the fact that ilia is arguably the most famous name in the sport right now and ted is still getting on an international broadcast and pronouncing his name mal-EE-nen is just. who let this man have a career.

ok @misterdadguy FOR NEXT TIME, LET US AIM TO READ ANOTHER QUARTER OF BOOK

this puts us almost halfway thru the story! You will know you in right place, as Mort will be in a TAVERN the line to stop - "Everyone had seen Mort run through it three times. He just hadn't opened it" get ready to watch ya boi learn the job a bit, mess up, meet some new cast members…. (a few things will seem like Good Omens references.... but this IS Pratchett we talkin about, so really, it's all comin from the same creative pool)

lets do some Sir pTerry notes so far! behind cut to save others timelines

DISNEY at one point had optioned Discworld, MORT specifically, for an animated movie

the deal eventually fell thru as Discworld came as more of a complete package than they wanted (don't know details of rights sales/ownership here. Gonna guess it was maybe similar to Jim Henson's MUPPETS being diff package to Henson Workshop creatures type thing?) a lovely pre-production concept art by Claire Keane. Keli to Ysabell contrast is really *chefs kiss*

Another lovely art: its not quite as book described, but maybe this is what Disney was already rewriting it to be? absolutely captures the PRESENCE of Ysabelle in Death's house tho

This is purely "pop culture has ruined me" but for the first day kept reading "Mort" as "Morty" each time its there, right. as In Rick and Morty almost kinda works in that hilarious awkward way, as for MOST of the book everyone keeps referring to him as "boy" and he corrects "Mort" Every. Single. Time. So did my brain kept forcefully correcting and rereading the name each time, to get it right ahhh Mortimer, we really in it this time

so basically Discworld summaries is literal shitposts. Perfectly accurate, but they all come off this way! like, u try a good summary that isn't spoilers: "if Meet Joe Black was B-story to Great Expectations" that is my summary for this book, make up your own when you ready!

*flipping thru notes* the scene with the thieves was fav funny bit: the dashes swears being so effortlessly pronounced! Also reannual plants!!! a throwaway joke that'll get reused like…10 books later

Geography notes: All the diff places have diff rulers here, all their own city-states. Sto Lat has a King, Ankh-Porpork has Patrician, Djelibeybi had pharaohs? ("sto lat" if the T is softened up & the "a" is sounded out like "eh" it very much sounds like "100 years" in russian. Make of that what you will) When they mention Klatchian and whatnot - The Seriphate of Klatch, desert country, across the sea. At this point of the books, a world-map hasn't been properly created (didn't bother until the late-90s) so don't worry about keeping some places straight. The important part is if a certain fiction VIBE is there, roll with it (it's probly another 2 pop-culture references holding up a pun)

A round of applause for Death naming his horse BINKY I like to headcanon that bebi~Ysabelle was allowed to name horses

Also, again a throwaway line, but SUCH A GOOD JOKE - Death commenting he gets his coins in pairs i read it, nodded, moved on… like an hour later the full meaning of the line smacked me upside the head

When they go to visit a certain dude ready for reincarnation - in real life, that name is a reference to a Tibetan monk … who turned out to be fake btw, buuuut he did published lots of books!

This book was written in the 80s, so i feel some stuff may have been more obvious to people closer to that pop~culture era Once we hit the mid-90s (later books duuh) …. u gonna be seeing it Every Line!! Like you know, if today I make a Seinfeld reference, half the room will give blank stares, and half will nod knowingly... LIKE THAT!

oh, and just a heads up goin ahead, as we will be meeting WIZARDS dog-Latin will happen! As in basically take a normal English phrase, and translate single words into latin, so it kinda forms a phrase? Not following any proper latin grammar rules.. but it looks fancy!

"I feel like there's opportunity to see how someone can lose themself in their work that it erases part of who they are" YES!!! you are a bit early on this point, but this is EXACTLY what will be happening to Mort, in a way….. don't wanna say too much, you will absolutely see it happening in the later part of the book

Ysabell is….. oh there's a reason she is the way she is, and there will be a fantastic scene which breaks it down. For the current moment, she is basically playing out The Great Expectation novel, what with being so stand-offish and constantly calling him "boy" Altho thats the entire b-plot in itself…. Sir Terry absolutely makes parts of all his books this way, and it never gets old!!

Princess Keli is …. ooooh boy is she a major plot point, not spoiling. The man does not write in anything needlessly, everything will come back in some way

YES YES YES 100 TIMES YES on certain puns needing a minute to…. "digest" or "sink in" as it were. There is ONE line in freakin Monstrous Regiment, that no joke, took me MONTHS! Like within the story it works a certain way [it works!! it makes perf in-fiction sense!], but then fast forward and us goin to see Beetlejuice musical and a song lyric suddenly snuck up and my brain went "hol…up… wait wait wait… motherfuck!!!" as the secondary meaning of the pun from the novel suddenly made too much sense! (which i then inflicted on a friend some weeks later, and his reaction was just as priceless)

This is the absolute wonder of Pratchett's writing - he will tell a great story, it will be very engaging! But on 2nd look… all these lil hidden puns and references and extra touches come thru, and it … just… SUDDENLY EVEN BETTER

Basic Guide on How Not To: Slavic Characters

Well, as most of you have probably realised by now, I’m Polish. Truthfully, I am quite upset now. I generally tend to avoid most content involving Slavic people, because well, stereotypes are plentiful and I have only one stomach - there is only so much anger I can fit inside of it. However, this time I was merrily watching an episode of a series, for goodnight sleep, and got smacked in the face with just that... So, I suppose, let’s use my anger towards something - hopefully - productive. This is a very hard post for me to write. It may be closer to my personal experience, although I did try to be more general.

Contents:

Where Do I Even Begin or Sad Slav Filter

Common Stereotypes - Professions & Jobs

Common Stereotypes - Characteristics

Few basic issues with languages & names

Where Do I Even Begin or Sad Slav Filter

Grey buildings, empty plazas, ominous blocks of flats with walls up to the very sky. Snow. Gloom faces. Dark nights. Red. Gold.

To start with, be aware that this sort of image is oftentimes not only written into stories or presented in picture-based media, but that I had the displeasure of seeing it being used for cover art for several books.

What I jokingly call sad Slav filter is presenting the reality of Eastern Europe* through, well, pessimistic glasses. The architecture speaks of terror, of being post-communist state, of never having recovered. The streets portrayed in such fashion are gloom, unwelcoming, threatening in a way. Winter is oftentimes the season of choice, to add an extra layer of depressive atmosphere and cold. Nobody smiles. One may say that usage of gold and red brightens the image - however, those connect directly to the communist flag, thus locking the entire space in a rather obvious context.

The reality?

Yes, old blocks of flats built in 60s or so still exist. Some are even grey and in dire need of being re-painted! However... Many are not in such a state. In Poland, the common colours for elevation of such buildings are white, pastel orange, pastel yellow and pastel green, oftentimes put together in combination of stripes or other geometric shapes. What also should be noted is that such estates were designed with plenty trees and other plants around them in mind, as to accommodate for a development of a community - especially for older blocks of flats, those are most likely situated nearby a primary school and a kindergarten, not to mention stores and other services. It is not uncommon for playgrounds to be present as well. You could also expect small flower gardens.

Parks exist here. Architecture does not begin and end at the blocks of flats, especially not in the major cities - most, if not all, have old towns or historical representative streets. Buildings dating back to medieval still do exist in plenty of places. Churches & Tserkovs - those are oftentimes tourists sites for a reason! 

It may happen that the side of a building will be decorated with a mural. It is not very common, but does happen. Here are some examples (from Poland). The designs sometimes relate to other works of art, or to some forms of traditional art.

mural by NeSpoon, a street artist who incorporates motives of koronka ludowa [a type of lace] into her artwork

Overall, I come from a poorer region of Poland, from a small town to add to that. The one thing I would list about it? Flower gardens. All of my neighbours had flower gardens in front of their houses. In the recent years, I’ve seen plenty of new houses being built, plenty of renovations being made. Especially in spring and summer, it is all far from grey. Some major cities started investing in fields of wild flowers, as to aid pollinators. And winters? Well, the way it should be (as climate change shows and I have not seen a proper winter in a while), they should be snowy. Yes, it may involve a rather depressing image, at least in places where snow cannot just rest over the ground and glitter... But I do think it may be the case in plenty parts of Europe, as winter days are overall shorter as well, which hardly helps :”) Eastern Europe as a region is not locked in an eternal winter.

People may not be smiling, but they are not frowning either - it is the... Neutral resting face.

*- that being said, Eastern Europe is not inhabited only by Slavic people, even if it is often presented like so

Common Stereotypes - Professions & Jobs

List of common stereotypical jobs/professions usually performed by characters of Slavic descent:

a member of a mafia (Russian mafia)

a drug dealer

a spy

a prostitute

a maid / a cleaner

As you can see, nearly all of those involve crime, the only exception being a maid / a cleaner (which, I’d argue, speaks of a lower socio-economic status). If you do not plan to have more than one Slavic character in your work, I advise you to avoid those - especially if you wanted to make your character Russian. I do not think I have to explain why representing a group of people nearly exclusively as criminals is hurtful. 

Certain stereotypes exist in media. They do influence the reality. I have seen covers of books about spy programs (non-fiction, referencing an issue from 2000s) which involved clear references to communism (+ used the most hideous Sad Slav Filter I have ever seen). The title suggested all Russians are spies. This is not okay.

If you want to have a character who is performing any of the above, and want to make them Slavic, but then never have their heritage influence anything about them - ask yourself why.

EDIT: Do allow me to also add that being a sex-worker may not be a choice for all Slavic women. Sex-trafficking of Eastern Europeans is a real issue. You should be mindful of that when writing a story - even more so as it affects some countries more than others. Research is due.

Common Stereotypes - Characteristics

Common hurtful characteristics in depicting slavic characters:

uneducated or otherwise stupid

rude, loud, uncultured, violent

an alcoholic / addicted to drugs

extremely conservative / religious

Do I have to explain it? Yes, alcoholism is a social issue, same as addiction to drugs. Yes, some people are conservative and / or religious. However! We are not a monolith! Social issues are not the general rule! 

Scale of conservativeness and religiousness also differs greatly by age group and region. In Poland we have an entire category of practising atheists - non-believers, usually from smaller communities, who appear in church once or twice a year, despite not believing. Due to social pressure. What religion? This differs greatly too! Roman catholic, Greek orthodox, Muslim? Slavic people are not a monolith.

(about women specifically):

beautiful (must put plenty effort in her physical appearance)

looks for a rich (western) husband

submissive

obedient 

Well. This ties into the greater issue of objectification and sexualisation of Slavic and Eastern European women. Admittedly, such portrayal [including all of those] is more so present in online spaces, if you turn a few wrong corners down the roads of the internet :) It is dehumanising.

If your Slavic character happens to be a woman and must be extremely sexy femme fatal spy - this reeks of stereotypes.

Few basic issues with languages & names

As I’ve hinted already, it appears that oftentimes Slavic = Russian. This, however, is not true, both language-wise and culture-wise. Despite sharing some common elements, Slavic cultures do differ. Polish characters, unless they are 50+ years old, won’t generally speak Russian. Czech and Ukrainian are different. Ukrainian is not just another version of Russian.

I decided to single out this paragraph for one reason: authors oftentimes do not bother to check for appropriate names and just use whatever seems right. If you want to write a Slavic character, do make some research. 

The common mess-ups I’ve seen:

inappropriate form of the surname (about Russian surnames in particular; giving a woman a male version of the surname, giving a man the female version of the surname - Slavic languages are heavily gendered!)

claiming a character is of nationality B, while giving them a surname which is most definitely speaking of nationality A (e.g: Polish character with a clearly Hungarian name & surname)

wrong spelling

using very rare forms of names for all the characters written into the story (it sounds very unnatural - in one particular case it seemed to have been done on purpose, as I’ve had to google whether some names were even names. They were used as code names for few organisations during WWII. That sort of uncommon).

nicknames derived from the actual names that would not work at all (Żegota -> Zeg; It just would not work like this. It would be literally more likely for a character named Żegota to be nicknamed/renamed Staszek than for somebody to call him Zeg. It does not only not include the ż sound, but it also ends with g - which a Polish person would simplify to k when speaking. In other words Zeg -> zek. This, meanwhile, is not only not exactly pleasant to say, but it also sounds like a grammatical form of another word, albeit pronounced with a heavy lisp - “river”; It is possible to find appropriate nicknames online).

Also, unless you want for some character to be a dick, do not make them purposefully mispronounce the name of a Slavic character or have them name them after an object/thing. (Calling “Maciej” by “Magic” because they can’t be bothered to learn to pronounce the name or at least try to get it close is not nice).

Can you do a Steve X reader where y/n’s parents work for the Russian government and y/n can speak but is not fluent in English she saves Steve and Robin and ends up falling for Steve?

𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫

➵ 𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 | You rescue Steve from Russian guards and you start falling for him, despite not being able to understand him.

➵ 𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 | Steve Harrington x Russian!reader

➵ 𝐖��𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 | 2k

➵ 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 | Mention of kidnapping, blood, vomiting, language barrier, language (in English), embarrassment, drugged!Steve and Robin, I tried my best with the translations! Mostly fluff.

დ 𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | დ 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | დ 𝐤𝐨-𝐟𝐢

Translations:

С тобой все в порядке? (pronounced like “S toboy vse v poryadke?”)– Are you alright?

Спасибо (pronounced like “spasibo”)– Thank you

Cкучный (pronounced like “skuchnyy”)- Boring

Красивая (pronounced like “krasivaya”)– Beautiful

It was like Bring Your Daughter To Work Day, except without the fun benefits and activities a normal boss at a normal company would provide. Just as you were finished with your school year, your father had been hired by the Russian government for a top-secret project, and before you could even say goodbye, you were in a completely new country on the other side of the world. You weren’t even entirely sure what your father did for a living, it was that confidential, but you knew one thing: you hated him for this.

This new project meant traveling to America, staying in hiding, living under a fake name, and absolutely no associating yourself with your father unless absolutely necessary. You always seemed to be talking in code, or not talking at all. You had been meaning to start learning English, and you picked up a few phrases here and there, but the second someone said something too quickly or a single word you didn’t understand, you backed out and got flustered, drawing more attention to yourself than necessary.

America did have its perks, though. You spent your days at the mall, which was a front for where your father was working. You liked watching the parents swing their children around as they walked, the teenagers gossiping at the food court or shopping for new clothes. You took note of how they wore their hair and the types of clothes they liked. It would help you fit in better.

But most of all, you liked watching the boy at the ice cream shop work. He’d shamelessly flirt with every girl his age who came in, causing the other employee to laugh at him. He was tall and lanky, with flowing brown hair nearly to his shoulders. His uniform, styled like a sailor to fit the shop’s theme, made him look ridiculous, but there was a part of you that absolutely loved the way it showed off his legs. Day after day, you’d build up the courage to go into the shop and talk to him.

The day you finally decided to do it was the most nervous you’d ever felt in your life. You repeated the phrase over and over again in your head, “One vanilla cone, please.” When you were alone, you practiced your American accent, hoping you wouldn’t give yourself away. You’d triple-checked that you had the right amount of money for the transaction.

He was dreamy, like a boy you’d see in a magazine. A kind of handsome you didn’t even think existed.

“Welcome to Scoops Ahoy, what can I get for you?” he said, a little too quickly, but you understood him.

“One vanilla cone, please.” You said, and watched as he didn’t even think twice about it. He just put a single scoop of vanilla ice cream into a cone and handed it to you.

You took out your money and started to hand it to him, but he said something and stopped you. Your heart stopped. He caught you, and you were in big trouble.

He could sense the fear in your eyes, “Hey, it’s okay.” He said, “A pretty girl like you shouldn’t have to pay. It’s on me.”

He was talking too quickly for you to understand. You hurriedly set the money on the counter and speed-walked away, the ice cream in your hand slowly melting. You looked back only once, seeing the other employee, a girl about your age with light brown hair and freckles, write a single tally on a white board with words written on it that you couldn’t make out as she laughed.

Embarrassed, you hid in the bathroom for close to half an hour, crying silent tears and wishing you were home. You hated it here. You hated that you couldn’t speak the language. You hated that you had no friends. You just wanted to be anywhere but here.

It had been two weeks since that horrible day, and you had spent this particular day away from everyone, underground with other people from your country, making time pass by writing nonsense in your journal. Some words in Russian, others in English. To anyone who spoke both languages, it just looked like gibberish.

“Morons! Hey morons!” you heard two people yell from another room. You thought you were imagining it at first, but as they continued to laugh, you knew it was real.

You followed their voices, always checking behind you to make sure no one was following. You traveled down the long, empty hallway before you finally heard a crash and a few groans of pain and laughs- sounding exactly like the people you heard before- coming from the other side of a door. You opened it, and were greeted by the sight of the two Scoops Ahoy employees on the ground, tied to a chair.

You gasped, immediately coming to their aid, untying them and helping them up. The cute boy looked at you, his face nearly beaten to a pulp. “You…” he said, recognizing you from your awkward encounter.

“С тобой все в порядке?” you asked him, then immediately covering your mouth to prevent you from saying anything else. You had just blown your cover. You were no longer an unassuming girl who hung out at the mall. You were the enemy. You were a liar.

“What?” He said, panicked. You grabbed his and the girl’s hands, running and taking them somewhere else. They hurt him. You had to make sure he was safe.

You took them to the elevator, inputting the code your father had given you to safely make it back up to the mall, where it was completely deserted. You had forgotten it was nearly midnight, and the mall had been closed for hours.

The relief was clear in their voices as they spoke to each other, but they seemed to have forgotten you were there. Giving them space, you sat on a bench a few feet away, not knowing what to do or say. You hadn’t gotten around to having a conversation in English with anyone besides the one at Scoops Ahoy two weeks ago, and you figured you’d save yourself the embarrassment of trying again.

The boy approached you, putting his hands on his hips, “Thank you for what you did. Seriously, you’re kind of like a criminal now-“ he stopped his rambling the second he saw the confusion on your face. He was talking too quickly for you to understand and rambling too much, you lost him a few words in. It occurred to him that you didn’t speak much English, and despite being free from the torture of the Russian guards, he still felt terrible. “Um,” he sat next to you, trying to formulate what he was going to say to where you could understand him and respond, “Thank you.”

You nodded, showing him you understood. “You’re welcome.” You said cautiously. If you remembered correctly, those were the words Americans responded with after being thanked.

He nodded, and you knew your response was appropriate and correct. “Can you tell me how to say, ‘thank you’?”

You nodded and smiled. He smiled back, both of you warming up to each other. “Спасибо.” You said.

“Спасибо.” He repeated, extending his hand, “My name is Steve.”

Steve. It was so American. You liked it.

“Steve!” the girl scolded, still unsure of your intentions.

“Come on, she’s harmless.” Steve said, “If she was gonna kill us, she would’ve done it by now.”

You opened your mouth, about to say something in broken English, but Steve’s behavior abruptly shifted. He went from kind to dazed, playful to confused. Then you remembered the drugs in his system. He had a lost look in his eyes, and you could tell it was affecting the girl too. You knew how the drugs worked, you’d seen how it affected people. It wasn’t going to kill them, but it would make them vomit fairly soon.

“Come,” you said, getting up and guiding Steve and the girl to the restroom, putting them each in a stall as the drugs ran their course. Soon enough, you heard both of them vomiting, which you knew was a sign that the drugs had worn off.

You gave them a minute to collect themselves, and it was the girl who emerged from the stall first. “How did you know that would happen?” she said.

You could understand what she was asking, you just weren’t sure how to respond. “My father,” you started, your foreign accent on display, “He is a guard. I have seen it before.”

She nodded, grabbing your hand, “Thank you,” she said, “I’m Robin.”

Steve emerged from his stall. “We still need to find Dustin and Erica. They could be anywhere.”

“Dustin said he’d make a hideout spot at the GAP. We should check there first.” Robin responded.

It was happening again. Too many words, not enough enunciation. You could barely understand, and had it not been for the large glowing “GAP” clothing store sign you remembered seeing on the other side of the mall, you would’ve thought they were talking about a physical gap between the stores or in the wall.

Robin exited the restroom in a hurry, leaving you and Steve to walk slowly together behind her.

“How long have you been in America?” Steve asked, making sure to talk at a pace that was slow enough for you to catch every word he was saying, but too slow, which would’ve made you feel stupid.

“Two months.” you said. You wanted to say more. You wanted to say so much more, if only you knew how to say it. “And you?”

Steve chuckled to himself, “My entire life. Indiana is a shithole.”

You could tell by the tone of his voice that “shithole” wasn’t a good thing. You were taken back by his opinions of his home. Sure, it was overwhelming, but there were so many things about it that you loved. “What is a ‘shithole?’” you asked innocently.

Steve laughed again. “A place that is dull. Bad people, bad weather. No fun.” He looked to you to see if you understood.

“Cкучный. Boring.” You said.

“Yeah, boring.”

“Like Russia?”

Steve smiled, “Sure, yeah,” he said. You found yourself lost in his eyes. He was the first person to show you kindness since moving here. You liked him a lot, but right now, you were just happy to have a friend.

“So,” Steve started, “what would you say if I asked you on a date? Would you be able to do that? Maybe we could see a movie? That Travolta one might still be playing.” He lost you again. He tried miming a little dance to hopefully get you to recognize the movie he was referencing. “Dance?”

You shook your head and looked at the floor as you walked with him, slightly embarrassed.

“Hey, no, it’s okay,” he said stopping and turning to face you, sensing your embarrassment and trying to think quickly, “uh... you and me. Date?” he tried again.

“The fourth of July.”

“No, Jesus,” Steve said, slightly frustrated with himself. He exasperatedly ran his fingers through his hair. He didn’t know what he could say or do to get you to understand, so he did what felt right. He leaned in and kissed your cheek, catching you completely by surprise. If he hadn’t just thrown up or had blood all over his face, you would’ve let him kiss your lips.

“Ohhh,” you said and nodded, understanding what he was asking, “romantic. Yes. We can.”

“Yeah, yeah, romantic.” He nodded, “I better start learning some Russian then, yeah?”

You smiled, “I will learn more English. We will learn together.”

“How do you say, ‘beautiful?’” He asked. Sensing your hesitation, he continued, “Pretty? Attractive?”

You smiled, “Красивая.”

“Well,” Steve started, pushing a lock of hair behind your ear, “You are красивая.”

For the first time since moving to America, you felt complete, genuine happiness. No, it was more than happiness. It was peace. Somebody making an effort to understand you. Somebody wanting to be near you. It made your heart leap.

Maybe this new country wasn’t so bad after all. Steve could be the silver lining, the one thing that was worth all the hardships. It would take a while to get there, and it would be a long, stressful process, but if you knew one thing, it was that you could handle it if you had him.

Provocation [Golden Kamuy, Tsuki/Ogata] -- part 1/2

Tsuki/Ogata || could-be-canon pre-series || 3,254 words

Second Private Ogata is nothing but trouble, and no end to infuriating. Tsukishima is determined to treat him fairly nonetheless.

(GK fanworks exchange prompt 27: Ogata dealing with the "wildcat" jokes and consequential reputation in the army, Tsukishima somehow protecting him.)

Warnings: canon-typical violence

(On Ao3) (part 2 on tumblr)

===/\==

.

Tsukishima isn't meant to hear it, but he does. He pulls two men aside to warn them for being late, and as he is walking away, he hears one mutter, "that shitty wildcat, this is his fault".

"Wildcat?" Tsukishima asks, because predatory animals near the camp are a significant concern.

"It's nothing, sir," Second Private Nikaido (he's not sure which one) responds after a moment too long and a shared look with his brother. In hindsight, that look is why Tsukishima remembers.

.

.

He doesn't think much of it until he walks into the main tent just as a fight nearly breaks out. There's shouting that abruptly cuts off as the men catch sight of him and turn to salute instead of throwing punches. Still, the tension in the air is palpable, and almost everyone is throwing dirty sideways glances at one man in particular. He's not new, but somehow, Tsukishima has yet to speak with him. His face was both familiar and less familiar than it should be, with big, dark eyes and eyebrows that turn down at both ends. He's built on the smaller side, though still taller than Tsukishima himself.

Tsukishima sighs and gestures for the men to stand at ease.

"There will be no punishment, but I need to know what happened here," he says. Most of them bow slightly in acknowledgement, though the newer men look apprehensive. No one volunteers, of course, so Tsukishima is forced to single someone out. "The Second Private in the sheepskin vest, what's your name?"

The big, honest-looking man, one of the new reserves, steps forward.

"Tanigaki Genjirou, sir."

"Second Private Tanigaki." Tsukishima nods. "What happened here?"

"I'm afraid I was not following the conversation, sir. I can only say that it appears that Second Private Ogata and Superior Private Tamai have had some disagreement."

Tsukishima turns to Superior Private Tamai expectantly.

"Second Private Ogata is just being his usual offensive self, sir. His words are not worth repeating."

"Ahh," interrupts the man with the big, dark eyes. His voice is soft with a slight rasp, almost like a purring cat. "The Superior Private and Second Private Tanigaki are giving me too much credit. I only said that having more snipers might give us more tactical options, and it's a pity that no one else in our unit is suitable. Superior Private Tamai took that as a criticism of his leadership or marksman abilities."

A collective rustle of discontent goes through the men, but no one says anything further and Tsukishima dismisses them. Then all at once, noise and movement return and it seems the men can't contain themselves anymore, speaking in agitated whispers.

"He really is a wildcat, did you hear him?"

"What a liar!"

"Shhh, the Sergeant can hear you."

"Forget the Sergeant, that bastard Ogata might hear you."

… so that's what they meant. Tsukishima thought of one particular cat back in the fishing village he once called home. A cat with a hanging belly that belonged to no-one, meowing pitifully to beg for food. Tsukishima had fed it until one fisherman had laughed at him, and told him "that cat isn't pregnant— he's just fat, and a good fraud."

He finds himself staring, and Second Private Ogata looks up and smiles.

.

.

He soon learns that there's more to it than that.

The nickname catches on with unusual speed and enthusiasm. Outside of formal channels, Second Private Ogata is almost universally referred to as "wildcat Ogata", "that wildcat", or a mix of expletives. It's compromising the order and morale of the men. Tsukishima has more pressing things to think about, but there are enough rumours that it earns its place as an item on his mental checklist of problems to deal with.

One night, when intelligence indicates that an attack by the Russians is unlikely, an air of cautious optimism pervades the camp, and men and officers alike take full advantage of the respite.

"Sergeant Tsukishima, you're slow to the party!" Someone calls to him from a group seated around a fire. "Come drink with us, Second Lieutenant Hanazawa just donated his share of sake."

Tsukishima takes his seat with them, more than readily takes the sake passed to him—he's long learned not to refuse anything that might ease the weight and reality of war— and joins them in raising a toast.

"To Yuusaku-san! May you have a long life, so your generosity can continue to bless us!"

"Empty the glasses!" someone roars amongst the cheers and uproarious laughter. "Cheers!"

"Cheers!" Tsukishima echoes, raising his drink and nodding to Second Lieutenant Hanazawa. The handsome young officer laughs along with everyone, waving away the thanks modestly. That just gets him another round of cheers, and even some pats on the back.

"Yuusaku-san, you're really amazing! Brave and generous and virtuous. Your father, the Lieutenant General's blood really shows!"

A chorus of approval and agreement, indistinct. The atmosphere of relative safety and normalcy, the comfortable warmth of the fire, his accumulated fatigue, and the sake all softened the noise and going-ons around him until Tsukishima heard someone say: "Eh, no, no, that can't be right, otherwise that wildcat would also have some good qualities instead of fucking around all the time."

And then the conversation suddenly related to A Problem, and Tsukishima was too dutiful to ignore it. Holding back a sigh, he dredged up some willpower to pay attention.

"You're right, it must come from his mother's side. Or Yuusaku-san must have taken all the good parts from the Lieutenant General."

"It's true, how are they even related?"

"Simple! The child of a wildcat... must also be a wildcat!" The man who says this pronounces it with a dramatic sweep of his arm and a great deal of pride at his own cleverness, the others burst out in drunken laughter, all except Tsukishima and Second Lieutenant Hanazawa. This doesn't pass unnoticed. Not wanting to exclude their benefactor, Lance Corporal Takahashi slings his arm around the Second Lieutenant, and with all the social acumen of an injured bear, he helpfully explains.

"Ah, of course our dear flagbearer wouldn't know! Wildcat here means geisha, especially of the sort that… is willing to take some extra appointments, if you catch my meaning."

He leers so lecherously that his meaning is completely unmistakable. Second Lieutenant Hanazawa blushes, and then very rapidly goes pale. He looks like he wants to say something, but the flag-bearer's duty to camaraderie and harmony of the troops shackles him.

The same did not apply to Tsukishima.

"It does you no credit to speak ill of your fellow soldiers or their heritage," he says sharply, "—or to imply ill of your Lieutenant General."

Tsukishima speaks like the sergeant he is, so his voice carries, even if he's not trying to be particularly loud. Most of the noise in the group dies instantly, and the people at the fringes quickly quieten as well as the ones near them nudge them to lower their voices.

The Lance Corporal who was speaking does a double take, swaying slightly, drunk but not drunk enough to miss the sudden uncomfortable hush and Tsukishima's obvious disapproval.

"Ahh Sergeant, it was only a joke, a joke."

"A poor joke in bad taste," replies Tsukishima and the person's smile becomes visibly more strained, but Tsukishima doesn't care about popularity, he's a dead man returned to life by a man who outranks everyone present. Even if he were shot tomorrow, it was all borrowed time anyway, as far as he was concerned. The funny characteristic about people when they've already made their peace with death was that they cared very little about what the living think of them.

"—but—" Lance Corporal Takahashi starts to argue.

"It is also an insult to the Second Lieutenant, which is a poor way to repay him for his generosity," Tsukishima adds and as expected, that is what makes the Lance Corporal stop, glancing to the side where the Second Lieutenant is smiling uncomfortably.

"And in any case," Tsukishima continues, "it hardly matters when we're all here fighting and dying in the same war for the same country."

The mood instantly sobers, the temporary illusion of warmth and normalcy dropping away, the weight of the war they were on the front lines of returning tenfold

Tsukishima is suddenly more tired than when he first joined the group. So much for having a bit of respite this evening. He should have gone straight to the baths and stayed there.

"I've said everything I have to say and I'll stand by it, with all the authority I have. But it's late now. Excuse me, I'll take my leave." He turns to the Second Lieutenant, gives a shallow bow, probably more shallow than is polite but his body is too heavy for him to care overly much. "Thank you for the sake, sir."

He leaves. Behind him, he hears Second Lieutenant Hanazawa softly taking his leave from the table of now subdued officers. Footsteps follow him, and the young officer's voice calls out, "Wait!"

Tsukishima stops and turns, and Second Lieutenant Hanazawa jogs to meet him.

"It is good to see that the high praise I have heard about Sergeant Tsukishima is well-founded. Thank you for your defense of my elder brother."

"Second Lieutenant Hanazawa, you're being far too kind. Anything I said was merely for satisfaction of my own principles."

Tsukishima wants to turn and leave, but the Second Lieutenant looks like he has more to say, and the mix of decorum, rank, and actually not disliking the young man keeps Tsukishima standing there.

"I thought they might treat him better if they knew we were related," confesses Hanazawa, "but that provoked people's curiosity. In the end, I seem to have made more trouble for my elder brother."

From the little Tsukishima is aware of, he rather thinks that Second Private Ogata makes most of the trouble himself— there couldn't be that much smoke without even a spark of fire— but as with most situations where he doesn't know enough, he keeps his mouth shut.

Suddenly realising that he was keeping Tsukishima standing in the cold for a personal conversation, Second Lieutenant Hanazawa startles.

"I've said too much." Second Lieutenant Hanazawa bows again. "I beg for your discretion with this information."

"Of course, sir," Tsukishima replies. When Second Lieutenant Hanazawa smiles widely in relief, Tsukishima doesn't have the heart to tell him that he is just closing the doors after the horse has bolted.

.

.

That conversation haunts him, annoyingly mundane amongst the greater horrors he has to deal with. It invokes memories of his home being mocked as unclean, a murderer's dwelling-place, and the murder of a kind girl for no reason other than the appearance she was born with and the misfortune of his affection. Tsukishima takes the old nightmares in stride, as he takes everything, but every time he sees the cloaked figure of Second Private Ogata huddling near a fire or brazier, the thought returns to him, an incomplete task.

It doesn't sit well with him.

The gods give him his chance a few days later, when Second Private Ogata walks by and gives him the mandatory salute. Again, Tsukishima is struck by his big dark eyes, true black catching a small gleam of light, intelligent and strange. If all-seeing eyes existed, they must be like his. Ogata glances over Tsukishima, but his eyes don't settle, don't even linger, like he's seen all there is to see and has already dismissed it with a flick of dark eyelashes, already looking for something else.

He is a sniper. Tsukishima had looked at his records. An unnaturally good one too. It made a man wonder what those eyes could see.

"Second Private Ogata."

"Sir."

"It has come to my attention that these 'wildcat' references are an insult to your private matters and parentage. I don't stand such things. If they bring up that distasteful joke again, let me know."

A blink from those big dark eyes.

"I can deal with it," Second Private Ogata starts to say, but Tsukishima cuts him off before he can go on to make the obligatory polite refusals. He's in no mood for the song and dance of social niceties. The memory of dark hair in unusual curls and a murderer called father are too close to his thoughts today.

"This is a matter of principle. Insulting a person for their heritage has no place in this regiment." Tsukishima surprises himself with how forcefully the words come out, though that is probably not noticeable to someone who does not know him well.

"If it's not about me, then I wonder why the sergeant decided to talk to me?" Ogata's tone, normally flat with disinterest, curled ever so slightly with curiosity now. "Just make an order or punishment, as you please. Sir."

He makes a point, and somehow Tsukishima does not like the question. Still, he answers.

"An order might confirm the information and disservice you and Second Lieutenant Hanazawa more. But if that's what it takes, I will make the order and enforce it with my own two hands if I must."

Something changes. Ogata's eyes feel like they finally focus on him, even with the strange sensation that they are too big and taking everything at once, at least now that includes him. Ogata comes to some decision, lifting his chin.

"I can deal with it, sir. No need to trouble yourself."

His eyes are unreadable.

.

.

The atmosphere in the regiment becomes more vicious. As Tsukishima investigates, small misfortunes start making sense.

Superior Private Tamai's rifle sight rusts on a perfectly dry night. Second Private Tanigaki's uniform buttons go missing. Lance Corporal Takahashi's trigger finger is shot off.

No one knows for certain that it's Second Private Ogata, but everyone knows.

.

.

"You wanted to speak to me, sir?"

Ogata reports as he is required to, but from his carefully blank expression, it's clear he doesn't intend to cooperate. Tsukishima looks up from where he is writing a report and puts down his pen, sits back, more upright.

"I was under the impression we had an understanding," he says grimly, "that you'd come to me regarding those insults if necessary."

"It was not necessary," replied Ogata, just this side of insubordinate, and with a very neutral expression he goes on to say, "But I appreciate the Sergeant's special attention."

"Then it would befit Second Private Ogata to show his appreciation via his conduct."

"What conduct do you suggest?" he asks blithely with an innocently straight face and his too-big eyes and his purring voice. He's far too aware for that ignorance to be genuine.

How irritating.

"Report to me instead of acting on your own," Tsukishima says forcefully. "Or if you don't wish to bring the matter to me, you are free to go to the Second Lieutenant if you prefer. He is more than willing to help you." That gets the first involuntary reaction he sees from Ogata, a definitive rise in his shoulders, a slight lean away from Tsukishima, as if he could physically avoid the suggestion.

"If I don't go to the Sergeant, how could I go to the Second Lieutenant?" asks Ogata, insulting while somehow still staying just this side of appropriate enough to avoid penalty. "As I said, I can deal with it. There's no need to trouble yourself, sir."

.

.

Three more men trade their trigger fingers for a ticket out of the regiment.

There is no evidence that it is Second Private Ogata.

There is no evidence that it is not Second Private Ogata.

.

.

This time, Tsukishima does not send a missive, he pulls Second Private Ogata aside himself.

"I told you to come to me," Tsukishima starts without preamble.

"I don't know what you mean," says Ogata with a straight face.

It takes everything in Tsukishima not to react visibly to that.

"Antagonising our own unit members is bad for morale," replies Tsukishima flatly. "And some actions are outright sabotage, or treason."

"Is Sergeant Tsukishima suggesting I would do such things?" Ogata has the gall to look surprised, and even slightly offended. Tsukishima doesn't buy it for a second.

"I am trying to be fair to you. Stop putting me in a position where I have to punish the people you provoke."

"Mmm, Sergeant Tsukishima has been very patient and generous, all for me." The words in themselves are perfectly polite, but something in the way he says it twists it to mockery. It stops all sound but the blood rushing in Tsukishima's ears.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Tsukishima challenges. A spark lights in Ogata's eyes, and he tilts up his chin, looking down his nose at Tsukishima.

"Obviously the sergeant doesn't care that much about me. So the sergeant must be personally invested in this type of insult, right?"

The protest "I'm not" dies unsaid in Tsukishima's throat as patently untrue. He looks at Ogata, unable to find something to say in the varied mess of emotion struggling to resolve into something comprehensible. Disbelief, irritation, anger, sadness, profound regret, longing, something a little bit of all of these and yet none of them.

Ogata looks at him as Tsukishima's silent struggle grows, and at length, Ogata speaks.

"You already know how the unit talks about me," Ogata says. He is unbearably smug and insubordinate despite the formal address. "So this show of yours must be because you want to make sure they don't talk about you behind your back. Do you want to know what they say about you? Or is that too 'inappropriate'— it's true that I can take it better than you, just judging from your reaction."

Tsukishima's emotions resolve decidedly into fury, which he holds back for a moment before thinking — why not and swinging, landing a good hit right in the face. His fist crunches into Ogata's nose satisfyingly, makes contact with the hard socket and soft tissue of Ogata's eye. His knuckles sting slightly from the impact, tingling with the blood in his small capillaries, with the satisfaction of justified anger finding a deserving target.

Ogata's eyes have a victorious gleam of malicious amusement for a passing fraction of a second as Tsukishima swings, then he goes staggering into a tree.

"You really bring out the worst in people," Tsukishima mutters under his breath, not intending for Ogata to hear but Ogata's expression turns even more smug and even more infuriating. Tsukishima has met the worst of men, has the blood of one in his own veins even, but Ogata is something else— he thinks he's invincible and untouchable and the only real thing. He's vicious for sport and everything is a joke, even in the middle of a war. He wants to watch the world burn.

He's a liability.

With this realisation, Tsukishima knows what he must do. He looks down at Ogata where the man lays on the floor and doesn't even attempt to get up, and Tsukishima tells him, "Your attitude has become too big of an issue. I will have to bring your matter to my superior officer."

"A big issue," Ogata repeats slowly, smiling at the words as if Tsukishima had just cracked a joke instead of informing him that a disciplinary matter would be escalated. He sits up, and looks up to Tsukishima, blood dripping from his nose, the beginnings of a bruise already showing around his eye. It'll be swollen shut before tomorrow. "Please mention me favourably then, Sergeant Tsukishima."

.

===/end of part 1\===

(On Ao3) (part 2 on tumblr)  ( patreon ) ( kofi ) ( paypal )

originally posted by all-the-crackshipS

A B O U T ELEANOR ‘NEL’ WALSH

full name: Eleanor Renee Walsh

nickname(s): Nel, Nellie, Elle

reason for name: N/A

date of birth: June 10th, 1989

age: 32

gender + pronouns: Cis-female, she/her/hers

place of birth: Richmond, VA

parents: Kevin and Josie Walsh

siblings: Matt (brother- 2 years older), Trenton (sister- 5 years younger), Micah (10 years younger)

moral alignment: Chaotic Good

Scent: Gucci Bloom

relationship with family (close? estranged?): Very estranged from both parents. Is not too close with oldest and youngest brother, but still contacts them.  Is very close with her younger brother Trenton, who lives in Kings Head.

pets:  Jack (cat)

P H Y S I C A L

height: 5’8”

build: Very lean, in shape.

nationality: American

ethnicity: German, Italian, 

distinguishing facial features: High cheekbones, strong jawline

hair color: Dark blonde

usual hair style: Middle part, unstyled

eye color: Blue

complexion (freckles, acne, skin tone, birthmarks, scars): White skin, freckles on nose, birthmark on wrist

disabilities (physical or mental, including mental illnesses): N/A

what do they consider their best feature?: Her eyes

worst they’ve ever been injured (what, how did it happen)?: Fractured wrist at 15 from being pushed at a party.

A P P E A R A N C E 

favorite outfit: White t-shirt, jeans, and Birkenstocks

glasses? contacts?: Glasses, only when driving

personal hygiene: Showers daily, washes hair when necessary, and washes face in the shower

jewelry? tattoos? Piercings?: 5 pierces on the right ear, 3 on the left. Has a mark on her eyebrow from having it pierced, but has taken it out. Leaf imagery tattooed on her ribcage, ‘CUTE’ tatted on the inside of her bottom lip.

what does their voice sound like?: Raspy, a bit soft and quiet

style of speech (loud, mumbler, articulate, etc.): Quiet, pronounced

accent?: N/A

unique mannerisms/physical habits: Furrows her eyebrows when staring at something no matter the intensity, clicks her tongue when she’s nervous.

left handed or right?: Right

do they work out/exercise?: Yoga and pilates

B E L I E F S & I N T E L L E C T

known languages: English and a little Russian

zodiac: 

gifts/talents: Can tie a cherry stem with her mouth, can recite poetry, and can play piano

religious stance: Raised Jewish, doesn’t practice unless around holidays

political stance: Liberal views

pet peeves: Cat-calling, spam phone calls, and noisy neighbors

optimist or pessimist: Pessimist

extrovert or introvert: Introvert

I N T I M A C Y & R E L A T I O N S H I P S 

relationship status: Single

sexual orientation: Heterosexual

ideal mate/qualities they look for in mate: Very unsure about qualities. She doesn’t understand what that looks like or how it could be achieved, but would at least like someone with shared interests. Someone caring and thoughtful.

ever been in love?: What she thought was love at the time.

what’s their love language?: Thoughtfulness, cooking, and expensive dinners out.

most important person in their life?: Herself.

V O C A T I O N

level of education: High school (unfinished)

profession: Only Fans/Bartender

past occupations: Tutor, waiter

dream occupation: Lawyer

passions: Literature and food

attitude towards current job: Learning to accept what is rather than what should be. She does not hate it, but she would rather move on.

spender or saver? Why?: Spender. She never learned to save money.

which is more important – money or doing something they love?: Money is the only thing that can buy anything.

phobias: Getting taken 

life goals: Buying a house

greatest fears: Not having anyone

most embarrassing thing ever to happen to him/her: Getting noticed in public.

something they��ve never told anyone: She was in a domestic abusive relationship for 5 years.

biggest regret: Dating her last boyfriend

compulsions: Getting angry and having black and white thinking.

police/criminal/legal record: DUI when she was 18

Vices: Reeses Cups (even though she’s plant-based)

P R E F E R E N C E S

hobbies: Reading, journaling, and swimming

favorite color: Copper

favorite smell: Airports, jet fuel

favorite food: Grilled (vegan) cheese and tomato soup

favorite book: War and Peace

favorite movie: Pretty Woman

favorite song: Home Sweet Home by Motley Crue

coffee or tea?: Passionfruit Tea

favorite type of weather?: rainy and cold

Saints&Reading: thu., Oct. 7, 2020

Commemorated on September 2_according to the Julian calendar

The Monk Sergei of Radonezh

     The Monk Sergei of Radonezh was born in the village of Varnitsa, near Rostov, on 3 May 1314. His parents were the pious and illustrious boyar-nobles Kirill and Maria. The Lord forechose him while still in his mother's womb. In the Vita of the Monk Sergei it reports, that at Divine Liturgy even before the birth of her son, Righteous Maria and those praying heard the thrice-repeated cry of the infant: before the reading of the Holy Gospel, during the time of the Cherubim hymn, and when the priest pronounced: "Holy Things to the Holy". God gave Kirill and Maria a son, whom they named Bartholomew. From his very first days of life the infant amazed everyone by his fasting, on Wednesdays and Fridays he would not accept milk from his mother, and on other days, if Maria used oil in the food, the infant likewise refused the milk of his mother. Noticing this, Maria refrained altogether from food with oil. At seven years of age Bartholomew was sent to study together with his two brothers – his older brother Stefan and his younger brother Peter. His brothers learned successfully, but Bartholomew fell behind in his studies, even though the teacher gave him much special attention. The parents scolded the child, the teacher chastised him, and his fellow-classmates made fun of his lack of comprehension. Finally in tears Bartholomew besought of the Lord to grant him the bookish understanding. One time his father sent Bartholomew out after the horses in the field. Along the way he met an Angel sent by God under the guise of appearance of a monk: the starets-elder stood at prayer beneathe an oak amidst the field. Bartholomew approached him, and bowing, waited for the elder's finish of prayer. That one blessed him, gave him a kiss and asked, what he wanted. Bartholomew answered: "With all my soul I want to learn reading and writing, holy father, pray for me to God, that He help me to become literate". The monk fulfilled the request of Bartholomew, raising up his prayer to God, and in blessing the lad he said to him: "From henceforth God giveth thee, my child, to understand reading and writing, and in this wilt thou surpass thy brothers and peers". With this the elder took forth a vessel and gave Bartholomew a portion of prosphora-bread: "Take, child, and eat, – said he. – This is given thee as a sign of the grace of God and for the understanding of Holy Scripture". The elder wanted to depart, but Bartholomew asked him to visit at the home of his parents. His parents received their guest with joy and offered him their hospitality. The starets answered, that first it is proper to partake of spiritual nourishment, and he bade their son to read the Psalter. Bartholomew began harmoniously to read, and his parents were amazed at the change that had happened with their son. In parting, the elder prophetically predicted about the Monk Sergei: "Great shalt be your son before God and the people. He shalt become a chosen habitation of the Holy Spirit". After this the holy lad read without difficulty and understood the contents of books. And with an especial fervour he became immersed in prayer, not missing a single Divine-service. Already in childhood he imposed upon himself a strict fast, he ate nothing on Wednesdays and Fridays, and on the other days he sustained himself on bread and water.

In about the year 1328 the parents of the Monk Sergei resettled from Rostov to Radonezh. When their older sons married, Kirill and Maria shortly before their death accepted the monastic schema at the Khot'kov monastery of the Protection of the MostHoly Mother of God, not far from Radonezh. And later on, the older brother Stefan as a widower accepted monasticism at this monastery. Having buried his parents, Bartholomew together with his brother Stefan withdrew for wilderness-dwelling into the forest (12 versts from Radonezh). At first they made cells, and then a not-large church, and with the blessing of metropolitan Theognost, it was consecrated in the Name of the Mos tHoly Trinity. But soon, unable to bear the difficulties of life in the wilderness, Stefan left his brother and went on to the Moscow Theophany monastery (where he became close with the Monk Alexei, afterwards Metropolitan of Moscow – Comm. 12 February).      Bartholomew on 7 October 1337 accepted tonsure into monasticism from hegumen Mitrophan, taking the name of the holy Martyr Sergios (Comm. 7 October), and he set about the start of a new habitation to the glory of the Life-Originating Trinity. Suffering temptations and demonic apparitions, the Monk Sergei advanced from strength to strength. Gradually he became known to other monks, seeking his guidance. The Monk Sergei accepted all with love, and soon in the small monastery were gathered a brethren of twelve monks. Their experienced spiritual guide distinguished himself by an extraordinary love for work. With his own hands he built several cells, he carried water, he chopped wood, baked bread, sewed clothing, prepared food for the brethren and humbly took on other tasks. The Monk Sergei combined the heavy work with prayer, vigil and fasting. The brethren were amazed, that with such severe exertion the health of their guide did not deteriorate, but rather became all the more hearty. It was not without difficulty that they implored the Monk Sergei to accept being hegumen over the monastery. In 1354 the Volynsk bishop Athanasii consecrated the Monk a priest-monk and elevated him to the dignity of hegumen. Just as before at the monastery, monastic obediences were strictly fulfilled. With the expansion of the monastery grew also its needs. Often the monks had only scant food, but through the prayers of the Monk Sergei unknown people provided the necessities.      Reports about the exploits of the Monk Sergei became known even at Constantinople, and Patriarch Philotheos sent to the Monk a cross, a "paraman" [or "paramandia" – a monk's article of clothing, a four-cornered cloth tied with cords to the chest and worn beneathe other garb, and adorned with symbols of the Lord's Passion] and schema-robe in blessing for new deeds, and a grammota-document of blessing, in which the patriarch counselled the chosen of God to organise a coenobitic (life-in-common) monastery. The Monk set off with the Patriarchal missive to Saint Alexei, and received from him the counsel to introduce a strict manner of life-in-common. The monks began to grumble at the strictness of the monastic ustav-rule, and the Monk Sergei was compelled to forsake the monastery. At the River Kirzhach he founded a monastery in honour of the Annunciation of the MostHoly Mother of God. Matters at the former monastery went quickly into disarray, and the remaining monks recoursed to Saint Alexei, that he should get the saint to return.      The Monk Sergei unquestioningly obeyed the sainted-hierarch, and left in place of himself at the Kirzhachsk monastery his disciple, the Monk Roman.      Already during his lifetime the Monk Sergei had been vouchsafed a graced gift of wonderworking. He resuscitated a lad, at a point when the despairing father had given up on his only son as lost. Reports about the miracles worked by the Monk Sergei began quickly to spread about, and the sick began to come to him, both from the surrounding villages and also from remote places. And no one left from the Monk without receiving healing of infirmities and edifying counsel. Everyone gave glory for the Monk Sergei, and reverenced him on an equal with the ancient holy fathers. But human glory did not hold allure for the great ascetic, and as before he remained the example of monastic humility.      One time Saint Stephen, Bishop of Perm (Comm. 27 April), – who deeply revered the Monk Sergei, was on journey from his diocese to Moscow. The road-way passed off eight versts distant from the Sergiev monastery. Intending to visit the monastery on his return trip, the saint stopped, and having recited a prayer, he bowed to the Monk Sergei with the words: "Peace be to thee, spiritual brother". At this instant the Monk Sergei was sitting at refectory-meal with the brethren. In reply to the blessing of the sainted-hierarch, the Monk Sergei rose up, recited a prayer, and made a return blessing to Saint Stephen. Certain of the disciples, astonished at the extraordinary action of the Monk Sergei, hastened off to the indicated place, and became convinced of the veracity of the vision.      Gradually the monks began to witness also other similar actions. One time during Liturgy an Angel of the Lord served together with the Monk, but the Monk Sergei in his humility forbade anyone to tell about this before the end of his life on earth.      The Monk Sergei was connected with Saint Alexei by close bonds of spiritual friendship and brotherly love. Saint Alexei in his declining years summoned the Monk Sergei to him and besought him to accept to be Russian Metropolitan, but Blessed Sergei in humility declined to be primate.      The Russian Land at this time suffered under the Mongol-Tatar Yoke. Having gathered an army, Great-prince Dimitrii Ioannovich Donskoy went to monastery of the Monk Sergei to ask blessing in the pending struggle. The Monk Sergei gave blessing to two monks of his monastery to render help to the great-prince: the schema-monk Andrei (Oslyaba) and the schema-monk Aleksandr (Peresvet), and he predicted the victory for prince Dimitrii. The prophecy of the Monk Sergei was fulfilled: on 8 September 1380, on the feastday of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God, Russian soldiers gained a total victory over the Tatar hordes at Kulikovo Pole (Kulikovo Field), and set in place the beginning of the liberation of the Russian Land from the Mongol Yoke. During the time of the fighting the Monk Sergei together with the brethren stood at prayer and besought God to grant victory to the Russian forces.      For his angelic manner of life the Monk Sergei was granted an heavenly vision by God. One time by night Abba Sergei was reading the rule of prayer beneathe an icon of the Most Holy Mother of God. Having completed the reading of the canon to the Mother of God, he sat down to rest, but suddenly he said to his disciple, the Monk Mikhei (Comm. 6 May), that there awaited them a wondrous visitation. After a moment the Mother of God appeared accompanied by the holy Apostles Peter and John the Theologian. Due to the extraordinary bright light the Monk Sergei fell down, but the MostHoly Mother of God touched Her hands to him, and in blessing him promised always to be Protectress of his holy monastery.      Having reached old age, and foreseeing his own end six months beforehand, the Monk summoned the brethren to him and blessed as hegumen his disciple the Monk Nikon (Comm. 17 November), who was experienced in the spiritual life and obedience. In tranquil solitude the Monk reposed to God on 25 September 1392. On the eve beforehand the great saint of God summoned the brethren a final time and turned to them with the words of last-instruction: "Brethren, be attentive to yourselves. Have first the fear of God, purity of soul and love unhypocritical...".

© 1996-2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos.

Luke 6:17-23 

17And He came down with them and stood on a level place with a crowd of His disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear Him and be healed of their diseases,18 as well as those who were tormented with unclean spirits. And they were healed.19 And the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all. 20 Then He lifted up His eyes toward His disciples, and said: Blessed are you poor, For yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, For you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, For you shall laugh. 22 Blessed are you when men hate you, And when they exclude you, And revile you, and cast out your name as evil, For the Son of Man's sake. 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.

Galatians 5:22-6:2 

22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. 24And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

1Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted. 2 Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

neon moon || chapter 1 - broadcast me a joyful noise unto the times

A/N:  Disclaimer, I haven’t written fanfic since I was fourteen so please be gentle with me, friends

AO3 link

Fair warning that the only editing this has gone through has been proofreading!

Also, the first two chapters are largely exposition and setting up the various connections between Frankie and the MC (Natalia), but they will finally get to meet in chapter three!

Neon Moon summary: [starts three years after the events of the movie]

Single dad Francisco "Frankie" Morales and former Ph.D candidate Natalia Yevstigneyev-Diaz are trying their best. 

Alternatively: Frankie and the woman about to change his life keep missing each other, until they don't.

“Whoo-wee! Nice one, Diaz!” Benny said from where he’d just been knocked onto his back atop the sparring mats. 

 At her instructor’s praise, Natalia Diaz preened, making a show of taking her long dark wavy-curls out of her workout ponytail and flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Thank you, thank you, always happy to hear my badassery is increasing.”

 “I’d say perfecting. That was solid.”

 “Yeah, haven’t seen him go down that unexpectedly probably ever,” piped up a man with big, kind brown eyes whose name Natalia swore was Frankie. She’d only ever heard him called by his real name once or twice --- Benny usually greeted him as Fish.

 If Frankie was here, that meant the rest of Benny Miller’s military buddies would be trickling into the gym. Pity they seemed to be on time today— flipping Benny was fun, maybe he’d’ve given her a window to do it again. Sometimes if his buddies ran late he’d keep sparring with her past the self-defense session she’d paid for. 

 “It’s thanks to him and his lessons! Wouldn’t know where to begin without him.” Natalia hi-fived Benny from where he was on the floor, now sitting. “Thanks as always, Benny. See you Friday afternoon?”

 “Hell yeah!”

 “Awesome. Well, I’ll get out of your hair before the rest of the guys show up. Later Benny!” She nodded politely to Frankie just as she spotted the man she knew to be Benny’s older brother and...Pope? Santiago? again, she’d only run into these men in passing.

  ~.*~.*~.*~.*

Natalia Diaz’s early life read like an adventure, and in many ways, it had been. Her mother, Anna Diaz, was a first generation Mexican-American of Spanish, Mixtec, and Chinese background who met her father, then in medical school, while studying abroad in Russia. Her father, Gavril Yevstigneyev, was from Yakutsk of mixed Russian, Yakut, and Chuvash background. He was a doctor who gave up the possibility of an ultra-lucrative career to spend most of his life working as a medical officer in human rights organizations, and she was a research assistant in those same organizations.

 Born while her father was practicing in St. Petersburg, Natalia Gavrilovna Yevstigneyeva Diaz didn’t spend too long in one place. She may have been a dual citizen of the United States and Russia but she didn’t set foot in the United States until she was twelve years old, and her earliest concept of ‘home’ was Pakse, Laos. She was educated at international schools across Southeast Asia, and spoke Lao, Khmer, and Vietnamese in daily life depending on where the Yevstigneyev family was living, Russian at home, learned English and French at school, and her mother taught her enough Spanish to understand her abuela’s English-Spanish mix on birthday and Christmas phone calls.

 When it came time to graduate from secondary school - she graduated in Laos, ultimately  - she even applied to universities across Laos, Canada, Cambodia, France, The United States, Switzerland, China, Singapore, Australia, and Russia. At her parents’ insistence she cast her net far and wide. Except, with twenty-two acceptance letters and zero rejections, she almost wished she hadn’t.

 She studied at McGill University and through a combination of scholarships, her parents’ help, and her “waitressing” job (stripping job actually, and Natalia was damn proud of it and the crazy money it made, but knew her parents would flip out on her so she lied), she earned her B.A.s in linguistics with a minor in translation and interpretation, and anthropology.

 She had her pick of the litter as far as where she could settle post-grad: her dual citizenship made the US and Russia wide open to her, Canadian employers were offering to keep her in Canada, her parents still lived in Laos - six years in one place? That was a record for her folks! - and the NGO they were working for straight up offered her a job without her even sending an application. 

 There wasn’t a grad school on planet Earth that would’ve rejected her application.

 Natalia’s life should have been set forever. For a while, it was.

 After a gap year traveling Bhutan, Thailand, Indonesia, Mongolia, and completing the Trans-Siberian railway with her younger sister Mariya, who took a gap year between secondary school and university herself, Natalia prepared to conquer grad school….at motherfucking Yale!

 That same year, her parents and younger siblings (save Mariya who was studying at Yakutsk State University in their father’s home Russian Republic of Yakutia) moved to her mother’s home state of Texas. A part of Natalia felt bad for her eleven year old sister and the three year old twins out of some sense that her upbringing had been, objectively, the best possible. Natalia did not feel Russian, or Mexican, or American, or Laotian, or Cambodian, or Vietnamese, nor did she feel the need to. Borders were an arbitrary thing. People were people just with different languages, looks, and customs, and she believed she came to know that truth early in life because of her childhood as a third culture kid. 

 She understood why her parents made that decision though.

 In her first year of grad school, the Yevstigneyev Diaz siblings were twenty-two year old Natalia, nineteen-year-old Mariya, eleven-year-old Valentina, and two-year-old Alisa and her twin brother, the only boy in the family, Pavel. Alisa had been born partially deaf and their parents, as if they could react any other way, saw it not as a terrible thing to mourn over but as an opportunity to learn. A challenge did not equal a burden in their eyes. When she was two, however, they realized they needed to either move back to Russia or move to the United States.

 The Yevstigneyevs primarily worked and lived in Vietnam and Laos, and there was no singular Laotian or Vietnamese sign language, rather, localized sign languages. As Alisa grew from an infant to a toddler they decided they did not want to deprive her of Deaf culture, and thus, the decision to move to Texas was made.

 Just two years after relocating to Texas, tragedy struck the family.

 A car speeding through a red light killed Anna and Gavril on the way home from volunteering their time to teach Russian classes at the local Russian cultural center. Natalia, then twenty-four years old with a newly minted Masters from Yale and acceptances to three Ph.D programs, had to force out emails declining the offers, pack up her apartment, and move to Texas to raise her siblings.

 Abuela Rita instinctively offered to handle her grandchildren, but Natalia couldn’t possibly make her abuela (who she barely knew at that) raise three children again. Besides, her mother’s youngest sister still lived at home, and this was the same year Hurricane Harvey destroyed one of her uncle’s homes and he, his wife, and their children were also living in Abuela’s home...yeah, no. No, this had to be Natalia.

 It was Natalia or the state of Texas and like hell she was going to throw her three little siblings, two of them just four, and one of them deaf,  into the system. Alisa being able to communicate in ASL was so important to her parents...how could Natalia possibly let Alisa go into a system that wouldn’t care?

 And anyway, it wasn’t so bad. She used her fluency in Russian, Lao, Khmer, and French to work as a book translator. She’d even gone back to dancing four days a week for two reasons. A. You’d think speaking five languages fluently would mean she was making an assload of money, right? Wrong. and B. The inheritance and life insurance policies from her parents wouldn’t last forever and she had four college educations to finance. 

That was three years ago, and two and a half years before she started taking self-defense classes from Benny Miller. She’d only been working at an Austin strip club for about four months when one handsy patron reminded her that she needed a refresher on how to throw a punch.

 As for why she was Natalia Diaz now and not Natalia Yevstigneyeva? Well. She was still Natalia Yevstigneyeva-Diaz, but unless she was filling out legal papers, or at the Russian cultural center, it was just Diaz. Her mother’s last name was just easier for Austinites to pronounce right. You had to be at least a level six friend to unlock her tragic backstory and her full last name.

 Natalia had had everything going for her until one drunk driver took her parents, her Ph.D goals, her planned return to traveling the world, and even her name in one instant. 

 She wished she had it in her to be bitter but that would require her to have time to think about herself anymore. If it wasn’t taking ASL classes with Alisa, it was listening to Mariya complain about her job. If it wasn’t Valentina’s archery competitions, it was Pavel’s gymnastics meets. 

 (Yes, yes, she knew. How stereotypically Russian of them to have a kid in competitive gymnastics. It wasn’t her idea! Pavel loved it and when he begged his big sister to be allowed more than one class a week...she dared anybody to say no to that face.)

Any Natalia time she did have was too precious to spend being bitter, she decided.

   ~.*~.*~.*~.*

“Natasha! Nataaaaaaaasha….NATASHA!” 

 “Wha!” Thud! “Fuck. Oww.”

 Natalia groaned from where she’d fallen into a startled pile on the living room floor, staring up at the ceiling and turned her head to shoot a glare at Mariya.

 “Marusya, one day, you’re going to scare me awake to actual death.”

 “That’s impossible.” Valentina said from where she sat at the dining table typing up a paper for school. “If you’re scared to literal death you can’t be scared awake because you’ll be dead. Dead people can’t be awake.”

 “Unless she’s a zombie, Valya!” Shouted Pavel from his room down the hall.

 “Pasha’s got a point.” Mariya said, to which Natalia grabbed her foot and yanked hard, making her shriek as she fell against the couch. “Oof. Anyway, you’re going to be late for work if you don’t hurry up.”

 Natalia checked her watch and let out a swear under her breath. “I really need to not spar with Benny on work nights. Hey, Valya-” she sat up on the floor and whirled around to face her middle sister. “Do I need to drop you off for babysitting anywhere tonight?”

 Valentina shook her head. “Abuela’s picking me up to take me to Mr. Morales’. I’m watching Daniela.” Mr. Morales - whoever that was - lived near Abuela and her taking Valentina to his house gave her some ‘Valone time’ she liked to say.

 Natalia peeled herself off the floor and made her way to her bedroom, stopping by Alisa’s on the way. She grabbed the purple narwhal plushie that lived in a little basket attached to her door - the Get Alisa’s Attention Narwhal - and gently tossed it at Alisa, and when it landed in her lap Alisa tossed it back to Natalia, kept her hands free, and said “I didn’t forget.”

 “Good. If you’re good at the dentist tomorrow morning, I’ll buy you ice cream after.”

 “Isn’t that the opposite of what you should do after the dentist?”

 “So you don’t want ice cream?” “That’s not what I said!”

 Natalia laughed and stepped far enough into Alisa’s room to ruffle her hair and then said, “Be good. Masha’s in charge while I’m at work.”

  ~.*~.*~.*~.*

 “Thought you were day shift on Wednesdays, Natasha!” A black woman with her hair in box braids — Jess, stage name Phoenix — said, throwing her arm around Natalia when she first got to work. 

 “Nah, I talked to Paris, got my hours changed around, remember? Gosh, it’s like you don’t remember everything I ever say to you.” 

 Jess stuck her tongue out and muttered, “Bitch,” before smooching Natalia’s cheek.

 Natalia shoved Jess off of her with a giggle. “Go finish getting ready, ya crazy.” She sat down in front of one of the available mirrors to touch up her makeup before she was officially working, then addressed Jess again. “My 11-8 days are now Sunday and Monday. Wednesday, Saturday, I’m here with you 8 til 4, baybeeeee.”

 “Mm, good call. Wine Wednesday.”

 Half price wine meant more cash for dancers. 

 “Needs more body glitter,” Natalia said in her best Christopher Walken impression, before unscrewing the cap of her body glitter to shiny herself up. 

 “Now in your Zoya voice!”

 “Needs more body glitter,” Natalia repeated, this time, in her stage persona’s stronger Russian accent.

 The accent helped to further distinguish between Zoya the performer and who Natalia was offstage. It also wasn’t exactly offensive, either, because it was just Natalia exaggerating the accent she naturally had and just making it consistently Russian. It was a mess otherwise. Natalia and Mariya...talked funny. Their accents were kind of impossible to place because of how they learned English and which languages they first learned to actually speak in.

 At first listen, their international school education would hint at American- ish . But listen closely and certain vowels come out like an Aussie or a Canadian, courtesy of international school teachers from those countries. Listen for another moment and you’ll hear that Natalia’s tongue, specifically, never learned to consistently make certain sounds that English has that Russian, Lao, Vietnamese and Khmer just don’t. Natalia’s H’s came out harsh courtesy of her Russian father. And both Natalia and Mariya had a habit of dropping articles when telling their younger siblings to ‘close window’ or ‘feed dog and cat.’

For the most part, as Natalia tried to explain to anybody who asked about her accent, English was a language for the classroom. They spoke exclusively Russian in the home and out in ‘the wild’ spoke the local language. Yakutsk was a closer flight from Laos, Cambodia, or Vietnam than Austin was so if they visited any grandparents for Christmas it was their babushka and dedushka in Russia.

 Returning to the US permanently never was the plan, remember. It was only a decision they made for Alisa to live somewhere with a standard sign language -- and the only reason, Anna confessed to Natalia once, that they didn’t go back to Russia, was because Natalia had recently come out as bisexual.

  “We worried for Valya and the twins. What if they also grow up and realize they aren’t straight? The way it is in Russia for people like you...your father and I love Russia more than the United States. But we love our kids more than Russia.”

 She hated how vivid that conversation was in her head. There were some truly beautiful moments with her mother that had already faded from memory. How unfair of her brain to let things like holidays, birthdays, and her mother’s hugs slip. 

“Drive home safe, Jess.” Natalia bid her friend farewell a little after four the next morning, kissing her on the cheek before she unlocked her own car. If she got up to 70 and stayed there, she’d be home in time to count her tips, shower, and fix breakfast for the kiddos before school and in Alisa’s case, the dentist.

~.*~.*~.*~.*

 “Stand still Pasha,” Natalia said as she gently bopped the seat of her baby brother’s pants to knock the glitter off them. “Your butt looks like a glitter cannon exploded right next to it.”

 Pavel giggled and pointed out, “It’s your fault there’s always glitter in your bed.”

 “You shouldn’t lay down in my bed for naps after I’ve woken you up for school anyway. Especially not after you’ve already got your clothes on, you dingus.”

 “ Heeeey, that’s mean!” Pavel pouted.

 “Not if I’m saying it with love. Which I am.” Natalia stood up and pressed a kiss to the top of her brother’s head. “Okay, your butt’s as unsparkly as it's gonna get.”

 “I don’t see what wrong with having a sparkly butt anyway.” Pavel grumbled.

 “Now run along to the bus stop with the other kids. Be good at school, learn lots, I love you kid.”

 “Love you too , Natashe-!” the -nka! came muffled as Pavel had darted out the door to run down to the bus stop. 

 Natalia sipped on her coffee and watched out the window as her brother darted across the field to the complex’s mailbox pavilion to make sure he joined the other children safely. Satisfied he had, she turned away from the window to trudge back to the kitchen and refill her coffee and begin her vanilla work for the day before she had to wake Alisa for the dentist. On today’s docket? Trying to get through editing at least the first third of her Russian translation of the next book in the hottest new YA series.

 There was nothing Natalia wanted more than a nap but she was already cutting her deadline close. Right on schedule was the same as being behind in the literary translation world. If she wasn’t so ahead of schedule she was getting bored then she was nearing panic mode. 

 Logically she knew that only she felt that way. Her boss didn’t, or at least never felt the need to express to her that he did, but just herself was enough to put the pressure on from beginning to end of a project.

 It had benefited her in school. Not so much in her career.

 A life in academia as a linguistics scholar and researcher would have suited her better. The universe didn’t consider that when it let a drunk driver kill her parents and leave her three siblings to raise and Mariya’s academic dreams to finance.

do not reblog this.

SO YOUR LOCAL RUSSIAN FOUND HER BEST GIRL IN ARKNIGHTS. 

Some things that I learned about Rosa/Poca the Polar Bear Waifu (for me) from theReddit things and which I will change a bit based on my portrayal and my knowledge of Russian history since Ursus IS Russia in Arknights. I only read Reddit’s posts and I also added some of my personal thoughts. Everything is a combo of what I found and what I will put into my portrayal of the polar bear and heavy weight sniper. 

1. She was the student council president in 4th Boris High school. A funny thing: in Russia, student councils do not exist. However, if we’re judging what Arknights tries to show through nobility and such, the student council is more likely to be a government-type. A starting position in the government to make nobles go further in the chain. 

2. Rosa’s full name is Rostova Natalia Andreyevna. Not Natalia Rostov Andreyevich. She is a female and her name would be written differently. Her name Rosa/Poca is pronounced rosA with underlining the last ‘a’. The same goes for Зима/Zima, as it’s pronounced zimA. 

3. Unlike Zima’s group, Rosa is supposed to be 18 by the time she joins the fight with Rhodes Island. High school in Russia is 10th and 11th grade where student can be either 17-18 at the time of graduation. Taking into consideration the unknown period of time they spent in the school enclosed and forced to fight each other because of starvation, Rosa must be 18 when she’s in RI. Plus, when she joins the fight. It’s been a YEAR since she came with Ursus group, but she wasn’t taking part in missions before that point. 

4. SUI.CIDE MENTION WARNING !  Rosa’s token is a paper cutter. This is a direct correlation with her attempts at suicide before joining the fight at Rhodes Island. 

5. If you think about it, the biggest reason why Rosa probably didn’t join the fight earlier is because of how deeply traumatized she was when she joined Rhodes Island with the group (since it’s said they joined TOGETHER). I’d assume that she was carefully watched by the Rhodes Island crew due to her suicidal state and only when she got better and proved that she will not do anything rash, she was allowed to pick up a weapon and also join the fight. 

6. Rosa’s survivor’s guilt and guilt towards Zima’s group is IMMENSE. It’s turned into self-hatred as she looks back at what she did (as a perpetrator in stealing the food from ‘commoners’ as a ‘nobility’s leader’). She was spared by Zima and Rosa remembers it vividly and every single time she looks at Gummy, Istina, and Zima - she feels intense guilt and a wish to protect them now that she knows she did wrong (even if it was for survival). 

7. Rosa’s different hair color locks are probably a way to signify her respect (?) to Zima and Istina: Red and Blue. Or they can be just a thing signifying the blood and the winter, who knows. I don’t know what that can mean. Maybe it’s her heterochromia eye colors as well. 

8.  Another thing, the hat that Rosa wears is similar to hats that police officers wear in Russia. Fluffy with a “signature” / emblem of the district.  

9. She found her weapon while strolling around Chernobog, judging by the information given. I don’t know how accurate it is, but for now, it stays that way. As a noble lady, it’s a really weird weapon choice, but it’s a proof of her abandoning her nobility status in Rhodes Island once the ‘survival’s game’ happened. 

10. She’s very polite and educated. Her education stands above ‘commoners’ since she was a noble. The air of maturity beyond her years are a sign of that. 

11. Some of the things written on her clothes prove she’s a Polar Bear: 

Полярные - Northern - Polar. 

U. Martimus / Ursus - might have correlation with Marxism or smth like that. Idk, I need to revisit some studying about 20th century Russia because Ursur seems to be that state of affairs. 

Chordata is a classifcation of animals who have tails (thanks Kae!).  Mammalia - probably Mammals.  Carnivora - Carnivorous - eating meat.  Ursidae - probably Ursur / Bear meaning. 

So, yes, I’m playing Rosa on this blog as well and once there will be more information, I’ll be updating my knowledge and my portrayal on her. 

10+36+4 julian/gn reader/lucio maybe? love your writing so much btw 💞💖💝💕💗💓💘❤️

Hello my love!! My sunshine!! My sunflower!! I hope you are still in the mood for some Julian/You/Lucio action because do I have something wonderful for you.

A bit of backstory: I have always been so fascinated and in love with and fucking s o f t for Russian diminutive names. 

So that’s what I wanted to play around with, here. Some soft boy business™ where Julian tries out some soft, wonderful nicknames for Lucio who at first is absolutely horrified but then comes around when he realises the meaning behind using them.

EDIT: I’ve been educated and assisted by the absolutely wonderful @help-devorak-stole-my-heart who answered every single one of my questions about Russian diminutives and suffixes and intimate and familiar names. I learned that the correct forms of Lucio’s names would be Lyudya or Lyusya for friends, and Lyudochka or Lyusenka for parents or lovers in more intimate situations (HOW COOL IS THAT !!!!!!! Can you imagine Julian pulling Lucio close and just sighing Lyudochka into his ear? hnggggg). I’ve adjusted the names in this accordingly, so if you see a slightly different version floating around from earlier reblogs, thats why!

**

Anyway, IT’S DAY 6 BUT REALLY DAY 7 BECAUSE I’M FUCKIN LATE A G A I N OF POLY WEEK!

[Day One | Day Two | Day Three | Day Four | Day Five]

Lucio/You/Julian. Gender-neutral reader, no pronouns used, genitals not specified. Lemon.

During a soft evening in bed together, you take control of your two bickering boys, and Julian trials out some new affectionate names for Lucio, who immediately hates them. Lucio/Julian/You sandwich. Julian gets you off with his mouth while Lucio fucks him from behind. Sleepy cuddles after. Lucio eventually doesn’t entirely hate the names. 2721 words.

Prompts: “I want them to hear us, maybe then they’ll get the message” and “I want to hear you say it, slut.”

**

Lucio exhales into your ear, the noise a strange mix of a whine and a growl that only he has ever seemed to have perfected. His hands are roaming over your trembling body, stretched out along the bed beneath him. The insistent press of his cock against your thigh as he grinds softly into you, as he lets out his impatient little noises, already has your cheekbones flushed, your mouth dry from the thirst he is drawing from you.

“I’m here! I’m here—” Julian’s voice is hurried, a little pitched, though even if he hadn’t announced himself it would have been evident from the stumble, thunk, curse that followed as he moved for the bed.

Lucio exhales again, entirely a growl this time, and pulls back to throw Julian a sneer. “Next time you should try taking the long way to my rooms!”

Julian quirks an eyebrow as he drops himself down onto the bed beside you. He places his hands behind his head and settles in with a devilish grin.

“No one likes a pouter, Lyusenka,” he returns. He turns his head toward you, winking.

Lucio shifts above you, rolling his eyes. “I told you not to call me that.”

“You call me ‘Jules’,” Julian defends, his still-there grin showing he is losing no steam and actually having a pretty fantastic time. He nods to you. “And your ‘pet’ is laid out beneath you. Why can’t I have a lovely nickname for you, too?”

“Because the ‘nickname’ is no shorter than my actual name. What’s the point?”

“Oh ho!” Julian sticks his bottom lip out in a mocking pout, then rolls over to press his lips to your ear. “I think someone is a little sangry.”

You smirk and turn your gaze to Lucio as the doctor takes your earlobe between his teeth and rolls it gently, along with his entire body along the length of yours as he sidles closer. Indeed, Lucio was sex starved and angry about it. Always so impatient to get his gratification in any form.

Just as Julian’s hand begins to work its way under your clothes, and just as you release a quiet and content little sigh, Lucio smacks the hand away. He leans back over you, hands to either side of your head, and grinds against your thigh with much the same impatient sigh as he had before Julian had arrived.

“Lucio?” You ask. He makes a noise that seems vaguely like he heard you, his movements not ceasing. “Would you let me be in charge today?”

His body gives such a violent shudder that you think, just for a moment, he has already come,  straight into his slacks. And his shoulders are so tight, and he is still for so long afterward, neither of which do much to change your mind.

But then he lifts his head, and you see that wicked glint in his eye, and his entire body rolls against yours, letting you feel his still very-much stiff and aching cock as he leans into your neck.

“As you wish,” he purrs.

“But we have to be quiet today,” you tell him. “I don’t want people to hear us again. No servants, no guests.”

Lucio grins at your demands, teeth glinting as he pushes the hair from your face.

“Well I want them to hear us. I want them to know exactly who my lovers are, exactly what you do to me any time you open those perfect fucking lips of yours.”

You know by now there is no point in arguing with him. Lucio is a man who needs to brag, who needs to parade himself or others, comfort himself that your love is real by showing it to the world.

So instead of arguing, you nod for him to get off. There’s a slight downturn to his lips. He eyes you for a moment, as though reconsidering his choice, before sitting back on his feet to wait for you.

“Ilya,” you murmur. You turn your gaze toward him, watch the excited flush make its way over his nose and cheekbones as you bite your lip. “Come closer.”

He scrambles to do so, his eyes wide as he settles between your parted thighs. Lucio has to shuffle back to accommodate Julian’s long body, putting him even further from you. You eye is downturned lips as they become more pronounced; you know you could call him out on his pout, but it’s so much more delightful when he thinks he’s not being attended to at all.

Keeping your eyes locked with Lucio’s, a small quirk to your lips, you address Julian again. “Do you want to play?”

Julian laughs, leaning forward to nuzzle against your jaw. “Oh ho. My love, my little kotenok, you know I always do.”

“Can you make me feel good with that wonderful mouth of yours?”

He hums into you, placing a single kiss where your jaw and ear meet before murmuring, “Anything you ask for.”

He kisses down your body in long, wet kisses that leave each patch of skin he finds—and he finds every patch that he can—damp and shivering from the light chill of the night’s air. His hands follow the trail of his lips, smoothing down your chest, your stomach, your hips, praising each part of you he touches. Lucio, who hasn’t let himself so much as blink while keeping his gaze locked with yours, shifts impatiently at the foot of the bed.

“Ilya?” You ask. Julian murmurs a response, and you dig your hand in his hair as he moves aside your clothing to kiss the patch of skin just above where you want him. “Lyusenka is pouting.”

Julian laughs into your skin, the sound a delightful lilt that rolls his entire body. He tilts his head up to look at you, his fingertips fiddling with your clothes to strip you bare as he speaks.

“Lyusenka isn’t used to being left out of the games,” he replies. His tongue darts out to lick a hot little line up the inside your thigh, and you let out a soft moan as your gaze flickers back up to Lucio.

“I won’t have you both using that ridiculous name,” he seethes. Though it’s more of a grumble, and you don’t miss the way his bottom lip sticks out a little more than usual as he glances off.

“Well, it just so happens that tonight is the one night where what you want doesn’t seem to matter,” Julian counters, then he ads to you, “My love, may I?”

His mouth is hovering just above where you want him, so close you can feel every moment of every hot little breath he exhales, the shake of his lips as he waits for your answer. You retract and extend your fingers in his hair, causing him to close his eyes and purr.

“Lyusenka,” you murmur. He refuses to look at you, so you say again, so softly, “Lucio.” He looks, and you can see the shift in his body as his gaze rakes down yours, settling on Julian, waiting so desperately to begin devouring you with his mouth.

It is this sight, somehow, that finally makes Lucio shift a little closer, to reach out and place a hand on your hip, his fingertips curling into the feel of your bare skin.

“What is it you need from me, pet?” He asks.

“Will you let me watch as you make Ilya writhe on your cock, while he pleasures me with his mouth?”

That delightfully wicked glint finally returns to Lucio’s eyes, his teeth showing as he grins his predatory grin at you.

“Anything you ask for,” he murmurs.

Things move so quickly, then. Julian opens his eyes to look up to you, and when you breathe out and nod to him, he immediately descends on you with his mouth. Of the two, Julian is the most knowing when it comes to your body; he knows every way his tongue should curve around you, every spot to press his fingers into to make you sigh and cry out. You know he would eat you out for hours, get you off as many times as you wanted if only you would let him, but somehow Lucio’s petulance and all of your duties to the city get in the way.

Lucio himself has already returned from the dresser, a bottle of lubricant in hand as he shifts Julian’s pants down with the other. Julian trembles against you, a movement followed soon by his long, high-pitched whine at the feel of the lubricant sliding down between his cheeks.

“Oh, Ilya,” you sigh to him. He looks up to you, pulling away for a moment to gain his breath. His eyes are wide, lips parted, skin wet around them. You crook your fingers in his hair again, and his lips twist into a wicked little grin as he leans into your touch.

“So good to me, my love,” he groans. “What did I ever do to deserve such a wondrous gift?”

Lucio lets out a groan of agreement, your eyes flickering up to catch him with his cock in his gloved hand, while his other works at relaxing and stretching Julian’s hole. You can tell each time his fingers crook in just the right place or stretch Julian a little further, because the doctor releases a tiny little whimper between your legs, the sound sending sensation into all the right places.

After a few minutes of pressing and coaxing, Lucio shifts his hips closer to press the head of his cock against Julian. You pull Julian’s head up by his hair so you can watch as Lucio pushes his way in, slow and agonising and just the way that makes Julian’s jaw drop and his eyes roll into the back of his head. It is by far, your favourite look on him, and one that has your thighs trembling and abdomen clenching with the threat of a too-soon orgasm.

“O-oh! Ah—Lucio—Lyusya—” Julian’s groans are intermixed with incoherent babble, languages you both know and don’t as he presses back against Lucio to try to take his cock a little deeper, a little faster.

“Yes!” You hiss the word out through your teeth, followed by a cry as Julian’s fingers hit the most perfect fucking spot inside of you.

Once he is fully seated, Lucio wastes no time in making Julian cry out, his fingers pressing into Julian’s hips, leaving little bruises as the doctor squirms and whimpers against you. The sight of Lucio’s head thrown back, his jaw twitching as Julian clenches around him and whimpers and begs for his cock to be deeper, harder, more, has your entire body shivering, your mind near delirious.

You come so suddenly, so much faster than you had anticipated, that the world seems to spot black for a few moments. You gasp and cry out as your orgasm crashes into you, all memories of commanding yourselves into silence banished from your mind, your fingers clenching Julian’s hair tight enough to pull strands, stopping his mouth from moving from its exact location as you buck and squirm against it.

Lucio laughs at your cries and screams, the sounds seeming to rejuvenate him and bring back the pieces of his dominant self he couldn’t seem to quite push down far enough.

“Oh pet, louder, I know you can be louder!”

You clench your jaw as Julian’s mouth—locked in place, not having stopped any of its attentions and affections on you—brings another wave of pleasure crashing into you. You arch up into him, your cries almost completely drowning out Julian’s own as Lucio pulls the doctor away from you and back against his chest.

Both arms are wrapped around Julian’s heaving chest, locking him in place as Lucio nuzzles into Julian’s neck. Then, his eyes move downward, and his gaze flicks up to lock with yours, and the haze of your orgasm has cleared just enough for you to see the glint there.

“Poor Ilya has been so neglected,” Lucio croons. Your eyes drop down to where Julian’s cock is bobbing, red and hot and thick, against his lower abdomen. You lick your lips, and Lucio groans out. “Be nice to him, pet. He was so nice to you.”

You are too starved for the taste of Julian to care about how quickly Lucio switched you all again, that you had seemingly had all of 10 seconds of control before he had taken it from you again.

You drop to your stomach in front of Julian, immediately taking him in your hand and licking a clean line up the underside of him.

He sighs as you take the tip of him into your lips, sucking gently then hollowing your cheeks out to bob your head down onto him. “Ah! Oh—ho, my love, yes—such a wonderful mouth, such a wonderful tongue—”

You suck a little harder, pulling on him with the movement while cupping his sack. He twitches against your tongue, and the rocking of his hips thanks to Lucio’s furious movements sends him a little further in.

You pull off with a gasp, leaving little strings of spit between your lips and the tip. You lick them away, taking the salty taste of his pre-cum along with them.

“Please!” Julian groans. His fingers are flexing, trying to get to you to pull your mouth back onto his cock, but Lucio’s arm merely tighten around him. “Please, my love, please—”

Lucio cuts in then, his voice sharp and low as he nuzzles almost affectionately into Julian’s hair. “Not please. I want to hear you say it, my perfect little slut.”

“P-please let me come, my love,” Julian groans to you, his hooded gaze dropping to find yours, pleading. “Please suck me off, please swallow every drop—”

He is cut off by his own groan, his body giving a quiet shudder as you take him back into your mouth and he comes barely a moment later, the salty taste of him hitting your tongue as you softly moan against him, suck every drop from his throbbing cock.

You pull off with a soft pop, noticing that Lucio’s movements have stilled. You glance up to him, curious, only to find he is already looking at you. Keeping you captive with his gaze, Lucio runs a hand through Julian’s hair, places a kiss to his temple, then lets him crumple onto the bed beside you.

“Come here, pet.”

He meets you halfway, smashing his lips to yours while both hands tangle in your hair and half-removed clothes. His tongue sweeps into your mouth, tasting Julian’s seed, swallowing every soft moan and whimper you give him as he grinds against your leg, his own seed spurting over your thighs and stomach a few moments later.

Closing your eyes, you release a soft sigh into his mouth. His movements slow, and you allow him to lower you to the bed beside Julian, whose hooded gaze is watching you with an affection that makes your chest tight.

“That was hardly fair,” Julian murmurs to you. “Lyusenka let you have control for barely a few moments.”

Lucio shifts in close behind you, tugging you back into his chest with his golden arm. The claws stroke lightly up and down your arm, making you shiver.

“Unfortunately,” he says, voice low. “There are some things you just can’t change about me.”

“No arguments about the name?” You ask.

Lucio smiles into your shoulder before pressing a soft kiss there, his lips lingering there as he speaks. “No, my love. No arguments about the name.”

Julian, eyes now closed and jaw a little slack in his half-sleep state, murmurs his appreciation. You reach out to push his hair out of his patched eye, and he brings a hand to your wrist to nuzzle into your hand before kissing your palm.

“Good night, my loves,” he murmurs, before his chest settles into the steady rise-and-fall of sleep.

You and Lucio follow soon after, and the last thing you hear before the peaceful darkness settles, right when he thinks you have already been taken and cannot hear him, is the Count murmuring a soft I love you into your shoulder.

Adam Prompts

Monster Hunting

Just because it wasn’t destined didn’t mean it shouldn’t die. He felt the shock run up his arm as metal met bone but it did not weaken his grip. His shoulder and wrist would ache the next day and he would be nagged for poor form from his tutors. Right now, that didn’t matter. The thing with fur and teeth fell heavily into the leaves and twigs of the forest floor. Only half the battle was done. He sheathed the sword, taking a single moment to feel the exhaustion that very almost set him trembling. Then he gritted his teeth, set his jaw and grabbed two of the creature’s limbs. He began dragging it slowly, the moonlight luckily bright enough to illuminate the winter woods. Soon, the sound of the rushing river crept in. He made his way to the bank, sweat trickling down his back and into the waistband of his jeans. With a final heave, he rolled the body into the water and it was borne away. Time to go home.

The walk was familiar. The woods did not frighten him, even though he knew exactly what they held. He also knew he was the most frightening thing in here. He had fought and had won against so many creatures. Things with teeth, things with claws, things with malice, things with instinct. He could not remember a time he had felt something as mundane as fear. Maybe he didn’t have the capacity. Maybe it has been carved out of him, along with so many other things. In being the defender of humanity, he had had his own taken. So it goes. So was right. How could he miss what he had never had?

______________________________________________________________

Being given his first sword 

It was far too heavy. So much heavier than even the best of the wooden ones he had been working with. He almost immediately let the tip hit the floor in surprise, only managing to just about catch it. It shone, not with any supernatural light, but with the glow of well forged metal and bright spring sunlight. It wasn’t a birthday present, they didn’t do birthdays, but it felt like it marked something all the same. Age? An intent? Something confirming he couldn’t back out? He wasn’t sure. His young mind only knew its gravity.

Later, in bed, he draws it out again, laying it on the covers. Now it was lit by moonlight. It didn’t seem as brilliant here. The edge seemed sharper. It didn’t look like a toy or something from a fairy story. It looked like a weapon used to kill people. It looked deadly. He could see now that it would also bite the hand that wielded it, if they didn’t learn fast enough. Bruised knuckles against the hand guard, cut shins, aching arms. 

He didn’t love his first sword. Not yet. For a long time. For a while, it represented nothing but endless days of physical labour, of a future he couldn’t escape, of every weird thing about his life. He hadn’t learnt to love the ache yet, hadn’t learnt to love what he could find, in absence of anything else. For now it was just a sword.

_______________________________________________________________

Training sessions 

It being pretend didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Even gentle swords still left bruises. Hard falls still rocked his bones. Chain mail could still graze skin and let’s face it, his tutors didn’t exactly go easy on him. But it hurting didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy it. His only options were to hate it or to love it as it certainly wasn’t going away, so he chose to love it. The heat and sweat that came from exerting himself. The joy that came from the simple act of your body obeying you perfectly. Even the small sharp shocks of pain, reminding him he was alive. Most of all it was the knowledge that he was getting better, this was making him better. Who didn’t like to be the best at everything?

Nowadays, his training sessions didn’t exactly challenge him. He had outstripped every adult on the commune by time he was fourteen in terms of swordsmanship. His hand to hand combat caught up once his growth spurt hit. He still sparred of course, but sometimes it felt like his partners were only just a step up from a mannequin. That was the main reason he patrolled - well, that and the immediate danger monsters posed to human life obviously. No better training than things that actually wanted to kill you but were not mandated by fate to do so. It gave you the sense of security that fostered confidence while not removing the risk he could lose a limb. Balance. 

Which, speaking of, he did lack in some areas. His intellectual training had not gone nearly so well. He found it hard to sit still, to think and be quiet. When he managed to focus, he learned lessons easily but getting him to that point was a battle in of itself. The irony was, of course, that he was actually doing rather well in his lessons. But he had no basis for comparison nor any other pupils to fail with him. When you were raised with the expectation of perfection, anything less was an automatic failure. Adam didn’t like to fail.

No, scratch that, he didn’t know how to fail. How not to feel the burning pit of shame suddenly take root in his stomach and blacken the world around him. He knew logically not everyone felt like this - how could he learn that? How could he achieve such lightness? And should this even be a skill he learnt? Maybe accepting small failures was indeed, the first step to failing the big things, the things that mattered.

If there was one thing he was not allowed to do, it was fail at the big thing.

_______________________________________________________________

First time being part of the outside world 

He clung to David’s hand, eyes wide and round. He didn’t know there could be so many people in the world. Old people. Young people. Black people. White people. Rich people. Poor people. Rude, polite. Laughing, serious, tall, short, fat, thin. Of course he had seen many of these types back at the commune, they were a mixed bunch, but never had he seen the sheer number and diversity combine like this. And they were loud. He almost wanted to clap his hands over his ears. He didn’t, instead determinedly eavesdropping on every conversation he could, desperate to know about each and every person that passed.

Who were they? What did they love, what did they hate? What were they doing in town? What had they just bought? What were their families like? Did they have sons like him? He didn’t have the faintest idea what normal people did and so that mundane life seemed as exotic as if it had come from another universe altogether.

Toys shone in store windows like gold in Aladdin’s cave. Sweet smells came from bakeries and smells so delicious his stomach rumbled came from restaurants with names he couldn’t pronounce. Posters covered walls, promising action movies, romcoms, horror. Adam had never seen a movie - training videos just didn’t count. This world was impossibly bright with too much to learn in it. He felt over-awed, every nerve jangling. He held on to David’s hand tight enough to leave red impressions of small fingers on the skin. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be in this world or without it entirely.

_______________________________________________________________

Destiny vs what Adam wants

He wanted to go to parties and kiss girls. He wanted to learn how to dance and drink too much and be hungover the next day. He wanted to scrape his knees playing football. He wanted to have pathetic, stupid fights where nobody was at risk of dying. He wanted to have hobbies - photography or video games or some stupid sport. He wanted to excel at PE because he was good at it, not because his blood dictated he be fit. He wanted to read fantasy novels and not have shivers down his spine. Hell, he wanted to watch horror movies and be scared.

What did he want when he grew up? Well. He didn’t know. He explored images in his mind and none of them fit. He couldn’t imagine himself living to be an adult. Name one hero that lived to that age. Want was out of the picture. So instead, he tried on lifestyles he saw elsewhere.

Him, with kids. With a house and a wife and a dog. He’d have a boring job but a family that loved him. They’d go camping or on holidays and he’d go to parent evenings and tut at grades and drink instant coffee.

Him, with a girlfriend. They explored the world together, had painfully cool jobs. They had friends that read the New Yorker and dyed their hair. He’d get tattoos and smoke weed and read novels by obscure russian authors.

Him, in university. Studying history. Late nights revising, the taste of energy drinks and cheap beer. Making friends he would never speak to again. Talking to professors, making lectures, attending seminars hung over.

Him as a detective. Him as a cleaner. Him as a librarian. Him as a football star. A hundred possibilities, each one exactly as unrealistic as the next. Each unattainable. Each destined to stay as what they were, a story. Not his story at all.

The Gift

Written for the @yoilitmag (Third Issue).

.

Drip.

Drip. Drip.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Yuuri tried to ignore the saliva trickling down his shoulder that only he could feel. One’s first instinct would usually be to jump away from the source of the disgusting matter - or scream, whichever came first. He certainly did, as a child, but no one really understood him.

That said, though, Yuuri never really had a normal childhood.

It was unnerving, to say the least, how he even got used to all this in the first place-- that is to say, he never did. He remembered how he could only sit dully on the floor as his mother cried and begged the temple priest to “please exorcise the living demons out of this child” while hugging him so tight, he thought he’d lose his own living breath instead.

Not a good memory to look back on.

He’d learned to keep quiet in middle school - certainly no one would think any better of a plain, bespectacled boy who could see… things he shouldn’t see. Back then, he was called a handful of names, each as hurtful as the other. Crying only made things worse; besides, the “things,” for some reason, enjoyed seeing him in tears.

By high school, Yuuri was practically nonexistent in his class, aside from the occasional rumor that he was a ghost and that he could curse people - funny how their assumptions were both correct and far off at the same time. He whiled away his time in the library, studying the creatures that bothered him and using what he learned to his advantage. He had always been an observant boy; adapting came easier to him than to most.

Still, he wished he didn’t have this “gift.” Not that wishes ever came true, anyway.

Sighing, Yuuri finished his water in a few gulps and put the glass down with a heavy thud. The startled black blob with a single eye distanced itself before letting out an unnaturally high-pitched squeal, which he pretended not to notice. These types tended to leave him after five minutes of no attention.

He asked for the bill after that.

Researching Russia’s yokai sounded like a good idea right now. It always helped to be prepared.

 .

 The rusalka did not at all resemble its likeness in pictures.

For starters, it was a male, albeit with long hair. Looked like a female, but not quite.

The first thing Yuuri thought as he ran away was that he shouldn’t have consulted Wikipedia in the first place.

In his twenty-three years of life, he’d never had the unpleasant experience of turning people down, even more so nonhuman beings that are apparently after his heart. He remembered Takeshi joking about what he’d do if he ended up with a yokai lover someday. Yuuri couldn’t help but chuckle inwardly at the brief memory; Takeshi and Yuuko were the only two people who even befriended him at all. Good people, they really were.

This predicament, he thought next, must have been his punishment for not having been a more sociable person. Maybe he should have confessed to Victor Nikiforov or something when he had the chance - he didn’t know.

The third thing he thought as he fell on the pavement and the rusalka pounced on him was that he was going to die. A relief in itself, but not quite.

None of it was.

 .

 A cool breeze awakened Yuuri from his slumber. He instinctively put an arm over his eyes; even the faintest light hurt. As he gingerly sat himself up on the grass, the claw marks on his forearm began to itch.

The creature after his life was gone for now, at least. Great.

It didn’t take him long to regain his bearings; granted, he always had to keep himself on guard for so long now, it was almost as easy as feeding himself.

Yuuri was not prepared for what came next, however.

Before him stood what seemed to look like an old two-storey dacha with slate roof tiles and a varnished wood exterior, surrounded by a well-maintained garden of white flowers. A wooden door with iron lattice-work served as the main entrance. The whole sight was very much out of place, located smack dab in between various high-rise apartments for some reason.

It felt as if he stepped into a totally different dimension, altogether.

Yuuri carefully approached the house, peering into the windows apprehensively. It was only after ascertaining that no one was in that he let himself in.

The interior smelled of a mixture of old wood and light mildew, the kind that reminded him of the local temple back at home. As he ventured deeper inside, he was greeted by the sight of circular shelves of books, with sunlight filtering through a dome made of stained glass. It was eerily quiet, yet comforting at the same time.

Maybe too quiet.

Following his best judgment, Yuuri slowly backed away once more. If past experience has taught him well, it wouldn’t do to stay too long in suspicious places alone.

As he turned around to leave, he bumped into something warm.

Victor Nikiforov stared back, his blue eyes twinkling in amusement. Long, silver hair reflected the pale sunlight, and his clothes, though unusually shabby, looked as if they glittered like gold.

Yuuri instantly forgot how to breathe.

 .

 “Where exactly am I?”

“A library, as you can see. Not an ordinary one, though, as you’ve probably guessed.”

This is definitely not how Yuuri imagined how his first conversation with Victor would go. He’d only seen the Russian star once or twice on TV during the last Winter Games, but for some reason, Victor was the last person he thought of before he ended up in this… situation.

“Are you really… Victor?”

This earned a chuckle in response, and the dimple that formed when he smiled was adorable. “Yes and no. Do I look like him to you?”

With an audible gulp, Yuuri nodded.

“Then I am Victor.”

Victor - or whoever this was, smiled warmly at him. “Why this person?”

The question, spoken in Victor’s voice, from Victor’s own lips, was nothing short of strange, to say the least. The resemblance was definitely more than striking, it was like he was exactly the same person. For Yuuri, however, this did not explain anything.

After a moment of contemplation, Victor laughed heartily. “I see. You must be fond of him.”

Yuuri promptly choked on his water, heat rising in his cheeks.

“Say, Yuuri,” Victor pronounced his name in a gentle croon, “tell me more about yourself.”

 .

 Yuuri found himself leaving from university much earlier than usual these days. The traffic was much less than during rush hour, leaving him with more time to explore the city. He’d get off a stop before his apartment every time, taking a shortcut through the park.

The library waited for him every time he emerged from the forest, looking the same as it did when he first arrived. So did Victor, with cups of tea in hand and a fond smile on his lips.

Yuuri at once noticed how no creatures dared to approach him whenever he was in the vicinity of the library. Rather, it was as if he ceased to be able to see them during these times. The relief he felt at this was indescribable, as if the walls around him were taken down and he could breathe freely once more.

“You have that gift, it seems,” Victor once told him in observation. “One that attracts the fae and their favors to you. As with most things, it is both a blessing and a curse.”

It was not at all surprising, Yuuri thought, considering how often he attracted trouble and found himself in problematic, even life-threatening situations for as long as he could remember. Still, he was glad things turned out this way, what with all of it leading up to meeting and spending time with one of his favorite people this often.

He was painfully aware that this was not Victor Nikiforov, but still. Still.

A couple of weeks passed, and Yuuri started spending all-nighters in the library doing his homework. Dinner was always a hearty experience, even with just the two of them exchanging stories over piping hot soup and meat pies. It was evident how much Victor enjoyed having someone around after so long, having expressed as much to Yuuri one night over fruit and wine.

“Twenty-three is quite a small number, if you ask me. You still have a lot to learn.”

“You’re not much older, either, Victor.”

“At least I’m young and handsome. I’ll miss looking like this after you stop coming here.”

And it pained Yuuri to see the longing in those blue eyes, but he knew that this, too, will soon end.

Still, he wished it never would. Not that wishes ever came true, anyway.

He was terribly, painfully aware of that.

 .

 One day, Victor gave Yuuri an old picture book.

It was a thin, hard-bound copy of what seemed like an old Russian fairy tale, if the colorful phoenix was of any indication. Yuuri began to untie the straw cord that was wrapped around it, but Victor immediately seized his hand.

“Don’t open it yet,” he said, a bit too firmly than what Yuuri was used to. He caught himself quickly, however, immediately loosening his grip.

“It’s a surprise, Yuuri,” he added, with a forced smile. And as if that weren’t cryptic enough: “Promise me.”

The look in Victor’s eyes pleaded with Yuuri to not ask. It hurt so much.

“... Okay, I guess. But how do I know?”

“Trust me, you’ll know when.”

 .

 Yuuri often recalled this moment, as Victor suddenly became more distant from him. They still spent time together every day, but fewer and fewer words were exchanged between them, until everything blurred into a massive cloud of awkward silence.

The book-- Victor’s gift, remained their sole connection to each other. It was constantly by his side, reminding him of the friendship they had. The day he’d gotten it felt like it only happened yesterday, and he would regret--

Even though he promised not to open it.

Blinking back his tears, Yuuri excused himself, asking to go home.

He saw, too, in the way Victor’s blue eyes were dark and hazy, how much this hurt him-- both of them. But he wanted to believe, still. There had to be a reason.

It came the next day, unexpectedly, when Yuuri found an empty lot where the library used to stand.

 .

 Yuuri didn’t know how long he had been asleep for. His body felt unusually exhausted for some reason, and it felt as if he’d forgotten something for the day. Nothing in his apartment was out of place, however, and the trash had already been brought out.

He can’t even remember what he had been crying about.

He decided to get food, just in case.

Every step he took away from the building felt heavy, and a voice repeatedly echoed in his mind to return home. He did not heed it, deeming himself far past the stage of fearing monsters at his age.

There are no monsters, Yuuri told himself, before moving on.

It did not assuage the unease in his heart at all.

Something-- something , nagging at the back of his mind--

No sooner had he exited the bakery than the ground shook beneath his feet, causing him to lose balance and fall hard on his back. The few people left on the street started running for cover, one of whom dropped a handful of silver coins that rolled to where he lay. The resulting reflection of lights blinded Yuuri, and for a moment he thought he saw an old house on fire, a flash of silver hair--

“Forgive me.”

The bread rolls Yuuri bought joined the coins on the floor, dirtied and forgotten.

 .

 Yuuri’s lungs burned painfully, the need for oxygen rapidly overtaking the fatigue in his legs. But he ran, still, as far as his legs would take him. He didn’t know where he was headed, but his body seemed to remember where to go.

There was somewhere-- someone he needed to be with.

And he was close-- very, terribly close--

 He finally collapsed on the pavement before a seemingly-empty lot, where a dilapidated, empty house burned brightly between rows of apartments. Heavy chains clinked in the distance, as if being dragged, growing louder by the second.

The last thing Yuuri heard is his name being shouted in agony before his world turned black.

 .

 “--uri! Yuuri! Wake up!”

Yuuri was vigorously shaken awake by firm hands and an panicked voice, claws digging deep into his shoulders. The air around him was hot, and the sky blackened with thick smoke.

Without warning, he found himself being pulled away by another set of claws much longer than the first. He is greeted by a large, humanoid creature with long, stringy hair, a scarred, blackened face, and pointed teeth.

“Mine,” it hissed. “You’re mine.”

The rusalka .

It had come back to take his life.

Yuuri’s eyed promptly widened in terror. He was going to die this time, for real.

All of a sudden, everything came rushing back-- the creatures, the house, Victor--

Suddenly, as if an answer to his unsaid prayer, chains were wrapped around the rusalka’s neck, causing it to fall to the ground as it gasped for breath. The first set of arms wrapped themselves around him, and there was Victor again, crying on his shoulder.

“Yuuri… Yuuri…”

Still bewildered, Yuuri raised a hand to gently stroke Victor’s hair. It was not the thick, shiny, perfectly maintained mane that he once knew from before-- that is to say, there was none. His face was that of an older man’s, with multiple wrinkles and scars, and pointed ears akin to those of elven folk. Only the voice it produced was that of Victor’s, Yuuri realized.

But how, he wanted to ask. He did not understand.

“ Domovoy, ” Victor spoke, as if sensing Yuuri’s confusion. “In a sense, I am what you’d call a household god, similar to your country’s zashiki-warashi .”

“I was supposed to protect this library at all costs. But I was weak.” Victor laughs dejectedly, tears running down his aged eyes. “I couldn’t prevent this from happening. I couldn’t protect you.”

Yuuri bit his lip, slowly putting everything together. “You knew it was coming back. So you sent me away.”

“Oh, who knows?” Victor’s hold on Yuuri suddenly weakened, his strength finally leaving him.

“Victor!”

“No, Yuuri, listen to me.” Victor looked up at him, his ocean blue ones clearer than ever despite his appearance. “You are strong. You know this. Think of everything you’ve been through.

“Stop talking, please!”

“Those hardships you’ve been through-- don’t let it go to waste. Only you can decide what to make of them.”

Yuuri did not respond anymore, cradling Victor’s form in his trembling arms. Smiling, Victor produced a worn, rusted band, placing it into the center of Yuuri’s palm. “A remembrance of me?”

It was very much like him, Yuuri thought, charming until the last moment. He might have loved Victor-- this domovoy , he realized. Was it because he was Victor, or was it something else? Why did all this happen?

Yuuri wept silently as everything faded away, and he was left there, all alone.

He’d never know now.

 .

 A year passed in the blink of an eye.

Everyone was surprised at how much more outgoing Yuuri had now become. Minako had been the most shocked, immediately attributing the change to a newfound boyfriend.

“But I don’t have one, Minako- sensei .”

“Then explain that ring on your finger,” she accused. “You don’t just suddenly get an ancient heirloom like that from anywhere. Now spill.”

Had Takeshi known of this, too, he wouldn’t ever hear the end of it. Funny really, how things turned out. Victor certainly would laugh.

“It’s… a charm,” he settled on saying. “From someone I got to know.”

“Hmmmm,” Minako nodded slowly, unconvinced. This Yuuri did not deign to reply. It was, after all, a part-truth, in his defense. He noted how he isn’t able to see the creatures ever since he had it in his possession. It was as if Victor had set him free, in a way.

The ring, although very important in itself, was not as close to his heart as Minako thought.

Once she finally left him alone, Yuuri brought out the old picture book from his bag. Its cover had lost much of its shine over the past year, and its pages have slowly become tattered. He flipped through each page slowly, tears brimming in his eyes.

A story was written on it, in Yuuri’s own handwriting.

It took him half a year to get over everything that had happened, before he finally decided it was time to read the book Victor had given him. It was all blank paper, save for the first page, on which were written: “Once upon a time.”

It was his second most precious treasure.

Meeting Victor was the first.

He was the gift that changed Yuuri’s life.

THE MONSTER

full name: AVENIR BJÖRN LINDQVIST birthday & age: march 21st, aged THIRTY-FOUR pronouns: HE/HIM sexuality: PANSEXUAL/AROMANTIC  occupation: HITMAN for the ST PIERRE SYNDICATE / member of the INNER CIRCLE district: THORNHAVEN on VOIE DE LA MER lives with: alone resident for: NINE YEARS affiliation: ST PIERRE SYNDICATE — INNER CIRCLE positives: stoic, loyal, debonair negatives: malevolent, ruthless, apathetic faceclaim: BILL SKARSGÅRD

{ trigger: murder tw, dark & mature themes }

YOU COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND THEIR STORY …

THE PAST

THE MONSTER is quite possibly the most terrifying citizen in all of champigné, there isn’t a thing they aren’t willing to do for THE TYRANT. 

nobody is very clear on the nature of their personal relationship now, but THE TYRANT offered him a second chance at life with only doing what he knew he did best—killing. locked away in prison for the muder of his father, it was THE MONSTER’s sister, THE SYCOPHANT who brought the predicament to THE TYRANT’s attention, seeking his help in hopes it would lead to his freedom. after a carefully laid out plan, which including faking his own death, THE MONSTER regained his freedom and went to work for THE TYRANT as his personal contract killer. 

it’s been easy for the rest of the syndicate to see there was something very wrong with THE MONSTER, but nobody has dared say a word suggesting so aloud out of fear of the consequences. so THE MONSTER continued on, relatively unsociable and only interested in THE TYRANT and his word.

THE PRESENT

A few years later, now shed of his rather unflattering prison jumpsuit, he’s looking out of the floor-to-ceiling window of his new apartment, located in a city of france which he couldn’t quite pronounce yet, drinking the very brand of vodka that he had the night he committed the murder. it’s somewhat symbolic and nostalgic, as images of his drunk and clueless mother and his innocent, yet broken sister flash before his eyes. he’s dressed in tom ford from head to toe, one THE TYRANT has allowed him to handpick for once. “all you have to do is flaunt it, flaunt what you’re good at and the fortune will come to you.” THE TYRANT’s voice echoes in his head, amidst the high-pitched ringing in his left ear. he chews on two tablets of valium and washes it down with his mother’s vodka to temporarily relieve him from the ringing, before releasing the blackout curtains that THE TYRANT has so tastefully placed for him from its restraints, letting it flow onto the windows.

THERE’S a little night light which he switches on, before he opens up the bottom drawer to his nightstand, picking up a rather tattered, paperback bible. a habit (he’d rather call it a habit than his religion) he’s picked up while in prison, initially to pass the time, but later realizing the greatness of the gospel. he’s read and reread the bible so many times that he’s able to throw out verses on command, just like that. he has bibles in every language, his first being in english, through which he was able to learn the language from, that and, the sopranos, which he enjoyed during his leisure times in prison). as far as his language abilities go, his mother tongue’s russian ( although he refrains or refuses to speak it, claiming that died with the rest of his old self ), fluent in english, polish, ukranian, german, swedish ( his father was a swede living in russia ) and conversational in french.

ALL this was made possible by someone he considered to be god himself, THE TYRANT. there’s no one he respects and worships more than THE TYRANT, not even christ himself. he’s claimed loyalty the day THE TYRANT proved himself to him, getting him out of prison and giving him a new identity and life without a single flaw. he’s given him direction with this rather monstrous life of his and has given him a purpose. he nods to no one but THE TYRANT and would do anything and everything he asks. hell, he’d even give up his own life for him if he had to. THE TYRANT was nothing short of a god to him; no, he was god to him. if given a map of his life, one could tell it was pretty simple— all the roads just led to one eventual direction, all pointing towards THE TYRANT.

                                    CONNECTIONS

THE SYCOPHANT — his younger sister, who was meant to have found a fresh start, away from any semblance of crime, instead, she picked a city riddled with it and feel in THE TYRANT while he was still a member of the BABINEAUX MAFIA. she was among the first to join the syndicate and never left THE TYRANT’s side, part of why he was so willing to help THE MONSTER regain his freedom. THE SYCOPHANT has been the only person he’s ever truly cared about and loved and there's nothing he won’t do to protect her. after all, he’s already been to prison for the sake of protecting her once.

THE TYRANT — there isn’t a thing THE MONSTER isn’t willing to do for them, they are constantly at their beck and call ever since THE TYRANT saved them from a life behind bars. 

THE HELLKITE — THE HELLKITE and THE MONSTER have been at odds since the beginning.  each of them similar to the devil and the angel whispering in THE TYRANT’s ear. except, in this case, they’re both devils. there is nothing THE MONSTER would like to see more than THE HELLKITE pushed out of the syndicate for good.

THE SABOTEUR —partner. the only person in the syndicate THE MONSTER can really tolerate working with

THE VIXEN — acquaintance. most assume it’s their undeniable charm, but THE VIXEN has been the only one who’s even come to close to getting them to open up.

INNER CIRCLE — the small hand-selected council of the ST PIERRE SYNDICATE is no place for the faint of heart or disloyal and the admission on its own is steep, enough to make most not want to pay it. a pound of flesh is what owe when you join the syndicate, but a pound of your own is what you owe when you join its INNER CIRCLE. though the rewards and favor it might gain you with THE TYRANT and HELLKITE are worth it to some.

the role of  THE MONSTER is taken by LIA

Gasoline

I know. I can see it in Mrs. Stella's eyes, in the pakistani guy's eyes while he scratches the gyro instead of cutting it, even the new guy's eyes that he keeps on smiling only because they didn't tell him the gas for the bike is on him. I turn my head for one single moment and I can almost hear the eyeballs rolling on my neck. "What's on Maxim's mind right now" or "will he or will he not talk about it" and "why is Maxim even here in the first place". To be honest, Maxim's not feeling quite self-explanatory right now but he is quite sure that teeth are going to go places if the weird stares keep on popping up.

-Wanna go a bit earlier tonight? You can fill in another day, no biggie, kiddo. If you ain't feeling hundred percent, better let it go and pop up when the time's rig..

Mrs. Stella's mole, upper right from her mouth, kind of trips me out every time. I can't quite make out what she tries to say by whispering with this cigarette-ducked voice of hers. Not that I'm really invested hearing her in the first place, she looks like she could really afford a convo. The pakistani guy over there looks at me kinda frightened and I return to normal mode though. Maybe I really am freaking them out and they're right for being concerned when I'm acting like this, but…

-I'm not going home. My shift's till 3, right? It's not even midnight yet.

-That's not what I said, Maxim. Don't go just because I say it, do it for Victor if you please. You understand?

-That's a topic for another time, Mrs. Stella. Gotta deliver these as long as they're still edible.

I'm pressing the water bottle on my neck for an extra second and throw it back at the fridge. The new guy tries for some chit chat to me, like real smooth and all, just so he can ride to get the delivery himself. He says that the bottle was his, I say I'm a bit sort of fucks at the moment. I'm taking the kebabs and storm outside, straight in hell.

My arms and legs are burning up on the bike and I'm still not far for the plaza. Helmet's our of the question of course, except if you're fond of third degree burns. Only this small hint of wind that drags the sweat off my face makes the ride bearable. Up and down, down and up again, steep uphills and downhills turn my brains upside down on the road and I'm trying as hard as I can to chill until my veins are back beneath my skin. I see the nightlights showering the complexes with a cold shade of yellow and I'm fantasise about the people inside them. Like they're getting melted by the heat like me, even though they are watching tv or porn while eating a bunch of fucking junk as I can hardly swallow water at this point.

I turn the key and spend a minute to look at the name. The label's "Vann", the bell's "Vann" too, all good so far. Been here to get him this stuff a hundred times, he's nothing but a divorced loner and kind of a prick on the first floor that is always up for some conversation. I ring, the entrance opens, I storm upstairs and voilà.

   Here we go again. It's not him. Full dark hair, small nose, tall, green-brown eyes, fucked up teeth and short shorts with a wide ass white tee like a curtain. Like taking a look in the fucking mirror. And it's like the tenth delivery this night? Tenth time I see his ass, looking just like me but not really like me. Last nine times I froze and didn't have the courage to think about it out of fear and cringe, let alone not having the money of the delivery to return back at the tavern. But this went too far. If I'm returning for the tenth time only with some cheap coins and excuses Mrs. Stella will have her reason to nag about me. Like what could you say about this shit in the first place? That you saw a dude that kinda looked like you and got the chills?

-Got the card thingy with you?

I barely nod no. He exhales in frustration and asks for change from a ten. He could flip me upside down and wouldn't find enough to even buy a lollie. I nod again. Again with the exhales. He stressfully throws these dirty ass coins in my hand until I have the 4,40. I'm making my move.

-What a coincidence, right? Makes you crazy. It's like a mirror even.

He just stares at me like I just fucked his day up just by talking to him.

-Are these enough, bro?

-Is Mr. Vann gone from here? You heard where he went or something?

-Oh fuck me, you in for a chit chat man? Really? God.

What the hell.

-I only asked.

-So what? Are we like best friends and I didn't know or something?

The door slams my face with the apartment's awful smell as I'm stuck at picking up the coins that fell to the carpet and battling sweat in a hurry just so I can get back outside and stop myself from thinking about how this fucking clone knows my name.

The route back to the tavern seems stretched in my eyes. I feel the bike like it's sliding backwards and I'm trying to catch up with the lost road in front of me. I take turns in weird streets and stop to look if anything is wrong with my wheels; all good though. Could it be me? Dunno. It just looks so strange to me that each and every one that opens his door before me is that same asshole imitating me and shit. Could it be this cheap expired beer I dared to chugg? Nah, must be the heat. A little bit of inside/outside and you're seeing stars for sure. I mean my fingers keep sticking at the handles for God's sake.

I'm circling the plaza to get the sweat out of me and slip through the back door to bypass the lava coming from the gyro; in vain, of course. Even the boomers that were eating like crazy along with their toddlers on the tables outside have gone with their faces looking like a red traffic light, as the pakistani guy said to me. Just by studying his face I can see that as much as he got scared before, he has nothing but pity for me. I mean look at me. I'm nothing but panda eyes, crazy hair and arms and legs really stick-looking. All that plus the fact that I also have rivers of sweat on my neck right now. Why am I like this?

-Why are you like this?

Mrs. Stella spawns behind the fan only to fuck with me again. It must be a pleasure for her to annoy people jsut so we can see her mole dance and feel the rust in her voice to the bone marrow.

-Again with the coins, what can I do? They all want to swipe their cards now.

-Go home, kiddo, take a shower and lay down. We have much more things to worry than you. Do you think we are wanna check on you?

-Yeah man, she's right, Maxim.

Someone remind me when I deliver the next patch to make a call at the missing persons line because for hours we can't find who the fuck gave the new guy the right to get in my shit. I did has my chance with him in private though and explained him crystal clear to stay out of my shit. You know, with logical thinking and maybe threats. Mostly threats I think. Maybe at some point I might have said I have Russian mob ties, gambling on the fact that he might didn't find out that I'm really Ukrainian yet.

-I only need some air. It's like an oven in here.

I really tried to follow Mrs. Stella this time. But because of the mole and the new guy tag teaming on busying my balls I got knocked out. I could listen more enjoyably and clearly the fan spinning around above me than her and her sidekick. I only made out a small chunk of what she spilled.

-And please, take off what you're wearing. Put your own clothes again please.

-Ain't those mine too?

-No. They're Victor's.

Times like this I wish I wasn't so socially incapable to be so shy about asking again the pakistani guy's name again. It would make things so less awkward when I was trying to ask him for the next order. Maybe even less awkward if I hadn't had Mrs. Stella reaching New heights with her raspy voice while I was leaving again.

Of course this all storming out shit caught up to me. I've never seen this street in my life. Could be Mrs. Stella have her pathetic tavern on the Internet order sites to get deliveries across the fucking milky way? But now that I'm thinking about it she's answering the phone every time she gets a text message.

Google maps says 12 kilometers and I'm cursing every saint in existence. All the money that didn't get down the drain thanks to that imposter dude will get down the drain for gasoline. I'm steering and get through streets I normally wouldn't cross even with a bloody tank just to save 2 or so minutes from the route. I pick my head up and feel the breeze cuddling my neck and chest. Finally. Traffic's at an all time low and I really can step in the gas a bit but the heatwave growing arms and legs and all runs behind me. When I get off and go to the apartment building's entrance, heat already caught up to me.

I'm pausing. Name on the bell Al-Jirarddlosomething, the same at the order; and no I won't even begin to try to pronounce this thing. I ring, the entrance opens in 3 secs and enough roaches storm out for a 5 on 5 basketball game, bench included.

I'm hearing traction and voices behind the door, something like that, but I really wanna stick my ear to hear what's going on. Of course this is the time the guy opens up. Or the girl, you don't know.

-So now you found the house, vro? Now that I'm showering?

But you do know.

Same outfit minus the sweatiness, same face, same attitude, same me for up to like 90% percent. And I don't want to be that guy, but I really don't think this is the Al-Jiriarlasomethjng guy. Maybe for a prick.

-9,60.

-What about the coke?

-It's in there, ain't it?

-Take a wild guess.

-Didn't you ask for a bottle?

-Can. I asked for a can. Why would I want a bottle? Where could I put it?

Take a wild guess.

No, I'm joking. I paid for the bottle thing. It wasn't his fault. He asks me full offended why would I pay for him.

-Well, you don't find your long lost twin every day, ha ha. Maxim, and yours?

-All fucking around and saying shit, ah Maxim? Aren't you bored of this already? Good lord.

I think I need to learn how to make friends again.

Gasoline’s is nearly gone, the route I took got lost inside my head as I zig zagging between the buildings and the road is nothing but tar right now with me boiling in it. Still no cars around, though. It's only July and the neighborhood got deserted. It's now so quiet the noise from the engine hits the buildings and bounces back to my eardrums. I'm dizzy as hell right now.

I'm swimming back at the plaza. Outside there are only two tables stuck together with broke and boozed up Airbnb tourists that share fucking french fries and kebabs as two old folks take their dog out for a walk, right beside them. How miserable. Like I know the neighborhood is dead, little by little each day, but tonight you car really feel the death and rotting right up your nostrils. As if something so tragic happened that no one has the courage to address it loudly. Like they're all busy trying to catch a unicorn or something, just to keep their heads off the despair.

-You're not getting it, do you?

I don't have the energy to do this conversation again. Nothing new will be said. If I could I would just stare at Mrs. Stella until she can finally take a fucking hint that I could not care less about what she's been trying to talk about all night with me.

-Forgive me for doing the job you're paying me to do. Not gonna happen again.

-Believe it or not, but as long as you are here you're like my son to me. Even if you're Ukrainian, doesn't matter.

I'm looking sideways like a shark at the pakistani guy that plays with his phone and I want to burst laughing. Dunno exactly why. Maybe because I can't picture her talking the same thing to him. I'm not saying she's racist, I'm saying that she's really focused with me right now that is getting ridiculous. And that she is kind of racist.

-I don't get where this conversation goes. All I know is that I don't wanna do it.

-I do.

Isn't democracy great.

-Where's the new guy at?

-Gone. He wanted to bounce and I just let him go. Maybe cause that's a shit job, maybe cause you were acting like an asshole. Who knows?

-What can I say. I'm sorry.

-You are not sorry. That's exactly what you wanted.

-I don't get it.

-Oh you get it alright. Tell me, you really believe that something bad is going to happen if someone takes Victor's work? As if something bad is going to happen.

I don't want this. I don't need this.

-This is way over the line.

-What can I do to help you? People look at you and you just look back at them like they just called you a hoe. "It will pass" I though, "he's going to rest his head a bit and get right back at his feet". But nothing. It's like you enjoy all this. Being kinda like sick. Just like today, damn; you keep on popping back in there with a different color on your face.

-Ok..

-And then I get the new guy I here and you turn to a complete ass of yourself. As if no one's gets to Victor's place equals that nothing have ever happened. Do you seriously believe that? Answer me, because it seems like I can't make you go home.

-You're right.

And her mole rides a bitter smile of assurance. It was kind of spectacular. Too bad it didn't last long when she saw me catching the last order on my way out. I'm outside and still can feel her cigarette breath on my back.

I'm rolling to the gas station two blocks away and spill my last money for three drops. Worth it, though, if this means getting away from my boss's lecture again. I'm rolling my last cig waiting for a car or something to cross the boulevard. Something that indicates that there's still life and pulse here. I'm waiting until my fingers get toasted, no one. I'm turn the key and fly away. I can't just stand doing nothing; doing nothing makes me think of this kind of shit and nothing good comes out of that.

Distance? A fuck lot. Buildings get unfamiliar quite fast and I'm down this straight line for god know how much time but the gas indicator is still stuck a 1/3. Complexes seven to eight floors high, gardens, yards and a scent of sea salt coming from somewhere near. Did I really get that far south?

Τhe street has the name of an ancient guy with so many syllables even his momma had a hard time calling him, while the number of the address was at a large concrete war crime of nine floors. The fluorescent Bell had one of those weird new female names like Mirtianna or Christian the and that shit with an "astrology" sticked at the end. Of course I got ringed instantly. I getting to the elevator for the ninth floor and try to pick my words for him. I know he's gonna be there, I just need some answers. But how do you start a convo about that? Well, I'm lucky I didn't start it.

-What kind of bullshit is this you're telling her? Did she do you wrong?

I'm trying to read his face. There's not much emotion there, only a small frustration and some eagerness to shut the door right up my face again.

-Well, you could say that.

-Nonsense. You’re just being Maxim again. Spoiled and dumb Maxim. As always.

-Alright. It’s 7,90.

-She’s right, you know. You kinda into all of this. As far as it goes your way, at least. After that you just continue where you left.

-Ok. 7,90. I need to return back money, right?

-Stop wasting time trying to catch unicorns, bro. It’s fine, it’ll pass, you don’t need to follow me around all the time. I mean I’m gone.

What. Is. Happening.

-Oh I’m following you? You just keep popping up in front of me.

-That’s not how it works, Maxim. You feel alone, I get that. But that doesn’t make it ok acting like a dumbass.

-7,90.

-If there’s a problem, at least try to tackle it. Don’t wait for it to go away with your eyes closed.

-Nice to see you, Victor.

I almost tripped on my way down. I got vertigo and chills on my spine for no real reason whilst the scent of the sea from here burns my lungs. I got to get out of here. I got to go back.

With the dizziness in my head I have everything around me move and vibrate the same time the bike barely slides down the road. I can actually catch up with my eyes the buildings rotate around themselves like bolts, the balconies of the apartments wide open with the blueish light of a tv on shining like a projector outside, the yellow stars above me getting bigger and bigger until they turn to street lights. It’s like the world is running down my feet.

I’m processing the things he said to me tonight. I don’t care if he is or isn’t Victor, I only want to understand why is all this happening. I knew that it wouldn’t make much sense for everyone else at the beginning but now I have a difficult time making some of it too. The only thing I seem to achieved tonight was to turn my brains to mush and make things actually harder for me just cause I wanted to get involved to this. All night went to the trash bin because I had the curiosity fucking up my head about understanding what’s happening when in reality nothing matters to me anymore. Why? I don’t know. Because I might really love being like this after all and fucking up my head all on my own like a psycho.

I have no idea how to end all this. Maybe this isn’t as important, though. Like maybe I might be back home right now watching nickelodeon shows until I doze off. Or maybe I have some sort of something and have to go to the doctor; any doctor. Whatever it needs, I don’t care, I’ll go first thing tomorrow. If there’s a problem I’ll try to tackle it. I can’t wait for it to go way with my eyes clo-

Dunno how it happened. I can make out the branches of the trees on the plaza and a silver jeep beast blinding me with its lights. Gasoline is raining on my head I can feel the clatter of people into my ear. They shout and yell above me with their throats clogged in tar; don’t understand a word of them. I’m thirty meters at worst from the tavern and Mrs. Stella is looking me shocked with her mole chilling over the big O that she forms with her mouth. The pakistani guy drags me beside yelling “HEY HEY MAXIM HEY, ZAMEER”. I don’t know if I can feel anything belloc my neck but I’m definitely happy with myself for finding out his name again at last so I wouldn't have to hold that grudge. It’s something. Something small that maybe make me look less ridiculous, stupid and useless that I got hit by a car and going to die at the same exact spot my twin brother died, only a week later.

The Life of a Bartender - Request

Requested by anon:  I was wondering if you could write a Black widow x Reader fiction... Natasha is such an awesome character and I would find it incredible to read about her.

Pairing: Natasha x Reader

Word count: 2.221

Warnings: Not romantic, not edited, not thought through. I also played  A LOT with the timeline, so forget everything you know.

A/N: So this is an experiment of a new story format I wanted to try, and a character I love but have never written before. It’s also the first fic I finish since I started my break, so it’s a huge deal for me and would really appreciate it if you were to offer your feedback. Seriously, it means a lot to me because I am very excited about this, but also about being back and just want you to tell me if you liked it or not.

Also: I’m back, bitches. Requests are still closed, though.

Enjoy!

The bar hadn’t had much clients in the last couple of weeks. Only the five usual alcoholics who basically lived here, and a couple of teenagers every now and then, pretending to be all grown and ready to drink but who would leave whenever one of us asked for their ID.

I was attending my shift solely because I had nothing else to do. I didn’t even enjoy this job anymore, not without a good story to spend the night with, that is.

All the good ones had gone. The only stories left were the typical: my wife left me, violent parents, terminal diseases… I wanted adventure, thrill and fantasy, not another episode of Desperate Housewives.

“Scotch on the rocks, please,” a girl on her thirties asked, sitting on the stool right in front of me.

“Do I know you?” I inquired as I started pouring down her drink.

“Don’t think so, I’m not from here…”

“Newscast! A new threat raises and the Avengers struggle to take it down… find out more on tonight’s Broadcast with Jimmy Buffay and Marlon Branaghan.”

“I hate those guys,” I mumbled and turned of the TV. Nobody noticed except for the girl, who simply chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, pouring her another glass.

“The Avengers always struggle to take down threats, but they always report that as news.”

“Damn right.”

She drank a few more glasses of Scotch and then asked to change to Tequila.

“Slow down, why would you do that?”

“To forget.”

And so I noticed the story I was craving for had been sitting in front of me for a whole hour.

It took three tequila shots to convince her to tell me her story, but I finally achieved my goal.

“When I was a child I moved to Russia with my parents. I lived there until five years ago, when I moved back here.

During my last three years there, things got dangerous around the area where I lived. Some bad guys were terrorising the town a little. My parents died victims of those assholes, and I got sent to this sort of academy for orphans.

I met a woman there… she was a bit older, but we got along right away. If you know what I mean…

That academy turned out to be even worse than the gangs on the streets.”

“How come?” I asked.

“You wouldn't believe me.”

“Try me.”

She sighed before talking in a whisper. “They… trained us to be some sort of femme fatales so we could get important information for them in order to end with all those criminals.”

“That’s awesome.” I mumbled, she chuckled sadly.

“That's what I thought too at first, but then I realised we were actually getting brainwashed into working for said criminals.”

“How?”

“They sterilised us, and filled our brains with fake memories so we’d remain loyal to them. I was rather new so I still had some of my  own memories, but Nat… the woman I talked to you about, didn’t even remember who she was anymore.”

“That's… fucked up.”

“It is, indeed…” She asked for another shot and I poured it down without second guessing. She drank it like water, sighed and looked down. The shadow that formed around her eyes in that moment, due to the dim light from the bar, only added up to the dramatic story she was telling. “So this one night, I’m out of my room, just walking around because I couldn’t sleep. I hear steps on the other side of the hallway, so I hide in the shadows, waiting to see who the intruder was.”

“And?”

“It was Nat.”

“What was she doing there?”

“She was leaving,” her eyes were far away, back in Russia, reliving the moment those very eyes caught Nat running away.

“And?”

“And I begged her to take me with her.”

“Nat, please, I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“I know, I know… I promise you I will come back for you, okay? You have my word.”

“She wouldn’t do it, she had planned everything, there was no room for me.”

“She sounds like a bitch, I’ll tell you that,” I interrupted, as I started drying the glasses that the other bartender had washed and left on my side. A tough looking man approached, asked for a bloody Mary for his partner, I poured it and then he left. “So? Did she come back?”

“Not exactly,” she mumbled, “I spent a whole year in that hellhole, and it was worse than before. They left my remaining memories untouched, but not because they wanted to be good but the exact opposite; they had checked the security cameras and microphones installed in the hallway the night Nat escaped, and they had heard me asking her to take me away…”

“What did they do?” She lifted her Tequila glass, I poured her another one, then she repeated the motion and I obeyed. She drank two more shots before she continued with her story, and every word she said became more and more slurry.

“They tortured me, day by day, they found ways to make my life impossible, without stopping my training. I obviously became stronger, because I could stand more pain than the rest of the girls there, but at what cost?” She chuckled once again, “I ended up hating Nat so much that I became loyal to the criminals I hated in the beginning. I wanted to have my revenge…”

“Did you ever?”

“Well, this one day I get a mission to stop someone from S.H.I.E.L.D. that was trying to get some info on some secret project my superiors were working on. So I prepare myself, I get to the mission and it turns out Nat is the enemy.”

“What happened?”

“So we meet again,” said (Y/N).

“I see you’re still with them,” Natasha muttered.

“Well, somebody didn’t come back for me,” (Y/N) replied. There was something dark in her eyes that Natasha hadn’t seen before.

“I couldn’t…” She apologised.

“Well, isn’t that sad?”

“This time is different, I can help you out of here if you just let me take the information I need.” Natasha begged.

“I don’t think so.”

What followed was a violent fight that involved three different martial arts combined with other combat techniques and weapon managing. They used everything in their power to defeat the other, even the furniture from the office they were in. Tables, chairs, glasses, wires and even broom were used against each other. Kicks and punches were thrown, some into the other’s face, some into the air. It was a proper fight that would, invariably, end with blood.

Natasha was still too fond of (Y/N), who she kept in her heart as a sweet and innocent child, and therefore she was controlling her strength, something (Y/N) didn’t do.

At one point, Natasha was on the ground, absolutely defenseless, hurt and lacking of air. (Y/N) would take this as her advantage, and so she pulled out a gun from her belt, pointing it directly into Natasha’s head.

Natasha lifted her hands up, as a sign of surrender, and connected her eyes to (Y/N)’s.

“I know you’re hurt, I know it’s my fault, but killing me won’t change anything…” She started, “It may actually make it worse.”

“Talking from experience?”

“No, but… I learnt that this is not the way out, okay? I know good people, kind people, who will help you no matter what. Please, let me take you to them.”

(Y/N) took the safety lock from the gun. Natasha swallowed loudly before pronouncing the words she would only say in the dark, when her mind was off this realm; words (Y/N) hadn’t heard ever after Natasha left. Words that mattered.

“So what did you do? Did you shoot her?” I inquired. I had forgotten about the glasses or the other clients. My focus was on that poor woman, and her amazing story.

“Will you tell the cops?”

“No,” I rushed to say, “my lips are sealed.”

“I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I was still in love with her… She was defenseless, and she wasn’t even hurting me that much whenever she punched me - like, I knew how strong she was, and she didn’t even left a single bruise on my body that night.”

“But she abandoned you, and the people she abandoned you with tortured you, and…”

“And I’m an idiot for letting her live,” she granted, “but I don’t regret it.”

“What happened then?”

“I decided to take the information myself and run away.” Another Tequila shot. “I didn’t go back to my superiors, instead I escaped to Croatia, changed my last name and my general information.”

“What about that super important information?”

“I sold it to S.H.I.E.L.D. for a good amount of money and a guarantee of witness protection. With that I moved here and tried to start a new life.”

“How can someone like you start a new life? What do you do for a living?”

“I work at a library, live in a very tiny apartment in the outskirts of the city, and try to keep a low profile.” She responded, and suddenly everything she had told me stopped making sense.

“Right, so you’re going to tell me you went from being a Russian spy to a librarian.”

“That’s what I said.”

“And what? Nat is now an Avenger or some shit like that?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” she replied, “Natasha Romanova, or Black Widow as the press like to call her.”

I bursted in laughter right in front of her face. She didn’t flinch, nor changed her poker face at the action. She simply poured herself another shot of Tequila.

“I know what’s going on here,” I said.

“Yeah? Tell me.”

“You read everything about the Avengers, and probably a lot of books about the Cold War and shit like that, because that’s what librarians do, and then you came here trying to mock some chick with a story you created based on what you had learned from your precious books,” I explained, “am I right or what?”

She giggled. “You’re damn right.”

“I knew it!” I cheered, “No Russian spy would come here and tell her story so easily. I think I deserve a tequila shot,” I said as I took a glass out for myself, “and you get another one, which is on me because that was the greatest story I have heard, and I’ve been in this business for quite some time.” She agreed happily and we both drank together.

Out of a sudden, a huge robot arm fell from the sky and into the bar, leaving a whole on the roof and killing the two folks that were playing pool right where the arm fell.

Chaos begun, the clients ran away screaming, as other the bartenders all gathered around me and pulled us down. (Y/N) got up from her stool, a bit shaky from the multiple shots of alcohol she had consumed but on full alert mode. She took a gun out of her jacket and pointed it to the door.

It opened, and a strange looking man walked inside. He barely took a glimpse of (Y/N) when Black Widow struck him from behind, beginning a fight as violent as the ones in the movies. The man hit her on the stomach, making her fall and stop attacking.

He was carrying a trident, which he was about to use to stab the famous Avenger, when (Y/N) shot at him. Of course, she didn’t hit, because she was too drunk to aim properly, and she noticed and so she threw the gun back to us and ran towards the man.

A similar fight as the one with Black Widow begun. (Y/N) was very good, in spite of her drunken condition, and although she didn’t harm the man as much as he harmed her, she gave Black Widow time to get back up and take another gun out.

Headshot.

His brain splattered all around the walls. It was green, and viscous. Grossest thing I have witness in that bar, including those girls who think they can drink and end up recreating the Exorcist in the bathroom.

“Are you drunk?” Black Widow inquired, approaching (Y/N).

“A little,” she replied. Black Widow gave her a stern look. “It’s her fault,” (Y/N) said, pointing towards me.

“We need to talk after this is over,” Black Widow told her.

“No, you need to thank me for saving your ass,” (Y/N) argued. Black Widow smirked.

“I’ll be back for you,” She promised.

“Prove it,” (Y/N) dared.

Black Widow shook her head as her smirk grew into a huge smile. “Don’t let her drink anymore!” She ordered and strut outside as a green spat of light shone through the bar’s windows.

“I forgot to tell you that,” (Y/N) said, as she turned around to look at me, “we kind of made up.” She took her wallet out and left more money than what she actually owed. “Thanks for the talk, and the tequila.” She winked at me and walked out as if nothing was going on.

Best story ever.

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HC: Science TA Geno History Student Sid

The second these photos came out we were like IT’S TIME. So HERE. WE. GO:

Imagine a universe in which Sid and Geno are separated by a few more years but not enough for it to be weird and Sid is a history major/gym addict (we just can’t picture him without the lower body) who has put off his science requirements for his degree until the very last possible time to do them. So there he is, 21/22 with a bunch of 18y/o freshmen in first year chem, looking mildly confused three times a week in lecture with his biceps threatening to burst through his intramural hockey tees, carefully seated 2/3 of the way up the lecture hall for maximum anonymity.

Sid does not like science very much. At least, not advanced science; he has no need for it beyond understanding the theory and the basics. He has no burning need to know the world’s innermost workings, and he thinks stoichiometry should go die in a fire.

But he’s also not going to let his GPA suffer because of this stupid class. He has a hard time focusing because he has so many other MORE IMPORTANT things he could be doing with his time so he gets lost easily and feels like he’s floundering and it’s ridiculous and embarrassing.

So, like a good and diligent student he goes to the TA office hours with his last quiz, bracing himself for an hour with some bored grad-school chem major to try and get a handle on the last module before it’s too far into the semester to catch up, and immediately has to squint at the name Evgeni Malkin on the door. He’s not even sure how to pronounce that. Eff-Jenny? Eve Genie? Veg-inni? He knows enough to parse out that it’s Russian and he immediately flashes to a nerdy Russian stereotype playing chess in his office behind thick glasses and a really tragic knit sweater. Sid is prepared to have the WORST time with a hardcore nerd who probably thinks a BA jock like Sid shouldn’t even be in his class - LET ALONE the fact Sid doesn’t want to be there and doesn’t get it and really doesn’t care.

Geno doesn’t make much better of a first impression. BUT to be fair:

The smell in his shared office is vinegary from the eco-friendly cleaning solution that he used to clean up an unfortunate sour cream incident in his small ancient TA office microwave. And it’s also a little like BO because...well because he smells like BO because he hasn’t been home for more than 20 minutes in weeks working on a breakthrough in his thesis. And let’s be fair, all the tiny shitty basements TAs get shoved into smell a little funky. He can’t be blamed!

Re: the point of hasn’t been home in weeks, his clothes are thoroughly dirty, we’re talking food stains, ink stains, lab stains of who knows what that soaked through his labcoat and smeared on his shirt cuffs. Also the clothes he’s wearing are his warmest and most comfortable. Oversized university sweatshirt (he’s so cold always), beanie (covering up greasy hair), his glasses because he hasn’t had time to order new contacts, extra cardigan over the back of his chair for when it gets particularly drafty after dark.

There are a LOT of mugs, and cups, and takeout containers where there aren’t stacks of papers upon papers upon textbooks. Listen, office hours are boring and any time he can get for his thesis is welcome. Cleaning isn’t high on his list of things to do currently.

So anyway, imagine Geno highly sleep deprived (who needs sleep when you have CHEMISTRY), and probably lacking a nutritionally balanced meal and hopped up on caffeine looking up at the knock to his door and seeing the most beautiful man possibly EVER standing in the doorway. He looks wary and faintly disgusted, but he also looks like he smells good, and his hair is a little damp, like he’d just come from the gym or something.

Geno legitimately thinks he's starting to hallucinate beautiful men. But then Sid opens his mouth and Geno recoils because no cute angels actually sound like that, so he must be a student.

And then Sid's asking about his quiz and he's so DETERMINED AND BRIGHT but clearly hating chem and just trying to like STRONG-ARM IT INTO OBEYING HIM. And you know what, this Geno legitimately loves chemistry; the way it underpins all of nature and all of biology, the way you can add one thing to another and get something totally surprising seemingly out of nowhere, the way equations balance out so beautifully when you get them right - the way it’s a whole language that makes perfect and total sense, unlike the confusing jumble of English he’s been putting up with since he moved here for school. He DOES want to help students learn to understand it - to love it like he does, ideally.

Geno probably pulls the test closer for a look and faintly remembers Sid seeing him up close. In class he’d never looked like much, usually wearing a ball cap that kept his beautiful face in shadow and from 40ft away in an auditorium he looked like every other university freshman, not this stacked slice of yum (on second thought, judging by the quality of his internal monologue, Geno is starting to think maybe he really does need to get some sleep).

Looking at the quiz is a little painful in some places though. Geno points out that Sid’s not dumb, but he’s careless with his work.

"This inattentiveness kill you in lab."

"I don't like science, I don't particularly want to be here, but I need this requirement and I'm not going to fly by with a C and let it tank my GPA. SO. we're going over every single one of these quiz questions."

"...You got most right though."

"Still, I could hear a repeat of the concepts, cramming doesn’t help anyone.”

So Sid sits gingerly in the moth-eaten chair in the cramped office while Geno (greasy, owlish with lack of sleep, a little too enthusiastic) tries to impress upon him the BEAUTY of Chemistry and Sid tries to dedicate himself to remembering anything at all while his brain keeps reflexively blanking out every time Geno mentions equilibriums. He’s doing better one on one, but he knew that, he always did better with a focused point for his attention.

Anyway so Sid walks out thinking the TA is like kind of a Russian Science Gremlin Nerd who chats on forums and has never eaten anything other than cheetos (judging by the contents of the wastebasket by the door). And Geno watches the door close probably thinking someone who wears as much athleisure wear and is as jacked as Sid, not to mention was only 70% successful in hiding his general disdain for THE GLORY OF STOICH, is kind of a meathead.

But Sid learned some things and Geno’s a patient if slightly judgy teacher, and Geno knows not everyone can truly understand his love of chem, so they both come out with not...100% accurate impressions of each other, but with a kind of alliance? An understanding? The usual academic relationship you might have with a TA. They're both students, the difference being one gives a shit about the topic and grades the other one’s work. Sid checks in a couple more times with questions and Geno clears up some desk space to help out if he can. 

SO THEN. The semester ends, Sid passes chem, Geno gives him a high five when he hands back his final exam, which has a sticker of a cat with pom-poms saying PURR-FECT on it. Geno loves weird animal stickers (Geno is the weirdest person Sid has ever met maybe).

The next time Geno sees Sid is in the library of all places. Geno would have never thought Sid would be caught dead in a uni library. Like that doesn’t actually make sense the more he thinks about it, but it’s true, he thought maybe Sid’s intensity about his GPA was sport-team related. But here he is stationed at a carrel that is just covered in organized stacks of books, meticulous notes, colour coded even! Sid is hyper-focused on what he’s doing, flipping through a book with one hand and jotting down notes with the other.

Geno: Oh shit I'm getting a competence boner, SID IS REALLY SMART OH NO, HE’S SO ORGANIZED AND DEDICATED. LOOK AT ALL THE TABS IN THAT TEXTBOOK.

He’s beautiful and brilliant RIP G. So then Geno kind of low-key follows Sid's academic career - sees/stalks/stares in the library if he has occasion to be there (SID IS THERE SO OFTEN OH NO), immediately ducking between a couple of shelves whenever Sid looks up or stretches. He finds too many reasons to hang out in the Russian history section, probably bothering Ovi who is actually taking history courses and has a reason to be there and actually knows Sid, much to his disgust with Zhenya when he finds out what’s happening (why not a good Russian history undergrad Zhenya??). Geno has studying to do too! The library is an ideal place to study! What’s that you say, the whole catalogue is even easier to navigate digitally? Shush, you.

The next time Sid sees Geno after the semester ends is in the biggest campus gym. One time he was running on the track for a cool-down and saw Geno swimming in the lane pool below through the windows.

Initially Sid was like "good for him, he doesn't go outside enough, lil russian potted plant/cheeto gremlin."

And then Geno grabs hold of the side of the pool and lifts himself out and Sid almost runs off the track, stumbling hard. Geno doesn't have the soft and furry pale body that Sid was expecting - he's all clean angles with an even tan and the shoulder-to-waist ratio OF A DORITO. He looks insanely long and lean, just legs for days. Sid tries to recollect if he’d ever seen Geno standing before and honestly can’t remember. But watching him wiping the water out of his eyes and walk over to joke and laugh with the lifeguard on her stand, he has to be over six feet, EASILY. He just looked so small hunched in his little office in his sweaters! His face is so angular without the glasses!

So then Sid kind of gets just as creepy as G is in the library and figures out when Geno frequents the gym and starts attending at the same time to creep. The track is raised! It overlooks the pool and he’s a frequent runner! It goes on like that for some time, some mutual creeping in the way you do when you’re on a campus with 20,000 (or w/e) people and you see a familiar face but it would be weird to say hi and so you just keep going about your day/occasionally creeping as one does.

It all comes to a head fortunately one Friday night in late January. Sid gets knocked on his ass yet again at the campus pub one night when he finds out that G doesn't always dress like a soviet grandpa or a mostly-nude glistening adonis. He’s all legs a mile long in jeans laughing with his Russian TA bros, gold chains and a bright graphic tee. He looks so at ease in his clothing the way that Sid never does, because Sid is so sold, blocky, muscular - he always looks like he's 5 seconds from hulking out in his clothing or like he's swimming in his dad's suit, there's no medium. The best he can usually manage is looking like he works in a sporting goods store with an unflattering polo shirt and some track pants. And here’s Geno all handsome and tall and easy confidence with his friends, and Sid KNOWS he’s brilliant too, like this is a disaster.

Meanwhile Geno is IN LOVE with how Sid always looks like he’s going to bust out of whatever he’s wearing but this is just because Sid is still young and hasn't grown into his face/lost some childhood fat and like learned how sleek he can look in well-tailored clothing.

(Brief moment of silent thanks for his current tailor)

G probably sees Sid at the bar as well, looking flushed pink from his drink and giggling atrociously/attractively with his friends. His lips are bright pink and the flush looks so good on those cheekbones and someone’s obviously convinced him to ditch the athleisure and dress like a normal guy for the night. And if Sid is old enough to get into the bar that's not creepy right? They're no longer teacher/student and Sid looks so so so pretty. Geno might be a little drunk and narrating all of this to a very unimpressed Gonch.

(Gonch is a PHD student who is like taking 800 years to do his work because like he's also working a day job because he has a wife and kids)

There are some glances back and forth for a bit, and eventually they can both tell the other is looking looking. Geno is just tipsy enough he plucks up the courage to go over to Sid. And Sid, seeing him approaching, catching his eye, distances himself from his history nerd friends (WE’RE LOOKING AT YOU JACK JOHNSON).

So they meet up in a little nook along the bar, and exchange smiles/greetings (Sid looking up, up, up at him and feeling his flush getting DEEPER). And then the awkwardness sets in HARD. The problem being it's kind of loud in the bar, because they always are, and Sid has trouble with accents most of the time and so does Geno, plus they've both had a few beers.

They end up 100% not understanding anything the other is saying and doing that weird smile-and-nod but not-knowing-what-to-say thing that keeps your convos stilted and awkward with a few “SORRY?”s thrown in for good measure.

They’re still both a little blushy and a little mortified about not understanding. Geno feels like he understood more the first day he came to America he's like "How have I regressed to literally zero English. I don’t remember ANY ENGLISH WORDS."

Meanwhile Sid has realized they can’t really understand each other and the beer has loosened his lips enough that he’s taking advantage of the situation and blurting a lot of awkward stuff he’s way too embarrassed to actually say.

Unfortunately there’s one of those LULLS in the bar where everyone stops talking and the music is between songs and Sid just yells "I DIDN'T REALIZE YOU WERE HOT AT FIRST."

Cue an few cackles from the wings and Sid’s instant mortification. Geno’s face is doing something between fighting a smirk of amusement and being confused/concerned.

Mostly Geno realizes that this is going to spiral out of control very quickly and tugs Sid’s elbow until they’re stepping outside together in the freezing night where their shouts will actually reach each other’s ears.

Basically they end up in a Denny’s at 2 am blushing at each other. Geno getting his flirt on, because once he feels like Sid’s into him he is all confident body language and jokes, getting into Sid’s personal space with his impossibly long limbs. Sid relaxes into being kinda snarky and snide, but so quick-witted and kind, the side of him that Geno had only briefly glimpsed during their office hour conversations. And that’s all it really takes, because they both are the type to go for what they want, and the interest is clearly mutual, and it turns out they already know a bit too much about each other’s schedules and they just make it work in the best ways.

They quickly turn into THAT COUPLE that makes all their friends roll their eyes, and Geno never stops chirping Sid for “I didn’t think you were hot at first.” both in front of other people and while Sid is trying desperately to wrestle G’s jeans off (“oh, I’m hot enough now, Sid?” “shut UP Geno and lift up your hips!!”).

Of course being the academic doorknobs they are, neither of them realize that this is an everlasting permanent kind of love, a LEGIT COLLEGE SWEETHEART KIND OF LOVE until like Sid meal preps Geno's entire week without asking whenever he knows that there's a big assignment coming up and he's never gonna get out of the lab, so he like keeps eating vegetables and not just cheetos and potato-based dishes.

Geno adopts all Sid's weird little rituals in his spaces because he respects that Sid has a system and is serious about his studies and has witnessed the meltdowns that can occur when too big a wrench gets thrown into Sid’s day. He never bothers Sid while he’s studying, but working out a system to ask unobtrusively if he wants a snack.

Geno willingly gets pranked by Flower because there’s HAZING when it comes to roommate’s significant others showering in their bathroom.

Sid has an intimidating family dinner with the Gonchars he was in no way prepared for, but gamely shows up with a bottle of wine and a button down shirt that is still creased from the packaging.

By the time Geno is cheering in the crowd at Sid’s graduation they’re maybe getting an inkling what their future looks like, full of too many bookshelves, messy stacks of papers and notebooks, missed anniversaries for papers and research but made up with good sex and take out, lumpy knit sweaters over the backs of chairs and ugly but charming antique furniture. Full of each other.