour. Bobas audience chamber was cleared out for the day, leaving her idle while the daimyo himself worked on reports from the throne. Her keen eyes had picked up the tiny frown that kept working itself across your lips as you mixed your pastels with your fingers. Noting your physical discomfort towards the chalk that clung to your skin.

“Have you tried painting?” You looked up, your hand stilling over your sketch as you focused on her.

“Why do you ask?”

She gave a rolling shrug, her braid slipping behind her shoulder with an easy you wish you could capture in your work. “You don't seem to like the way those feel.” She gestured at your chalk pastels that were scattered across your table. As if to prove her point she picked one up and grimaced as it grated under her nail.

“And I can see why.” She set it back down and wiped the chalk dust on her pants, leaving behind a streak of yellow on her otherwise pristine clothes which she frowned at.

With a sigh you set your sketch down and began cleaning off your fingers with the rag you kept nearby. “I used to paint. A long time ago.” Fenic looked back at you even as she tried to rub the yellow chalk off. “But paint’s more expensive and it’d take up too much room.” You couldn't keep the wistfulness out of your voice which was probably what kickstarted the whole thing.

You were never sure if Fenic had taken it upon herself to bring it up to Boba or if he’d been eavesdropping on your conversation, but a few days later Boba sprung it on you.

“I have a gift for you little one.” You were just finishing up breakfast together, your mind already wandering to your day when he’d caught your eye.

You gave him a curious smile and when he offered you his worn hand you took it with a question. “What’s the occasion?” He gently pulled you from your seat, his eyes never leaving yours even as his expression softened just a hair.

“Do I need a reason to spoil you?” You ran your tongue across your teeth but it did little to stop your smile from spreading.

Boba had tucked your hand in his as he guided you through the palace. He’d refused to answer any of your questions, opting instead to question you about your latest work. It wasn't long before he paused in front of a small room adjacent to his personal quarters. You gave him a questioning look since it’d only ever been used for storage.

He gestured at the closed door with a nod of his head. “Go ahead.”

Skeptically you palmed the door controls and stepped inside, your mouth already forming another question that never left your lips. What was once a storage room had been effortlessly turned into a studio. Blank canvases were neatly leaning against the plain adobe walls, their blank visages inviting you to deface them. An old paint flecked easel stood tall in the center of the room facing a small open window looking out over the dune sea. Beside the well loved easel stood a wobbly table that was covered in supplies. Your legs carried you closer without any instruction from your brain and you reverently ran your hands across the multitude of paints. It was a hodgepodge of mediums, from watercolor to acrylic to more obscure types. There were even a few tubes of Kashyyyk pigment and Rhodian dye, the likes of which you’d only ever seen from afar.

But beyond the tubes and pallets of paint were the brushes. They were well used, obviously taken care of by their previous artists. Their wooden handles had been worn smooth, any lacquer had long since flaked off leaving them a natural, yet washed out brown. The metal ferrules were dull and dented, a few of them showing signs of rust yet all of them relatively clean and well maintained. Most of the brushes were rounded, their fluffy tan bristles a little uneven and soft from time. But to you they were perfect. They were reminiscent of the brushes you’d learned to paint with in school so long ago. Already broken in by a multitude of strokes, their stubborn existence a testament to their value.

You turned towards Boba with tears in your eyes to find him standing right behind you, his eyes soft and a tiny bit anxious as he waited for your response. You grinned at him, throwing your arms around his neck and pulling him close. He cradled your form against him, his warm hands landing on your back and gripping you tightly in return.

“Thank you Boba, this is…” you trailed off, unable to voice just how much it meant to you.

Boba gave a soft chuckle, his breath tickling your neck. “The tools may be old but I felt they suited you better than an untouched set.” You huffed out a laugh, loving the fact that he knew you so well and gave him a squeeze before pulling back so you could see his face.

“I love them.” You released his neck to gently brush his cheeks with the pads of your thumbs feeling his worn skin against yours. “Thank you.”

Boba cupped his hands around yours, engulfing them with his warm palms. “I would give you everything you desire, little one. Even the old and worn relics of the past so much like me.”

You gave a little shake of your head, a rueful gesture that always amused him. “Not old, well loved.”

He turned one of your palms towards his lips and brushed a chaste kiss against your skin before agreeing. “Well loved indeed.”

@writer-wednesday

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frostedlemonwriter · 1 year

Text

A little something I wrote yesterday

It is a little long

The sun was an uncaring, relentless force. Mixed with too much sand and wind, enough to send a man flying when it desired, the Tehari desert was not the place for any living creature. Though, there were plenty, mostly large black birds that circled above. A woman was lashed and nailed to a death tree, a large crossed set of wooden beams that held her in place. Her brown hair waved in the wind; it beat against her sun-kissed skin. Beads of sweat glistened in the unforgiving sun. Her nudity presented to any that would find her here, but that was a long shot. She knew her life would end sooner rather than later. There was a certain peace in such knowledge. A wooden sign hung from a hempen rope tied around her neck, down to cover the bottom of her stomach that decreed the made-up crimes the woman didn’t commit. She couldn’t even remember what they were supposed to be.

One of the large black birds with a naked neck and head landed upon the cross arm. Its beady little black eyes stared deep into her soul, just enough energy for her to glance at the feathered demon. A harbinger of death, of Isolde, the dual-faced goddess of death and fertility, to some vultures were her messengers. She prayed for a quick death, but the bird didn’t wish to peck her eyes out or rip open her stomach. The elements will take her soon. The bird had more patience than most.

Though her mind played tricks on her, she knew the truth with her own eyes. There on the horizon was a group of figures. With her vision going dark, the end was coming, and it wouldn’t be stopped. Each time her eyes opened, the group got closer and closer. Dark-skinned, they spoke in a lilting language, their ears long and pointed. She didn’t know their intentions. Her vision went black again before they reopened to feel the hot sand under her body.

“Help,” Was all she could squawk out.

Her vision went black again, and she didn’t return to the woman for what seemed like eons, but it also seemed like no time had passed. The mind is the strongest magic one could find. A humming from another woman came to her ears before her eyes opened to the inside of a yurt—several dried herbs strung above her head whose scent was masked by burning incense set beside her.

A soft pallet comprised of furs and hides cushioned her body, which was covered by a fur blanket. She could move and sit up, but before she could go further, a crone-like hand grabbed her shoulder with an unexpected softness.

“You’re alive, dead woman,” The wizened woman said. Her skin was etched with the lines of seasons upon seasons that had past the woman by—white hair in elaborate braids with multi-colored beads strewn throughout. Long, pointed ears with many rings pierced throughout. “You’re in the hands of the Ardenai. You will live, dead woman.”

“Water,” The woman croaked. “Please.”

The elf removed a water skin from the frayed leather belt to offer to the human woman. Of which was gladly taken. She drank and drank from the skin until the matron stopped her with an admonishment of moderation. The human knew this well but felt her thirst desired more, yet she handed back the water skin.

“The hunters wished your death. They do not trust humans. Especially exiles doomed to death,” The matron’s voice was low and heavy with each word spoken. As if she carried the burden of time with her. “Robbery, buggery, and murder? Did you commit these crimes? Do not lie to me. I will know.”

The human woman looked deep into the matron’s deep honey-brown eyes for a moment. Perhaps she considered her words as there was a great chance she would end up alone in the desert.

“I was a thief, and I have killed ‘fore. But only those who attacked me first. Self-defense isn’t murder.” The human fully sat up. “Buggery? Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve…never…”

“It’s fine, young’un. I believe ya. ‘Sides, being light of foot, quick of hand, and full of wit was never a bad thing. Rest up. We will speak ‘gain very soon, and ya can repay us for the medicinal herbs, water, and food, yes?” The matron stood up but didn’t leave yet. “What is yer name, girl?”

“Tegan of Ryre.”

“I’m Grand Matron Nysarial. Get some rest. Ya will live.” She let out a breath Tegan didn’t know the older woman held. Then turned and left the yurt, and a hot blast of air followed in her wake.

Tegan sighed as she scanned the yurt for anything that could be used as makeshift coverings. That’s when she noticed a pair of brocade pants with a matching tunic. No foot coverings, but Tegan wasn’t picky in this regard. She was tired of being tired and laying here like an invalid.

The sun hung just above the horizon. Which cast its long tendrils across the land which formed into fingers of shadows. Several yurts formed a semi-circle with a few camels and horses within a sturdy wooden pen along with a rather sizable lean-to. A smelter made of sand bricks stood beside a hot forge and a large muscular man who pounded hammer upon red-yellow metal. A large yurt capped the small village-like camp, and it was undoubtedly where the leader resided.

#my wip #wip #fantasy #writers of tumblr #short story thingie #mystory

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