#but seeing him messing around with camera equipment is a real mind fuck
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Look at these dorks and their AV Club shenanigans.
#perry mason#hamilton burger#lt. andy anderson#wesley lau looks so much like my grandfather it's insane#but seeing him messing around with camera equipment is a real mind fuck#given my grandpa was a major shutterbug himself#if raymond burr and william talman weren't in this shot#and i saw it at a glance#i'd think this was my grandpa#the case of the legal lazarus
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Wormhole
Steve is laying on his bed wearing his pyjamas, his eyes droopy and his mind hazy with tiredness but still, he insists on texting his friends. A normal tuesday, it appears.
Until suddenly, a big blue ring light starts to shine out of nowhere in the middle of his room. Steve sits on the bed, eyes wide. Suddenly a person gets out from inside the light. A boy about his height, his big honey eyes hiding behind his dark hair that was covering almost all of his freckled face. He was wearing black pants, a white button up and a coat. He looked drenched but still, he looked very handsome.
Is Steve too sleep deprived? Is he dreaming? Is he imagining this? He doesn't know.
"Oh thank god, it's you" the boy holds Steve's shoulders and kisses his cheek quickly, dropping a little device on the bed beside him.
"Um. Hello? W-who are you?" Steve freezes, trying to understand what just happened. He's not imagining it then, since the kiss felt very real. He would've blushed if the situation wasn't really scary.
"What? It's me. I guess I might look a little different, I've been traveling around for a while. Ugh my clothes are gross. I'm just gonna change real quick, okay?" the guy rambles walking to Steve's closet and opening the door. He searches for something, getting all his clothes out of the way. Steve frowns. What the fuck is this dude doing?
"Did you move my stuff again?"
"I literally don't know what you're talking about." Steve slowly gets up and walks towards the door.
"C'mon Steve, stop messing around, they were right here" he half laughs and keeps searching. A shiver goes down Steve's spine. He knows his name. Is he a spy? An alien? Is he here to harm him? Steve grabs his bat carefully and places it on his neck.
"I'd appreciate if you stopped messing with my stuff and left. I don't know who you are and why you're here! Just leave me alone!" he says with a rough voice.
Eli turns to face Steve, ready to laugh and ask 'what is this, a prank?' but his smile drops as soon as he sees Steve with the bat and a serious expression.
"Steve, calm down! It's me, your best friend, Eli Pepperjack. Do you seriously not recognize me?"
"Wrong! My best friend is Jim Lake and everybody knows that. I've never seen you before in my life!"
Steve and Jim being best friends??? Something is definitely Not Right. Eli looks around in disbelief. Now that he notices, Steve looks... younger. The room looks different too. It's the same style, but the colors are all wrong. He peeks outside the window and the street is slightly different too. Oh my god.
Did he just travelled to a parallel universe? One that Steve doesn't know him? He knew the wormhole could do that, but only on command! How did it malfunctioned so badly??
Steve adjusts his hands on the bat, getting Eli out of his thoughts.
"Wait! Wait! I can explain! I can prove that I know you!"
Steve considers, still not moving from the position he's in. The boy seems scared but somehow his eyes are shining, inviting. Steve sighs.
"Ok. Go on." he raises an eyebrow, curiously.
"Your favorite color is blue. You favorite food is pancakes. You can't have spicy food. You had a crush on Claire Nunes"
"Those are really basic and you could easily be lying. Or spying on me! And everybody had a crush on Claire!" Steve shouts, losing his patience.
"Okay, look." Eli reaches for his back pocket, taking out his wallet and handing Steve a picture of them hugging and smiling, doing the Creepslayerz hand gesture to the camera.
"You like nerdy movies like Gun Robot and Earth Invaders in secret because you don't want people to know. You don't know basic math but that's alright because you're a really great actor and you're very good at sports. Sometimes you let your insecurities get to you and that's why you act like you're superior to everyone else. But you're actually a really nice person. You care a lot about people, so much that you saved my life a thousand times before. You're funny and brave and I love you for that" Eli blurted out without even thinking.
"Wow, okay, that's scary. How is all of this possible?" He puts the bat down and stares at the picture, not believing what he's seeing.
"It's possible because I was traveling through that thing" Eli points to the wormhole device on the bed. Steve reaches it and throws it his way.
"Thanks. It's a wormhole, it's extraterrestrial technology. I've been living in another planet but I try to visit as much as I can. It malfunctioned this time. I'm guessing I ended up in a parallel universe" Eli says matter of factly, clicking the device on his hand. A blue hologram appears in front of them. Steve doesn't recognize the language on it.
"Hold up, are you telling me I'm dating an alien?"
"I literally just told you I'm from another universe and you decided to focus on that?"
"Well yeah" he shrugged.
Eli sighed, smiling.
"No, I'm human. I'm Earth's ambassador on the planet Arkiridion-5."
"Ok but are we dating...?" Steve blushes at him.
"Yes. We are."
"Oh sweet! Point for the Palchuk!" He punched the air. Eli laughs through his nose, shaking his head but still focused on the device.
"Can I ask you some questions?"
"Yeah, go on"
"How did it happen... How did we even... do it?" Steven didn't know how to ask this, but as if he was reading his mind, the brown haired boy answered quickly.
"Well, when we started getting close people just assumed. But our families are okay with it, if that's what you're asking"
"Cool. Alright." Steve knew he was bi for a long time now. He was just afraid of telling his family and friends. What if they got disappointed? What if they couldn't love him? What if he was left behind?
"How will I know if they're like this here too?" Steve asked in a quiet voice after a few seconds of silence and just the bleeping of the device.
"I'm pretty sure they love you in every universe. I know I do." Eli sinceraly stated, not even looking up. Steve had a hard time believing someone cared about him and loved him enough to say something so soft like that. He looked at the picture on his hands again. They were sharing a smile so genuine, their eyes meeting in such a sweet way, like they meant the whole world to each other.
"And how did we meet?" he leaned on the closet, crossing his arms. Eli just kept clicking away.
"At school. We didn't like each other at first, but we figured it out" he exhaled. "Took a while, but we did."
"Why? What happened?"
Eli thought about the years his Steve used to be mean at him and shove him into lockers. It was sad, but he knew there was good in him. Maybe this Steve could do it differently.
"Just... be nice."
"I am nice!" Eli stopped what he was doing, raising an eyebrow on Steve's direction. "Alright, I'll be nicer."
"Good. What year is it?"
"2018"
"Woah, okay, I'm so far off." he clicked a few more times, the big blue ring light popping up in the middle of the room again.
"Wait, you're leaving already?"
"Yeah. My Steve is waiting for me at home."
"But I still have so many questions!"
"Don't worry, it's gonna be alright. Nice to meet you. I hope I see you soon." And with that, he disappeared with the light, leaving Steve alone in his room. He looks down to his hands, still holding the picture strongly. He smiles.
"I hope so too."
Steve didn't remember his name. He tried to think back but at the time he was panicking at the thought of "CUTE BOY IN MY ROOM!" and focusing too hard on the fact that said boy was from another universe. So of course his ADHD brain would forget his name.
But this didn't keep Steve from looking. He was never this excited to go to school before. He started paying more attention to his surroundings, hoping he would spot the mysterious boy somewhere.
Instead, he spotted a fight. "Just be nice" he thought. The older boys being mean to the smaller ones does seem like a good moment to be nice. Also, it was just not fair.
"Hey, why don't you pick someone your size?" Steve approached the bully, tapping him on the shoulder with his eyebrows pinched.
"Ugh. Why do you always have to ruin the party, Palchuk? You had potential but you insist on being on the wrong side" he tries to push Steve, asking for a fight. Steve scoffs and holds the boy's wrist.
"Just let them go. You know you can't win against me." The bully grunts and shakes his wrist from Steve's hold. He nods to his friends and they leave, muttering amongst themselves.
Steve turns to help the other boys out of the ground, offering a hand. The first boy refuses, getting up fast and running away. And that's when finally, Steve sees him. He looks smaller than the boy in his room, his hair is shorter and he was wearing nerdy glasses. But it was definitely him. He would recognize that smile and those eyes anywhere.
"Thanks. Steve, right?" the boy said, holding his hand and getting up. Steve was at a loss of words. He nodded, smiling.
"That was very nice of you. I'm Eli, by the way." he shook his hand. He was real and he was right here, holding hands with him. Ok, this is happening!
"Nice to meet you. That was no problem really, if you ever have any trouble with them again just tell me" Steve blunted out nervously, scratching his neck. Eli smiled, picking up his books and leaving.
"Again, Steve?" the teacher asked, raising an eyebrow. "I'm starting to think you're not even trying. Go to detention!"
Steve sighs, walking with his head down in shame. But this time, when he enters the classroom he sees someone that make his eyes light up.
"Eli! Hi!" Steve sits on the table behind him, excited.
"Oh, hey Steve"
"What are you in here for?" he asks confused.
"I was breaking in. And you?" Eli says as if it's a normal occurrence.
"Woah what???"
"I was trying to study at the lab during recess."
"I didn't know that wasn't allowed"
"Well... I kinda was using their equipment to try and communicate with aliens... Which isn't allowed..." Eli says a little embarrassed.
"Oh" Steve laughs, finding the story very endearing. "So you like space, huh?"
"I do. Imagine if I got to do it. It would've been so cool!" he exclaims, and Steve has to hold back the urge to tell him about the parallel universe.
"It really would. Don't lose hope though" he winks at his direction.
Eli smiles and keeps working on his assignment.
"Y'know, I didn't expect you to be here. You're very... um... nerdy?" Steve admits after some minutes of silence.
"Oh so we're doing stereotypes? Alright, jock. Why are you here? Got into a fight?"
"What? No. I'm a nice person! I just didn't do my homework. Again."
"Because you didn't want to or...?" Eli asked confused, tilting his head. Steve had a genius idea. He felt like those cartoons when a little lamp lights up.
"I'm having a lot of trouble, actually. Are you any good with math?"
"Of course. Why?"
"What do you say you help me with homework and I help you by staying on look out when you're in the lab?"
Eli considered, as he heard the bell ring. He gathers his books and hands Steve a piece of paper before leaving.
"Sure. Text me later so we can talk about it"
"Sounds good" Steve smiled. If this went anything like he wanted to, he better start cleaning some space in his closet.
#hello! its me! again#just a silly little thing that came to me and i rolled with it lol#i kinda like it tho! enjoy!#steli#steve palchuk x eli pepperjack#creepslayerz#tales of arcadia#trollhunters#my writing
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Continued from here, because @thoughts-onfire just had to have 69 notes on the last post.
thoughts-onfire:
As much as Elania had tried to take in his words she couldn’t help the way her mind stopped at his ever too frequent use of the word ‘if’ - as if somehow he was trying to be the clear opposite of presumptuous, the manners while respectable were also starting to cause Elania to question just how many dates they’d end up having after their evening together. The rattling question in her mind causing her to temporarily detour from answering his question in exchange for a comment that sprang from her own overly forward nature. Taking a moment to unbuckle her seatbelt and shift towards him now that they were parked Elania spoke up, offering her bold opinion on their potential towards future dates. “You keep saying if when it comes to us going out again, and I just want to be perfectly clear on this, just in regards to being entirely transparent on where I stand.. I want to keep getting to know you. You’re obviously handsome, and as charming as you are interesting to talk to, and as much as I want you to fuck me until I forget my own name tonight, I’m currently pretty set on there being a fourth date. Just, for the record.” Elania spoke, her tone as sweet as it was confident as she reached out for the collar of his leather jacket, bringing him in towards her as she leaned in just enough to press a lingering kiss against his lips, “No more if’s for the evening, okay?” She mumbled before pulling back towards her side of the car, the hand that clasped his coat reaching for her door handle before she stepped onto the concrete, shutting the door behind her as she waited for him to join her.
“I will admit though, that I didn’t actually plan on inviting you up before we went out tonight, so if you’d be so kind in ignoring my camera equipment that I have no doubts about forgetting to clean up and put away before leaving earlier.” Elania commented, letting one hand wrap around Oliver’s arm as her other reached out to buzz her own apartment number, only to use her phone to unlock the building door once it starting ringing, “I lost my building key a months ago and I’m just too stubborn to pay for a new one.” She admitted, leading them both into the elevator shortly after they stepped inside, Elania keeping herself what could have easily been deemed as too close to Oliver as they made their way up to her floor, the blonde doing her best in keeping her attention focused on keeping her hands to herself the best she could as they made they way to her apartment.
Oliver was trying not to be too presumptuous about date four and beyond, even if they already had their mystery third date pretty set in stone at the moment. Though, there was a little part of him that feared what might happen after some drunken mutual oversharing on date three, but again, if Elania didn't truly like every part of him, and he, her, there wasn't going to be a real future friendship anyhow. His brows raised when she spoke, taking a minute to absorb when she'd changed gears on him so quickly, though he'd take the compliments she threw in there. "I feel the same way. I just...I don't know, I didn't want you to think I was planning a Spring wedding or something.", he joked softly. He kissed her back gently then, nodding in agreement after she pulled away. "No more if's." He took his seatbelt off, trying not to complain about her getting out of the car on her own, but he'd been a gentleman all night, so he'd let it slide. He got out of the car, locked it and rejoined her side, not minding the camera equipment, or any other perceived mess in her apartment, for the most part. "I know, and remember, I can't cross the threshold unless I'm invited in." He chuckled softly, calling back what he'd said about vampires earlier in the evening. "Besides, I like the idea of seeing my little artist in her element. It's why we met, after all."
Oliver shook his head silently in protective disapproval when Elania went through this whole little elaborate dance to get into the building, but he didn't say anything about it as they walked in and got onto the elevator. As they made their way to her floor and to her apartment door, he quietly tried to backtrack to their conversation in his car. "I did promise actual dancing, man of my word, and all that, but uh, are we going to circle back to the boundaries conversation at some point? It's just that....that super hot part of you that's all bright, shining starlight and fire? It maybe scares me a little bit, in a hot way.", he admitted with a fond chuckle.
#oepara01#oliver and elania#thoughts-onfire#~Calling you out publicly-lol-I only have like 7 followers though#~I'm sure it messed up formatting in html-but I tried#~Also-we watched WW S1 Ep9 tonight and in one of the town scenes I noticed a building that said Wainwright-Oliver's last name on it#~I recommend re-watching WW with someone who is watching it for the first time and doesn't know spoilers-it's wild and super fun
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Glass in the Studio
Description: Alex Turner x Reader (Female) | Alex injures himself before your date which means that it’s a trip to A&E instead of a restaurant.
Word Count: 1.5k
Warnings: Mentions of blood & injuries?
A/N: This was requested by @supersonic-scientist I really hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think. This is the first of a few drabbles coming over the next few days so enjoy. Likes and reblog are appreciated and as always, thank you to everyone who reads x
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“Miles you really are a fucking idiot.” Alex rolls his eyes as he crouches down on the floor to pick up the now smashed Coke bottle.
“I think you’re the idiot mate. You couldn’t catch a bottle from four foot away.” Miles shakes his head.
Alex looks up at his best mate as if he’s stupid, and also chuckles a little in disbelief, “Why would you throw a half empty bottle at me from four foot away when you could have just passed it me?”
Miles mumbles something under his breath that Alex didn’t quite hear as he starts picking up the glass. There were quite a few large shards that acted as bowls for the smaller shards to sit on as Alex continued to collect the glass from the studio’s wooden floor.
The fluorescent lights that were lighting up the room were making it pretty hard for Alex to actually see the smaller pieces of glass because they blended in with the glossy floor beneath him. However, Alex thought he did quite well with what glass he’d already collected so he asked his best mate to pass the bin over.
This is something Miles does for his friend, but he’s still in a weird mood that the both of them get into when they are in the studio together. So Miles extends the small bin in his hand towards his best mate, but when Alex goes to put the glass in, Miles pulls it away.
No glass goes on the floor again because Miles never actually let Alex get that far, but it was amusing to Miles to see his best friend getting annoyed at him. So he just decided to do it one more time.
This is when tragedy struck. Alex preempted his idiot of a mate to pull his trick again so Alex lunged himself forward ensuring that the glass went in the bin this time, but as he did he threw himself off balance.
His free hand landed right on a decent sized shard of glass, cutting the small muscle on his palm that protected his thumb. And he could feel it stuck in there pretty deep.
“Fuck.” Alex seethed, picking himself up off the floor as he started seeing the blood oozing around the glass that was stuck in his hand.
~*~*~*~
You’d just finished work and you were really excited for your night ahead. You were seeing Alex later and he was taking you out on your 7th date.
You’d been friends for well over 5 years so you knew each other like the back of your hands. But only 6 months ago did you both question if you could be more than the friends you've been for ages.
And as it turns out you could.
You’d loved each and every second of seeing Alex in a romantic sense. He was a real gentleman and you were loving that he treated you like ‘his queen’.
That was a little joke of his because since he’d grown his hair out over the past 2 years after the AM tour, you'd told him that he looked like prince charming but with brown hair. And he was honestly living up to that title because he never stopped looking after you.
Your job stressed you out a lot and with Alex being back and mostly being bored before his tour came back around he was always with you. He gave you a lovely distraction from what your life normally was and he lit you back up again.
You’d really fallen hard for him. And he for you.
That’s why your heart stopped in your chest when you got in the car and found out what had happened. Alex had FaceTimed you saying, “Hey love, sorry to bother you when you're not even home yet but I’m gunna probably be really late tonight.”
“Are you okay?” You ask him as he looks white as a sheet on the screen on your phone. His floppy hair was a mess too.
You didn’t even mind about the date, you’re just worried about him as he looked really unwell. Like more unwell than you’d ever seen him before.
And you’d seen him in some states over the years.
“Erm, yeah and no.” Alex says and panic sets in your stomach, but thankfully he carries on explaining, “I cut my hand on broken glass and Miles is dragging me to A&E.”
“Not dragging you Alex, you’re hand’s cut open.” You can hear Miles say in a scorning voice.
You could see from the screen that he was sitting in a car but he didn't let you ask about his health. He just shushed his mate and apologised, “That doesn’t matter. Y/N I’m really sorry I’m gunna more than likely miss the reservation but I swear I’m gunna make it u-”
You interrupt and ask your boyfriend, “Al, Are you okay?” as he looks very light headed now.
“I’m fine” Alex says before lifting his hand so you could see it in the camera.
You could see that he’d tied a pot towel around it but what scared you was that the bit around the back of his hand was white and the bit on his parm was completely soaked red.
Your heart drops knowing what it was but for some reason you ask, “Is that blood?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t matter right now, what does matter is-” Alex tries to carry on but you don’t let him.
You shake your head and widen your eyes to scorn him for trying to continue on about the date, “You are literally bleeding… There’s more important things Alex.”
“But I just wanted to take you out.” Alex pouts and he leans his head against the window of the car Miles is obviously taking him to hospital in.
He was so adorable but at the same time so stupid.
After you ask Miles which A&E he’s taking him to, you race there yourself. You knew Alex and you knew how he was around doctors, especially when the trip was an unwanted one.
One too many bad experiences left him nervous of waiting rooms and seeing men and women in white coats. He didn’t like it all that much so there was no way you weren’t going.
Whether that be for moral support or to help ease his nerves you didn’t know. You just knew you couldn’t sit at home wondering if the man you love was okay after seeing how much blood was on that thick pot towel.
“Are you okay?” You say as your arms wrap around his waist.
“I’m fine.” Alex says, hugging you while simultaneously keeping his hand raised. “Better now you’re here.”
He kissed the side of your head before he let you go and you sat yourself down beside him. Miles left after you’d all been waiting together for 20 minutes but you assured him that your (but also practically his) boyfriend would be alright with you.
You were waiting an hour in total before you were sat in a chair next to the bed that the nurse had made Alex lie down on the bed and was preparing his hand to be stitched up. The cut was fairly deep and the nurse really wasn’t surprised at how much blood he’d lost considering the size of the wound.
It was lucky the glass hadn’t gone any deeper into his muscle or he could have been in a lot worse situation.
“I’m sorry.” Alex says when he looks away from the nurse to you sitting just beside him.
You frown a little then and look into his soft brown eyes, “What for?”
“This isn’t the date I wanted to take you on...” Alex tells you, pouting his bottom lip a little. “A&E isn’t really what I had in mind for tonight.”
You softly smile at him then and gently rub his shoulder as you say, “We could be here or at a dingy pub or a fancy restaurant and I’d be just as happy because you’re with me.”
Alex just grins at you like an idiot then, even more so when you say, “I’m happy anywhere as long as you’re with me.”
Alex’s heart melts.
“Please give me a kiss.” His Sheffield accent comes through thick when he asks you that.
You grin like the idiot in love that you are before you get up off the chair you’re sat on and kiss your boyfriend. His lips are warm and inviting as they always were and you smile into the sweet kiss as he tries to keep you there a little longer to distract him.
When you pull away, Alex softly smiles, “I love you.”
“I love you more...” You grin and add, “My little damsel in distress.” You run your fingers through his floppy hair and smile when he leans into your touch a bit more.
Alex laughs at that as you sit back down beside his bed and he chuckles, “This make you my prince charming now?”
“Well I’m not the one about to get stitches so I think so.” You giggle, looking over to the nurse who looked just about ready to start.
She moved her wheely table that now held her equipment to start treating Alex and she looks to him and asks, “You ready?”
Alex then grabs your hand and intertwines your fingers and after giving it a kiss and a squeeze he smiles and nods, “I am now”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
#alex turner x reader#alex turner#alex#turner#arctic monkeys#arcticmonkeys#alex arctic monkeys#AM#alex turner imagine#alex turner fluff#alex turner drabble#alex turner fanfic#alex turner blurb#alex turner x y/n#alex turner x you#matt helders#nick o'malley#jamie cook#miles kane#whatever people say I am that's what I'm not#favourite worst nightmare#humbug#suck it and see#tranquility base hotel and casino#tbhc#the age of the understatement#everything you've come to expect#alex x reader
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Akio’s Idea
CW: Some vague past noncon references, discussion of traumatic events, referenced minor whump, referenced Oliver being gross as shit - all vague, Akio Gets An Idea, modern slavery
(Lisa Huang appears in Teenage Dream)
“Thanks for driving down here, Lisa.”
“No problem.” Lisa Huang pushes her glasses back up on her nose, sitting back in the hard plastic chair in the side room with its large conference table. The faint sounds of the gym are still audible here. Lisa’s got one ankle laid over the other knee, hands behind her head as she looks around. The heavy knit cap on her head is a deep saturated orange, the rest of her clothes a mix of faded gray and blacks. It makes her look, just a little, like she’s wearing a pumpkin on her head. “I needed to meet my sister for lunch some time this month, so I figured, two birds one stone. The drive down was really pretty, anyway. Wow, the gym has hardly changed at all, has it?”
“Not really.” Akio gives her a half-smile. He’s in his own casual clothes, just a hoodie over a t-shirt and jeans. He feels like she’ll see his heart beating, the way he shifts from foot to foot. Lisa was always good at reading people, better than Akio’s ever been, anyway. “New equipment, new kids, but… you know. You probably didn’t exactly get lost.”
“Ha! No. I could have walked to this room with my eyes closed.” She gestures at a large framed photo across the room, settled along a wall between two windows. “They haven’t even changed the team photo. We were, like, kids when we went there.”
Akio looks over his shoulder.
He’s right in the center of the photo, next to the old governor, smiling brightly for the camera. On either end of the line, their coaches. Spread throughout the center, all of them, a range of ages, wearing matching windbreakers and gym pants, smiling. All of them, smiling.
One of them, missing, presumed dead.
“Yeah, Mark’s still really proud of that, I guess.”
“I remember. That crusty old guy’s what got us the WRU sponsorship. Mark just about had a stroke when they wanted to do that whole marketing campaign with us.” Lisa laughs. Akio doesn’t. His nerves are shot, and he doesn’t want to make small talk about WRU. Not knowing what he knows. Not with who’s waiting in the hallway.
Lisa seems to pick up on his reticence. Her laughter fades, and she tilts her head, some of her black hair brushing along her shoulder. “Aki? What’s up, man? I haven’t talked to you in, like, six months and then you ask me to come down to the old gym and say it’s super important but you can’t say why on the phone. Talk to me, man. I don’t mind being here, but if you’re going to propose, I have some real bad news about how thoroughly I am not going to do that. Nothing personal, I don’t want that mess with anyone else, either.”
That does pull a laugh from him, and Lisa relaxes slightly. “Don’t worry, Lees, I’m not asking you to-... anything me,” Akio says, heading for the doorway to the conference room. His palms feel sweaty. His palms never feel sweaty. He can swing through the air and only feel the perfect rush of what his body can do, he can land on his feet, he broke an ankle once without a sound, but now… now he’s scared.
Scared of what he’s going to show her.
Scared of how she could react.
“I’m actually sort of dating someone,” Akio confesses, after a pause. “I mean. I think we’re dating.”
“Honestly, you not knowing if you’re dating someone or not is the most Nakamura thing I can imagine,” Lisa says cheerfully. “You haven’t changed much, either.”
Has he not? He feels like a whole different person since he found Tristan again. Like he’s aged ten years in a few weeks. A new anger burns under his skin, fury at grieving the loss of a boy who was never actually gone.
“What’s his name?”
Akio stops, hand on the doorknob, and turns to look over his shoulder at Lisa’s impish little grin.
“Oh, fuck off, Aki, you think I didn’t know? We practically lived together at the gym. What’s his name? Is that why you wanted me here, to meet him maybe?”
“His name’s-... uh, his name’s Ben. He’s not here, but. Okay, so. There’s something I needed to show you today. I want to show everybody from the old group, but… but I wanted to start with you.” He can feel heat in his eyes, unfamiliar fear making his pulse thrum. Something in his expression makes her own smile fade.
Lisa Huang leans forward, dropping both feet to the floor. She watches him, dark eyes traveling over his face. “Aki? What’s wrong?”
Akio laughs, a little helplessly. “Just… so much is wrong, Lisa.”
“Talk to me, Nakamura. What’s going on?” Lisa’s concern is open, and genuine, and he can’t think of any way to answer except just to open the door, glancing to where Chris is waiting sitting on a bench in the hallway, and gesture him inside.
Chris comes in slowly - he’s nervous, too, and one hand grips tightly to the oversized plastic feather necklace he’s always wearing, rubbing his thumb over the carved vanes. He’d be less recognizable, Akio thinks, if he still had the long blue hair and not the short copper. As it is, he’s all giant green eyes and narrow chin, black compression shirt under a loose oversized blue one, black jeans, wearing his friend’s old black-and-white checked shoes.
Lisa glances at him, and he’d be less recognizable, maybe, with blue hair, but Akio sees the color drain from her face as she takes in a man who is, as far as she knows, a very dead boy. She moves to stand, gets halfway up, drops back down into the seat again. “Aki-” Her voice catches, cuts off. “Akio, what-... who is-”
“Lisa.” Akio’s own voice is rough, staying close as Chris steps inside further, then stops. His thumb rubs at the plastic feather, his other hand curves over his stomach, gripping into the fabric of his t-shirt. “This is-”
“Tristan fucking Higgs.” Lisa cuts him off, getting to her feet again. “He’s-... Aki, Tristan’s-”
“A little less dead than we were supposed to think he was. This is, um. Christopher Stanton.” When Lisa looks at him, eyebrows furrowing, Akio shakes his own head in response. “He was Tristan Higgs. Our, our Tris-... but he ended up-”
“Lisa,” Chris says, suddenly, the name slotting into place in a mind where memories still slip and slide out of his awareness seemingly at will. They stick or they don’t, and Akio doesn’t know what makes the difference. His eyes light up, and he takes another two steps forward, then stops when Lisa flinches slightly back. “Lisa, um, Lisa… Lisa-... you, you, you you did, um, you did, you were good at the uneven bars, were, you you you-you… you wore the, the same ponytail holder every time you did a meet.”
Lisa’s eyes fill with tears, the glitter of them visible even across the room, and her hands come up to cover her mouth. “Oh my God,” She whispers. She sits back down, but it’s more like her legs simply stop working, dropping so heavily the chair creaks beneath her. She keeps whispering, oh my god, oh my god, over and over, her face ash-gray, her eyes locked on Chris’s face.
“Wha-... what…” Lisa takes in a breath, and then another, and Chris moves closer to her, bit by bit. Neither of them is able to close the last foot or so of distance, and Akio watches them, his own lips pressed together into a thin line. He’d expected her to deny it, to call this a joke, to call Chris an impostor, but-
Lisa was the one closest to Tris, other than him.
Lisa remembers him well enough to see him in the older, more angular face in front of her, knows him well enough to hear in his speech and the way his fingers tap carefully on his own skin - finger-twist tap tap tap - that it’s Tristan, through and through.
“What happened to you?” Lisa manages. She sounds like she’s choking on the words.
Chris rocks a little, uncertainly, his eyes drifting to look to the windows, the walls, drifting over the framed team photos over the years. “My, my, my parents-... after-”
“I remember that. But you-... you had to go live with someone-”
“My, my aunt.” Chris’s eyes find the old photo of the team with the governor and lock on. His pale eyebrows come together a little, frowning. Something in his face goes distant. “She, she, she… she gave me up.”
Lisa looks at Akio, who nods. “It’s true, as far as I can tell. He went to stay with his mom’s sister, and then… WRU.”
“After he ran away?”
Akio swallows, and shakes his head. “He, uh. He says he never ran away.” He doesn’t mean to talk for Chris, but Chris is moving away from them, staring at the photo on the wall, wandering towards it and away from he and Lisa entirely. “She, uh. She sold him.”
Lisa jerks forward, as though she’ll be sick on the floor, and closes her eyes. “That’s not possible,” She says, in a low voice. “That can’t be what happened. They would-... nobody would do that to someone, nobody would-”
“They did it to him. He didn’t even know who he was, Lees. They gave him a new name and did that thing where they take all his memories and they sold him to someone.”
Akio knows the look on Lisa’s face. Her mind is spinning, overwhelmed. He knows the feeling, he’s cycled through it a hundred times now, his body and brain working to understand that while he was crying in his bed missing his best friend, visiting his parents’ fucking graves to leave flowers for him, Tristan was locked up somewhere, not even knowing who he was.
“But WRU only takes people who sign up on purpose.” Lisa’s hands drop. Her mouth barely moves. There’s almost no sound to the words.
Akio takes in a breath, glancing over at Chris, standing in front of the photo of the team at the governor’s mansion. “So, I asked, he says-... that’s a lie. They… steal people. Or people get given to them, like Tris was.”
“Who-... who did they sell him to?”
“Him. I was, was, was sold to him.”
The two of them look over to where Chris is pointing at the center of the photo. Akio moves over to him, Lisa pushing herself up to follow on his heels.
Akio’s eyes follow the line of Chris's arm, to his index finger pressed just lightly against the glass covering the photo in the frame. Lisa jerks in a breath.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” She says, voice flat, almost empty, the emotions struggling to catch up to the pile of information building up. “That’s-... that’s the governor that got fucking murdered-”
“Right before he was supposed to testify against WRU,” Akio says, blinking. “I remember. Our coach was super pissed because of the publicity. He had some kind of bombshell something that was going to-... oh. Oh shit.”
If Chris hears either of them, he doesn’t show it. He just keeps looking at the man in the photo, tracing the line of his face with his fingertip.
"Right there," Chris says. “I was there.” His voice is nearly drowned out by the sound of creaking, of shouting, of bodies in the air or on mats coming in through the open door. Behind them, out in the practice area, nothing changes. Everything is the same, with Tristan and without him. Life went on.
Life goes on.
Here, though, the silence draws out, as Akio and Lisa stare at Chris's fingernail, with a star sticker stuck to it, and at the photo of the old governor, the one who died, with his arm around Akio's shoulders. Here, time stands horribly still.
"What do you mean-... you’d been… I mean, we had been told you’d, um, that you’d… you know-"
"Under the, the, the desk." Chris taps lightly on the glass. The desk was right behind them, in the photo. His finger is tapping just behind Akio's legs. "I was... right, right, right there. He, he, he, he liked that no one ever saw me. I was there.”
Akio looks at the smile on Governor Branch's face and remembers how his skin crawled at the man's too-friendly touch. How he’d kept asking questions about Tristan, pushing until Akio had gotten upset. How he’d joked with them and Akio had gone home and taken a shower that nearly burned him from the heat just to feel clean for reasons he couldn’t explain to himself.
How the governor kept asking about Tristan.
"I'm going to be sick," He whispers. Akio Nakamura, smiling gymnast, is standing right in front of the fucking desk. Oliver's hand curved around the ball of his shoulder and he's leaning in and, oh god, they're all smiling, all of them.
Their coaches had been so happy for the photo op.
“Tristan-” Neither of them correct Lisa on the name. “Are you-... are you saying you were under the desk when this photo was taken?”
Lisa’s in the photo, too. She’s off to the side, not really looking at the camera, smiling tightly. Lisa never liked photos, and she didn’t even want to go to the governor’s mansion that day. Her hair was longer then.
“Probably. Some… sometimes he would, um, he, he, he would, he would… make me wait in his, his, his room.”
“Gross,” Lisa says, weakly. “How-... how old were you?”
Chris blinks. He’s lost, Akio thinks. Inside his head, inside the memories he can’t hold on to very well. Grasping on with slippery fingers to images and thoughts that someone will have to remind him of later. “They, they, they, they told me to say I-I was eighteen.” He presses his finger directly over Oliver Branch’s face, digging the flat of it in until a smudged fingerprint nearly obscures the man’s face entirely. “They beat me un, until I said it.”
“WRU did?”
Chris nods.
“But you weren’t…”
“No.”
"Why would Governor Branch buy-... But why..."
"Too pretty," Chris whispers. "Too, too, too pretty for... for, um, for for anything else. He, he, he… wanted young." There's a healing wound on his forehead sure to scar and his green eyes are dark and Akio should move, before he throws up on the photo.
He can't. He keeps staring at the desk, like if he tries hard enough, he can step in and tell a younger version of himself Tristan isn't dead, he's right there, just look. Just look. Just look.
Tris was right there the whole time.
While Oliver Branch looked at Akio Nakamura like dinner laid out for him on a plate, he had Tristan under his desk, and when they left he probably pulled him out from under the desk and-
Akio has to turn away, then, jamming his hands into his hoodie pockets and walking away, to the window, breathing in and out as he stares at the cars in the parking lot outside. His blood rushes in his ears, pounds through his temples. His fingers pulse.
Behind him, Lisa asks Chris about his life now, and he answers, in his familiar stammer that Akio had missed so much when he had to live without it. He talks about his brother, going to college.
All of it is-... good, that Tristan rebuilt, that he has people now, a family. But he had a family then, one he should never have had to lose.
Akio has to let them talk, because he’s afraid if he opens his mouth he’ll start screaming.
How many people has this happened to? Akio knows the company line. People disappear into WRU sometimes, running from debt or criminal charges or homelessness, and they get a whole new life.
But he knows the other side of it now, too. He knows Chris - he knows his dead best friend was never dead at all. He knows what happened to him. He’s met a houseful of others - Chris’s older brother with a pretty smile who told him none of us ever want it, not really. The other quiet brother who has a scar on his neck he won’t talk about. The others who stared at him when he came over, terrified to get close to him, scared he’d turn them in.
Akio has started looking at the street kids he sees sometimes and wondering who ran away from WRU and who’s going to end up there.
He’s started to wonder if it has to be that way at all.
When he trusts his voice again, he says, “Did-... did WRU know you were-... weren’t willing-” It’s stupid, he knows better, but he wants - he wants so badly - for it to have been some kind of terrible misunderstanding. If it is, he tells himself, he can pull back from this.
If it is, he can focus on Tristan, he can walk away from the rest.
“They, they, they call us ‘underagers’,” Chris says, and he still doesn’t look away from Oliver Branch’s face. “We, we, we have special rooms. They… know. We’re... we, we, we... we sell for more. After I, I waas rescued they, um, they they they sent people once. To take me back. My, my, my brother kept me safe.”
Akio feels a rush of heat that threatens to burn him alive in his own fury. WRU has been giving the team money and marketing opportunities and bullshit since-... since they met the governor, who had been the one to hook them up with WRU in the first place, and… and the whole time he’d known what happened to Tristan, he was what happened to Tristan, Governor Branch and his oily fucking voice and his stupid jokes and he had Tristan the whole time.
WRU knew.
They know.
They’re still doing it, probably, hurting people like Chris, sending fucking SWAT teams after them if they get out. How many people are out there hurting like this?
There’s an idea that’s been building in the back of his mind. Foggy, barely-formed. But as his anger lights him up, Akio feels the pieces coming together. Speaking up, speaking out, telling people what happened to his best friend will probably ruin his career. It could ruin his life.
But there are a lot of people like Tristan Higgs whose lives are already ruined. A whole lot more whose lives will be if nobody ever stops it.
If he’s going to speak out, he might as well make sure everyone is listening.
“Lisa, do you still speak to the girls from the Canadian team?”
She nods, frowning. “Yeah, I speak to a bunch of different people still. Why?”
Akio looks over at Chris, at Tristan Higgs’s face. The last day he saw Tristan was at his parents’ funeral, wearing an ill-fitting suit and rocking against the weight of grief, his aunt saying it’d be awhile before he could come back to practice.
He’d never returned.
Then the texts stopped, then his aunt said he’d run off, then she said they’d found his body. Then then then. One lie after another, so she could fucking sell him. So WRU could make money off someone who needed help, who Akio couldn’t hear crying for him, for someone, for anyone, to get him out of this.
Akio turns back, and to Lisa and Chris he’s nearly a silhouette of darkness backlit by the light from outside.
“What if we-... what if we make it so WRU can’t do this anymore?”
“How?”
“I have an idea. Just... what if we make it so nobody can ignore what’s really happening anymore?”
---
Tagging: @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @astrobly @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions , @pretty-face-breaker , @boxboysandotherwhump , @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump , @whump-tr0pes @whumpiary @downriver914 @vickytokio
#chris the strawberry blond romantic#akio nakamura#lisa huang#speak out arc#box boy whump#whump#modern slavery#box boy universe#bbu#wru#referenced past noncon#referenced past torture#referenced past minor whump
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it’s a monthly tradition. on the last friday of every month, you whip out the aprons and bake. the winner is given dibs over what to watch on tv for the next month. it’s a serious competition, with multiple judges. but who will be crowned star baker, y/n or osamu?
warnings - some swearing
word count - 1.4k
The kitchen was all set up. You and Osamu had claimed your work stations, you using the counters on the right, him those on the left. They were mirror images of each other, same base ingredients, same equipment (though you had both customised yours in honour of a year of baking competition). The competition was so serious that Atsumu insisted on playing the role of presenter. Currently, he was stood in front of you holding a large whiteboard to his chest (which he had taken great pride in decorating as it was the only thing he had been trusted to do while you and Osamu set up the kitchen).
“Are you going to make us stand here all day, Sumu?” questioned Osamu, shooting his brother a glare. The quicker they started, the quicker he could beat you and regain his TV privileges. Last month, you had beaten him with an excellent batch of cookies that had been devoured while you forced him to sit through a whole season of Love Island. He would rather not have to relive that experience.
“Come on, Atsumu,” you said, bouncing slightly on the balls of your feet. “I want to know what we’re baking.”
With a flourish, Atsumu spun the board around, revealing the task to be ‘realistic cakes.’ You read the name, quickly processing it and beginning to formulate a plan. Your eyes were then drawn to the decoration. To say Atsumu lacked artistic talent would be an understatement.
“What the fuck is that?” you snickered, pointing at an oddly humanoid figure for something which had a tail and pointed ears.
“Looks like he’s just drawn himself in all his glory,” quipped Osamu, leaning forward to admire the drawing. “It really is a great likeness.”
“Shut up, Samu,” grumbled Atsumu. “If I look like a rat, then so do you.”
“It’s supposed to be a rat?” you laughed.
In a huff, he grabbed a cloth from the table and wiped the picture away. A small smile tugged at the corner of your lips, but you pushed it away. Though you enjoyed teasing your roommate and best friend’s brother, you had to focus. There was a competition to win.
Now, what to make...
You blocked out the sound of their bickering. Whether Osamu was attempting to use it as a distraction tactic or was simply being annoyed by his brother, you couldn’t let it distract you. After all, you had the crown of star baker to uphold.
Opening the notebook in front of you, you began to sketch down a couple of ideas. There was making the cake look like some other type of food, such as onigiri (which was no doubt where Osamu’s mind had wandered). You supposed you could make it look like your favourite animal but, if you were being honest with yourself, you hardly had the artistic talent for that. Unable to help yourself, your brain wandered back to the idea of food. You supposed you could make it resemble a cookie jar, paying homage to your previous win. Nodding away to yourself, you drafted out your plan and began to bake.
Osamu had already begun with the baking process, having taken less time than you to decide on an idea. Much to his Atsumu’s delight, he had decided to make it look like a volleyball. In terms of flavours, he decided to stick with the classics, figuring that most of the judging would be appearance based. There was also the fact that the last time he had been experimental in his flavourings, he had suffered a crushing defeat.
Silence descended on the kitchen, the both of you too focused to acknowledge Atsumu or shoot teasing comments at each other. Atsumu wasn’t fazed by the silence, deciding to start a live stream to document the event. He approached you first, phone in hand, introducing you before flipping the camera around to capture you in action. You lifted a flour dusted hand and shot the camera a bright smile.
“On a scale of one to I’m going to crush Samu’s ass, how confident do you feel about the win?” he questioned, zooming in on your face. You sent the camera a confident smile, leaning in close and dropping your voice to a whisper.
“Oh, I’m going to win. Though our Samu can make great onigiri, he can’t bake for shit.”
You pulled away from the camera, wafting a hand towards Osamu. “Now, go bother that loser over there. I have washing up and cake assembling to do.”
You turned away from the camera, wiping your hand across your forehead before heading to the sink with an armful of washing up.
You finished wiping down the side as Osamu completed the drying up, putting the last mixing bowl away. Both of you were a mess, flour coating your aprons. Osamu had avoided getting any on his face, something you couldn’t claim for yourself. With a chuckle, he wet a cloth and walked over to you. Grasping your chin with his free hand, he tilted your face, allowing him to clearly see the smear of flour along your brow. Gently, he wiped it away, his touch lingering for a moment before pulling away.
“Thanks, Samu,” you beamed. “Atsumu just laughed at me. Wouldn’t even tell me what I had on my face.”
You slipped your apron off, holding a hand out for his. “I’ll go throw these in the washing basket and then the judging will begin.”
The table was set, both your cakes at opposite ends. Atsumu claimed the role of head judge, claiming he was the most likely to cast an accurate vote as he was the only judge actually physically present. You and Osamu had chosen a judge each, and they were displayed on your phone screens. You had chosen Kita. You weren’t going to lie. It was a tactical move as he had always liked you a bit more than the twins. Osamu had chosen Suna, which wasn’t a massive shock. Though he insisted that he hated being forced to judge these competitions, when he was left out he would become grumpy and ghost you both for a couple of days until you bribed him with food.
“Now,” Atsumu declared, “if you would hand me your phones and leave the room, the judging will commence.”
With a roll of your eyes, you handed your phone over, leaving the room with Osamu beside you. He nudged you gently with his elbow, grabbing your attention. “I actually thought your cake was a real cookie jar for a minute. It looks really good.”
You gave a light shrug, brushing off the compliment. “The icing is a bit sloppy in places. If I’m honest, yours looks so much better. I can think of a few people who would definitely try to set it.”
He flushed slightly, rubbing the back of his neck. He let out a light chuckle. “Does that mean you forfeit? I’m really looking forward to having control of the TV again.”
“Think again, Samu. I’m not giving up that TV without a fight.”
“The results are in,” announced Atsumu, banging his hands against the table in an imitation of a drum roll.
“If you wanted to be dramatic, you could have used an actual drum roll from youtube,” stated Osamu, drily. “It’s actually amazing what your phone can do when you have the brain to use it.”
Atsumu shot his brother a glare. “For that comment, my vote is changing. Y/N, you now have my full support. That cookie jar is way better than his shitty volleyball... not that it makes a difference anyway.”
Laughing, you elbowed Osamu, shooting him a triumphant look. It was clear you had not heard Atsumu’s muttered comment. “Prepare for another month of trashy TV.”
“Anyway, back to the results,” declared Atsumu. “Winning - unfortunately - with two out of three of the votes... is Osamu.”
You clapped and cheered. “I should have know a volleyball would sway the votes when the judges play the sport.”
You and Osamu were sat on the couch, a film playing on the TV and two slices of cake on both your plates. Relaxing, you lent into him, the plate resting on your lap as you watched the film.
“Damn it. You cake looked good and it tasted good. No wonder you won.”
He shot you a grin, placing his empty plate on the coffee table and wrapping an arm around your shoulder. “Hey, I’m just happy I get to choose what we watch together for a month.”
#haikyuu x reader#haikyuu fluff#haikyuu imagines#haikyuu x y/n#haikyuu x you#miya twins x reader#osamu x reader#miya osamu#osamu fluff#osamu imagine#haikyuu platonic#roommates fic#osamu x you#osamu x y/n
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Book Four - Part 9
Dapper wakes up somewhere new, feeling unwell, while Trick struggles alone in his room. Red, Blue, and Dok come home to help.
Tws for imprisonment, major illness, psychosis, sedation, and verbal and physical aggression from Anti.
Part 9 - The Locked Room
Anonymous asked: Sorry for saying you were a joke... it's just that your source material didn't really paint you in a nuanced or multidimensional way, and that's mostly what we're all basing our understanding on... You're a bit of a prick tho
Your camera comes back to life in unfamiliar hands as afternoon light spills across black hair and turns it to gold. Silver turns you gently in his palms, curious and bright-eyed, the panic of the night before gone from his face. Closer up, you can see some of the ways in which he is not Mark - a pair of small scars across his chin, a habit of picking at his lips that leaves them raw and red, a gauge in one ear.
As for your camera, the tiny symbol of an eye that usually resides in the corner, either opened or unopened, has been replaced by a small, presumptuous G.
“Hi,” says Shep, sat on his bed and looking at you. He hears footsteps down the hallway outside his room and furtively tucks you against his side, waiting for the steps to pass before he draws you out again.
“Hi,” he repeats, beginning to smile. “This is cool. I actually have a way to talk to you. Yeah, no, it’s okay. My source material is a joke, that’s why I said it even before you did. But - a prick?”
He pauses, glancing away.
“A prick,” he repeats in a mumble. “I think that’s new… I like that, let me just…”
He hops out of bed and takes a journal from one of his dressers, and then opens it up to reveal a long list of descriptors, some more inane than others, all printed in scrappy handwriting down the lines of his notebook. There are general adjectives in some places - “strong,” “bold,” “foolish,” “cute,” “conniving,” “selfish,” “clever,” “sweet” - but other places have full phrases or apparently random words - “you fucking annoyance,” “loves kids,” “buddy,” “your own kind of superhero,” “my soldier,” “a joke Mark forgot about,” “martial arts nerd,” “eats all the fucking candy in the house” - and it goes on for pages and pages.
On the first open line, he pulls out a pen and writes “a bit of a prick.”
Anonymous asked: damn, shepard. what happened to you lot?
Shep puts down his pen and turns to you, grinning. “Ah, you’re gonna have to be a little more specific than that. It’s been a long… eight years? And you haven’t exactly kept up to date with me. Which isn’t your fault. I guess. Not really.”
He side-eyes you, flipping his pen between his fingers.
“Anyway, this is my first year back in Dark’s houses for a while. I was living in the city for a few years after Dark kicked me out because I kept, uh. Bringing criminals back to the house for interrogations. They said I brought too much attention to us, so they had Google throw me out. Guess I deserved it… it turned out to be mostly okay. I had my own apartment for a while. My own pet rat. I was teaching martial arts and making rent. Then I kind of got into some trouble trying to be a fucking hero again… and I got lonely. Stressed all the time. Can’t keep a girlfriend. Rat died. Kind of a breaking point for me. So I came back here. Because of course I did. Because I always do. Because I don’t have any purpose without somebody else fucking giving it to me.”
He sighs bitterly, scratching at the web of cuts on his leg from Anti’s vines last night. Some of them are fairly deep, but he’s just stuck a mess of Band-Aids over the top and went to sleep with a towel beneath his legs just in case.
Anonymous asked: are you happy with this, shep? i'm trying to figure out how much we can trust you.
“You can trust me entirely, we’re just not on the same side,” answers Shep frankly, raising his eyebrows at you. “What’s not to trust? I belong to Dark. That’s true. There you go. Make of it what you will. And as for being happy, it doesn’t bother me. I’ve done much nastier things for Dark and enjoyed them much more. Parts of my life are still hard on me, but I’ve done what Dark tells me for the better part of eight years, ever since I pulled my head out of my ass and realized Mark was never going to come back and make me a real hero. So now I make my own choices. Sometimes I make ones he probably wouldn’t make for me. Sometimes I make ones almost no one else would be able to make. And that’s freedom. That adrenaline… that knowing that you are changing someone else’s life, that you matter, even in the worst fucking way possible… that’s freedom.”
Anonymous asked: are you doing ok, shep? seems like your life's been a bit of a mess.
“Yeah,” laughs Shep. “Honestly, things are fine now. I’m just never getting out of this house, you know? I don’t know. Ippy moved out two years ago. Yan’s in prison and nobody wants to bust her out after what she did. Dark has Google throw out or kill anybody who annoys them. Wil travels half the year, Eric works at the aquarium, Host’s published, even the twins have jobs, haha. And Bim…”
Silver scratches bitterly at his legs, maybe trying to draw a little blood now, bored of the scabs.
“Ran off about four months ago,” he mutters. “I miss him. Asshole. Didn’t tell me where he was going. Doesn’t answer his phone. Could have taken me with him. There was nobody quite that chaotic. I don’t know, maybe Dark just killed him to stop him from making our faces too public like he always wanted to, the little showman. But no, it’s okay. I’m like Google, you know? I’m just always going to be stuck in this fucking house. But I like it pretty well. Dark keeps me busy. And I like when the others come visit. I’m pretty much friends with everybody. Maybe I’ll get another rat soon.”
He flashes you a sudden look of alarm, his hands drawing away from his legs.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m… first time I get to talk to you in years and I don’t have anything worth saying, I just - I can tell you stories! Maybe. Uh. I’m not good at telling stories. Ask Host. I should have taken video then so I could have something to show you. You’re going to forget again and then all of this will be for nothing and no one will even see me differently. Eight years! Fuck. Do you want to go talk to somebody else? I bet you do. Well, sorry I’m not good enough for you, okay? Guess I never was. Whatever.”
He shoves the camera onto the bed, picking tersely at his mouth.
The door swings suddenly open. A figure in a long coat leans against the doorway, crossing his arms.
“I can hear you being a little bitch all the way from my room,” drawls Host.
“Oh, fuck off!”
Host laughs and leaves him again. He’s not interested in chatting.
“This story isn’t about us,” he calls back at Shep. “Don’t damage the narrative integrity with your need for their attention. Let them see their baby brother. He’s not well.”
Anonymous asked: hey, shep, don't you start saying you're not good enough for us. no matter what mark says or did to you, made you a joke or whatnot, that doesn't mean you can't become something different. and i have no doubt that one day, people will know you, and people will love you. maybe you'll have your own story. you just... can't rely on mark to write it for you. sometimes you have to do things like that for yourself. and for what it's worth, i think you're pretty cool. you're different. for example, what's up with that book you just wrote in?
Shep grins weakly, acknowledging the foolishness of his own outburst.
“I try to get rid of the thoughts of him,” he says. “You should hear Dark snarl about the stories Mark told about them… but I’m just jealous. It’s stupid. And you guys - you never - ”
He shrugs and lets out a huff, the irritation fading again. He knows it’s all useless and unfair, but it never stops eating at him. What could have been. But he tries to cheer up for you.
“These are just things I am or might be,” he says, hefting the book. “Things other people have called me. I try to figure out which ones are true. And which ones I want to be. I’m not good at that part so much, though. Sometimes I decide I want to be, like, nice, but then next thing I know I’m shouting at somebody for looking at me wrong, ha. I’m glad the others put up with me. I mean, some of them are dicks. But we kind of make a team together.”
“I’m not what I was then,” he adds after a moment. “So maybe I broke away a little. But at the same time, I’m not sure the story I’ve told is the one that I wanted. Or the one that I want.”
Anonymous asked: it's okay, shep, we don't mind hearing you talk. could we go see dapper, though? i'm a little worried about him.
Shep lets out a sigh, breathing out some of his anxiety. “Yeah. Sure. Is that actually his goddamn name? We’ve got some pretty nutty names around here, but not ‘Dapper.’ I guess it’s kind of cute.”
He gets to his feet and scoops you up, wandering down the stairs. The house is quiet but for the whirling of a fan overhead and the buzzing of a show somebody left playing on the TV. Out in the yard, you catch a glimpse of a few of them playing badminton, dropping the birdie most of the time and then racing each other to pick it up and bring it back to their side. Wilford’s booming voice drifts into the house as though from much farther away than it is. Around their feet, barking joyfully, is a dog almost as enormous as Anti’s wolf-like form, wagging its tail furiously and racing to the birdie along with its owners.
“Actually,” says Shep, pausing outside the only door with extra locks. “I’m not sure Ippy will want me inside. Let’s see if he’s in here.”
He pushes the door gently open. Edward only glances up for a second before turning back to his notes. It’s a makeshift clinic room, barely even the size of the bedrooms, and it’s cramped with a desk and a bed and some examination equipment and dressers with supplies in them. Dapper’s on the bed, tucked up tight, asleep.
“What’s that?” asks Ippy.
“Uh, a camera.”
“Is it now?” he answers dryly.
“There’s an audience or something.”
“Is there someone who can tell me what’s going on with my patient?”
“Well. I guess. I think.”
Ippy reaches out, beckoning for the camera. Shep hands it over and Ippy drops you on the bed, still scrawling in his little notebook. “I’d like medical history, please, allergies, recent injuries, notable behaviors, sleeping habits, blood type, next of kin, etc. Start talking.”
Shep chuckles at his bluntness and pulls up a chair beside him, grinning at his friend as he works.
“What are you looking at?” mutters Ippy, and he reaches out to shove playfully at Shep’s head. “Called me in on my day off for this, huh. Fuckers. You’re lucky he’s actually sick or I’d be peeved.”
Anonymous asked: you can always change. seriously, shep, it's never too late to become someone different. and i'm sorry that none of us did anything. it's difficult, when mark made so many videos and gave so many more characters attention and left others with nothing. you did not deserve that, and i'm genuinely so sorry. does mark still even make videos? we haven't heard anything about him in a long time.
“You’re talking to them about this?” asks Ippy.
Shep shrugs, settling down in his chair.
“It’s very simple, Shepherd. Mark doesn’t have much control of his power and even if he did you were still early enough that you would have been created.”
“I know, Ip.”
“Telling a story about you would only limit your freedom and subject us to more publicity, which is dangerous.”
“I know, Ippy.”
“The audience can’t do anything for us without videos and them dwelling on the thought of us does not make you any more of a - ”
“I know, Edward!” snaps Shep. “Okay?”
Ippy rolls his eyes and turns back to Dapper.
“Mark makes videos sometimes, but he focuses on bigger productions,” adds Shep with a sigh. “I think he mostly wrapped up ego stuff, but you never know with him. We don’t talk. And ever since he got that bigger deal as a real producer - ”
“Can we not talk about Mark?” asks Ippy. “I don’t like hearing about him. He’s fine, I guess, but I just prefer to live a Mark-less life at this point, thanks. A life unmarked by Mark, as it were.”
“You really are peeved today.”
“I just have boundaries, Shep, maybe you should learn some.”
.
Dok wakes to the buzzing of the lights in the bathroom.
He shifts uncomfortably, feeling his back protest, but the cold plastic of a hospital chair is much better than waking up in that room back in the house, aching on the unfinished floor, dreaming of spiders crawling over his skin. He shudders and sits up, pulling his - oh. This is Red’s hoodie, wrapped around him. He sighs and glances at his brother splayed over the side of Blue’s bed, dead asleep.
The bathroom is silent but for those burning lights. He waits a long time, but nothing moves.
“Blue?” he calls wearily, getting to his feet. He knocks his fist gently against the door. “Okay? Want the nurse or something?”
Blue doesn’t answer.
“Hey, Blue, no silences,” he begs with a sigh, rubbing at his head. “Too many nights finding Trick hurting himself in the bathroom. Come on.”
Blue mumbles something. Dok grimaces and pushes open the door.
He’s okay, which he’s grateful for, though he’s almost too tired to be relieved. He steps forward and takes Blue carefully by the wrists. He was just standing there staring at them. Too intently. Too blankly.
“What’s going on?” asks Dok.
Blue turns to look at him and his eyes are fogged and all but blind. Dok touches his cheek to ground him, sighing in his brother’s stead.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t have to be sorry. Tell me what’s up.”
“I don’t… know. Just… looking at myself. So weird.”
“What’s weird?”
Blue reaches out and touches his own reflection on the surface of the mirror.
“Not me,” he mumbles. “More and more often, it’s not me. Not real. It makes me feel really… I don’t… I don’t like it.”
Dok shifts on his feet and pulls his sibling’s fingers away. “That’s called dissociation,” he says. “I get it too sometimes when Anti uses me. It can’t be easy having been possessed so often lately.”
Blue shakes his head numbly, managing to fix his eyes on him for a moment. “Dissociation,” he repeats.
“Let’s ground. Tell me three things about your body.”
“What?”
“Look. In the mirror. Tell me three things about yourself. Anything. Obvious things. It’s okay.”
Blue stares into the mirror, blinking. His mouth parts. But he doesn’t say anything. After a moment, there are tears welling in his eyes.
“Blue,” breathes Dok.
“Sorry,” repeats Blue frailly, turning away from the sight of himself, covering his face with his hands. He doesn’t want to see himself. He doesn’t want Dok to look at him. He doesn’t want anyone to look at him ever again.
“What’s going on?”
“I just want Anti’s fucking head, alright?” snaps Blue. “I just want to murder him. And then I’ll feel like myself again, and I’ll get my magic back, and then my body back, and we can have a chance to be okay again. And until then I just have to deal with this. Until I rip his goddamn throat out. Like I promised him I would. When my hands are covered in his blood, then I’ll feel better.”
Dok looks at him, taken a little aback. His hands curl together nervously on his stomach. He stares down at the floor.
Blue sighs bitterly through his teeth, shaking his head. “I know you don’t like talking about blood. Sorry.”
Dok shrugs. “Is fine.”
“Dok, I just can’t take much more, you know that, I know you feel the same way… surely you get this same bloodlust, don’t you, my darling? He’s been torturing you. Don’t you want to torture him back?”
Dok’s stomach turns. He takes a step back, shaking his head.
“I would not like to ever torture anybody ever again,” he says quietly. “I have had my fair share, thank you.”
They stand side-by-side in the bathroom, frowning together, cold.
“What if it doesn’t make it better?” asks Dok.
“What?”
“What if killing Anti doesn’t make it feel better?”
“Killing Anti will solve most every problem of mine I can think of,” answers Blue soundly, straightening up.
“Oh, goodness,” grumbles Dok, rolling his eyes. “I’m not even going to start with you.”
“Better not, you sassy little monkey man.”
“Monkey man? I am monkey man? How dare you say this.”
“Yeah. You’re bananas.”
“Blue, I will end you.”
But he’s laughing now and that’s what matters. Dok snorts and rolls his eyes, trying to let himself laugh a little too. He leaves the bathroom and flops down on his chair, gazing at Blue as he limps back into his bed and sits down. They look at each other for a long moment, trying to make each other smile with their own tired grins.
“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” whispers Blue. “I wish I could keep all of you safe.”
“Don’t have to be sorry,” Dok says again, letting his eyes slip shut. “I know you’re trying so hard. It’s not your fault at all.”
“I’ll kill Anti for you,” Blue swears, his eyes shining through the haze that seems to lie over them most days. “Then we can be okay again.”
“And what if we can’t?” asks Dok, barely even registering the words before he feels them leave his mouth. “What if we can’t kill him, Blue? What happens then?”
Blue stares out at the smog of the sky, wishing he could see the stars.
“Then I think he’ll kill us instead,” he answers simply. “And then, either way… it’ll be over.”
Dok nods slowly, not opening his eyes. Blue reaches out. They hold each other’s hands in the low light.
.
Anonymous asked: Hey there Ippy, we don't know much about Jameson medically, besides that he has schizophrenia and takes the medicine Haloperidol/Haldol, and he's allergic to rowan (as though he might be a chageling?). He's not a regular human either, he's basically Jacksepticeye's version of you guys.
“Ohhh,” says Ippy, standing slightly outside his clinic, arms crossed over his chest and eyes wide. “Schizophrenia. I’m relieved, actually. Because if this was fever delirium… we would have a problem.”
Google leaps out of the room, synthetic blood dripping down his neck, and slams the door hard behind him, panting. From within the room, hissing.
“Kid’s fucking nuts,” Gigi snarls.
“Kid’s fucking delusional,” answers Ippy sharply. “And that’s not his fault. This is on you for kidnapping somebody with a psychotic disorder.”
“He would have died there anyway,” sneers Gigi, stalking past Ippy. He has a red shirt now instead of blue. “That little monster wasn’t going to get him any help for that infection. And if you don’t do something fast, he’ll die here instead. He’s exhausting himself. Sedate him again.”
“No. Too much sedating. We have to calm him down. I’ll give him his Haldol intravenously so he can’t throw it up with this fever. You just have to steal some for me.”
“I only take orders from the Darkness,” answers Google.
Ippy sighs and shakes his head, turning stonily back to the door of his clinic. “If this doesn’t change, I’m sending him back to his brothers.”
“That place has no family. And Dark will speak with him before he’s let go. You get him well enough that he can have a discussion, then he’s free to go.”
Anonymous asked: JJ, honey, are you doing alright? I know you must be absolutely terrified right now, but at the very least you're getting medical treatment and they plan to give you back to Anti after you have a discussion with the Darkness. I know it'll be absolutely terrifying, but I think it's the only way to get home. Ippy is going to give you Haldol, if you'll let him? You'll feel much clearer if you do, then maybe you can make plans on what to do next.
JJ has not struggled this much with his symptoms since he and Red were homeless in Columbia and he knows it.
But he can’t make it stop.
“Tell my big brothers to come get me if they have to kill everyone in this house to do it!” his hands scream, and that is the last coherent thought you get out of him.
He moves! He has to move. He doesn’t just pace, he darts around the room, he races. His hands strike strike strike every surface. He pauses only for a moment to be sick over the waste basket, leaving him pale and dizzy, but even then his body is consumed by wracking spasms and shakes. He spins in a circle. He can’t stop looking at the lights no matter how hard he tries. His eyes are up, up, up. Fluttering, rolled back. Watching the light. Fixed on the light. If he looks away bad things will happen. The cameras told him so. Didn’t they? Someone did and he knows it must be true. He has to look at the light or the Darkness will get him.
“I’m already here,” whispers Dark’s voice in JJ’s head. He spasms and jolts back with terror, rubbing at his arms and shaking himself like he’s trying to act out a seizure, but despite his frantic motion and his fear, his face is numbed to any emotion, blank as it was when Red would struggle to understand him in Columbia. Dapper starts to sign wildly, but the words don’t make sense together to anyone but him.
“Skin. I was in. Blood up tree branch he made me go there and I didn’t want to! Can’t Red come? Miss candy and bedsheets, where? The radio, turn down. Does my blood come up? Does my blood rise?”
Ippy peeks his head inside the room. Dapper turns and sends a lamp flying towards him, smashing it against the wall, and Ippy ducks away again. Dapper grins joylessly, with his teeth, his eyes rolled towards the lights on the ceiling. He holds up his wrists and his hands dangle as though on string. Then he crumples to the ground, dazed and panting, scratching at the fever in his face.
“Jackie,” he begs. “Chase.”
Anonymous asked: dapper, jamie, my dear. you're okay, yeah? we would tell you if we thought you were in danger. and now i'm telling you to try to be calm, okay? we'll tell you if we think you're in danger. i promise.
For just a moment, he manages to drag his flickering eyes over to you. There’s a red light on the camera. That counts, right? Does it? His hands search the floors for his bear. Trick packed his things. Didn’t he? But what if it was a trick? Isn’t that why he named him that? Also guns and grey shirts.
He rubs at his aching, pounding head, and swats at a tactile hallucination on his legs. Just a snake, though, and those you don’t have to worry about. It’s dogs and cats that will tear their teeth into you.
He registers the promise vaguely, but his paranoia is so high he could be home safe and sound and still feel that Dark was slowly killing him. He casts his eyes over your message, counting the y’s. Nine. Does that mean something? He knows it means something. The universe is trying to talk to him. God is trying to talk to him. He just needs to listen.
Anonymous asked: ippy's gonna get you your haldol, okay? he's kind. he won't hurt you. do you think you can agree to that, dap? that way, if you are in danger, it'll be clearer, and if it's a hallucination that'll be clearer too.
He would like his Haldol. He would. That’s one of the only mercies Anti usually grants him. He registers that someone is coming into the room and you said it was okay. He rocks his head back and forth, trying to think, feeling drool clinging to his lips. Where is he?
Ippy tries again. Creeping, patient, quiet.
“Are you feeling up to talking?” he asks quietly, when he manages to get into the room without being assaulted. Dapper learned from Anti and when he does not have a blade he makes use of his teeth and his mean white fingernails.
Dapper rocks his head, still trembling from the catatonia, burning with fever.
“I don’t know where to fucking start,” Ippy mumbles, kneeling down beside him. “You’re going to puke up your medication. Google might get you some of the liquid stuff, might not. Depends how generous he thinks he’s being. And what Dark tells him…”
Dapper shudders, baring his teeth.
“Please turn down the radio,” he says, clawing at his ears between signs, but it just looks like more frantic movement to Ippy. “So many people talking all at once.”
“Can I give you something for the fever?” asks Ippy, getting up to get him some water and medicine. “Yeah? Try to keep you hydrated? I need to look at your wrist.”
Dapper clutches his arm to his chest, squirming. “Anti? You’re playing games with me? Can I come out, please? Been good.”
scunneredzombie asked: Jay, they're going to give you some of your medicine. You have a really bad fever right now, it's most likely making the psychosis much much worse. We're here to help and so is Ippy. You will be okay. Breathe, Dapper, just breathe. You will get through this. Remind yourself of things you know are real, things that are unchanging and true no matter what. Cling to those for now. That's what I do during my psychotic episodes.
What’s real? What’s unchanging? What’s true?
Dapper squints his eyes up at the light on the ceiling and tries to think. His hand is still searching for his things. Ippy passes his backpack towards him and Dapper finds his bear, dragging his gaze down to it. Red and Blue and Dok got it for him for Christmas this year. He’s had it for months, even in Columbia. The fur is alpaca. It doesn’t feel quite like any other texture. Cloudy and thick at the same time. Warm. It still smells, faintly, of their home in Peru.
He tries to breathe.
“Okay, I’m going to try to give you some medicine here,” Edward warns him carefully, moving closer. “It’s good for you. Just to bring the fever down a little. I’ll look at your wrist again here in a minute.”
JJ scoots away, shaking his head, but it only makes him dizzy. A hundred voices speak to him. Edward’s is rich and deep and all too familiar. He concentrates on the faint beep of the camera, a sound he’s grown used to over months and months of what would otherwise be total loneliness.
He hopes Trick is okay at home. He’s sorry he left him alone.
Anonymous asked: yeah, you're doing well, dap. just gotta hang on a little longer, okay? and ippy will help you, dap. you don't have to trust him, but you trust us, don't you? and we trust him. it's okay, dap. you're gonna be okay.
Ippy takes his chin in his hand and angles him towards him.
Nope.
Anchors fall away and Dapper feels something inside himself snap. This has always been the rule. This has always been the rule, the rule he has learned since his creation: no one touches him but Anti and his brothers.
No one.
And the punishments he’s seen Anti inflict on those who broke that rule -
Dapper does not often wish for a voicebox that works. But right now, all he wants to do is fucking scream.
His teeth flash and bite down hard on Ippy’s hand, making Dark’s look-alike yelp in alarm. Dapper slams their heads together and grabs him by the throat, burning with fury, burning with fear, burning alive on a pyre he did not set, and then Google is there, and he has him by the hair, and he shoves a needle deep into the neck of Anti’s most savage attack dog.
Dapper quails, gripping frantically at Gigi’s hand. He chokes and looks up into deep brown eyes. There is no red glow.
He slides to the ground, asleep. Google lets him go.
“Alright?” asks Google quietly.
Ippy swears under his breath and puts his hand to his forehead, teeth marks indented in the skin. “I’m fine, goddammit.”
“Keep him asleep til he’s better,” says Gigi. “I will not tell you again.”
Edward shakes his head slowly, biting his lip, but he doesn’t protest.
Jamie sleeps. The fever is burning in his flesh.
Anonymous asked: Trick is right, Anti. You keep asking, multiple times now, "why did this all fall apart?" And the answer is because you constantly excuse your cruelty, excuse your abuse and all the pain you cause, by blaming Jack and saying you "can't control yourself". You, sir, are just as capable as anyone else in the world of controlling your temper and controlling your aggression. You need to stop making excuses. They will leave over and over and over if you do not change.
“Leave over and over,” mutters Anti under his breath, his eyes angry, aglow in the morning light through the great window in the master bedroom.
Trick is still asleep, though he shifts now, his hair mussed around his eyes. The roots have turned brown. The bright green is beginning to fade to yellow.
Anti wraps his arms around his waist, tugging him close. Trick rolls over with a yawn, trying to rise, but Anti’s grip holds him in place. Trick cracks open an eye and finds himself pressed against him.
“Anti, hey, wake up,” he mumbles, rubbing at his sleepy eyes. “Lemme go. I want a shower and some coffee.”
Anti is already awake, but Trick can’t see that, and he doesn’t move. Trick pauses. He starts trying to squirm out of Anti’s arms without moving enough to wake him if he is sleeping, but he doesn’t have much luck. Anti tightens his arms around him as he tries to escape.
“Anti?”
Anti glares out the window, ignoring his wriggling. Eventually, blinking in surprise, Trick just stays in place.
Leave over and over. Anti grips his ribs until his fingernails put cuts in Trick’s shirt. Leave. Ha. He isn’t going anywhere.
Anonymous asked: are you alright then, anti?
Anti gets out of bed after a half hour has passed. Trick is hot and uncomfortable, needing to stretch and change out of his sweaty sleeping clothes and use the bathroom. But he’s stopped struggling by the time Anti releases him.
The glitch gets to his feet and picks out an appearance for the day in the mirror, settling on the younger man he wore when Dapper was created, ruffling teal hair in the mirror. Trick sits up and gives him a smile. Anti doesn’t answer your question, but the way he looks at Trick - he focuses on the bruises someone left in his wrist as they pulled him along. Something simmers in Anti’s eyes. He turns towards the door.
“Where are you going?” asks Trick, hurrying out of bed. “Hey - Anti? Come on, have breakfast with me or something. Don’t leave me, dude.”
“I have to go get your little brother,” answers Anti. “Just stay here, Trick.”
“Anti, I - ”
He glitches away.
Trick stares at the door, mouth slightly parted.
Anonymous asked: You gonna do something that will stop Dark from kicking your ass a second time?
“Where in the narrative did Dark kick my ass?” snaps Anti, stalking into the forest. “Last I checked I was tearing them and their fucking soldiers a new one when Bubblegum McGee scoops my kiddo off the ground and disappears like the deranged little thief he is. And then all of them went sprinting for the hills. No. When I find Dark, I’m burning down everything they love and tearing apart that mangled excuse for a spine of theirs. Then we’ll see if they remember me.”
Anonymous asked: Trick? You want to talk for a bit?
“Yeah, uh, yeah,” says Trick, trying to recover quickly, nodding his head and straightening up. “Yes, please. House is super quiet without anybody else! Last time I was this alone was when Blue was in hospital and I’d come back to the house and try not to worry about everybody else too much. But I do have Noodle! He’s always got my back. I’m just going to get changed and then we’ll go make some breakfast and check on kitty cat, yeah? Doesn’t have to be a sucky day just cause things are trying to go bad. I can stay positive.”
Anonymous asked: Alright, we'll just have a bit of a "you" day. Decompress a bit. It's good to check in on yourself and have a little time off. (Give noodle some pets please!)
“Yes,” laughs Trick. He worries at his hands, yes, kneading his fingers into his palms, and you can see the edge of a breakdown somewhere in the back of his eyes, but he has survived a lot and he wants to prove to himself that he can be okay even without Dok sometimes. Maybe even to be okay when Dok isn’t, so he can look after him better. So he can look after all of them better.
Next time they’re scared enough to run away, he wants to be someone they can trust.
“Decompress - play some games, probably - chill with my cat - cook a ton - swim, maybe… yeah!” Trick pulls his shirt over his head and turns toward the door, grabbing the handle. “I’ll - ”
It’s locked.
Trick stops. Tries it again. Stares. Glances at you. Tries again.
It’s still locked.
He stands in front of the door. His hand rests on the door handle.
Outside, a mewl.
Anonymous asked: can the window open, trick?
“The… window?” he asks. “Yeah… yeah, it can. But I’m on the second story.”
He moves to the window and lets it swing open. The fresh air and the scent of the forest are refreshing, but the red brick of the patio is still several meters down.
Anonymous asked: where's noodle?
Claws pick at the carpet outside Anti’s bedroom. Trick hurries back to the door and kneels down, crouching to try and see his cat through the crack beneath it.
“Mrow,” complains Noodle loudly, scraping at the carpet with his claws out. “Meehhhh.”
“Daddy’s here, kitty cat, I’m right here.” Trick reaches for him as though he could pull him beneath the door. Noodle attacks one of his fingers, chewing on the end, but Trick doesn’t even mind. “Are you hungry? I’m sorry I didn’t let you out last night. Things were crazy, baby. But I’m coming, boyo, I’ll… I’ll, uh…”
What is he supposed to do?
Anonymous asked: do you think anti will be mad if you leave the room?
“I don’t know. It was probably an accident.”
Noodle yowls on the other side of the door. Trick stares at his kitten’s paws, his eyebrows drawn back in worry. You see him look down at his feet.
He knows it wasn’t an accident. And he wouldn’t have locked it if he was okay with Trick leaving.
Anonymous asked: Okay unless we know a for our window downstairs is unlocked, I wouldn't use the window, don't want you getting locked out of the house entirely. You think you might be able to find a key or break the lock if you need to?
“It’s… maybe I could? I don’t want to get in trouble. But there’s no keyhole on this side. I’d have to really bust the door up. And then he’d be so angry.”
Trick steps back from the door, chewing on his nails. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe.
“Okay,” he says after a moment. “Okay. I wish he hadn’t done this, but he did. I’m safe in here. I have a bathroom with water and all the stuff I packed into a bag in case I got kidnapped is here. Dapper was keeping food in the drawers. I’m okay. But my poor cat…”
Anonymous asked: for now, at least, you can make sure noodle has food, right? is the food only in there? maybe you can grab a little something and push it under the door
“That’s a good idea. Okay, let me look.”
He goes back to the bottom drawer and pulls it open to reveal Dapper’s stash. He recoils a little, scrunching up his nose - he hadn’t realized how bad it smelled in the panic of last night, but now he notices.
“This is kind of nasty… we’ve only been here a couple weeks. Why would he keep - ugh, cheese!” Trick chucks the hot string cheese towards the trash, making a gagging motion. “He has to know this would go bad right away, right? Why even take it? Look, my cookies from last week. Hard as rocks cause he didn’t even ask me to wrap them. There’s lint on them. He just shoved them in his pockets. Fuck’s sake… oh!”
Here’s some stuff that should still be edible. Crackers still in their packs. A couple apples. Tupperware with brownies. One pack of raisins, one pack of dried cranberries. And a little pack of Dapper’s favorite - jerky. Most of it is gone, but there are a few good chunks still at the bottom.
“At least I can give him something, then,” says Trick, taking a breath.
Anonymous asked: Anti keeps his favorite trophy locked up in a case when not in use
Trick looks at you, eyes wide, and then away, trying to make himself scowl. He crouches down beside the door and pushes dried meat towards his cat. Noodle seems to accept the offering. He goes quiet and Trick hears him chewing. It’ll take him a while to get through that.
Trick sits back on his heels and stares at the door.
“Always wanted to be Anti’s favorite trophy,” he mumbles, something frightened and tired passing across his face. “Or thought I did, I guess.”
Anonymous asked: you have a choice, then, trick. do you want our help in leaving the room, to go to noodle? or will you stay here and wait for anti to come back and let you out?
Trick sighs and slumps down against the door, rubbing at his face. He stares out the window and thinks.
“You know… I think I’ll try to stay here for a while,” he says, giving you a smile that looks more like a grimace. “It’s not bad. We’ve definitely stayed in much worse places! I have lots of room and a clean bathroom and everything I need. Maybe I’ll take a bath. Yeah… it’s okay.”
He glances around the room. How long has he been in here? Two hours? Oh, twenty minutes. He bites his lip and sighs. He puts his head between his knees and rubs at the back of his neck.
“Always kind of knew it couldn’t really be fun for anybody to be locked in a room all day. But I thought maybe, with Dapper’s nerves, it was better for him just to stay up there with Anti. And when I imagined it, I guess I made everything nice. Him getting to eat his own food, sleep whenever he wants, just working on his art all the time. Doing whatever he wanted, you know? I usually imagined Anti actually… being here, though. Yeah. I guess that I thought that when he loved me, I’d be able to feel it.”
Trick pauses, looking up. Looking out at the sun.
“That’s always the thing with me, though,” he says. “Even when I know for a fact people love me - it doesn’t always feel that way. And I thought - well, Anti, he just… with his power, it’s like he can make me feel that way. Or maybe it’s just him. But those days when I would just spend all my time praying to impress him… and then he would brush his hand across my hair or smile at me… it would be my favorite part of the week. Like I finally got it all right. Like I’m finally worthwhile.”
He puts his head down again, looking at the carpet, his fringe falling into his eyes. It occurs to him that he doesn’t really like bright green. Or dying yellow.
“I love him,” he says, a little hollowly. “But I think maybe Dok was always right. Nobody else can magically fix me. I need to stop expecting Anti to put everything right in my head. That’s not fair to either of us. I should have been happier just being with Dok. Cause Anti gave me these bursts of joy, yeah, and he’s trying to be better to me these days - but Dok has been the earth beneath my feet for months now.”
He stares at the food in the drawer, rotting. He tugs uselessly on the door handle. He stares around the silent, empty room, and the silence stares back, and says nothing.
“I shouldn’t have been jealous of my little brother,” says Trick, heart sinking. “I should have been making sure he had ground to stand on too.”
Anonymous asked: yeah, i get that, trick. and i think anti does love you, as much as he can love someone anyway. although, trick, you don't have to answer this now, and if you don't want to talk about this right now i'll stop, but trick? if given a choice between dok and anti, who would you choose?
“Oh, hey,” protests Trick, a little weakly. “That’s family both, we don’t talk like that. Hey, it’s okay to love people in different ways, and I know you don’t like Anti. But the truth is that just because I’m closer to Dok, I would never ‘choose him’ over any of the others. We all gotta just love each other in the way we need. I want to do what’s best for all of them. If… if Dok and Red and Blue need some space from Anti, well… maybe they should have some. But even if I lived with some of them instead of the others, it’s not because I’m trying to pick someone as my favorite. We just all need different things at different times. Whoever needs me most is who I ‘choose.’ Whoever I can help. And I hope it’s always… all of them, you know? When you’re a family, helping one person is good for everyone.”
Anonymous asked: It's easy to fall into a "grass is greener" mentality but abuse is abuse no matter if you're crouched by a window with a gun, locked away in an attic, or running through the streets with stolen drugs. I don't blame you for wanting a higher standing with Anti but he's not going to give you what you want, to no failing of your own.
“Ha! Okay, fair… maybe being in the basement and being in the attic both kind of suck. But I’ve always had Dok. Having someone there with you is what makes it not sucky. Look, this house is fucking awesome! But there’s no one here with me right now. And that does kind of suck, even worse than when Dok and I were sleeping in the same pile of cheap blankets beside a window in a broken down cabin during a Norwegian fall. We had a good time in Norway, didn’t we? Before everything went wrong? Do you remember… we got fish in a restaurant in town, ha… and I got my crinkle paper…”
Trick pulls it out of the pocket of his basketball shorts and presses his fingers to the crinkly baby paper, familiar and fond. He smiles while his eyes grieve.
Anonymous asked: Those sound like fair conclusions, Trick. It sounds like you've been thinking a lot about yourself and how you've interacted with your family in the past. That's really good; well done. For what it's worth, I am really sorry you got left here alone. You don't deserve that. Are you sure you don't want help leaving, or looking for something else to do?
“Aww, you guys are like my therapists now,” laughs Trick, genuinely pleased. “That’s sweet, thanks. No, um… I’ll stay here a while, I guess. Think Dap would mind me looking through his sketchbooks? Maybe I’ll draw a little myself. Or… write, maybe. Yeah. Maybe I’ll write a little.”
Anonymous asked: trick, that's admirable. and i do mean that. you have a lot of loyalty. but trick, it's not just that they need some space from anti. anti has hurt them, time and time again. family doesn't hurt each other like that, trick. anti has gone too far, many, many times.
“I am loyal,” he agrees quickly, because that’s something he’s always known and one of the few things he’s almost always liked about himself. “Yes. Mh.”
He pulls his eyes away from the rest of the message uncertainly, fiddling with his hands as he sits down on Anti’s bed and pulls Dapper’s latest sketchbook off the bedside drawer. He’s grinning for a minute. They’re mostly pictures of animals. Some people scattered in there - dancers and babies and old people in love. Dapper’s good and he’s gotten even better since the last time Trick checked in on his art, which was… how long ago?
But there are other things in the pages too.
Faces that almost hurt from how familiar and yet unrecognizable they are. Images Trick recognizes from Dapper’s hallucinations, painful and threatening. One baby that is not like the rest in a way Trick can’t express. And… himself?
Himself burning?
Trick takes a moment to realize what this is. The night he got the burn that now laces from his palm to the back of his hand. He hadn’t realized Dapper remembered, or was even there, watching, as it happened.
In the image, a dark figure shoves him towards the fire. His shirt sleeve is already ablaze, his hand consumed, and yet - despite the fire, despite the pain, his eyes are like those of a monk in Mass, wide, adoring, tear-filled - and those eyes are fixed on the creature pulling him into the flame.
Trick shoves the sketchbook away from him, squeezing his eyes shut.
“I don’t want to talk about this right now,” he croaks, turning his face away from you. “Later. Okay? Later, I promise, just… not right now.”
It is the second time he has pushed your concerns aside in as many nights. There are messages waiting for him that he’s avoiding. But he still isn’t ready to hear it.
Anonymous asked: okay. that's okay, trick. do you wanna talk about something else, then? i can tell you a funny thing one of my birds did, if you'd like.
“Ha. Birds, wow, that’s awesome. Yeah, sure! Tell me.”
Anonymous asked: alright! so, my sister has an obvious favorite, and the bird knows it, and likes to hang out on people's shoulders and stuff. and today, she flew up onto my arm, and then stared at me face very curiously, and so i started talking to her, and she immediately tried to eat my teeth. very smart bird, who apparently does not quite get what is or is not food. she's very funny.
Trick snorts and covers his mouth with his hand. “Oh, no! I do not like the sensation I am imagining. A beak picking at my teeth, haha. Geez. Sounds like a funny bird. Noodle likes to try to eat toes when we move at night.”
Anonymous asked: oh, yeah, my friend's cats are kinda like that too. for a while, when they were kittens, we had to be careful because they would try to attack our feet. is noodle chaotic like that?
“Half the time he is nuts-o crazy boy, and then half the time he pretends he’s a perfect angel and he just wants all of Daddy’s attention and all of Uncle’s attention and everybody’s attention one hundred percent of the time. And he looks up at you and cries until you scratch him.”
Anonymous asked: oooo, do you write, trick?
“Well, I thought since I’m sure jabbering your guys’ ears off, I could write some shit down. Dok had me do that for a while once. It was right after… well, there’s blurry spots in my memory. It was right after I started being his twin. I was pretty low. I was, um. Self-harming a lot. Losing a lot of my memories. So he recommended I write stuff down. Whatever I was feeling. And he said even he wouldn’t read it, he promised. We were in this kind of warehouse place at the time, and there was nowhere to sleep. Not a lot of privacy except my pieces of paper. They’re gone now. But I think they kept me focused on something, at the time.”
He holds Dapper’s pencil in his hand, taking a loose sheet of paper. But his eyes get fixed on the stretched out sketchbook on the floor once again. He looks away from the image of himself with a grimace.
That night - that look on his face - that wasn’t what he remembers. Not exactly.
Want to know a secret? he writes.
He has scrawling, beautiful, messy handwriting.
I was pissed at you that night. You left me and Dok to freeze. I don’t even think I started that fire because I was trying to keep Dok warm.
He pauses, squeezing his eyes shut. Bites on his lip. Puts his pencil back down.
I wanted to make you angry. I wanted there to be a confrontation. I was angry at you. But I didn’t know how to tell you because you didn’t care about me back then and that was what burned, more than this goddamn scar on my hand. I wanted to hurt you for hurting me. But all you did was hurt me worse. You act like you want things to be good between us now but we’ve never even talked about
He stops and sighs and scowls before crumpling the paper up, scratching at his scalp.
“Forget it,” he mumbles. “Not that. Just…”
Noodle mewls at the door, beginning to get bored with his jerky. Trick smiles softly and chuckles, turning away.
When you were a kitten your body was like a slinky and I could feel every one of your bones. Hot little spine rubbing against my wide palms. Big fuzzy leaf ears. When you were a kitten you made a weight beneath my throat and when I breathed I would feel the tiny thump of your heart. You are the memory of someone I lost.
And Trick is stopped again, closing his eyes again, turning away again.
“Maybe I’ll just go get a hot bath. Relax a while. I’m okay. Poor kitty cat. Don’t be lonely, okay, baby boy? I’ll be back in a while.”
Anonymous asked: Keep your head high and your standards higher, Trick.
“My standards for this rich guy’s bath are high as fuck right now,” he says, slinging a towel over his shoulder. “Motherfucker got bath bombs and everything. This better be some Spirited Away experience or I’m out. Minus the evil lady, though. Just the big steamy bath and the nostalgia, please. Hey, keep an eye on my kitty for me, yeah? You’re still in the cameras all over the house? I’ll be out in a little while. Maybe a long while. Thanks, guys. Uh. For real.”
Anonymous asked: I'm sure noodle is going to be okay, Trick. If you're worried about him just stay near the door and he should be fine óvò You might want to try to slip him something to eat tho, I have no idea when was the last time anyone could've fed that kitty
Trick slips him one more piece of jerky and lets him chew on his finger for a moment before he slips into the bathroom. Noodle has his snack happily outside the door, and then, deprived of Trick’s presence, he goes exploring.
Trick has made toys for him out of anything he could find. He plays with string and a ball that makes a jangling sound. He zips around the house for a while. He searches for Trick and Dok, or anybody to give him some attention.
Usually they’re down in the basement. Usually they all stay down in the basement, Noodle himself shut in most of the day to avoid Anti, though he’s perfectly content to stay down there with everything he needs. But today, he gets to explore. The door was opened while Dark’s soldiers searched the house and he’s free to roam. It’s a little exciting.
He’s okay. For now, he’s okay. Trick has fed him and there’s a little water still in his bowl by the door. He’s okay.
But Trick was too hot in his bed for a reason. And he’s right - the windows do open.
Noodle gets tired of the basement. Noodle gets tired of his toys. Noodle wants to see Trick and the others.
He explores. The fresh breeze and the smell of the trees - the movement of the grass and the warmth of the sun - the song of the birds, the scurrying of mice, the cool water of the pool - they call to him.
He has not been outside since he was too small for anything but milk. Not until today.
He slips out through the window of Red and Blue’s room, and he explores.
Anonymous asked: hey, shep? dapper's brother has a golden cat, who we just saw leave, but he's away from the cameras at the moment so we can't tell him about it yet. could you and the others keep an eye out for the cat? his name is noodle, although i don't know if he knows it or not.
Shep hears the beeping in his pocket and pulls the camera out immediately.
“Shep! Come on, throw it in!”
“Just a second!”
His eyes scan your message and brighten, a hint of gold from the sun lighting up the brown curve of his irises. He feigns disinterest for a moment, pausing to kick a soccer ball back towards someone on the lawn. You can hear a dog barking and voices chatting. The sun is overhead. It’s a beautiful day.
“Would that make you happy?” asks Shep. “If I found the cat for you?”
He looks up at the forest.
Outside of the sunlight, Darkness reigns in more ways than one. The trees are thick and tall and heavy, shrouding the earth in a loving chill. Animals scamper across the dirt and lean plants curl up from the ground and latch onto the broad backs of trees, clinging to damp red wood. And for miles - for miles - it stretches on before him.
“Okay, then,” he says. “I will.”
Anonymous asked: it would help. thank you, shep. anti doesn't like animals, so i wouldn't recommend bringing the cat back to the house they're in, but you can bring it here and we'll tell the brother about it.
“I’ll start looking right now,” he says. “It’s a big forest. But I can do it.”
Anonymous asked: sleeby jj...Soff sleeby bean.. get well soon
His eyes slide open to your familiar light.
He stares at you for a second, his eyes heavy with shadowed circles.
Then he registers the message and manages to roll his eyes for the first time in days, huffing out a bit of a sigh.
“Not a bean.”
It’s only as he signs it that he realizes he’s no longer restrained.
He sits up slowly, pressing his palm to his forehead and grimacing. He doesn’t feel well at all. His stomach swims with nausea and he can feel his blood chugging sluggishly through his veins. But it’s better than the last few days.
He glances around the room, blinking slowly. He’s alone and there’s light streaming in through the barred window.
Alright. He’s had his nap. Time to start trying to escape.
Anonymous asked: Jj, think about this first. Anti is already coming for you, and if you try to escape you'll be in miles and miles of unknown forest, with no haldol, no medication for your fever, and no way to be sure you can get home. At least maybe wait until you've gotten over the infection and until you can steal some haldol to have with you? Just trying to analyze the situation fully before action is taken.
“I am not going to sit quietly while the monster who has haunted my nightmares - well, one of them - keeps me prisoner. I only do that for Anti. Come on, don’t be boring! Help me get out, yeah?”
He struggles to his feet, but as soon as he’s found a moment of balance he loses it again, tumbling into the wall and holding himself there on shaking arms and legs. He swallows thickly and turns towards the windows, yanking on the bars with his good hand. The other one is swaddled so thickly in bandages he can barely feel it, but at least his fingers stick out to let him speak most words.
That being said, he has about four good yanks on those bars before his head is swimming. He slumps against the wall, clinging to the metal. His whole body aches.
“Maybe you have a point,” he admits sullenly, rubbing at his face.
Anonymous asked: Haha, sorry Jay, not trying to be boring! I just want to make sure you've got a second voice to help think clearly. Look around you maybe? See any spare haldol or fever medication you can swipe and save up for when you do the grand escape?
“Thank you,” says JJ, grinning slowly, though nothing quite makes it to his eyes. “Okay, let me look. I think I must have something in me now because my psychosis is a lot less intense right now.”
He glances around the room. He isn’t hallucinating and his thinking is much clearer, but his expressions are still dulled, his face is twitching, and he isn’t sure what’s true and what’s not. He needs rest and a lot less stress.
He checks the drawers, but everything’s locked up.
nikkilbook asked: JJ, remind me again why Dark frightens you so much? I’m sorry, but I can’t remember clearly. He doesn’t remember any of you either. He showed up that first time because he didn’t know why Anti was trespassing in his territory.
Dapper looks over at you.
He turns away for a second, chewing on his nail. Shrugs. Sits down on the bed.
“Not a fun time,” he signs eventually.
scunneredzombie asked: Rest up, if you can, JJ! I'm almost completely certain you'll be safe here. Darkness won't hurt you because they want you healthy enough to talk to them. You need rest and to let your haldol take effect.
“Dark can do a lot worse things than hurting anybody,” he answers. “It’s the talking to them that’s more likely to fuck me up than anything. And I never want to see them again. Tell them to leave me alone! Where’s my big brothers? Are they coming to get me yet?”
Anonymous asked: How are you feeling, JJ? Still burning up?
“I actually feel quite cold.” He hugs his arms around his sunken chest, staring around the room. His lips are chapped to blood and his face is the color of bleach. He doesn’t look well.
“This is miserable,” he admits, his signs soft. “I remember when I was created I always had energy and felt strong and healthy most of the time, even when I got hurt. I bounced back. The last few months, I’m just… every day I’m sicker. My bones break and I catch every cold and infection. Keep have psychotic episodes. Don’t sleep well.”
He realizes he’s just complaining and makes himself stop, digging his nails into his palms. Won’t help anything. He needs to get out.
He creeps to the door and takes the handle in his hand.
“Going somewhere?”
He turns, spitting, back to his bed, the hair on the back of his neck standing up like an angry cat’s as he snatches a pen off the nearest counter for self-defense.
Wilford nods patiently, following his movements as he swings his legs on the side of the little clinic bed. “Very good, very good.”
“You stay away from me.”
“Oh, my dear, forgive me, I don’t understand a word of that. Shall I get you paper?”
Dapper steps away from him, watching him with glittering eyes. After a moment, he nods.
Wilford pulls a pad of paper out from behind his back as though it had been there all along and sets it on the bed beside himself, smiling.
“What are you so frightened of, young man? Come on, then, calm down.”
Anonymous asked: Are you wearing your dress-shoes? The heel might be good for smashing the locks off the drawers! Though you'd have to be uh... as quiet as smashing can be haha.
JJ looks down at his bare feet. He scowls. Just like the day he was created.
But Wilford has boots on. “Give me those,” he demands.
Wilford doesn’t speak sign language, but he gets the gesture. “Sure,” he says, tugging a boot off and tossing it to him.
Dapper slams a desk drawer handle remorselessly. A loud clang signals the death of the handle as it flies to the ground. Dapper yanks the drawer open.
“Ippy says you’re all sorts of unhealthy,” says Wilford cheerfully, still kicking his legs, halfway bootless now. “Do you feel better today? He said you have so little Vitamin D he could probably break your bones with a pillowcase. You need some sun, dear boy!”
Dapper searches through the drawer, but there’s nothing but cotton swabs, gloves, tongue depressors and everything boring. He raises the boot and smashes another dresser handle, a little breathless.
scunneredzombie asked: Anti is trying to find you right now, I'm pretty sure. I understand not wanting to see them, they're frankly a terrifying jedi-powers 3D glasses fender-bender in you all's life. You'll be home soon, JJ. But you need rest right now, you could end up hurting yourself if you're in a bad mindset or not with the proper medication. I know being careful is no fun, but right now it seems like the best option. I know this sounds fucked, but trust Anti to find you. Like he'd give you up that easily, ha,,
“You don’t want to see Dark?” asks Wilford, finally sounding genuinely wounded. “Oh…”
“You stop,” signs JJ fiercely, whirling on him. “You’re lucky you’re out of your mind or I’d call you a creep for staying around that horrible - that horrible - thing. Whatever. Leave me alone. You’re a killer just like them.”
“I think your camera’s right. You ought to sit. You don’t look very well.”
Dapper glares, panting a little. He glances around the room again, a sense of despair shuddering its way over him. Always locked in his room. Always locked in his room. Always locked in his room. He grips at his hair, breathing through his teeth.
“Hey,” says Wilford. “It’s okay. Can you hear me at all? Do I need to be writing things down too? My handwriting is very good. Would you like some water?”
He clears his dry throat, his eyes flickering over to Wilford. Actually, he would. He’s parched.
Wilford nods and gets up. He disappears for a second and returns with a glass of water. JJ takes it from him with shaking hands, sinking down onto the bed.
Anonymous asked: Hey Wilford, you're not... planning on hurting JJ, are you? You don't seems like you have any intention of it but knowing you we can never be too wary >_>
“Excuse me!” Wilford waggles his finger indignantly, making a noise like pshaw! again and again. “I have never hurt a living soul in my life. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. I’m a pacifist, actually. Excepting that door-to-door salesman who would NOT stop coming by…”
Dapper hisses out a breath, pressing at his forehead, feeling faint again. He scoops up Wilford’s pad of paper and sets Ippy’s pen to it. “You really have no idea what’s going on, do you?” he scrawls out in a bitter, looping cursive.
“Do you?” spits back Wilford just as quick, a little fire flashing through his eyes.
Dapper sinks in on himself, exhaling. “No,” he writes. “Not ever.”
Wilford eases again, grinning his nonchalant, slightly dazed grin.
“Why’d you come in here?” writes Dapper.
“To see you,” answers Wilford eagerly, clapping his hands together. “Finally, a new ego with a real aesthetic!”
“I’m not a new ego, Wil. Look, I don’t look like you.”
“No, you’re not like me - well, like him,” insists Wilford, undaunted. “You’re one of the boys that runs around with him sometimes. He can create things too, that’s alright. You can still stay here.”
Dapper softens a little, quirking his eyebrows. “You’ve met Jack?”
“Seen him! They made a lot of videos together for a while, do you remember? Every day!”
JJ laughs, shaking his head. “You’re thinking of Ethan.”
“No, who? Noooo. The brown-haired one. Loud? Bouncy?”
“They’re both - ” JJ cuts himself off, laughing into his hands. “Never mind.”
“I don’t have my glasses on.”
“Apparently.”
Anonymous asked: Hey JJ, did you and Wil knew each other before the whole timeline mess?
“No, not really,” JJ signs to you gently. “I’ve never really had anyone outside of Anti.”
“Are you mute?” asks Wilford politely. “What’s wrong with your voice?”
“I’ve never been able to talk,” he writes out. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t be able to stay for long.”
“Oh,” says Wilford, face falling. “Oh, I thought that was why you came.”
“You took me from my house. Do you remember?”
“No… you’re thinking of one of the others, I think?”
Dapper lets out a sigh and smiles. “Never mind. Just - ”
It’s then that Edward enters the room.
Dapper stiffens, rubbing his shoulders and staring down at the floor. Ippy looks relieved, stepping carefully into the room, as though approaching an animal caught in a fence.
“Hi,” he breathes. “Feeling any better?”
JJ looks away, uncomfortable.
Anonymous asked: Hey Dap? I just wanted to let you know that it's ok to be experiencing symptoms right now. You're under so, so much stress, your body must be having hell and two pence. It's ok if you feel apathy, have a hard time with facial expression, hallucinating. You will be okay. You will get out soon, and you will have time to de-stress, you will see your brothers again soon. Know even through the fear, everything will be okay. You were made for happy endings.
“Do you have symptoms like these often?” asks Ippy.
Dapper plays with the edge of his paper, unsmiling.
“Your, uh… friends? Said you had a psychotic disorder. When was the last time you saw a clinician about that? Seems like you’ve been on Haldol a pretty long time.”
Dapper draws circles on his pad, not looking up.
Ippy sits down in one of those backless chairs that doctors roll around their offices in. “Are you aware that you have a Vitamin D deficiency? Serious enough to be impacting your bone strength?”
Dapper glances at Wilford but doesn’t answer.
“Broken rib… infected wrist… some pretty serious scarring…”
Dapper leans down to write something. Ippy waits patiently. Dapper turns the paper around and he’s written “stop talking to me” across the whole page. Ippy rolls his chair away and lets out a grumble beneath his breath, getting up to -
“Hey! Who broke my drawers!”
Wilford and JJ exchange glances.
“Probably the dog,” answers Wilford wisely, and it almost, almost makes JJ smile.
It’s okay. He’s okay. It’s okay for him to be psychotic. He’s just got to get through it, like he always does. It’s okay to struggle.
Anonymous asked: Hey now! Let the doctor take care of you, bud. You deserve some proper medical attention, you deserve some healing after everything you've been through.
“That’s not my doctor,” signs JJ bitterly, glaring Ippy down as best he can, though he mostly ends up looking like he’s squinting. “Give me back to my brother.”
“Five questions,” asks Ippy. “Yeah? Then I’ll give you some space.”
“One question.” He holds up a finger.
Ippy holds up three.
Dapper turns his head away. Tries to glare again. Nods. Fine.
“When was the last time you saw a psychiatrist?”
He’s never seen a psychiatrist. That’s why they mostly just call it a psychotic disorder. Schneep says it’s probably schizophrenia, but he’s a surgeon. Until Anti stole Dok, he would just tell Dapper that Jack fucked his head up as bad as his voice.
“I don’t have a psychiatrist,” says Dapper. “The Haldol is fine. It manages most everything.”
“Most of the positive symptoms, I bet,” says Ippy. “And even if antipsychotics are helpful, they still need to be adjusted sometimes, and you should probably be seeing a therapist for behavioral therapy.”
“What’s positive about psychosis?” asks Wilford. “Is that like the fun kind of psychosis? A little LSD, anybody?”
“Wilford,” sighs Ippy. “Positive means something added. So things like hallucinations, delusions, hyperactivity, disordered thinking - those are positive symptoms. Most antipsychotics work best for those. But there are negative symptoms too - depressed mood. Flattened expressions. Lack of enjoyment or pleasure. Feelings of hopelessness.”
Dapper stares at the floor. After a moment, he writes “question two” pointedly.
“Why do you look like Mark’s friend?”
“It’s exactly what you think it is. Don’t waste either of our time.”
“Dark says Jack doesn’t have videos with you or any of the others.”
“Is that a question?”
“No, grumbles Ippy, rubbing at his forehead. “Forget it. Who gave you all your scars?”
Dapper’s eyes flicker. He glances away. “Self-harm,” he writes.
“Liar,” answers Ippy evenly. “They go all the way to your back.”
Dapper hisses, tucking his pad up against his chest for a second. He lets out a breath of air, shaking his head.
Anonymous asked: His ribs are broken because his "big brother" nearly beat him to death then left him sitting in filth for hours until he passed out. He's deficient in vitamin D because he spends his entire life locked inside one room and that same brother almost never lets him out. He's scarred from year of torture and abuse. Let's just say he doesn't have the easiest home life.
Ippy sits back, setting his clipboard aside.
Dapper closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to think. He doesn’t feel well.
“Please just leave me alone,” he writes. “There. You got your answer. My brother did all of it. Go away.”
Ippy gets up. He takes Dapper’s bear off the bedside table and hands it carefully over to him. Dapper swallows and accepts it, pulling the familiar warmth and texture and smell to his chest. It’s grounding.
“Want to come sit in the sun for a while?” asks Ippy.
Dapper looks up at him, eyes wide. Ippy waits.
Dapper sighs and shakes his head, curling up against the wall. Even if he wanted to accept anybody’s niceness right now, he’s too tired.
“Okay,” says Ippy. “You don’t have to. But you should know - now that you’re awake and talking - ”
“No,” Dapper is already writing, the pen shaking in his grip.
“They just want to talk. That’s all. They won’t - ”
“Tell Dark to stay away from me,” writes Dapper frantically, tears budding in his eyes. He underlines it. Again and again.
Tell
Dark
To
Stay
Away
Ippy gets to his feet wearily. He unlocks one of his drawers and sets a Haldol and a Vitamin D tablet out on the dresser beside Dapper.
“Get a little sleep,” he says. “You’ll feel better.”
“I want Dok,” writes Dapper. “Please.”
Ippy is already shutting the door behind him.
nikkilbook asked: Edward, do you have any contacts in the city that work with homeless shelters or other kinds of emergency housing? I think that’s where three of his brothers are.
Edward’s eyebrows raise. “Oh? Sure, there’s some shelters. I usually refer them to LAAG. Sets you up in a hotel for a month or two if you’re out of somewhere to stay. Mostly for moms with kids, though. There’s some men’s and women’s shelters in town. Lot of homeless people out here, unfortunately. Hey, Gigi.”
“What?”
“What’s the closest homeless shelter?”
“Are they finally kicking you out of that pigsty you call an apartment? The closest homeless shelter is Missionaries of Charity Relief Services, 23.6 miles away. There is an adjoining soup kitchen.”
“There you go.”
nikkilbook asked: Could you send someone (non/less threatening, if possible?) to ask after them, see if they’d be willing to come and help you with JJ? Though one of them, Marvin, is hurt really bad as well because of some messed up dark magic crap that Anti thought was a good idea. Schneep, the doctor that JJ keeps referring to, is doing his best, but he’s technically a surgeon with holes in his memory.
“Excuse me,” Google cuts you both off, stepping forward. “You have to run decisions like that past Dark.”
“Then ask Dark,” answers Ippy mildly. “I’m sure they’d love to worm their way into somebody else’s heart. They wanted that other kid that was there, right? Bet they’d be happy with you if you brought the other three back to them.”
“You think you’re very clever.”
“But I got you thinking about it, didn’t I?”
Google glares at him.
Then his composure breaks, just the smallest bit, and you see a smile on the edges of his mouth. Ippy laughs and trails past him towards the kitchen. “Come on, you goddamn sycophant. It’s curry night. You can help me make it.”
“I’m not your maid,” says Gigi stubbornly.
But he follows right after him into the kitchen.
Anonymous asked: Does seeing outsiders reaction help you realize it JJ? How horrible Anti really is to you? You're dying, Dapper. You might be dead if you hadn't gotten medical treatment. You have all the scars because of his actions. All of your pain was caused by him. You have a psychotic disorder and he's never /once/ taken you to a psychiatrist. If he was your brother, if he loved you beyond being his pet, he would have at least taken you to therapy. Can you see the damage he's done, Dap?
“Save the realization tactics for my brothers, my friend,” JJ signs quietly. “I’ve always known exactly what Anti is. I used to stay because I was scared of what he’d do to me if I tried to get away. Now I just know there’s no escaping. Not for me.”
And that is when the light from the sun flickers and dies.
Dapper closes his eyes. He knows. Right away, without pausing.
“Dark,” you see his mouth move.
“Feeling… hopeless?” asks a voice that echoes. “I can help with that.”
“No,” says Dapper. “No, you can’t.”
And he gets to his shaking feet.
Anonymous asked: They made a deal JJ. This is the last time. If you don't allow yourself to escape, allow yourself freedom and family, true family, love... Then I fear you'll be stuck with him forever. Let yourself escape. Let Jameson Jackson live. Let your soul breathe again.
JJ holds the camera close to his chest, sinking down beside his bed as his legs give out on him. It makes Dark tower over him. He closes his eyes.
Family, true family - what he wouldn’t give for them to be here right now. And it’s odd to him because most often, when he wishes for family, he wishes Anti were here to protect him.
Today, he doesn’t wish for Anti at all. Even if Anti would protect him from Dark, it doesn’t matter. He wants… fuck, he just wants Red and Blue and Dok and even Trick, because every one of them, he has begun to realize, would take care of him if they ever had the chance to. Blue would be shouting at Dark to back off, Red would already be on the attack, Dok would be making him feel better, and Trick, he thinks, would just be wrapped around him, holding him, just like he did when Gigi and Shep came to take him away.
Maybe he wasn’t stuck up in the attic or in the backroom or in Anti’s bed because everyone else hated him or didn’t want him around. Maybe it was always just Anti’s barriers.
“How interesting the pair of you are,” Dark says, looking down at JJ with your viewpoint in his hands. “To know him intimately… to speak with him. Even when I talk to you, it’s always me on the one side of the camera, and you never able to answer… Mark sees to that. How interesting, though, to be the ones to tell him he’s loved.”
Dapper takes the writing pad in his trembling hands. “What do you want?” he writes.
Dark leans down, too close to him. “I told you. Let’s talk. I want to know everything about that monster you live with - and just how I can get rid of him.”
Dapper creeps along the wall away from Dark, shaking his head minutely. He and Anti have their struggles, but he doesn’t sell his brother out, and especially not to Dark.
“Come on, little one. What are you so scared of? My soldiers have all seen the markings all up and down you. Wouldn’t you rather let me extract a little vengeance for you?”
“Not little,” writes Dapper. “What do you want with Anti? Why kill him?”
Dark cocks their head coolly, eyes flashing red and blue.
“If you don’t remember him, there’s no reason to be angry.”
Dark doesn’t answer. Dark never answers if they don’t have to. They don’t give up information, period.
“I hope you know I hate your guts,” says JJ.
And then Dark’s hand is on his throat.
JJ wheezes in alarm, grabbing Dark’s arm as the room seems to flood with a darkness so thick it seems to shove at his bones like a fist or a car collision. He kicks his legs desperately and, for a moment, manages a shrill whistle of alarm - and then Dark makes him still.
The calm is like an infusion of something, settling into his lungs and chest and softening his violent terror into a whimpering fear. Dark drags him back to his bed and throws him onto the mattress. And Dapper, shaking and petrified with a weepy, muted alarm, curls his body into a roly-poly and hugs his bear to his chest, staring up at Dark with huge, watering eyes, because the times when he acts childish and too cute to hurt have never been anything more than a fear response.
“There you go,” says Dark, sitting down in the chair beside the bed and leaning back, their eyes closing for a moment from the strain it puts on their spine. Anti’s attack has left them physically shaken and weak, the pain haunting them through waking and dreams. For that, they will have revenge - and for the way that the thought of Anti has haunted them for more than a week now. “Be good now and tell me how you know me.”
“My brother brought me to you some years back to reset me even better than he can alone,” writes Dapper shakily. “He manipulates thoughts and he can possess people. You manipulate souls and emotions. I woke up a different person. Since then I feel like I have a different personality every day. You and Anti took who I was from me.”
Dark shakes their head faintly, squinting for a moment. They glance at Dapper, at his eyes, at his chest. They don’t say anything.
“Please don’t hurt me anymore,” writes Dapper.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” says Dark gently, and they try to make it feel, in Dapper’s heart, that this is true, but all he does is close his eyes and hide.
Anonymous asked: hey, jamie, dapper, my dear. i know you've been hurt by dark before, and i'm not saying you have to forgive them, or trust them, or anything. but can you try to trust us, when we tell you that you are safe? i wouldn't say that lightly, dap. but right now, you are safe. deep breaths. we're here to help you.
“There, that’s right,” agrees Dark quietly. “Don’t be scared.”
Dapper shudders under another wave of their power. Affection and faith well up in his chest, and this feeling, at least, has an anchor of truth in his head, a foundation it can stand on. Yes, he remembers the days when you have kept him company, the days when you have warned him of danger or convinced Anti to leave him alone. He remembers Trick and Dok taking him for fish and chips, presents you picked out for him, and the beeping of the camera on so many of the nights in the past seven months where he would have been completely alone without you.
He sucks in a deep breath, closing his eyes.
“If I met you and your brother,” says Dark. “Why don’t I remember?”
“You are a creature manipulated by the stories your creator tells,” writes Dapper slowly.
“Mark did this?”
“No. Another storyteller. My creator gave me his power of manipulating stories. Last year I changed things without meaning to. There are inconsistencies now - people who remember things that never happened in this timeline, and people who have forgotten things that happened to them in another life. And then there are things like you, somewhere in the middle - torn between memory and loss.”
Dark’s eyes narrow, smoke curling off their shoulders.
“I know you don’t remember Anti,” writes Dapper. “But at the same time, you do.”
“Enough,” says Dark. “Quiet. Let me think.”
Deep black eyes pierce into JJ like a scalpel. He stares up at the light, trying to breathe.
“The truth is you know nothing of what’s happening around you,” Dark murmurs.“You’re delusional and ill. You remember things that haven’t happened because you have a disorder.”
“No,” signs JJ, shaking his head. “No.”
He does have delusions sometimes, very intense ones. But he won’t let Dark tell him that he doesn’t know his own power - the piece of himself that Jack gave him.
“Look at you.” Dark shakes their head, eyes glittering, and smoke curls around them like creeping cats wandering through the air. “The moment you’re away from him, you crash, is that it?”
Dapper closes his eyes, turned up to the lights.
Dark hums and gets to their feet, drawing out wine and glasses as though from the shadows themselves. They pour two cups of rich, black wine and press a cool cup into his hands. Dapper’s fingers wrap around the glass slowly, his eyes blank.
“Why did you become psychotic the moment you were away from him?”
His gaze flickers up to Dark’s. He doesn’t answer.
“Of course,” mutters Dark, backing away and sitting down in their chair. “You live with a mind manipulator. I bet he makes the voices quiet, doesn’t he?”
Dapper’s mouth parts, a gleam of something hard appearing for moment in his eyes before shifting away again, leaving him tired and only vaguely annoyed.
“Admit it,” says Dark. “You rely on him. Don’t you? You wouldn’t last on your own, not without him. The medication manages some of it and he manages the rest. When he’s away, you can barely survive. You need him – desperately.”
You can hear Dapper breathing now. His eyes are fixed on the light above. He holds his wine too tightly in his fingers.
“And he tells you so,” adds Dark slowly, staring at Dapper’s face. They tilt back their wine and they drink. “Doesn’t he? Constantly, I would guess. You and him both know that you need him – and he loves it.”
Dapper doesn’t have anything to say to them. He wants to be far away. He hates them.
“It must be difficult to be both – ”
“Don’t even fucking start with me, jackass, as if you know anything about what it’s like to be mute and psychotic and abused by the person I love most in the world, as if you’re not the one who fucking triggered my schizophrenia, as if you know anything about my life or what I’ve done to – ”
“Calm down,” says Dark gently, and Dapper feels a rush of unnatural calm flood over him. For a second of raw terror, he is completely aware that he’s being forced to feel something he doesn’t really feel, and then, the next moment, he is slumped back in his chair, letting out a low sigh of relief.
“I can’t understand sign language, so you’ll have to write for me,” says Dark. “We can have a calm conversation if you stay level-headed instead of getting so out of control. I’ll forgive you because of your fever.”
Dapper reaches dazedly for the writing pad, trying to keep his thoughts straight. This is happening again. He’s losing himself again.
“You talk about my brother controlling me and then shove your way into my chest yourself,” he manages, his handwriting scrawling and small. “Just tell me what you want from me or let me go home.”
Dark drinks from their glass again, never breaking eye contact.“What do you think I want?”
“I think,” Dapper scrawls. “That you don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on.”
It is Dark’s turn for their eyes to gain a hardness. Something glitters in black irises.
“And you hate that, don’t you, Darkness? More than anything. More than anything.”
Dark does not answer.
“You want to know how to kill Anti because you remember him,” writes Dapper. “The fragments of the memory of him haunts you because you hate not knowing and you hate being confused, and the thought that I somehow changed your story is second in bitterness only to the knowledge that Mark has already told it for you. Of course you don’t want to admit you don’t remember. It means someone else changed you without your permission. Your greatest fear.”
“Watch your words,” warns Dark.
“Anti hated you at first. We would agree that you were a creep, a control freak, an asshole. But you were insistent. How pretty he was, you would say, and how you had finally found someone who matched you in ferocity. After a while, it started to flatter him. He decided he was some sort of exception to you. You would be terrible to everyone else but good to him. He loved that. The thought of being special to someone. His abandonment issues made him look past everything horrible about you.”
“You’re making this up.”
“You taught him to dance,” writes Dapper, his words coming faster and faster beneath his scrawling hands. “Do you remember? Your hands on his waist as he finally trusted you enough to put his head on your shoulder. You would bring him flowers, roses he pretended he didn’t want and then put in a vase by his bed, purring to me about how wrapped around his finger you were. You would go hunting together and let him have the kill because you loved to see him lose his mind with the power and the fun of it all. His sadism was wild any time he was with you. He would come home and hurt me on accident - mostly - because he was so violent and worked up he couldn’t control his energy and his excitement. Do you remember?”
Dark’s eyes are raised to JJ’s now, staring at him, their mouth faintly parted.
“Have you been dreaming, Dark?” asks Dapper. “Killing him won’t make it stop. Speak with him. I don’t think the two of you know what love is, but you loved the time you spent together.”
“You’re sentimental as well as delusional,” answers Dark, tilting back their wine.
“I would listen to me if I were you,” writes Dapper. “Because at this point, Dark, there are outcomes - you cool his fury, or he will kill you.”
Red and blue in Dark’s eyes. Bone through their rotting fingers.
“My brother has taken on power he should never have stolen,” says Dapper. “You can’t beat him with Blue’s power combined with his own. Calm Anti down, Dark - or he will burn down everything you love.”
Dark blinks, revealing, if only for a moment, an unsettled look on their face.
Outside the window, the others are laughing and talking. Dark catches a glance of Wilford’s bubblegum hair and the movement of the enormous dog you spotted earlier. Host’s voice murmurs down to them through the ceiling and someone is cooking in the kitchen, making the house fragrant with garlic and spices.
“Please leave me alone now,” says Dapper.
“One last thing. Is it true that you can time travel?”
“Yes,” Dapper answers. “I know you can feel the power in my chest.”
“I could take it,” says Dark. “If I wanted to. Your power is a part of your soul and that, my darling, is my specialty.”
Dapper flips a page on his pad and writes across the full page:
“It would burn you alive.”
A flicker of a small on Dark’s coy mouth.
“Yes,” they say. “I suppose it would. I’m not as stupid as your brother.”
“Whatever you say,” writes Dapper dryly.
Dark gets to their feet, draining the last of their wine.
“Can I go?” writes Dapper desperately.
“Hm? Oh, no. We’re not finished, doll. Hey.”
Dark reaches out to cluck his chin, but Dapper jerks back, terrified. Dark laughs and takes their hand back, leaving Dapper with a sudden and painfully intense feeling of exhaustion. He crumples against the bed, his eyes flickering shut.
“Get some sleep,” murmurs Dark, turning their back and beginning to disappear back into the shadows. “Hostages are no good to me dead.”
Dapper fades into darkness.
.
Blue wakes up to a hand on his shoulder. “Mh? What is it?”
He hears his twin chuckle softly above him. “You make cat noises when you’re waking up.”
“Mmmhhhh,” protests Blue sleepily, cuddling down deeper into his blankets.
“You can go back to sleep,” Red whispers. “I just wanted you to know I’m heading back to the house for a couple days. Stay here with Dok and I’ll - ”
Blue is awake. He almost flinches out of the sheets, sitting up fast and grabbing Red’s sleeve. “Wait, no. I’m coming with.”
“No, Blue, you need to stay here and rest.”
“I’m feeling much better,” replies Blue, his tone brooking no argument. “And I am NOT going to be miles and miles away while you go back to an Anti who’s no doubt furious. I need to see the others too. I have to make sure they’re okay. That’s my job.”
“I’m coming too,” answers a quiet voice from the doorway - Dok slipping into the room with three cups of hospital coffee.
“Guys, no,” protests Red. “Please. I’d rather you be here. Dok, Anti threatened to kill you.”
Dok shrugs, placing coffee down on the bedside table. He plucks at his necklaces. “We might need these,” he says, picking at each raven talisman in turn. “And I… I need to see Trick.”
“We’re both going, Red,” Blue insists, touching his arm and squeezing reassuringly. “You don’t have to do this alone. We’re here.”
Red smiles weakly at the both of them. “Just… promise me you won’t try anything stupid, okay?”
“Promise,” says Blue.
“I never do,” answers Dok dryly.
The twins laugh quietly at his answer. It does not, however, hide the fear that trembles in Dok’s fingertips and rattles the insides of his chest.
He can do this. He can. He has to.
immabethehero asked: Good luck dudes!
“Thanks,” says Ro, looking up at the house. “Yeah, thanks, we appreciate it.”
Blue and Dok are behind him. He can hear them whispering to each other, but he doesn’t want to interfere. Blue is wrapped around Dok like a vice, rubbing his back as he tries to reassure him, and Dok clings to his necklaces and his sibling and hides.
“Is, um.” Ro stares at the windows and door. “Is Anti really angry? Is he in there right now? I don’t really know what to expect…”
Anonymous asked: uh, trick? i believe noodle has decided to go exploring. outside. i'm going to tell the others, so they can look for noodle too, but i thought you should know.
“Noodle?”
You find Trick kneeling by the door, scratching at the carpet and trying to catch his cat’s attention. Yesterday, he waited patiently for Noodle to come back. Today, four days after Dapper was taken, Trick has only seen Noodle twice, and the light in his eyes has become desperate and frantic.
“Baby!” he hollers, sticking the last piece of jerky under the door. “Come here, sweetie! Daddy’s upstairs. Where are you? No, no, no, he can’t have gone outside. Noodle, come here! He’s never been outside in his life. He’s always been with me. Noodle!”
He wipes at hot tears on his face, back shaking from how long he’s been crouched there. Anti has let him out of the room a couple times, but he’s been with him the whole time, so all he’s done is make himself dinner a couple times or watch a movie with Anti.
He wants things to go back to normal.
“Noodle! Please come here! You’re scaring me!”
Anonymous asked: Dok, what if you feigned that you were "taking off" your necklaces, but quickly clasped the animal one around Anti, then got him weak as you could and used the light? Or perhaps told him the only way to stop their power was for him to wear them, then put the animal one around his neck? Do you think a plan like that would work?
“Yeah, if I can manage that I would like to do this,” says Dok frailly, gripping Blue’s hand so hard it’s beginning to bruise. “Might not be able to trick him, but could maybe act fast and hurt him.”
“Remind me what all of these do,” murmurs Blue, touching his brother’s collarbone.
“This one is light, this one is transformation, and this one keeps Anti out of my head,” Dok whispers. “They said I should give the light one to a warrior.”
Blue glances at Red, pacing his way towards the house. He wants to be the first one inside, to bear the brunt of Anti’s fury. Blue pulls Dok after him, trying to think.
Anonymous asked: Trick has been alone for such a long time, and Anti has been locking him all alone in one room most of the days, he really needs you Dok, needs you to help him fight. As for Anti, he's been in and out of the place, we're not sure what he's doing.
“Anti locked Trick in his room?” asks Red.
“Let’s go,” says Dok, pulling away from Blue and hurrying towards the house.
“Dok! You don’t know if Anti’s in there!”
“He’s already seen us on the cameras from this close,” answers Dok, yanking open the door to the house and moving inside. “If he wants to come after us, he will. There’s nothing we can do about that. Right now, I just want to see Trick. Where is he?”
He runs down into the basement where they’ve been staying, but Trick isn’t there - and neither is Noodle. Dok returns to the ground floor, where Blue and Red are looking through their own room. Blue shuts the window that’s been open for days, making the room hot and airy.
“Where’s kitty?” asks Blue.
“I’m sure he’s just with Trick,” answers Dok. “Right?”
Anonymous asked: Trick is locked up in Anti's bedroom, and Noodle is missing, he escaped outside. Trick's been alone with no one but Anti for this whole time.
Blue and Red exchange wide-eyed looks, Red already pacing towards the door to look around for the cat. Dok races upstairs, feeling more awake than he has in weeks.
“Trick!” he knocks rapidly on the door and shuffling sounds greet him from the other side.
“Anti?”
“Trick, it’s me,” Dok calls.
“Dok!”
The way he calls his name is almost a sob. Dok scrambles with the lock on the door, turning the stiff lock to the right. Trick shoves the door open and meets his eyes.
“Are you okay?” croaks Dok.
“Fine,” whispers Trick, though his hair is limp and dry and his eyes hollowed out. “Are you?”
“Yes. I’m okay. Listen, Trick, I just - ”
Trick crashes into him and hugs him to his chest. They fall back against the wall, pinned together, skulls pressed together and arms wrapped around each other’s ribs.
“You don’t have to explain,” says Trick. “I should have protected you better, so you didn’t have to run away. I’ll be better for you, Dok. I’ll take better care of you.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I should have been someone you could trust.”
“Trick…”
They wrap tighter around each other, rocking each other’s bodies against the wall, safe in each other’s grips.
Anonymous asked: He's here.
Blue is hugging Trick and Dok to himself, babbling at them about how he loves them, about how he missed him, about how happy he is to see him. Trick is relieved to feel less alone for the first time in days. He tells Blue he looks better and that he loves him too.
It’s Red who sees Anti.
He’s leaning against the banister at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at him with cold blue eyes.
Red swallows. Anti doesn’t say anything.
He signs “come here.”
And then he walks away.
Red feels a shudder down his whole body. He glances back at his brothers, celebrating the mini-reunion together, talking about everything that’s happened.
He doesn’t see Dapper. Anti must have him with him.
Red needs to see him.
He swallows once again, clearing his throat this time. He won’t be afraid. He can’t let himself get lost in Anti’s lies again. He sees what he is more clearly than he has in years and now - now he has to protect his brothers from the monsters in the middle of them.
He moves down the stairs after Anti.
Anonymous asked: Uh guys, look out, the big-bad wolf is here
“Big bad wolf…”
Anti turns back to Ro for a moment in the middle of the hall, his eyes burning red.
“That’s me, then, right, Jackie?”
Ro’s blood seems to frost over in his veins. He stops short in the hallway, mouth parted.
Anti narrows his eyes and turns away, leading Ro further down the hall. Red can barely bring himself to follow, but his nerves are tempered by his confusion.
Anti has never called him Jackie before.
“Where’s Dap?” he asks quietly, stepping after Anti.
Anti doesn’t answer. He steps into the office room where you once found Dapper drinking and waits.
Red steps in after him, chewing on his lip.
Anti closes the door behind him and sits down at the desk, propping his feet on the table. He glares at Ro, flipping a knife in his hands.
“You got a deathwish or something,” says Anti.
“No,” Ro manages. “No.”
“Tell me why you went,” Anti snaps.
“You were threatening Dok. Blue was sick. I got scared.”
Anti stares at him, eyes burning with flame.
Anonymous asked: Anti Blue was dying and you were threatening Dok. Don't punish Red for being their protector, that's literally what you make him be. Thanks to his action, neither of them are dead. You have him to thank for the time away you got to think about your temper.
Anti takes a deep breath, closing his eyes for a second. “Was that all it was?”
“Yes,” says Ro quietly. “I just didn’t want them to get hurt. Anti, you can’t threaten to murder Dok and expect me to - ”
“I can do what I want,” snaps Anti. “What’s your name?”
“What?”
“What’s your fucking name?”
Ro licks his mouth anxiously, glancing around for a second. He wishes Blue were here.
“It’s Red, Anti.”
Anti sighs, shaking his head at him. His posture relaxes slightly, letting his head thump back against the office chair.
Anonymous asked: Dapper isn't with him because Dark's soldiers stole him away. It seems like Anti can't find him.
“What?” asks Ro, incredulous. “Wait, you mean you actually let that monster get their hands on him?”
“You weren’t here!” shouts Anti, glitching to his feet and making Red stumble back. “You were the one I chose to protect them, Red, but you ran away without him or Trick like they meant nothing to you!”
“I thought you would keep them safe!” cries Red.
“I would have been able to if you had been here and I had known about Dark!” Anti snarls back, slamming his hand into the office table, a slight tremor in his palms. “But you and them both turned your backs on me! I can’t trust anyone but myself!”
“You were going to hurt Dok!”
Anti’s palm connects with Red’s face, sending him staggering back. He feels blood rush to the handprint on his cheek and he grips at his face weakly, looking up at Anti with watery eyes.
“You would have been useless if you were here anyway,” growls Anti. “You’re terrified of Dark. Fucking coward boy. And to think, Jack called you a hero.”
Hurt and fury light up in Ro’s chest. He squeezes his eyes tightly shut, straightening his back again and clutching his hands into fists.
“I found Dark today,” says Anti coldly, turning away. “We can get Dapper back. If you help me, maybe I won’t fucking slaughter you for running away like the little bitch you are.”
“I’m not a little bitch,” says Red. “You… you’ve never liked me.”
“Correct,” answers Anti.
Anonymous asked: Jackie's throwing caution to the wind, you're willing to throw everyone's lives to the wind. Even moreso now that this is the last run-through, right?
“If you turn on me like that again,” says Anti. “I’ll kill you like I promised you I would.”
“You expect my loyalty,” says Ro. “But you don’t even like me. You threaten us and hurt us. How do you expect me to stay?”
“You’ll stay because if you don’t I’ll end all five of you,” snarls Anti, Jack’s teeth in his mouth giving way to those of a dog. “What, you think you did a good job, running away from me? Think you saved them from anything? I know you were staying in Ashley Valley Hospital Room 412.”
Ro’s blood is cold.
“I know the fake names you used, I know the food pantry where Dok was getting you food everyday, I know what Blue’s doctors said, I know, I know, I know. You can’t get away from me, Red. You never will. All the more because you’re a spineless, needy moron who can’t think of anything but a man who doesn’t love him anymore and whatever bullshit your mind fixates on on any given day. You’re broken, Red. Same way Jack made Chase and JJ broken. Even when you were Jackie, you were still pathetic.”
“Wonder why Marvin and I were able to beat you to hell, then,” says Ro.
It’s a mistake as soon as he’s said it. It’s a mistake. It was a bad choice. He shouldn’t have said it.
But he doesn’t regret it.
Anti takes a step back towards him, his eyes narrowed like a cat’s.
Jackie takes a step towards him too, fists clenched.
“When I said that you made me forget important things in the past,” he says. “I meant that you made me forget people I loved and the places I come from. But there are other things you made me forget too, Anti. You’re not as untouchable as you’ve always told me you were. And you know what else?”
Anti’s eyes are pupil-less, iris-less, white.
“I think you’re still afraid of me,” he says. “I think that every time you flinch back from a bird at the window, you are flinching away from the memory of just how bad I hurt you the first time you stole my baby brother.”
Anonymous asked: Stand strong, Jackieboy man. You've got a war to fight.
Stand strong. He straightens his back. The others need him.
“Come on, then,” he snaps, taking another step forward. Anti takes a step back. “I can see it in you. That you want to hurt me. It’s a look I’ve gotten used to. That you want to see me begging so you feel less scared.”
“You shut your mouth, Jackie,” says Anti.
“No,” spits Ro, clenching his fists. “No, I won’t. I’m tired of you silencing me. I’m not stupid and I’m not a coward.”
Anti strikes him, harder than the first time. Red backs off, grabbing his face with a gasp. Tears water in his eyes. He straightens up again, seething.
“You’re the fucking coward, Anti,” he croaks out, something snapping in his chest. His little brother really has always hated him, no matter how hard he tried to love him. “I won’t let you tell me differently anymore.”
Anonymous asked: Hey younger brothers, you miiight want to go to the office with Red and Anti, something tells me it's about to go downhill from here, and you'd be stronger together, protecting each other.
Blue blinks and looks around, realizing only now that his twin is gone.
“Oh, shit,” he breathes.
He turns and races down the stairs, tearing towards the office.
Anonymous asked: You are not pathetic, Jackie. You are a hero, through-and-through. You've spent your every waking moment protecting them from abuse in any way you were able. "Broken" is just Anti being an ableist, abusive asshat. You are stronger than him. You always have been, no matter what he tries to convince you of. Break free of him, Jackieboy Man.
“Yeah, you know what, they’re right,” Jackie continues, lifting his chin up and glaring at Anti as bruises form on his face. “You know what I think, Anti? I think you’re so desperate to believe that our creator - that Jack - ”
“Don’t say that name!” screams Anti, slapping him again.
Red laughs. “I think you’re so desperate to believe that Jack was in the wrong that you tell yourself he did something wrong to us just because of things like me being autistic. And that’s pretty fucked up, Anti. There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with Dap and Trick. Honestly? I think Jack was probably an okay guy, and you’re the one who’s always been the villain.”
“Stop it!” screams Anti, driving his fist into Red’s chest. Red steps back, but doesn’t falter. “Stop it, stop it!”
“You like to act like you’re in control and you can’t even control your temper and your fucking daddy issues!”
“Red!” shouts Anti, his eyes flashing. “Stop it! You’re just like Jack, you’re just like Dark, everybody turns on me eventually! You were always just Jack’s little soldier, his failsafe! You think I made you a guard dog? Jack used you for years to get what he wanted.”
“Jack was trying to protect us from you!”
“You don’t even remember!” Anti grabs Red by the throat and slams him into the wall, crashing his head into wood. “Who have you been talking to? You - ”
“Hey, stop, stop!” cries Blue, appearing to grab Anti’s hands, trying to tear him off his twin. Anti kicks his cane away from him and sends him crashing to the ground.
“I ought to put both of you right back in the hospital!”
“Anti, don’t hurt him!” shrieks Blue. “Dapper’s not here! You can’t fix this if it all goes wrong!”
Anti’s grip tightens for a moment on Red’s throat. Ro chokes, gripping at his fingers.
Anti drops him to the ground.
“You’re right,” he spits, turning to grab Blue by the hair, dragging him back up to a sitting position. “So I’ll deal with you two once I have my boy back.”
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Spoiler-Filled Reaction to the 1st Ep of TFATWS: ‘New World Order’ ...
Okay, so I may switch up and do weekly recaps via audio. Either way, I’m getting something out before the weekend is up...
Still!...
It’s a been a few days, so I can go a bit more in depth with my thoughts on that pilot ep.
~ So, that opening was quiet and down-to-earth. For me, it was hammering home not only the humbleness of Sam (despite the bravado, the man is naive in his optimism and *not* superpowered), but being stuck in his initial thoughts about the shield.
...That it didn’t feel like it belonged to him.
Sam’s personality, has been established as super-loyal and almost childlike in his feelings that things will work out and doing the right thing because it’s right (which is why he didn’t get paid enough BTW naive pride).
-which comes into play w/ his conflict w/ his sister later... I’ll come back to that.
~ We jump into a dangerous mission that shows off Falcon’s personality. He’s gonna get it done with style and optimism even when working with equipment that needs a few updates.
The stunt coordination here was fantastic! I legit whewed! aloud at Balroc paragliding into *multiple* helicopters... Sam’s hair-pin turns milimeters from canyon rock, propellers, and rockets...
~ I *loved* Torres’ fanboying. It felt like a parallel to Sam fanboying Cap, in CA:WS and evoked the well-established superhero trope of a person *marveling* aloud at what you’re doing making it so. much. cooler. (as an oldhead, the random black dude emoting about Superman’s suit after he comes out of a phonebooth, in the Reeves movie, is my earliest memory of this trope).
~ Then we see the Tunisia titlecard, which yea! it didn’t just say Africa, but ehh, once again “yellow tint” is code for “exotic” country full of brown people.
It did cut through the typically more alt-right-tinged military propaganda w/ the Tunisian man thanking Sam for saving his wife, the bare minimum of humanization... but it saved the scene from just “backdropping” the people/culture w/o any humanity, at all, as is typical...
That and the way these two BIPOC spoke to one another (there is a certain kind of rapport we non-white folk have w/ each other) was my first hint...that this showrunner ain’t a white dude. The joking about him knowing Arabic...like cheering/teasing when we show our range to one another.
Mainly, this interaction was to show that Sam is to Torres what Steve was to Sam in some ways...with a bit more “brazen kid” on Torres’ part, along w/ introing the idea of the Flagsmashers.
~ Then, naive Sam decides to donate the shield to the Smithsonian...because he doesn’t feel like he’s earned it and because in his mind it still belongs to Cap and because he’s out here trusting this governement even after all the B.S. he’s done lived through. Even Rhodey was having his doubts... Maybe being around during the blip makes a person more savvy and cynical, IDK.
~ So, then we see Buck in therapy and since I’ve been through trauma, I know that mindset. Sticking to routine is a big “win”. Not really caring about anything beyond the bare essentials (yall saw that man’s apartment).
And the feeling of being displaced would be amplified by the fact that this man is more so than anyone who has existed(!).
~ I noticed that Seb leaned into his Rom-Merican accent, which was a great acting choice, it evokes his sense of having traveled without a solid sense of self in a place, because he was essentially, asleep all those decades, while the brainwashed aspect of himself was enslaved to Hydra.
I LOVE his therapist.
Fannishness for a cute guy, means a lot of people don’t like her being “mean” to him... But I’mma tell you, as someone who actually has been in therapy for a good bit, you *need* someone who will call you on your bullshit so you can properly work on it. I love that she’s also a vet and there’s nothing cutesy and coddling in a male-gazey sexy or motherly way.
She’s doing her fucking job and not letting his ass slide. To me, that read as a hat-tip to a woman drecting this.
So, we see Buck manifest his trauma w/ profound discomfort in his own skin. He doesn’t know how to interact anymore, how to swagger in this strange time and place (because dude had all kinds of 1940′s swagger and juice back in CA:TFA) So, he’s just awkwardly honest, and beating himself up for that.
But... he’s still alive, so he totally perked up in the presence of this attractive server and Yori notices and like so many old people, just busted his chops and skipped all the what he wasn’t gonna do and did it for him, w/ Leah’s confidant acceptance -ahhh, I luv her!- as an assist.
~ Then we flip back to Sam in Delacroix and we meet his sister and his nephews and his community(!) which really nails down Sam the man, the person, the human apart from his underwritten assists to the Avengers.
We see that Sarah knows and loves this naively optimistic ‘I will find a way to fix it because it’s the right thing to do’ hard-headed brother.... but good-God! he doesn’t know shit about real-world day-to-day struggle...
If you’ve seen Anthony Mackie in The Hurt Locker... one of the big themes explored, is how tough it is for vets who have been through explosions and firefights in another country... to adjust to day-to-day struggle in “normal life”.
THAT is what Buck’s therapist was calling out when she said BULLSHIT to him saying he wanted peace (lol, no he doesn’t, like Sam he wants that righeous kind of adrenalin only being in action for “good” gives) and what Sarah is frustrated w/ is regarding him not understanding or respecting the kind of struggle she had to deal w/.
~ As an aside I *loved* her *nose-scratch* “Can I talk to you for a minute??” Whew! That is a black-ass way to let you know someone is pissed w/ you and wants to hash all the shit out.
That’s why Sam avoided it, lol...
~ So, the date with Leah, who does all the right things...Goes terribly, because Buck is still too deep in his trauma focus on anything about how great she is.
Note, that just about everything that happened on that date reminded him of aspects of his trauma to the point where Buck, (being an absolute dick!) just fucking, walks out on her!! I NEED her to chew his ass out for that and I need him to *not* be able to make it up to her (and I’d also love some fanfic, where Buck actually does *ahem* treat her well... I know Asian women be shorted in fanfic too!)
~ So, he goes to Yori’s apartment and stares like an obvious knucklehead (still dealing w/ being stuck in his trauma) at the alter to the man who was just in the way of that brainwashed aspect of himself, pays for the lunch and walks off...AND, NOTE!!
YORI DID NOTICE ALL THIS. So, this will eventually come to a head...yikes!
~ Then we’re back to Sam, and Sarah who tries to have that talk, but old boy ain’t trying to hear it. Insisting that he’s the man to swoop in and save the boat and the business *sigh* by some magic (hanging with magical beings...will do that, I guess).
And Sarah smartly is just frustrated and skeptical, but lets him go on and try and fail in the same ways she already did so. many. times... in those five years.
~ And then we see bb Torres being brazen kid stupid amateur spy w/ the Flagsmashers. I honestly thought old masked dude stomped him to death, at first... The camera pan showed the cliched dead-man pose, after all. I guess he pulled that (super!)stomp, which means... Flagsmashers aren’t the lethal villians here IMO.
I think they escaped from the *real* villian.
~ And then comes some real world racist bullshit... This scene at the bank *nails* a particular kind of frustratingly infuriating racism that is common. Where they will act like they are doing you a favor because they like and want something from you... but still won’t serve you in the same way they would a white person.
It’s this strange willfullly “I like you negroes, you entertain me! -but fuck you -but I still like you!” patronizing thing that we know all too well. *whew!* That was real.
And then that heartbreaking scene where after Sarah rightly told-ya-so’s. -Sam is working on that mess of an engine and reality *finally* sets in when the key didn’t even attempt to turnover.
~ Then Torres messages Sam (and he’s alive!) and we all know Sam knows these Flasgsmashers got super-serum, but isn’t saying. Even TORRES knows (bless his heart).
~ And from there we go straight to the U.S. government rubbing salty dirt in Sam’s wound with the new/fake Cap holding the shield aloft and winking like “It’s mine now, bitch!”.
---And the credits, I won’t get into except to say if you want ALL the spoilers in the credits, watch that linked video, I posted earlier.
But they are SIGNIFICANT spoilers.
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Down the Rabbit Hole part 23
“Erica,” I ask her, “what the fuck are you doing?”
“Shut up,” she tells me, glancing behind her. I hear movement and then Marcus comes into view. He has a slim pistol gripped in his hand and casts a wary glance around the interior of the Cord before his eyes fall on the Sergeant’s prone form, laying just ahead of us.
“Is he dead?” he asks.
Erica prods at him with her foot gently. The Sergeant doesn’t move. I glance over at Elena; she is staring at his dead body with an unmistakable look of horror. I’ve never seen her look scared before.
Erica’s gun is still trained loosely on us but without it pointing directly at me I begin to relax a little. Her hand, I notice, is shaking a little.
My heart is still pounding and there is a heavy, queasy sensation whenever I look at the Sergeant’s body, but I shut it out, don’t even begin to process it. I can see the golden gleam of the other bullets in the revolver’s cylinder, pointed at me, blunt and shark-nosed. I can feel myself trembling lightly, adrenaline and exhaustion and grief all welling up inside of me.
“You aren’t going to get away with this,” Elena says, and Erica rolls her eyes.
“Can we have a little less from the peanut gallery?” she asks. “Hand over the crystal and nobody else is going to get hurt.”
There is a moment of frozen silence before Elena and I both blurt out our responses to this ludicrous request at the same time. “The crystal?” I ask. “You know about the crystal?”
“Nobody else?” Elena asks. I can feel her fists clench next to me and I have to resist the urge to reach over and hold her back. “Nobody else?” she repeats. “You didn’t have to fucking shoot him!”
“I’m not here to get in a goddam argument,” Erica growls, prodding the barrel of the revolver into Elena’s chest. I eye Marcus warily; our eyes meet for a moment and he looks away, glancing over at Erica, but his pistol remains trained on me.
I can see Elena thinking about it, as she looks down at the pistol. Erica has committed one of the cardinal sins of holding someone at gunpoint – you never actually touch them with the gun. Or touch them at all, really, if you can help it. Every point of contact between them and you is a conduit for information – they’ll be able to tell the way you’re moving, how distracted you are, might even be able to guess how willing you are to actually pull that trigger if you try something.
And it can be a point of attack. During my Karate years in Oklahoma we did a section on realistic encounters – what to do if someone pulls a knife on you, pulls a gun on you, and so on. If they’re holding it close to you and you are very, very quick, you can snap your hands down from where you’re holding them up and empty-palmed and jerk the gun away, maybe even get it into your hands. I don’t know what hand-to-hand training in the Coast Guard or in the park ranger service was like, but if even I know the technique Elena probably knows something similar.
And she will also know that it isn’t something you can ever realistically pull off. The person with the gun has to be distracted, or possibly just disabled, not to be able to react in time. There’s a reason Ali always told us in class, very seriously, that if someone was holding us up to mug us, to just give them what they wanted. “You are not,” he said, “going to be faster than someone’s index finger moving a couple of centimeters. You will die, unless you are very lucky. If they want something, give it to them. If they’re going to kill you, though,” he said, waggling his finger at us, flashing that brilliant smile, “it’ll be better than nothing.” Then we practiced headlocks and sleeper chokes.
So even though I can see Elena’s hands flexing with an unconscious urge to rip and choke and get us out of this situation, she doesn’t move a muscle. I see her glance over at me, just a flicker, like checking a pulse, making sure I’m still here, I’m not panicking.
“Hand it over,” Erica repeats, glancing between us. I am very curious to find out how she expects us to just give her a crystal that’s roughly the weight and shape of a refrigerator, but maybe she doesn’t know how big it is. How the hell does she even know about it to begin with?
Makado. Somehow I know it must have been through Makado, one way or another. If she was willing to tell me, she’d potentially be willing to tell someone else, someone even more of a security risk than I am.
I remember Peter telling me, what feels like ages ago now, that the cult was harmless. Just a bunch of broken people trying to get by.
“We don’t have it,” I tell Erica. “It was a mess down there, an ambush. If you want it, go get it.”
Erica’s eyes are very cold. I can practically see the gears working as she measures what I’ve said. Elena edges slightly closer to me and the feeling of her there at my side is a comfort, but I am just praying that Erica isn’t cold-blooded enough to just shoot the two of us right now that she knows we don’t have the crystal.
Erica finally tells Marcus to search us, and he does so, tossing all of our various tools and gear into a small pile on the floor. I hear the lens of my camera shatter when he drops it and I can’t help but wince. He doesn’t pat us down very proficiently besides searching our pockets and our bags, which makes me reassess my initial assumptions – maybe this isn’t something that had a lot of planning put into it? Or at least she definitely couldn’t have been expecting to run into us here.
I look Erica over, head to toe. She’s dressed in hiking gear, but loosely – long shirt, long pants, but fairly thin. Without a climate controlled suit the humidity would be the real danger. Marcus is dressed similarly; I can’t tell for sure but I think he must have changed clothes at some point after he got into the Pit, changed into something more suitable for a long stay. And there must have been – well, what would he have eaten? Just – carved out bits from the walls? No way. Even if you were a certified card-carrying badass on a mission you’d have brought your own food. And Marcus does not strike me as the disgruntled ex-Army-Ranger type. Even just the way his hands traced over me with extreme delicacy and hesitation when he’d searched me made me think that taking captives must be an entirely new experience for him, and not one he’s comfortable with.
No, Erica is improvising. Which makes her more dangerous, especially if she gets desperate.
So let’s not make her get desperate.
“We’ll take you back down to get it,” I suggest. Erica looks over from her huddle with Marcus. Well, half a huddle, both still turned towards us, watching cautiously, guns still aimed at us but fingers off the triggers now. Elena nudges me and looks at me like I’m crazy but I shoot her a look that I hope says ‘trust me.’
“I thought you said it was an ambush?” Erica asks. “Down in the barrows?”
“Well, yes, but –“
“What, do you want us to go down there just to get eaten by copepods?”
“Do you want the crystal or not?” I shrug. “Doesn’t bother me none.”
She looks at Marcus. His face is tight and unreadable. “We’ll go down and check,” she says, nodding. “We’ve come all this way, it’d be stupid not to.”
“What about them?” he asks.
“Look,” Elena says urgently, “the Sergeant had a tracker PDA in his bag. It’ll show you exactly where the crystal is. Just take it and follow it and we’ll leave and pretend we never saw you.”
I resist the urge to bury my face in my hands. Elena’s got plenty of strengths but negotiation isn’t one of them.
Erica laughs at that suggestion and informs us that she has a better idea.
“Why don’t I,” she asks, rummaging through the pile of gear and coming up with a short length of rope, “tie you two up, and then you’ll lead us down to get the crystal? Or,” she says, brightening, “how about I get rid of one of you first –“
Elena stiffens next to me, but all I can feel is a cold hard knife-edged anger slicing at me. I look at Erica, really look at her, force her to look at me, cram all of the casual hate I can into my gaze and throw it at her. “You’ll have to kill both of us, then,” I tell her. “Because if you kill her, I’m going to do the best I can to lead all of us straight into a copepod’s mouth. And if you kill me –“
Elena picks up where I left off, a little more bloody-minded: “and if you kill her,” she finishes, glancing over at me, “I’m going to do whatever I have to do to tear your throat out with my teeth before you put me down too.”
I have to stop myself from smiling when I hear her say that; I content myself with nudging a little closer to her as well so that our hips touch. That will have to be enough for now.
Erica has faltered a little. Even though she’s still got the gun, hell, she’s got two guns on her side, she isn’t certain. You can see it in her eyes. She draws back, then tries to save face. Predictable. “I was just – I wasn’t going to actually do it,” she says.
There is something very strange going on here. This is too disorganized to be a real attempt to – to what, steal the crystal from us on the way back up? No way. Even if she’d brought the material and equipment needed to actually transport it without the use of Joker, she’d still have to contend with what should have been a full squad of combat-trained rangers, plus two useless hangers-on (me and Euler). She’d have had to have brought enough people to outgun us, and even then it’d be dicey in tight quarters like these, especially if the people she brought weren’t familiar with the Pit.
This – her and Marcus – can’t be it. It simply can’t. Even if she thinks that the crystal could fit in her pocket she would still have to take it from us. This is something opportunistic, something important to her for some reason, important enough to throw her entire life away for a shot at, for a crazy shot at, for a Hail Mary at the buzzer.
I turn and look down the Cord, at the sparking depths of it, at the rows and rows of spiral-staircase encasing it. I wonder where Fumi is, what Fumi’s doing, whether he’s okay. Maybe it was cowardly for him to run but I’m glad that he did, I’m glad that at least he got out of this okay. For the moment anyway.
She’s going to make us go back down. There’s no way around it. I can feel myself sagging at the thought of it, at the thought of going back down there and seeing with fresh eyes all the death that’s waiting down there. I had kept it together admirably well up until now but I can feel myself clenching, I can feel myself freezing up, shying away from even thinking about it like if I don’t it won’t be able to touch me. I want to close my eyes and cry, for Euler, for the Sergeant, for Ellis, for Slate and Crookshank and all the others that are down there even still, I want to just heave out sobs until I can’t any more and I’ll be empty. Being empty sounds good right now but I’m not and I can’t be.
I wonder for a brief moment whether this is what PTSD is, whether I’ve been damaged somehow, and then my lip curls without any conscious effort and I can feel myself tighten, drag myself back upwards like chains ratcheting along my spine.
“Fuck it,” I say. Everyone looks round at me and I realize that I’ve said it a little louder than I meant to. Ordinarily I’d shrink and get embarrassed but I have gone through so much shit lately that I feel an uncharacteristic willingness to take up space, to be violent. I am tired.
I look at Erica again. “If this crystal is so fucking important we’ll go back down and you can look at it and admit that it was a stupid idea to go down there and then we can come back up. Alright? But don’t you ever point that fucking gun at her,” I say, pointing to Elena. “No, fucking look at me, I’m serious. I don’t give a shit. You don’t know this terrain, you don’t know this area, and even if you’ve been here before you don’t know the lay of the land right now. You need us, both of us, so give us a little fucking respect. We’ll fucking guide you down there but treat us like fucking human beings, you bitch.”
Erica’s eyes are very wide, and it is very, very quiet as my voice fades into the dull, thick air. Then her eyes go slatey and hard and she strikes me across the face. I see it coming and could have blocked it but I stopped myself, which is a little harder than it sounds, because the instinct when you can see a blow like that is to either dodge it or put your hands up, but she’s still got the gun.
I can feel the butt of the revolver smack into my cheekbone and there’s a starburst of pain there. I stagger back a little, bumping into Elena, and then she is holding me. I can hear her growling at Erica, calling her a bitch, but Marcus points his gun at her and she quiets a little. Then Erica hauls me to my feet. Her nails are digging into my shoulder painfully and I cry out softly. She digs the barrel of the gun into my gut and the feeling of it is like icewater. My hands are shaking and no matter how hard I try I can’t stop them.
I begin to realize that I may have made a mistake.
“No,” Erica snarls, “you listen to me, you little shit. You are in no position to make any fucking demands. You’re going to lead us down there and thank us profusely if we decide not to end your miserable lives once we’ve got the damn crystal. You understand?”
Her hand tightens further around my throat – when did she start choking me? – and I croak something out, but I am too busy panicking to realize whether or not I actually meant to form words or if I just let out a mindless squeak of fear.
One thing karate in a dojo will not teach you is how to handle imminent mortality. Nobody who learns karate expects to ever actually need to use it. Karate isn’t even a real way of fighting – it’s more of a sport, something for lazy dojo tigers to pad around showing off, sparring for points. The grabs and chokes and defenses I know are more MMA than anything else. What’ll karate, pure karate, do to help in a real fight? Are you going to throw a spin kick at somebody? Please.
I can’t breathe. I bat ineffectually at Erica’s face and her shoulders but she doesn’t even bother to stop me. Finally, after what seems like forever, she lets go and I fall to the ground in a huddle, coughing and gasping. Elena is there, curled over me protectively, glaring daggers at Erica, and even Marcus is eyeing her a little warily.
“You could have fucking killed her!” Elena spits, and a little of that uncertainty returns to Erica’s eyes, or at least I think it does – mine are still a little bleary. When I can blink the tears from them and look at her again she seems utterly unruffled.
“Tie their hands,” she says to Marcus, and after only a moment of hesitation he does so, and then we are making our slow, awkward, armless way down the Cord, back towards the barrows.
* * *
“We need a break,” Elena points out again, and again Erica does nothing but click her tongue and urge us onward, gesturing with the barrel of the revolver. Not only has Marcus bound our hands but he’s also tied us together, making it so that Elena and I are linked by only a couple feet of paracord. It’s been biting roughly into my wrists for the last couple of hours and if this keeps up I’m going to have ugly welts because of it. Erica and Marcus have both relaxed a little, especially since they’ve gotten rid of all of our gear. She got Elena to show her how to work the Sergeant’s tracker, and I almost cried when they had to flip him over in order to take it from his bag. The look of stunned surprise frozen on his face was so gentle and unlike him that it almost made him look like a different person entirely.
I don’t even know why I was crying – he was an asshole, for sure, but there was something, I don’t know, something meaningful to him that made me think that there were reasons. And of course there are always reasons that people end up acting like that but sometimes people end up being so crabbed and gnarled and nasty that you don’t want to find reasons to unpeel them from themselves and look at the kind of person they are really. The Sergeant I would have liked to have sat down and had a drink with and gotten to know, just for pure raw opportunistic curiosity.
I didn’t even have the luxury of closing his eyes for him, because as soon as Erica had retrieved the PDA and browbeat Elena into showing her how to work it – oh, how my blood boiled as she called Elena a bitch and a cunt and worst of all fucking stupid just because she kept fumbling with the login screen and getting her account on the PDA to track the crystal as well – we were off and marching, leaving the Sergeant sprawled there, staring up dead and empty at the cold metal-capped ceiling.
I don’t have it in me to feel angry, I don’t have it in me to hate. That will come later. Right now I’m too tired. I am too damn sour at myself for reading Erica wrong. I thought I could cow her, I thought that even though she had the gun she’d back down. At the very least we wouldn’t be tied up, even if we were marching all the way back down to the barrows on a pointless errand that might get us killed.
Once we’re down at our stop on the Cord and out and walking down the long, damp path down to the barrows, Elena turns around, fixes Erica with a glare. I can still see a cold light of hatred burning somewhere deep down inside of her cool grey eyes and for a moment I feel frightened for her, I feel momentarily terrified that she’s going to try something and get herself shot and I – I –
“What’s this crystal to you?” she asks Erica, and I swallow hard and glance back at Erica as well, waiting to see what she’ll say, if she’ll even give us a straight answer. I look at her and those dark eyes stare back at us. She is – I will give her this, she’s determined. She has set her mind to doing this, whatever the hell this is, and she’s going to be willing to throw us all away if she has to. You can see it in the set of her jaw, in the way her eyes rake us like an eagle’s claws. “What’s the point of all this?” Elena continues. Erica’s nose wrinkles lightly. I wonder if she’ll even bother trying to win us over, whether she’ll figure that her having shot the Sergeant will have turned us against her permanently.
Erica nods to Marcus and he unties us and we all huddle there for a while against the side of the corridor, sit down in the sopping squelch of it, too tired to care. Erica leans against the ribbed wall of the vent and looks down along its depths towards the barrows. She’s still holding the revolver but at least it isn’t pointed at us.
Elena leans in to me and rests her head on my shoulder and I kiss the top of her head, and I feel her smile faintly, but it vanishes fast. This isn’t going how I wanted at all. I want to say something to her, I want to kiss her and tell her it’s going to be okay. She’s so tough but she’s so scared, I can tell she’s scared, and I want to show her that I can be tough too. That I am more than an anchor. But doing that in front of Erica and Marcus would feel – dirty, somehow. Uncomfortable. I itch at the thought of it. So instead I sit there very still and let her rest her head on me and let that be enough.
“My husband was there four years ago,” Erica says, and we both look up at her. Marcus doesn’t look interested, clearly he knows this story, he’s heard it before. “At the disaster,” Erica clarifies.
She waits for a moment, maybe to see whether or not we’ve got any response. Elena and I stay quiet, no ‘oh really’ or ‘no way.’ If she wants us to be buddy-buddy with her she’s straight out of luck.
“You know what that crystal is, don’t you?” she asks, and Elena snorts. I would as well but the welt on my cheek from where she got me with the butt of the revolver hurts too much whenever I move my nose.
“I do,” Elena says. “Do you?”
Erica laughs. There isn’t much humor in it. “I don’t think you do. I think I know much better than you do.”
“Explain it to us, then,” Elena tells her, and I nod in agreement. The longer we can keep her talking, hopefully, the longer we’ll be able to rest.
“My husband Burt,” Erica says, “was a ranger here at the park. And he was here in 2007. But he wasn’t the ordinary type of ranger, he worked at the one place in this park that required a security clearance.”
Elena frowns. “I don’t know what –“
“You see,” Erica continues, “when they found the Pit back in the 70s, they found ritual grounds too. Old places, places that the indigenous tribes had been using for centuries to commune with the Pit. This place,” Erica gestures widely, “is alive. It feels and reacts. It thinks.”
Elena snorts again, a little softer this time. “In the ritual grounds there were crystals exactly like the one you were sent down to find, only carved and shaped so that if someone who knew what they were doing hit them with a strike in just the right way, they’d resonate. And that resonance could influence the Pit. Make it calm down if it were starting to wake up, make it wake if it were sleeping. Calm the wildlife, make it possible to live down here without any danger. Or send them into a frenzy.”
“Sounds like magic,” I murmur, but without much conviction. Makado, in that hurried briefing after Slate had died, had said something a little similar. I look at Erica, meet her eyes. “Did your husband work on the – the contingency plan?”
That catches Erica up for a moment, but she nods, glancing over at me. Her eyes, I notice, linger for a moment on the swollen mark on my cheek. “Yes,” she says finally. “Yes, he did. And he was there when they broke the crystals. See, I figure someone, Veret probably, told you about the crystal and why they want it. But nobody would have told you about what exactly the crystal did when it was broken.”
“Well, it – it put the Pit to sleep.”
“Yes,” Erica nods. “Yes, it did. But did they tell you what it did to the people there? Some of them, at least.”
Elena frowns. She starts to say something but I nod. “Peter told me,” I say. Elena is giving me a very confused look. “Not all of it,” I add, “but enough to piece together the parts. I hadn’t known it was breaking the crystal that had done it, but I could guess.”
“What - ?” Elena starts.
“It’s a – when they shattered the crystals it caused something like a contagious psychic plague,” I tell her, glancing at Erica. “From what Peter told me it sounded like it would gradually erode your self-control and make you want to come to the Pit, to come down into the Pit and, well, I don’t know what happened to them once they got in. I don’t think Peter did either. And if you weren’t able to get to the Pit you’d get to a point where you’d be spreading it to everybody you were near just – just mentally, I guess. I know it sounds like bullshit but it’s true, I swear it’s true.”
“But if that’s true why was Peter smuggling people in? It must have been people with that – with that disease,” Elena says. “Why didn’t he try to help them? I mean, Christ, people without any preparation, sick people, down here in the Pit, they wouldn’t last a fucking day. That’s –“
“Because the cure,” I tell her, “has a good chance of completely wiping out your personality,” I tell her, and she quiets. She believes me, I think, she has to believe me. Or if she doesn’t believe me she trusts me, at least. I don’t give myself time to feel warm and fuzzy about it. “That’s what Peter told me, anyway. He was one of the lucky ones.”
“He had this disease?” she asks, glancing over at me.
“Yes,” Erica says. “He did. Roan’s pretty much right about the details. Peter was lucky.”
“So he and Makado decided it would be better to just smuggle people in? Let them go down there to die?”
I can tell by the look on her face that Elena thinks this would be just as bad. I shrug. I can feel the exhaustion in the weight of my shoulders. “Peter told me that there’s a point where it becomes contagious, right before you die of it. But if you’re in the Pit, that doesn’t happen, there’s no contagiousness. That’s why they were letting them in.”
“That seems awfully convenient,” Elena remarks, and I shrug.
“I don’t know if it’s true,” I say, “that’s just what Peter told me.”
“Surely there would have been a better way -“
“Peace,” Erica says quietly. “All that’s over now, now that Peter’s – well, is he dead?”
I think about it. “I didn’t see him die,” I tell her. “But he must have. I don’t know how anybody else could have lived down there. It was awful.”
“It was stupid,” she says, “going down to the barrows to try and get it.”
“Makado was desperate,” Elena says. “She was afraid that the Pit was going to wake up sometime soon and without another crystal to break to send it back to sleep, they wouldn’t be able to contain it.”
“Well,” Erica says, running a hand through her hair, “you can see the logic in it, can’t you? But I think she’s being played. And in turn she’s playing you, all the rangers in the team that went down. How many were there?”
“Eight,” I say. “Plus me and one other.”
Erica nods. “See, the problem with breaking the crystals is that, yeah, it’s an immediate solution. But did you ever think why they found those thousand-year-old crystals carved and perfect and intact? Not cracked to pieces?”
“Why?” Elena asks. She still has an ugly sullen undertone to her voice but she’s listening, she’s evaluating. I don’t think Erica is necessarily going to lie to us but I think whatever information she’s operating off of must be flawed if she’s come down here herself.
“Because,” Erica says, giving us a little mirthless smile, “cracking one of those crystals is like knocking the Pit out, rather than easing it into a natural sleep like you supposedly can do if you strike it the right way. It’ll wake up sooner and angrier and hungrier than it would otherwise. I don’t think they meant to crack it but I don’t think they’ve done their research, they haven’t even tried to reach out to some of the native communities around here that might still have had a little knowledge about how these things work. They fucked everything up in the 70s, made a lot of people very mad at them. I don’t think they know how bad they’ve made things. If they get their hands on that crystal and end up cracking it again, it’ll –“
“Alright,” Elena says. “I get the picture.”
“What happened to Burt?” I ask, and Erica sighs.
“Well,” she says, “they told me he was dead. Wasn’t true for a couple months after, though. They shipped him off to a lab somewhere, I have no idea where, and used him and a bunch of other people from the park who were suffering the worst to try and develop some kind of treatment. I only found out because he was able to sneak out and call me from a pay phone someplace outside wherever they were keeping him. He told me everything and ever since then –“
She can’t go on, her voice cuts off in a sudden choke.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, and Elena looks at me sharply. I meet her gaze evenly, then turn back to Erica. “I’m sorry that that happened, because you nor him deserved it. But coming down here, killing the Sergeant, with no plan, not even the –“
“If I don’t at least try to do something to stop everything from happening all over again,” Erica tells me, “I’d never forgive myself.” She pauses for a moment, starts to say something, then thinks better of it. Her voice is like broken glass. “Maybe I’m making a mistake but I’m going to do the right thing.”
There is a brief, brief silence that passes between us. Elena reaches over and hugs me, but while her lips are pressed close to my ear, she hisses to me that this isn’t our fucking fight and to follow her lead when she makes us get moving again, and as she says it I feel a looming terror break over me like a riptide and I look at her as she pulls away and want so terribly to tell her not to, whatever she’s thinking about doing to just not, don’t do anything stupid, if I lost her I – I –
And then Erica is gesturing at us with the gun to get up, saying that it’s time to get a move on, and as Marcus comes over, his slim little automatic clutched loosely in his hand, aimed at us but from the hip, and offers Elena a hand, she takes it wordlessly and pulls herself up, her hand leaving mine with only a tight, brief squeeze. Then once she’s up she shoves Marcus off-balance and before he can even think to do anything other than reach out reflexively to catch himself she’s got both hands on the gun and is struggling with him for it. “Elena!” I croak, starting to rise, just as Erica screams at her to stop, legs spread wide in a shooter’s stance, trying to get a clear shot at her. Marcus’s gun is pointing straight at me and I scream and throw myself to the side just a moment before it goes off and a bullet shrieks past and buries itself in the fleshy wall of the corridor behind me, just where I had been standing. While I try to scramble to my feet amid the dirt and muck on the floor I hear another gunshot, and then a body falls next to me face-down and starts writhing, and when I see Marcus staggering to his feet and realize who has fallen heavily, a string of curses bubbling from her blood-flecked lips, I scream Elena’s name over and over again, pressing my hands over the streaming hole in her side with desperation born of utter futility.
Continue with Part 24
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colourful
a red hood au drabble
Gavin doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he feels he needs to do something. He needs to do this on his own. He can’t wait for Trevor to scheme and come up with a plan. He can’t wait for the crew to say they have his back. He can’t wait for Geoff to swoop in and save the day. In many respects, this feels like Gavin’s issue and only his. He can reach out to Alfredo. He can get past that hard exterior and reach him, not Red.
He just has to find him first.
He goes to his apartment first to grab his go-bag he keeps stashed in his closet. He leaves his phone and any other equipment Matt might be able to track his movements from. He’s got a few burner cellphones in his bag he’ll use for emergencies, but for this he’ll be going off the grid.
He leaves his apartment. He leaves his motorcycle and heads for a 24 hour garage that does business with people like him. There he’s able to get a bike the crew won’t be able to find him on. Then he stakes out a new place to work out of. He stays the night at a hostel and finds a cheap motel to work out of, paying cash at the front desk under a fake name.
Day one of finding Alfredo is literally all online. If there’s some new crew making its rounds in the city, people will be talking about it in forums. If you’re a civilian in Los Santos, you’re probably a fan of a criminal and talking about conspiracy theories and keeping up on the news. There are some smatterings of ‘Red’ on the forums that Gavin pays close attention to. If Alfredo is working for someone, then Gavin needs to know about it.
There’s some chatter about something called ‘Spectrum.’ Some people think it’s a group of highly trained grifters, conmen, hitmen, and more. An elite group. Others think it’s a person named ‘Spectrum.’ Like the Corpirate or Edgar. A moniker for a titan of crime. Or it’s an international organization that comes to massive cities like Los Santos to sow corruption into the municipal government for the betterment of mega-corporations and CEOs. Either way, Spectrum is something Gavin needs to consider. It’s information he’ll need to send to the crew.
Some people on the forums have said they’ve spotted members of Spectrum. And that an identifying feature is brightly coloured clothing for important members. That might explain Alfredo’s red sweater and why he wore it last night.
Gavin builds the profile based on what he has. He has some locations to work with that he’ll haunt for the next few days. It’s tedious work, but Gavin has the mind for it. He’s always been a puzzle guy, willing to sit and wrestle with something until he has the answer. So he builds his routine, makes note of locations, potential names and descriptions of people he’ll encounter.
It’s not that easy for him to move around—the so called ‘Golden Boy’ of the city. A lot of people know him on sight. So he shaves his beard, which easily takes a few years off his appearance. He ditches his designer jeans for loose cargo shirts and a shirt that’s two sizes two big. It makes him look younger, more immature, allowing him to pass by unnoticed when he needs to be.
In his room he hangs a map against the wall, using red thumbtacks to track the locations he’s checked out that he knows Spectrum has been by. He notices clusters of activity, attempting to triangulate to a location where this group might be working out of.
There’s one location in the downtown he decides to check into. It was one of the first apartment buildings built in the city, from the 1910s. The historical aspect of it is overlooked by the absolutely squalor that’s taken residence in it. There’ve been attempts to refurbish and remodel it, but it’s located smackdab in the crime district. Any politician worth their salt would know attempting to gentrify this area will end in failure, so no one is going to make an attempt on it.
He takes the fire escape all the way to the top of the building. It comes to an elegant point on top with slightly curved arches at the four corners. There are four massive eagle statues at each point, wings folded to make them look sleek and imposing. The age of the building means that very little surveillance has been incorporated into its architecture. It would make it great for hiding a criminal organization within it.
The entire top floor, what would’ve been the penthouse suite, is in constant sate of repair. Nearly all the fixtures had been torn down. Plastic sheeting hung from the ceiling in sections. Gavin has to admit, though, the view from the city is nice up here.
When he hears voices at the door, he ducks out one of the windows to crouch near one of the statues. It’s dark enough he shouldn’t be noticed.
“Prism has asked Blue and Yellow to move up to the docks,” says one.
“Yeah? And?” That’s Alfredo.
“Prism thinks you’re moving too slow. Once Blue and Yellow are in place and have the docks secure, Orange will be paired with you.”
Alfredo scoffs. “Prism can fuck off. I know the Fakes. I know how to handle them.”
“You had the opportunity to have three of them put in strict lockdown the other night and you gave them an out. How do you think that looks to the rest of Spectrum?”
“The Fakes have the most resources out of any crew in this city. They would’ve made bail no matter how high the DA would’ve set it. They have the best lawyers on retainer. You think a little burglary would’ve stopped them?”
“No, but I do find it odd that they were tipped off to the raid of their penthouse. They’ve been there for, what, almost ten years since Ramsey signed that lease? And someone tipped them off.”
“I don’t know what you’re expecting from me. You think I tipped them off?”
“I don’t know what I think. Just that a lot of coincidences have been happening concerning the Fakes lately. I’d be careful if I were you, Red. Prism doesn’t hand out second chances like they’re candy.”
“Is this a threat, Violet?”
“No. Just a thought. Careful, Red. Your true colours might start showing.”
The second voice moves off. Gavin hears the door close. He peers around the statue and spots Alfredo’s silhouette. He wonders if he should make his presence known, try to talk to Alfredo and try to understand what this is all about. Or should he try to make his escape. Or possibly trail this Violet person.
But he’s not ready for that, not yet. He decided to do this, go off on this quest to talk to Alfredo. Just talk.
He creeps along the edge and back towards the open window. He sets one foot in, toes then heel before the rest of his follows. He balances himself with his fingertips on the ground, looking for Alfredo’s figure in the dark. He hears a sigh off not too far. He stands.
“So you sleeping here or is it more of a vantage point?”
Alfredo whirls. He still has that mask in place, but his hood is off. Gavin knew his hair was longer. He kept it pretty short back in the day, but now he gets to see it fully, see how much Alfredo has changed.
“Gavin.” Alfredo scoffs, pulls up that wall of cold and sarcastic indifference. “I knew one of you would come looking. Thought it might be Fiona. I hear she’s more of a solo player. But you? Didn’t know you did shit like this anymore.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“Yeah, apparently. Thought you were the one who stuck by your friends. Even in the ugly times.”
Gavin swallows. It’s time he faces the past. “Everything pointed to you being dead.”
Alfredo laughs. “You for real right now? I know the type of impossible shit you guys have pulled. You broke Geoff out of a maximum-security prison in broad daylight. You guys once faked your own deaths! And what happens when you don’t find my body? You wash your hands and walk away.”
“We were there on the scene. I was just about to run in and get you when the building exploded in front of me. And I still ran in! If there was any chance you were still in there, I was going to look for you.”
“But you still didn’t find me,” Alfredo says, softer this time.
His admission makes Gavin pause because isn’t that what happened? Did they give up? Did they stop looking when they realized they were out of their depth? Geoff took Alfredo’s death very personally, and having Geoff demoralized like that affected the rest of the crew.
“We didn’t,” Gavin settles on. “And it fucks with me every day that we didn’t. I feel like I held on the longest. Kept some things of yours afterwards.”
“Yeah?”
Gavin nods, takes a step forward. He sees Alfredo shift his weight into a more relaxed position with his arms crossed over his chest. “A sweater of yours. This dumb disposable camera you had. Even got the photos developed. And your old Gameboy.”
“You kept all that?”
“They were important to you. I was hanging onto them for you. And for me.”
They never really had a deep talk about what they meant to each other outside of the crew, outside of their work. Does Alfredo still think of those times like Gavin does?
“Gav.” And then Gavin thinks Alfredo will drop the act. They’ll talk. They’ll leave. They’ll figure out this Spectrum/Prism mess together, and then—
Alfredo moves quickly. He swipes Gavin’s legs out from beneath him, sending him crashing onto the ground. Before Gavin can move, Alfredo is straddling him, pinning his arms to the ground.
“I can’t believe you’d fall for that. The sappiest trick in the book! You taught me that one and you fucking fell for it! Man. You’re out of practice. Or maybe you’re just too in deep to notice you’re drowning.”
“’fredo, I—”
“No. I’m not your ‘fredo. I’m not your ‘freddie. I’m not one of your fucking boys! I didn’t come back for you.”
“Then why are you keeping an eye on us?”
“Maybe because I like to screw around with you. Now get the fuck out.”
Alfredo stands and stalks off. Gavin is left shaken, but no worse off than before.
He retreats. He takes the fire escape down to the street and takes a twisting path back to his hotel until he knows he’s not being followed. Then he digs out one of his burner cellphones and calls up Trevor.
“Trevor, I think we need to get Geoff in on this. It’s bigger than I thought.”
#fake ah crew#fahc#gta au#red hood au#star speaks#star writes#i finally have an idea of what alfredo is doing#and its only going to get messier lol
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Eros.
Lee Taeyong | Camboy / Friends with benefits | +2.9K words | Smut.
Warnings : Badly written smut / soft real soft dom/sub dynamic / voyeurisme (I guess) / dirty talk / strong language / oral (female+male receiving) / fingering / spanking / come eating / slight choking.
+ not beta read, don’t mind the spelling mistakes we all know I’m bad at English, it’s a mess.
Synopsis : Eros is a primal and powerful fire that burns out quickly. It need its flame to be fanned through one of the deeper form of love as it is centered around the selfish aspect of love, that is, personal infatuation and physical pleasure.
"Excuse me, can you repeat what you just said I'm not sure I understood." Taeyong asked, baffled.
You whined, shifting from one foot to the other. It took you over two hours to gather the courage you needed to talk with Taeyong, and you weren't sure you could say it a second time.
"Taeyong, just answer the question."
He laughed while sitting up on the couch, a cup of coffee in between his hands.
"If I understand correctly you want to participate in my next session." He started. "I would never have thought you would be into that."
You lowered your head, it wasn't such a good idea after all.
"You know what ? Forget about it."
You were about to leave the room when Taeyong's hand on your waist kept you from moving.
"Ah Y/n, don't be like that, I'm just messing with you. If it's really something you want, I'll make it happen."
He kissed the corner of your mouth, his thumb brushing against your cheekbone.
"We’ll have a lot of fun." He said.
Nothing happened during the two weeks following your conversation. Taeyong was too busy with his current job to think about doing a show. But when you got home, you realized it was tonight. The door of Taeyong's room was wide open, and he was preparing his equipment.
"Make yourself pretty for me, we'll start in an hour." Was all he said.
And an hour later you were sitting on Taeyong's lap, turning your back to the camera. You could only hear the noise of the comments that came as Taeyong talked with his audience.
"She is a little shy right now, but I did promise you an unforgettable night, right ?"
All you could feel was the heat emanating from Taeyong's skin, he was half-naked, just like you. You never felt nervous with him before, but tonight it was different. You never had a camera on you, so many hungry eyes.
"Do you remember your safewords ?" He whispered against your ear.
"Y-yes I do."
Taeyong introduced you with the safewords earlier in the evening. He would stop everything with a simple "no" but he still wanted them.
"Perfect."
With that, he started kissing you. The time stopped when his lips met yours. Your heart pounded in your chest and you could feel your knees getting weaker. You could only focus on how hot he felt against your mouth. Taeyong’s lips were sweet and addictive. His tongue brushed against your lower lip and you gave in, parting your lips. His hands roamed on your back, fingers burning the bare skin. The kiss became hungry and you had to wrap your arm around his neck to keep balance. He finally broke the kiss and you whined at the loss of contact.
"So pretty." He whispered.
Heat rose from your stomach to your chest and your heart definitely skipped a beat. Pretty wasn't strong enough to describe Taeyong. His cheeks were flushed a soft shade of pink, and his lips swollen and bruised. You wanted more, so much more.
"Bed, on your back."
You obeyed, and without waiting you lay on the bed, your head on the soft pillows. He crawled over you, smirking.
“Can you feel them? Can you feel their eyes on you? How does that make you feel?”
Taeyong’s voice was soft and soothing, yet you could barely hear it above the beating of your heart and your soft moans. Your body was burning where Taeyong’s hands lingered. His lips brushed against your jaw, biting the soft flesh hard enough to leave a mark.
“Answer me.”
His voice was more urgent, and the lack of reaction on your part made him groan. He grabbed your chin between his fingers and forced your eyes in his. They were dark with lust, a powerful desire, and you were the only reason.
“Do you like that, being watched ? That’s why you asked me to include you in tonight’s show, right ? That’s why you almost begged me to say yes.”
You were ashamed of how aroused you felt when Taeyong told you everything about him being a camboy. Hearing it from him was degrading, and you had to bite your lower lip to avoid making any noise. It wasn’t long, because you gasped when he slid his hands up along your thighs.
“P- Please Taeyong…”
You didn’t know what you were asking for, but your body was craving his hands, his lips. You got addicted the very first time it happened, and since then his name kept on echoing in your head like a mantra. Taeyong, Taeyong, Taeyong.
“You have to tell me what you want, so I can give it to you princess.” He said.
“Everything, I want everything, please.”
It was pathetic, but Taeyong smiled. As he said, he was going to offer his viewers an unforgettable night.
You grabbed the hair at the back of his neck and Taeyong captured your lips in a bruising kiss. You whimpered, one of his hand settling on your waist. His free hand found its way between your thighs. You closed your eyes when his fingers brushed against the wetness on your panties, you couldn’t meet his eyes, it was too much.
"You're already so wet. Is it because of me ? Or because so many people are watching you ?"
You rocked against the digits and your breath catched in your throat.
"How many time will I have to tell you to use your words ?" Taeyong asked.
"It's you, only you." You finally answered.
Your voice was barely audible but it was enough for Taeyong whose hand slipped beneath your panties to take it off. Taeyong opened your thighs and crawled down your body kissing the exposed skin and biting the soft skin of your tummy. He always loved marking you, making you squirm under him. He found it fascinating how the skin turned a deep shade of red, you were so sensitive.
His tongue trailed the wetness with a soft hum. As he looked at you, you could see how his lips and chin already shone with slick. You gasped, your hand threading through his soft hair. When you tried to rock your hips back and forth on his face, he stopped you by gripping your hips.
“Oh Taeyong.” You mewled.
It was easier to forget about the camera when all you could think of was Taeyong’s lips against your clit. He knew how to use his tongue, and it was driving you crazy. How were you supposed to hold all night long when you could already feel the heat in the pit of your stomach. For a while he alternated between kitten licks and long licks. The moan Taeyong let out when you gripped at his hair a little stronger made your arched your back.
"M-More please." You breathed.
The slide of two fingers into your wetness was easy and you had to bit your tongue. He pushed them deeper and the grip of his hand on your hip was painful but it added to the pleasure that was already clouding your senses. It was going to leave marks, and you couldn't be happier. You wanted nothing more than to see what he did to you, and to feel it for days.
"Close, close I'm close." You moaned.
Suddenly Taeyong straightened up, retracting his hand.
"No, no please.."
You felt tears at the corner of your eyes, you were so close to your climax.
"I never said you could cum."
You swallowed a sob, and Taeyong kissed the inside of your thighs. He left more marks, and he seemed pleased with himself when he came back in your field of view.
"Don't cry princess, you were so good for me." His voice was so sweet and yet commanding. “Isn’t she a sweet little thing ?” He asked looking directly at the camera.
He pressed his thumb against your lower lip, and you took it in your mouth. In his hands you were nothing but a brainless little whore ready to be fucked stupid. And you liked that.
"Let's put that pretty little mouth of yours to work, and maybe afterwards I'll let you cum as many times as you want."
You nodded a little too quickly and you let Taeyong manhandled you. He took off his black briefs, hissing at the cold hair and waited as you settled on your knees.
"Fuck, you look so beautiful like that. Maybe I should keep you, and use you whenever I want. Would you like that ? Being my personal cocksleeve ?"
Yes, nothing but a brainless whore.
"Yes, I would love that."
His laugh turned into a groan when he felt your fingernails lightly scratch his stomach. A small bead of precum spurt out of the head of his cock. He was so hard, it was almost painful. You pressed a few kisses beneath his navel, your fingers around the base of his dick. You started to pump your fist up and down and when Taeyong slowly rocked his hips, you opened your mouth looking up at him. It was lewd. You licked at the head and he groaned. His hand found their way to your hair, guiding you. It was slow and careful, Taeyong didn’t want you to choke, not yet. Your lips stretched around his cock as he guided your further down. Taeyong was not the loud kind of guy, but a few groans escaped his lips when you hollowed your cheeks.
“Fuck, you never looked so beautiful.”
You moaned at the praise, sending vibrations through Taeyong’s body and he bucked his hips. You gagged, and let your jaw go slack before he could pull off. Your throat accommodated pretty quickly so you took as much of Taeyong as you could. You bobbed your head up and down, your fingers playing with his balls. He tightened his grip on your hair, it was so good. You had to stop yourself from rubbing your thighs together, you just wanted some sort of relief but you knew better than to disobey. Finally you pulled off, flicking your tongue at the slit. Drool had accumulated on the sides of your lips and Taeyong picked it up with his fingers to spraid it across your face. It was dirty.
“Alright, enough.”
He pulled on your hair and forced you on the bed once again. On all four this time.
He pressed a few kisses on the small of your back, his hands kneading your ass. Your arms were shaking, and when the first slap landed, the top of your body fell onto the mattress.
"Perfect."
Taeyong, and his audience had the perfect view of your perky ass. And he spanked you enough time for the skin to be red and warm to the touch. Tears were rolling down your cheeks, it was stinging but it felt so good.
"What's your color ?" He asked suddenly when you stayed quiet for a little too long after moaning louder after each slap. He slid his hand along your spine.
You wanted to answer, but you couldn't think of words. Your brain was nothing but a pile of mush. As much as he wanted to go hard on you, his true self always took over his dominant self once in a while.
"Do you want to stop ?" He demanded softly.
"No no no no.. Green, I'm green."
He nodded and then grabbed his dick and guided it into your wet entrance. Taeyong took his time. He wasn’t the biggest, but he still wanted you to feel comfortable, so when you started whining for him to move, he did just that. He pulled off and thrusted back inside with sharp move making you bite the pillow who was a shade darker with drool and tears. He setted a slow but powerful pace.
“I’m sure the people watching would love to hear you.”
He grabbed your throat with one of his hands and straightened you up, forcing you to arch your back prettily. This position allowed Taeyong to thrust deeper and you choked on a moan. Taeyong nipped at your shoulder, keeping his fingers around your throat. It wasn’t strong enough to cut your air flow but it was pleasant.
"You were made for my cock, I'm sure of it now."
Taeyong felt your orgasm before you. You were clenching so hard around him, and your moans became high-pitched. He never heard something so beautiful, it was like music to his ears and he wanted to hear more in the future. He let go of your throat and pushed you between your shoulder blade onto the matress.
"Do you want to cum princess ?"
It took you a few seconds to register the fact that Taeyong was talking to you, but once it was done you begged him to let you cum.
"Alright, cum for us."
You waited for so long, and your orgasm crushed you. Your vision faded to white. Your thighs were shaking so much that you would have fall if Taeyong was not holding your waist so tightly.
"Such a good girl."
You felt hazy when you came back to your senses. Taeyong was kissing your back, praising you under his breath.
"What do you want now?" He asked in between two bites.
"I- I don't know.."
You were tired, and you didn't know if you could go for another round, but Taeyong hadn't cum yet.
"Can I ride you, please ?"
Taeyong's smile was the opposite of his behavior. It was soft, and fond. You were melting under his gaze.
“Of course princess.”
You took Taeyong’s cock in your hand to guide him back into your entrance. Your body was tired, your thighs couldn’t stop shaking but you started grinding your hips, closing your eyes. You were still sensitive from your previous orgasm, but you knew it wouldn’t be long before another would rush over you. Taeyong’s left hand found your hip and soon enough he planted his feet on the mattress to meet your thrusts. You cried, your hands on his chest for leverage as you rocked on his cock.
“Oh god, it’s so good.” You whimpered.
Taeyong was pleased, breathing heavily trying to hold on a little longer. He rubbed your clit as you clenched around his girth. You raised and dropped your hips quickly, not caring about the tiredness, you were chasing your second release and Taeyong’s. He drew blood by biting his lower lip to cover his moans. You then leaned over to kiss him, it was messy and disgusting but at this point you didn’t mind one bit. Your second orgasm took over your body and you crashed on Taeyong. No sound, nothing. Just an internal bliss.
“Shit, I want to cum on your face.”
You dropped on the bed, exhausted. You couldn’t feel anything except the remains of the wave of pleasure you just felt. Taeyong settled between your legs, and hand on his dick he pumped himself a few times. He was leaking on his hand and soon enough he was cumming. His eyes rolled back as long spurt of white landed on your face. It took him a little while to come down from his high, body covered with a sheen layered of weat and when he did, he gathered the cum on his fingers.
“Open up.”
You opened your mouth and licked the cum out of his fingers. To be honest, Taeyong could have hardened once again with this simple vision of you licking his fingers like it was your favorite treat. Which it probably was.
“Fuck.” He muttered, out of breath.
He pressed his fingers on your tongue and you gagged. He pulled off and kissed you forehead.
“You did so good for me, I’m so proud.”
Finally he turned to his computer screen. The comments were still flooding the chat, which made him smile. For what he could read, it was positive and he was proud of him as much as he was proud of you.
"I think it'll be all for tonight, thank you for watching, and see you next week."
He winked at the camera and closed the computer. He turned to you.
"How are you feeling ?" He asked, sitting next to you.
"Tired, dirty." You answered with a laugh.
"Come on, let's shower."
You made grabby hands at him, and he laughed while carrying you in his arms bridal style.
"Thanks for that, it was perfect."
He kissed the top of your head and once in the bathroom, he sat you on the closed toilet lid. He turned on the shower and when he was sure the water was hot enough, he helped you in. The rest was unclear to you, you felt him wash you while your head was nestled in the crook of his neck, fighting against the sleep that threatened to take over.
Once he was clean too, he took you back to your room and let you sit on the bed. You brought back the comforter to cover your body and half of your face. When Taeyong came back he had a glass of water that you gladly accepted. Your throat was dry and sore.
"Can we cuddle, please ?"
What was he going to do ? Say no ? So he settled next to you, his arm around your shoulder as you put your head on his chest.
"Sleep well princess."
#cznnet#nct#nct smut#taeyong smut#superm#lee taeyong#nct imagines#taeyong imagines#nct scenarios#taeyong scenarios
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You hadn’t felt right all morning and you probably should have called in sick if truth be told, but you were drinking plenty of water and it seemed to ease your dizziness a little so you assumed it would be fine if you kept yourself hydrated. Plus you definitely didn’t want to miss out on your big scene with Ben today, and he was as excited as you were. You’d been a couple for while, before you both got parts on the film, and you were excited to work alongside him for the first and probably only time.
“Here she is,” Ben grins when he sees you walking towards him in full costume.
“Here I am,” you laugh as you swish your long 70s style dress from side to side, “what do you think?”
“I think I’m punching above my weight here,” he winks, then bites his bottom lip lightly so only you can see.
You laugh at his response and he wraps his arms around your waist as he steps towards you, bringing you into a very tight embrace which almost knocks the air out of your lungs completely. Your head spins as he releases you slowly and your fingers tighten around his upper arms as your brain feels as if it’s moving around in circles.
“Are you alright?” Ben asks with concern as he watches your eyes struggle to focus on him.
“I just need some water,” you reply, looking down at the ground to try and stop your head from spinning.
“Water, can someone get some water please?” Ben asks as he looks around at the crew desperately while he holds you up.
Someone quickly comes running along with a bottle of water and you chug the whole thing within a matter of minutes as Ben watches you with a face full of worry.
“That’s better, I’m fine now, much better,” you smile unconvincingly.
“How long have you been feeling like this?” he questions.
“Just since this morning, it’s no big deal, just a bit dizzy, maybe a little faint, but it eases off when I drink some water so I must just be a little dehydrated,” you shrug casually.
“Hmm,” Ben frowns, “I don’t think-”
“I’m fine,” you insist.
You weren’t, and Ben knew it, but you wanted to carry on and try to get this scene filmed when it was meant to be, rather than having to get everything rearranged just because you felt a little under the weather. Ben moves away from you to grab another bottle of water for you then pushes it gently against your stomach with an unimpressed expression at the fact you were over exerting yourself when you clearly shouldn’t be, and you roll your eyes as you drink it before everyone gets into position on set.
Ben takes your hand as you stand side by side ready to make your entrance when the cameras start to roll and he leans over to give you a quick peck on the cheek before the scene starts; it had sort of become his thing during this time you had together, every time you were to be in a scene together he’d make sure he gave you a kiss just before you began, and it was something you’d never tire of. You shoot him a warm smile at his gesture then the scene begins and you make your entrance into the space that was meant to be part of a recording studio.
“Come here,” Ben grins as he sits down on the couch and pulls you onto his lap.
“Roger!” you giggle, just about remembering not to say Ben instead.
He slides you onto the cushion next to him as ‘the band’ turn around to look at you both from the mixing desk, then he gets up as you sort your dress out and sit up properly while you watch them all gather to hear some playback of what was recorded earlier. The scene ends soon after and Ben’s eyes travel over to you where you sit as still as possible on the sofa, fearing another episode if you moved to stand up without help.
“Are you going to be able to do the next scene?” he asks as he perches on the cushion next to you.
“Of course! You think something like this is going to put me off from kissing my man on camera?” you smirk.
It was a pretty simple task; kiss Ben while he pushes you against a door and opens it for you both to fall through. You’d done it many, many times at home naturally, so this should not be a problem for you at all, and you weren’t going to let anything stop you from filming this part.
“I’m worried about you...”
“Don’t be!” you chuckle as you cup his face gently, “I’m fine. Why are you so worried?”
“Because...” he exhales, lifting his face from your soft touch, “because I couldn’t stand the thought of anything bad happening to you. This isn’t just… This is real, I love you.”
Your hands drop to your lap in shock at the fact that he’d just used the word love for the first time and your eyes widen as your mouth falls open while you try to think of something to say. His face drops as you take your time in replying and your mind finally catches up with the situation which results in you almost shouting it back at him.
“Oh my god, I didn’t mean to be so loud. My brain was in shock I think. I love you too Ben,” you smile, his face now lifted at your reaction.
“You can shout it if you want,” he shrugs, “I don’t mind who knows.”
“One question, why now?” you ask, “I mean, I love you, but you are dressed as a young Roger Taylor right this moment and it’s a little weird.”
He looks down at himself as if he didn’t even realise, then he meets your gaze with a slightly bemused expression.
“I… I totally forgot,” he frowns, “fucking hell. I’ve been waiting to say this for ages and now I’ve said it as someone else.”
“It’s absolutely fine, but I will definitely remember this as Roger Taylor telling me he loves me,” you tease.
“Oh, don’t!” he cringes as he holds his head in his hands in embarrassment.
“Honestly Rog, it’s absolutely fine,” you giggle.
“Please don’t tell anyone this is how I first said it,” he laughs, “please!”
“I’ll try not to, but this is too good not to share with my parents at least.”
“I’ll say it again as soon as I’m out of all this,” he says, gesturing to his outfit and long blonde wig.
“I’m holding you to that, Taylor… I mean, Jones… Or is it Hardy?” you wink.
“You are in for a-”
“Right, you both ready for the next scene?” the producer asks as he appears beside you both.
“Yeah, yeah all set,” Ben nods, getting up and offering you his hand.
You get to your feet without your head spinning or feeling as if you were about to pass out, but as you go to take a step you have a wobble and end up pressed against Ben’s chest as he clings onto you to stop you from falling to the ground.
“What were you saying a moment ago about being alright?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh shut up Roger,” you retort, “come on, we’ve got some kissing to do… Such a chore!”
“You really should at least get checked out by one of the team...”
“Listen, if I end up on the floor then please feel free to call someone over to make sure I’m okay, but otherwise I’ll be fine.”
You take a step away from him and that’s it for you; lights out. The next thing you know you’re waking up on the floor with a couple of paramedics hovering over you, and a very concerned looking Ben along with the others who are comforting him.
“Oh shit,” you mutter.
“(Y/N)!” Ben calls out after hearing your mumble.
“Alright, Rog?” you manage to joke with a half smile.
He looks at you sternly with a deep frown creasing his brow and you realise he was most definitely not in the mood to be messing around right now, so you whisper a very quick apology and assure him you’re taking this all very seriously.
“Is she okay?” he asks, looking up at the paramedics for an answer as they pack away their equipment.
“She’s fine,” one of them smiles, “just a little pre-menstrual drop in blood pressure, nothing to worry about.”
Your face flushes a little as the other guys hear the prognosis as well, and you turn away from everyone as you carefully get to your feet.
“Fuck’s sake,” you whisper as you dust yourself off and fiddle around with your dress.
“It’s okay,” Ben reassures, “they’re all half deaf anyway.”
He presses his forehead against the side of your head as he holds onto you, then you hear those enchanting words once more.
“I love you.”
can you do some ben x reader on set of bo rhap please?
@peachllobotomy @lv7867 @aynsleywalker @pink-lemo @painthatiusedto @itisjustmethistime @mamaskillerqueen @queenslandlover-93 @tenement-funstah @rogmeddows
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Maybe Promptis comfort like one of them is having a rough day. I hope this is ok and not too sad T-T
What are you talking about that’s literally half of my fics. That’s what I live for, babes. Y’all should read Expectations of Promises bc they’re both sad and I never really got recognition on it
Okay first off I’m just writing a little thing where Noct is having a rough time, but if you want it the opposite, I highly suggest Down Day by EyePhoenix! Prom comfort over there.
Prompto leaned back in his swivel chair with a drawn-out yawn, stretching his arms high above his head. His assigned pages for the school yearbook were coming along nicely, he thought, so he was officially giving himself a break for the day.
Lazily spinning around, it became clear that he had been the last one to think that. The only other person in the room was closing the door just as he saw them walk out.
With a sigh, Prompto let his head fall back for a few moments. Might as well text Noctis, tell him that he was finished.
They had started dating a few months back after Prompto had kicked enough courage into himself to confess. Coincidentally, Noctis had the same burst of motivation that exact day. It had been really cute and utterly stupid, and if they had been close before, now they were practically inseparable.
Prompto smiled faintly to himself as he held his phone above his face and opened his messages to his boyfriend.
Still on campus? Just finished yearbook stuff if u wanna walk to ur place together
He hit send and stretched once more, sighing loudly and moving to put away his camera equipment. The teacher had allowed him to use his personal camera, and there was no way he was going to leave that unattended in a highschool classroom.
It took a few moments to gather his belongings and shut down the computer, but he had the lights off and was out the door soon enough. Camera bag slung over his shoulder, his phone in the other hand, he started towards the entrance of the school while keeping his eyes fixated on his phone screen, waiting for a return message.
When he still didn’t get anything once he was outside, a slight pout formed on his face. He had wanted to walk with Noctis to his apartment. Maybe the prince was already there, snoozing the afternoon away. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
So he sighed and pocketed the phone, then pushed open the doors to step into the fresh air. It was such a nice day out, a bit breezy and hardly a cloud in the sky.
Just then, his phone buzzed. Prompto excitedly rushed to check it, stopping a few feet outside the doors. It was from Noctis.
Nice. Sorry, don’t think we can go together today, read the words on his screen.
That made his smile fall. “Huh?” he voiced to himself. Did that mean that Noctis was still on campus? What was he up to? There was hardly ever a reason for him to stay after classes ended, save for when he lazed around waiting for Prompto to finish yearbook things.
Biting his cheek, Prompto rapidly drummed on his phone case with a finger as he thought up how to respond to that. He started typing a few times before settling on a message.
You sure? I don’t mind waiting if you’re busy or something
He would be lying if he said worry wasn’t building up in his chest. Sure, sometimes Noctis was busy, but he usually offered up an explanation. He wouldn’t be this cryptic about it unless there was something wrong.
It’s really fine. You don’t gotta wait for me
Prompto took in a deep breath and held it for five, ten seconds. Then he exhaled and pressed the call button.
The phone rang on and on to the point where Prompto didn’t think he would answer, but the call connected right before he gave up hope. “Noct?” he blurted out. “Are you okay? Where are you at right now?”
A shaky sigh crackled through the speaker. “Prom, I don’t want you to worry about it.” Noctis sniffled, and Prompto’s worry did the exact opposite—it skyrocketed. “It’s really okay. Igs is coming to get me soon, so you should go on home. We can hang out tomorrow, I promise,” he spoke over the phone. His voice sounded weak and strained, as quiet as it was.
“What? No way,” Prompto countered. “Something is obviously up, and I’m really kinda freaking out right now. Please tell me where you’re at? I promise that you’re more important than just hanging out. I want to help,” he pleaded.
There was a pause. “Noct?”
“Behind the science building.”
Noctis hung up, and Prompto was left to stare at his phone screen. A few moments later, he had his camera bag hiked up on his shoulder and was dashing over to the science wing.
It was a few minutes’ jog, and his camera bouncing against his hip over and over slowed him down somewhat, but Prompto hardly cared. Noctis needed him.
He nearly fell over when he rounded the corner of the science building. The back area was all overgrown grass and wildflowers, trampled flat where students would sneak here to cut class and make out. Nestled against the brick, knees up to his chest, was the dark shape that was undoubtedly his Noctis.
As Prompto slowed his approach, he noted the way Noctis was settled. His face was buried in his arms, and his knuckles were white where they gripped the fabric of his school jacket. To his side, his bag and phone were haphazardly discarded into the overgrown grass. He looked small and pathetic, sitting there like that.
Something was most definitely plaguing his mind. As calmly as he could muster, Prompto set down his things and got on his hands and knees beside his boyfriend. “Hey, Noct,” he began, making Noctis jump slightly, but he didn’t look up. “Had a rough day? What are you doing back here?” Prompto continued.
The sniffling he had heard over the phone started up again, muffled by his clothes. Noctis gave a small nod, but that was it.
“Okay. Do you want to talk about it?”
There was a waver in the conversation, if it could be called a conversation, and Prompto took the opportunity to instead sit beside Noctis. Experience had taught him that when he was upset, Noctis needed some kind of physical touch to ground him. He gave him that by resting his hand on his shoulder and letting that travel around his back in a slow and smooth motion while he waited for him to respond.
Finally, Prompto heard what sounded like a small hum followed by a few more sniffles. “Don’t want you to see me cry like this,” he mumbled.
Prompto leaned a little more into Noctis’ side. “It’s okay, I promise. You see me cry all the time, yeah? I won’t see you as lesser if you cry, dude.” While it was true that Noctis rarely shed these kinds of tears in front of him, he wasn’t going to let that deter him. “I want to wipe your tears and listen to your problems just like you’ve done for me. Okay?”
This time, there was less of a pause. Albeit a bit slowly, Noctis lifted his head from his arms and went right to rubbing his eyes with a sleeve. “Okay,” he whispered weakly.
Next thing he knew, Prompto had an armful of Noctis, as the prince had leaned most of his weight against his boyfriend. Prompto wrapped his other arm around him, holding him around the shoulders against his chest. “There you go. You can stay like that as long as you need,” he told him.
Noctis made that slight nod again. It was obvious that he needed some time to regain his bearings, so they sat and listened to the breeze rustle the grasses for a short time. He could talk when he was ready.
After a few minutes, Noctis’ breathing grew less ragged. He took a deep breath. “I’m just really...overwhelmed today.”
Prompto rubbed slow circles into Noctis’ shoulder. “Yeah? School stuff or prince stuff?” he questioned.
“Bit of both. I don’t really know.” He sighed. “Started thinking about the future too hard, I guess. There’s so much I don’t know about. And I know that everyone goes through this, and there’s no real certainty about stuff, but...fuck, I have to be the king someday. Normal people get to screw up. If I do, it screws over everyone in the country,” he stressed. His shoulders tensed up, and though he wasn’t looking at him, Prompto could imagine his eyes were screwed shut.
He bit his lip briefly. This kind of issue was entirely unique, and one that Prompto had never even thought of from his own upbringing, so he couldn’t exactly relate to that specific anxiety. But Noctis needed him right now; he had to try.
Prompto mimicked his sigh. “Yeah, that’s...that’s tough,” he said. “I can’t imagine how that feels growing up. I’m really sorry that you’re going through this, babe.”
A sniffle. “I mean, it’s okay. Just a mood I’m in.”
“No, no, you don’t have to do all that,” Prompto interjected. “It’s not okay right now if you’re feeling this bad about it. You’re allowed to be upset, you know.”
Noctis groaned. “But I shouldn’t be. I can’t be upset about what I have to do,” he countered.
Prompto pouted. “Maybe not on live television.” He nestled his cheek against Noctis’ hair. “But you can with me. I’m here to listen, and I promise I won’t tell a soul. Boyfriend honor.”
That ended up getting a faint chuckle from Noctis. “Okay, okay. Fine, yeah, I’m upset. I don’t want to mess things up.” The tension from his shoulders started to fade, and he melted further against Prompto.
With a hum, Prompto closed his eyes. “But you don’t have to do everything alone, Noct. You have Ignis and Gladio, a whole bunch of council members, your dad, and countless other things to guide you. They’ll help you do what’s best,” he reasoned.
Something warm covered his hand, and he realized that Noctis had put his own over it. “You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s just stressful to think about the burden of everything.”
“That’s understandable. But hey, you’re still in highschool. There’s so much time to prepare yourself, babe. You’re not ruling right now for a reason,” he stated.
“Mh-hm. Thank Six for that,” Noctis murmured.
Tilting his head, Prompto pressed a soft kiss to Noctis’ cheek. “Mh-hm,” he repeated. “And there’s one thing you actually do know about the future,” he stated.
Noctis leaned back, craning his neck around to look Prompto in the eye for the first time. “What’s that?”
A smile touched Prompto’s face. “I’ll be right there with you the whole time.”
It took a few moments, but Noctis started to smile as well. “You’re right. What am I even worried about?” he said softly, getting somewhat misty-eyed again. “I’ve got you.”
Prompto nodded and placed another kiss on Noctis’ cheek. “Yep. I’m not going anywhere unless you kick me out of your life,” he joked.
Noctis’ smile grew, paired with an eye-roll. “As if I’d get rid of the best part of my life? No way. Honestly, how did I even get the best boyfriend in the world?” he questioned.
“A very funny double-confession, that’s how. Thought you’d remember that.”
Another eye-roll. “Right, ‘course. Couldn’t forget that.”
The two shared a quiet laugh, and Prompto hugged Noctis a little closer. He sighed, looking around. “So when Igs comes to get you, are you going back to your apartment?” Noctis nodded. “Can I come with? I think you need some serious cheering up this afternoon. We can eat that ice cream we just bought, and you can pick movies to watch,” he suggested.
Noctis gave Prompto’s hand a squeeze. “Only if you tell me how yearbook stuff went.”
“Deal.”
“Cool. Then can we just sit here until we have to go?” he asked.
Prompto leaned back against the building. “Absolutely. Let’s just relax until we can’t.”
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The Cold, Chapter 7 - The Messages Series
This chapter on AO3
By @thestarkerisobvious and @starker-stories
New chapters in the series post every Thursday.
All links are to AO3. You don’t need to be a creator to have an AO3 account. You can have one solely as a reader. But to read anything at all in this series, you can just be an anonymous reader and/or commenter.
The best way to keep up with The Cold is to subscribe to the story on AO3. And the best way to keep up with the Messages Series is also to subscribe to it as well as the individual stories. That way you’ll know when the next book is added.
Tags:
Tony Stark Feels, Peter Parker Feels, College Student Peter Parker, Established Relationship, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Tony Stark Still Has Arc Reactor, Arc Reactor Kink, Peter Parker is a Mess, Spider-Man powers, Communication, They Finally Communicate!, And Fuck Of Course Look at Who It’s Written By Of Course They Fuck, Avengers Compound
The entire Messages Series. All links are to AO3.
Messages Unsent (complete & posted)
Nothing More Than A Machine (complete & posted)
Tomorrow (complete & posted)
My Virgin (Revisited) (completely & posted)
The Cold (completely written)
Posts Every Thursday
There’s been a change.
The Cold is the final book in the main line of the Messages series. There is this one and three more chapters until the end (10 chapters total.) The story has been completely finished and is ready to post to schedule.
What were formerly the last two chapters will be written as Messages Interludes and won’t be posted to the same schedule that Messages has been.
The best way to follow them is to subscribe to the Interludes series link. These stories involve time jumps that make them their own separate thing from the contiguous week that Peter and Tony have been through in Messages.
The Opposite of Cold ( in progress )
Untitled ( in progress )
Note: There is some Italian in the chapter. It’s left untranslated until a note at the end of the chapter to put the reader in Peter’s head. If you speak Italian, obviously this little gambit won’t work on you. If you are an Italian speaker and we’ve gotten it wrong, please leave us a comment with the correction and we’ll make it.
Chapter 7: Faremo L'amore Ogni Notte
She guided him away and they headed to her lab, leaving Tony behind in her office.
Tony agreed that what was discussed between Peter and Helen would remain between them. But it didn’t mean he wasn’t nervous about what was happening. Instead of pacing the courtyard, making a nuisance of himself, he headed to his long-disused personal labs two floors up.
Cleaning the place up, activating and repairing the equipment, it all took time. He checked his watch. Not enough time. Peter was still gone, still downstairs with Helen. He looked up what he’d been working on when he was here last, years ago.
There was little to distract him. Going over his notes on his development of the nanotech for his and Peter’s suits was interesting in a ‘historical record’ sort of way, though the data wouldn’t become part of that until long after it had ceased to be useful to him.
Watch-checking time again. Tony’s inability to keep himself distracted for more than, at most, an hour was annoying. He was sitting in what had been the top lab in the country, and he couldn’t find anything to do. Because his mind was still two floors down. Where he had no idea what was going on. Tony wasn’t sure which was worse. The possibility that something could be wrong or the fact that he couldn’t see it even if there wasn’t anything wrong.
Peter’s texts finally interrupted him.
We’re still talking
Still talking
Hey can you send me that vid of me stopping the car? The first one? Can’t find it.
Can you send me my laser-course stats?
Thanx
Ok headed to the examination room now.
The updates were at least keeping Tony from going completely crazy. But they also kept him from getting involved in anything truly distracting. So their effect was to have him sitting there, doing nothing, staring at his phone, waiting for the next one.
He wanted to text back, to find out more, but he didn’t want to interrupt an exam or a test. He had no idea what was going on before or after the texts. So he just stared at his phone waiting for the next notification.
Omg I haven’t been naked at the doctor since I was 13
This is not a gown this is paper wtf?!
Finally Peter texted him again. The medical exam was over (I get to put on my clothes now) and he and ‘Helen’ were going for a walk.
At that, Tony’s resolve not to spy on Peter broke. He could control things in Helen’s office. He could control things on the entire medical floor. A ‘walk’? Where? Under whose watchful eyes and ears?
Finally, after the cameras showed them heading outside, he gave the monitoring over to FRIDAY. “Track them, turn the surveillance off as they move along the grid, block communication from anyone who sees them and decides to talk about it. I want them in total privacy, from everything and everyone.”
Tony paused. “Even me,” he added, abiding not by the rules Helen gave him, but by the rules he set for himself after their argument.
After an hour, he got another text.
Were on our way back headed to the cafeteria. Im starving
Tony took the elevator down to the atrium level where the cafeteria and the entrance from outside was. He tried not to be, but he was a little terse when he met Peter and Helen at the door. He looked at Helen. “You and I need to have a conversation.”
Helen flashed him a sunny smile, then turned to Peter. “You won’t believe it, but the pizza here is actually good. I’ll see you after?” After Peter was gone, Helen looked back at Tony, but her smile didn’t fade. Most people would have been alarmed to find themselves at the receiving end of a Tony Stark Glare. Helen Cho, of course, was not most people.
“Your office, Doctor?” Tony said, waving his hand in that direction. He was too involved in his own conspiracy theories to notice Helen’s unflappable demeanor. When they arrived, he shut the door behind them. The windows that looked out onto the atrium darkened, the active monitoring lights turned off on the cameras.
“Why the hell did you take him outside into an uncontrolled environment? Are you asking for the spies in the building to know that he had to see you about something? That alone right there is more information than I wanted out about this. So what’s with the doctor/patient confidentiality? That doesn’t apply suddenly?”
Dr. Cho looked mildly surprised at Tony’s accusatory tone, but only shrugged.
“Sorry, it’s now confidential that I met Spider-Man? My bad.”
“Everything about this is confidentential, I thought I made that clear. Fury, New-Cap, no one is supposed to know anything about anything. Just knowing that Peter is talking to you lets them know that something is up with Spider-Man. That will get them curious.
"All anyone knows is that we came here so I could show off the labs to Peter and make sure New-Cap accepts him as an Avenger. Coming here to see you? Getting tested? That was never on the agenda.”
“Good thing you’ve secured my office, then. We’ll go over the details after Peter achieves some caloric intake. I have theories.”
“That’s great. It’s what Peter needs. I want him to have your theories, your conclusions. But I want him to have them. No one else.”
“And you made that clear when you tried to bribe me for my silence, Tony,” Helen said, stepping closer, her patient face hardening a bit. “Peter wanted to go for a walk. He had things he wanted to talk about, and he did. And for the record? I can think of sixteen things we could have been talking about without even trying, and the fact that YOU can’t think of a few is a little telling. Not that he needs an alibi for finding his own personal physician... do you realize he hasn’t had a physical since he was fourteen?” She shook her head in disbelief. “He hasn’t even gotten all his shots! Not that it matters but still… just the idea…
“In any case, Peter is my priority now. If he wants to tell me about the things on his mind in a field, or a laboratory, or an alien spaceship it’s his call. Not yours.”
“He still thinks the Avengers are one big happy family spending nights in pillow forts, watching movies, and eating popcorn. He has no idea of the risk. You can’t trust his ability to know where he should be talking to you. He still… he still fucking trusts people.”
She reached out to touch Tony’s arm briefly. “Well, we know better, don’t we? You were right to call me in on this one.” Helen’s tone was gentler now. “I’m glad he’s got you in his corner on this one, Tony. He may need you. You may be protecting the real next Captain America…”
“Over my dead fucking body,” Tony interrupted hotly.
“…And I’m not sure he’s ready to say ‘no’ to Nick Fury. But I know you. You were born ready.
“I think you two make a good team.”
Tony sighed, a little more relieved. At least Helen saw through some of the smoke and mirrors that surrounded her. “He trusts people. But… he’s the only one… I trust.”
There was silence for a moment. Only when he turned to look at Helen did she speak again.
“I’m glad, Tony. You, more than anyone else on this planet, have earned the right to every single trust issue you own, and then some. But you trust me to an extent, or you wouldn’t have called me. And I’m glad you did. And for the record? I think he’s adorable, and you make a very sweet couple.
“Now shut the fuck up and stop telling me how to do my job,” she said dismisvely, turning back to her desk and pointing at the door. “Go debate the propriety of pineapple on pizza with your boyfriend. I’ll meet you two back here when he’s done eating.”
Tony nodded. He knew he had no objectivity on this issue. Just being here was the last place he wanted to be, which he’d tried to explain… No, he hadn’t tried to explain, just expected Peter to somehow intuit — which wasn’t really fair. Nor was it fair to Helen to blame her for what went on around her.
“Is that even a debate? Of course pineapple belongs on pizza,” Tony said smiling as he left to go find Peter.
Peter had, in fact, already scarfed down his pizza and was on his way to find Tony. He only glanced around for a moment to make sure they were alone before he wrapped his arms around Tony and hugged him fiercely.
“Thank you for this,” he whispered.
Tony smiled and put a kiss on — not the top of Peter’s head anymore! — Peter’s cheek. “Helen says she has ideas. So, I’m glad we were able to come.”
When they entered Helen’s office, she was pulling up a chart on her holoscreen, using her finger to add Peter’s numbers.
“Now, obviously I can’t chart a line based on one point. I’ll need more data. Peter and I may have to talk once year, twice a year ideally. But based on his memory and what data you gave me, I have some theories. Peter’s weight, muscle mass, and BMI put him solidly average, though his height is in the lower 25% until this last growth spurt. Still very average. Nothing anyone can do about that. Now — the jumps in his performance scores look drastic, but not if you take into consideration that the recorded scores from when he was sixteen were inaccurate. According to him he was holding back. But given the stats you calculated in high-adrenaline situations, catching moving vehicles, going hand to hand with the Winter Soldier, I’ve made different estimates. And that gives us a trajectory that looks like this.”
She drew the line with one finger, then hovered over the chart already on the screen.
“The numbers appear extreme, but the math is ultimately the same. A non-enhanced male of Peter’s age, weight and healthy caloric intake, not to mention his daily workout schedule…
“Yes,” she interrupted as Peter tried to correct her. “You swing your bodyweight through over the streets of New York City for hours almost daily, you weren’t taking that into account.”
“So a non-enhanced young adult male’s trajectory would look the same as the one Peter is making now. If my theory holds he’ll peak the same time a non-enhanced male would peak, then begin to decline the same way.” She looked at Peter, as if asking permission to continue.
Peter only nodded and looked at Tony. He was nothing but smiles. He seemed pleased and relieved. When Helen kept looking at him, waiting for that permission to come, Peter decided that it didn’t need to. They were finished talking.
The numbers didn’t matter any longer. They’d discussed them during their walk. What mattered was that he was growing at a normal — for non-normal — rate. It would stop. He’d reach a peak and not just keep growing ridiculously forever. There would come a point where he didn’t have to keep being afraid of his ability. He could just learn how to work within it. He’d learn his limits. Then he wouldn’t hurt anyone else. And he wouldn’t hurt Tony. That was what both of them needed to know.
The meeting ended with cell phones out and schedules compared, Peter and Dr. Cho making plans six months in the future and exchanging numbers. Tony copying the dates in his. Peter hugged Dr. Cho before they left the office, then once again as they said goodbye.
“Did you get the answers you were looking for?” Tony asked as they left Helen’s office, heading to the residence wing.
“Yes, I mean no, but I got some decent theories. Which beat the fuck out of my theories. My theories were just too scary. Helen put it all into perspective. She’s awesome. Thank you, Tony.”
They left the medical wing for the stairs in the lobby, then down them, holding hands.
They had decided to kill the rest of the day by heading to the pool ‘to relax’. Peter’s manic need to perform feats of strength had cooled. They talked, they joked, they made up conversations in between Sam and Bucky who, they assured each other, were watching them at every moment. Peter matched Tony joke for raunchy joke, laughing freely and easily.
Tony smiled, sneaking glances at Peter when the kid wouldn’t notice. He hadn’t seen Peter this relaxed and easy since, well, since his work started to impinge on their lives. Peter’s happiness started to slip away when they’d meet up at different hotels in the city as something fun and different from the penthouse. At first, Peter would get excited and they’d laugh and play around with things in the suite, even bouncing like a kid on the very soft and bouncy beds.
That seemed like a long, long time ago. As Tony drifted away from their life, Peter also drifted away. Now, his Peter was back.
They did laps, at which Peter would’ve beat Tony easily if the kid hadn’t been acting like a dolphin following a ship, diving and ducking underneath him, swerving in patterns, even leaping up and over Tony’s body.
More than once Peter made bets he could hold his breath for ‘this long’, bets he always lost, unable to resist surfacing directly under Tony to grab him and lift him into the air.
The kid was a fish. Their swimming quickly turned into nothing but playing, splashing, dunking. And a lot of teasing. A kiss stolen and then swam away from. An ‘accidental’ brush against somewhere while coming up from a dive.
Tony let himself go. He couldn’t remember when he’d last played around in the water. Or even if he had ever just played around in the water. If the surveillance to the pool room hadn’t been turned off, no one watching would’ve believed that it was Tony Stark down there, laughing and smiling and playing.
“There’s a huge pool at my house in Naples. I’m taking you there. It’ll be just like this for a week. Only better. New-Cap and the Manchurian Candidate won’t be trying to spy on us.”
“Take me to Italy,” Peter said, grinning, swimming into Tony’s arms for another kiss. “Take me somewhere where I don’t know anything, and teach me all of it. Maybe we won’t come back.”
“Andremo in Italia. Nuoteremo in piscina ogni mattina. Faremo l'amore ogni notte.”
“Mmmmm… more. I love being ignorant.”
“I’ll take away your phone and you won’t be able to use ‘translate’,” Tony grinned.
“The less I know the better. I’ll just assume you’re telling me a dirty joke.”
“You’ll have to trust that I’m correctly teaching you what to say. That I’m not having you to insult someone and get us chased out of the restaurant,” Tony clenched his fist and sprayed a squirt of water at Peter’s face.
“Ti comprerò diamanti e quell'orologio e ti rovinerò marcio.”
“I agree! I assume it’s about sex, and I agree.”
“Ti porterò in ogni ristorante di lusso che riesco a trovare. Indosserai scarpe italiane da mille dollari. Ti misurerò per un abito da uomo che costa più di quanto la maggior parte della gente guadagni in una settimana.”
“Yes! I’m unfazeable,” Peter said, laughing. “Whatever it is, I’m in.”
“E quando arriviamo a casa, ti scoperò nel culo così forte che non puoi camminare. Ti lascerò persino toccarmi lì.”
“I’ll assume that means ‘I want to have sex in the pool’,” Peter said, sinking straight down, nuzzling Tony’s cock for a moment before swimming away.
“Voglio fare sesso in piscina,” Tony shouted just before Peter dove again, this time swimming all the way down to the bottom of the deep end.
Peter didn’t spring back up like he’d been doing. A whole minute passed and he was still sitting, cross-legged, at the bottom. Tony frowned and looked down at the distorted image through the water. He counted another ten, fifteen seconds before he dove down. Paddling in front of Peter he looked into the kid’s face. His hair was waving through the water, looking like a mermaid. His eyes were open and he was grinning.
When they had laughed themselves silly and their fingers were getting pruned, Peter and Tony headed to the changing room, showered off and dressed. When they hit the common room, Tony’s hair was slicked back wet, and Peter’s kept falling over his forehead in little ringlets.
Cooking and eating together, they spared only a socially required greeting then ignored any conversation attempts. They were alone in the large room, regardless of who was there around them. Their conversation ranged through the adaptations Tony would be working on for Peter’s suit to the new webbing Peter would create for it. They had no worries about the security of their discussion. No one would understand what they said, even if overheard.
Peter still teased about the pool, his dive, and how it had scared Tony. Tony was still breaking into Italian as he described what he would cook for Peter in Naples and how he would spoil him.
As they sat down to the table, a robot that no one even knew was in the compound came up to them, bringing a bottle of wine from a private cellar that, also, no one knew was in the compound.
By the time dinner was made and finished, they were dry, well fed, and in good humor. They headed to Tony’s suite, leaving behind a befuddled Sam, staring at Tony laughing like he must’ve been an alien left to replace the real Tony Stark.
Italian translations:
The title
Faremo L'amore Ogni Notte - We'll make love all night
Within the text
Andremo in Italia. Nuoteremo in piscina ogni mattina. Faremo l'amore ogni notte. - We will go to Italy. We will swim in the pool every morning. We will make love every night.
Ti comprerò diamanti e quell'orologio e ti rovinerò marcio. - I'll buy you diamonds and that watch and spoil you rotten.
Ti porterò in ogni ristorante di lusso che riesco a trovare. Indosserai scarpe italiane da mille dollari. Ti misurerò per un abito da uomo che costa più di quanto la maggior parte della gente guadagni in una settimana. - I will take you to every luxury restaurant I can find. You will wear Italian thousand dollar shoes. I'll measure you for a men's suit that costs more than most people earn in a week.
E quando arriviamo a casa, ti scoperò nel culo così forte che non puoi camminare. Ti lascerò persino toccarmi lì. - And when we get home, I’ll fuck you in the ass so hard that you can't walk. I'll even let you touch me there.
Voglio fare sesso in piscina. - I want to have sex in the pool.
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The Anointed
The Vault Hunters are split up. Zane runs into a little trouble.
“Shite!” Zane hissed, rolling on the cement and pouncing to his feet, quickly raising his SMG towards his attacker.
The operative reached for his remote digistructor, slamming his thumb on the button and ducking yet another fist coming for his face. Within a moment, his digi-clone sparked alive, equipping himself with a copy of the man’s SMG and firing at the assailant.
“There ya are, ye handsome bastard!” Zane quipped, smirking as he dodged another fist yet again.
An Anointed Goliath. Troy had sent them, a bunch of them, splitting up the group. But Zane had never had a problem alone. He had his digi-clone and his other gadgets. It was just easier with a team.
“Why won’t you die now?” the goliath hissed, throwing a punch that made a hit, knocking Zane to the ground.
The operative tumbled, before rolling to his feet again, “Not today, boomer!”
“You are old man?” the purple hunk of meat’s skull tilted on it’s stem as he took a step back, momentarily stunned by Zane’s words.
“I’m an old man with spice! I’m a spicy old man! Zesty Zane boy…” the operative trailed off and chuckled, quickly raising his gun again and firing off into the goliath’s stomach.
The goliath hissed, stumbling back further, hitting the wall behind him. He huffed and shook the skull that lurched from his body, soon turning his attention back on the white haired man.
“Oof, are ye angry now?” Zane smiled, firing more shots into the big guy’s belly, then turning up the gun towards the head. His clone followed suit.
The Anointed paused, then let out a laugh. Zane halted his firing for a moment, enough to cock his head in confusion.
Before the operative knew it, he was knocked flat on the ground. His body hit the cement with a loud thump, his head cracking against the ground. It wasn’t enough to knock Zane unconscious, but was enough to daze him something awful… And give him quite the nasty headache. The man looked up through blurred and double vision, groaning as he grabbed his head. Above him were two goliaths, not one. The man blinked a few times to check his eyes, but no, it seemed like there were two Anointed goliaths standing above him. How had he missed the second one?
“You die now!” the first goliath spoke, grabbing Zane by the throat and lifting him off the ground.
The man gasped as the purple fist clenched around his neck, but he was too out of it to do anything. Zane reached weakly to pry the fingers off of him, but his body wouldn’t respond like he wanted it to. He let out a grunt as he hung there in the goliath’s grasp.
“No, you idiots!” Another voice spoke. A familiar voice.
The goliath turned and Zane got to see the fresh new blur. Two blurs, actually. Blurs with glowing red and blue… The pieces were starting to fall in place in his dazed and confused mind…
“We’re not killing him,” Troy Calypso. It was Troy Calypso, “We need him alive.”
Zane grimaced. His vision was starting to return to normal and he could start to see that rat boy’s face and his twin sister. Two leeches.
“No kill? Aw!” the Anointed goliath whined, dropping Zane to the ground.
The operative lay there on the ground, struggling to even get to his hands and knees. Before he knew it, he was lifted from the ground once again, this time, encased in some sort of energy… Maya’s powers… Troy had phaselocked him.
“Aw, what’s wrong, Vault Thief? Having a little trouble?” The red tattooed Siren laughed.
“See, our followers needed something more, so we decided to do something big! Real big, right Troy?” Tyreen, the Siren with the blue tattoos, smiled.
“Right, sis!” Troy looked towards his sister and beamed, “How’s about a little team switch?”
Zane rolled his head as much as he could to look at the twins. He hissed through his teeth.
“We’re going to recruit you, Vault Thief!” The blue tattooed Siren smiled, “Well, we were going to try and recruit that Siren friend of yours. What is her name? Amara…? But you just fell right into our hands so easily!”
“You’d have to…” Zane struggled, “...kill me first…”
“Kill you?” Tyreen laughed, “Maybe later, but we need you, Vault Thief! Come on, this will be fun!”
Zane grunted, trying to summon his SNTNL, but he couldn’t release it on account of not being able to move much. On top of still trying to shake himself out of it, the energy orb he was trapped in weighed down on him as well. Soon, Troy walked up to his captive. The Siren leech watched the operative struggle to find his energy before deciding to pull out a small device of sorts.
“You know, ECHO technology is kinda flawed…” The red tattooed Siren began, “It’s just so easy to manipulate and mess with…”
“Yeah, and your ECHO encryption is wack!” Tyreen chipped in.
“It’s just that, there was this guy once who had an ECHO port in the side of his head…”
Troy smiled, “Someone popped one of these babies right in there and boom!”
“His head blew up!” The other Siren exclaimed, “Not really, he totally got brainwashed,
haha!”
“Tyreen, I got this…” Troy turned towards his sister, then back at Zane, “Yeah… Brainwashed... Something like that. I noticed, you’re equipped with all sorts of ECHO gear… I wonder if you’d happen to have something worth our time…?”
“Feck you...” Zane spat.
Troy simply smiled and pulled the energy orb holding the operative closer to him. With excitement in his eyes, he watched the man struggle and fight… as much as he could.
“Now where is that ECHO port…?” the red tattooed Siren walked around the orb, observing the man closely.
Troy looked like Zane like a predator would it’s prey. Like a hunter admiring his trophy. The Siren looked proud to have this Vault Hunter in his grasp… And hungry for something sinister.
“Ah ha! There it is… Smart placement, Vault Thief. The beard almost hides it!” the Siren smiled.
Zane could only watch as the Siren grabbed him and rammed the device into the port on the side of his neck. Troy released the man from the phaselock and took a step back, watching him collapse on the ground.
“Oh, ye bastard...!” the operative hissed through his teeth as he struggled to wrap his hands around the device, “I’ll… kill ya!”
Zane made for a lunge, abandoning his effort to pull out the device in his neck, but his body would not cooperate. He fell short as a new feeling surged through him. Electricity. It doubled him over, completely incapacitating him.
“What... the feck…?!” the operative croaked, falling on his stomach, hands unsure where to try to comfort.
The twins stood above him and laughed, watching him suffer in agony. Watching him as he made a new attempt to crawl away. A pressure landed hard on his back, knocking him on his belly. Troy Calypso’s foot...
“Oh no, Vault Thief, you’re staying right here,” Troy chuckled.
The operative yelped as a kick to the side forced him on his back. He groaned aloud as he felt the electricity in his body grow somehow worse than it already was. The worst parts were his stomach and his head. God his head, though. His thoughts became scrambled, unorganized, a complete and utter mess. He couldn’t think one way or the other.
Then, through the nonsense in Zane’s head came sparks of thought. His own voice coming through, telling him things.
“Worship the Twin Gods,” the operative’s mind told him, “Follow the God Queen!”
Soon, Zane’s mind was overwhelmed with all kinds of thoughts, thoughts in his own voice, telling him all sorts of things. Join the Children of the Vault, kill the Vault Thiefs, the Vaults belong to the Twin Gods and the COV…
“Get out of me feckin’ head!” the operative yelled, pounding his fist weakly against the ground.
“You like that? Programmed that myself. Y’know, sitting in a room full of psychos for four hours is kinda the worst…” Troy’s beam turned towards a frown.
“But when they’re worshipping you… Hah!” Tyreen laughed, “Anyway, Vault Thief, what is your name? Sand or something, right? Who cares, you’re ours now. Our followers are gonna love this!”
Zane tried to get up, but he just couldn’t. Whatever had been inserted into his ECHO port was corrupting his mind and incapacitating him more than being knocked flat on his ass by the Anointed. The electricity was too strong, even if he had his strength back… He felt himself losing the battle. He felt himself slipping.
“Aw, look at him!” Tyreen teased, “He’s struggling. What a battle! Are you getting this, Troy?”
They had been filming this the whole time. Zane would have felt angry at both the twins and himself if it weren’t for whatever Troy uploaded into his ECHO port. He felt more exhausted than anything.
“Get a close up of his face!” Tyreen commanded.
Troy obliged and the camera drone flew closer. The operative was looking worse for wear. He soon gave up his struggle and just layed there, drooling on the cement.
“The operative got operated!” Troy exclaimed.
“Oh, I like that one, Troy. Haha, ‘the operative got operated’. So good,” Tyreen joined in her brother’s joy.
Zane looked through exhausted eyes up at the twins, feeling himself slip into the darkness. Everything began to slip away as he blacked out.
…
“Good morning, sleepy head!” Tyreen was standing in front of Zane’s vision, smiling as wide as she could, “How ya feeling, my favourite superfan?”
The operative groaned, but as soon as his mind adjusted to what he was seeing, he felt a pang of… excitement.
“God Queen…” The words left his lips before he had time to process them. Wait, what the fuck was he thinking?
The Siren gasped, “Troy! Troy, I think your little toy worked!”
“Did it?” Troy called, before walking into view, “Let’s wait to untie him before we’re sure.”
That’s when Zane realized he was tied down to a chair. His wrists were bound tight to the armrests and rope wrapped snugly around his chest and belly. His ankles received the same treatment: all nice and snug. Part of his mind was screaming in panic, while the other was screaming in joy. The Twin Gods were standing right before him…
No, don’t feel joy, Zane struggled, don’t feel…
“The Twin Gods… right in front of me!” the operative smiled and let out a chuckle, before showing a clear struggle with his mind as he scoffed, “If only I could just… kill…”
“Wait, he’s struggling. Troy, I don’t know if it’s working now,” Tyreen turned towards her brother and frowned.
Zane felt a pang of anxiety seeing that frown. No, be happy, God Queen! Be… fuckin’ miserable!
“Maybe he needs a little extra… push?” Troy suggested, “Ty, pull up the TV and put some COV broadcasts on, maybe that’ll help him!”
Tyreen glared at Troy, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Or I could do it…” the red tattooed Siren rolled his eyes before disappearing from sight.
Soon, Troy returned, pushing a box with a television on top of it. He stopped in front of Zane and pressed the power button. A blast of light flooded the operative’s vision, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to what he was seeing. The operative knew it for what it was; propaganda. But he just couldn’t take his eyes off of it…
…
The twins left Zane strapped down in front of the TV, forced to watch broadcast after broadcast after broadcast. Even with the excitement deep down in his gut, he screamed, hoping his fellow Vault Hunters would somehow hear him and rescue him… But soon enough, his screams died down...
“How ya feeling now, superfan?” Tyreen Calypso appeared in front of him again. Zane didn’t even realize the television was off until a smack to his face brought him to attention.
“G-God… Queen…” the operative muttered. He was exhausted… Broken.
“Oh, would you look at that!” the blue tattooed Siren smiled, placing a hand under Zane’s chin and lifting his head, “I think your propaganda idea worked. Finally brought him around! Don’t worry, Vault Thief, we’ll build you back up again…”
“Shame that we couldn’t just fry his brain in one go, but I guess this was faster,” Troy huffed, walking into view.
“I think we can let him go now,” Tyreen stated, “We gotta get going on the next part of this… Troy, will you do the honors?”
Troy smirked, casting the phaselock on the already tied up Zane, “Welcome to the family.”
With that, a haze of purple surrounded the operative. Energy raced through him like a train, devouring every inch of him. It was over in seconds. Before Zane knew it, he had become one of the Anointed.
#borderlands#borderlands 3#zane flynt#fanfiction#zane the operative#troy calypso#tyreen calypso#i guess it's#angst
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We Are Far Too Young and Clever
Archive Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20327977/chapters/48197671
Chapter 1/6 of We Are Far Too Young And Clever
Word Count: 3,068
Summary: Youtube's a buzzing, content-creating platform, where people from all walks of life can create and share. Simon Snow and Baz Pitch are on a rise at two very different angle, but by the coincidence of shared people, they clash and come together at all the right (and wrong) times.
~~~~~~~~~~
SIMON
I don’t really remember how it started.
Well, that’s a lie. I remember starting it. I remember setting up my mobile, using a mirror to make sure it was at the right angle (using random little things like Penny’s tiny bottles of face cleansers and such to keep it propped, despite them continuously slipping). I remember it being half past 3 in the morning on a Thursday right before a final. I wasn’t studying. I can’t study--I can’t make myself study, I should say. Never could. And, I remember laying out craft scissors, glitter glue tubes, googly eyes, and finding old class notes to go to town on.
I remember the build up.
I remember the upload, and I remember thinking nothing of it.
But I don’t remember the rise.
More to this, I don’t really know why anyone really watches my videos. I think it’s sort of dumb to watch a man now climbing further into his mid-to-late twenties sitting on his living room floor, working in a ranging the state of his soberness from completey dry to beyond wrecked, and doing shitty primary school crafts.
But then again, I’m the man making them, so I guess I’m not particularly the one to judge on this front.
Part of me still really doesn’t connect the popularity with myself--like it’s been Penny’s doing. Which, she says, might be partially true. She already had a decent enough following, but I’m on a completely different genre. She does educative videos, and she stays popular because they’re on current events topics (defines hot topics, explains what a certain celebrity is in trouble for, yada yada). I call her the cliffnotes of the ever-rolling social media 15 minutes of fame. She asks me if I’ve ever needed to read a book with cliffnotes, and I didn’t have much defense besides “You know, I was an English minor.” (“For the first year, yeah.” “Still, had a year of it.”)
But for me? I don’t do anything new or appealing.
I think I might be a handsome face (which, in all honesty, would be a nice brag, if I could actually maintain a relationship). Or maybe it’s because I can get a bit funny, especially when I’m plastered. And there’s never really any instructions when I do these things. I have a Pinterest board, a google search option, and a flow of craft store gift cards at my disposal to make shit work.
Or, maybe, I’m just entertaining.
I’m not really confident on that front, but I’ll take what I can get.
I don’t mind it much. People seem to like the videos, and I never mind making them. Brilliant distraction, and surprisingly decent income (especially since crafts require products, so sponsors are easy to get for videos, and I never feel really guilty because I’d have to get shit to use anyway).
Penny gets on my arse about my sleep schedule, though.
“Why can’t you do special editions of Simon’s Arts ‘N Crafts in the morning?” She asks, or more complains, hovering over the kitchen bar with a mug between her hands and her flannel pyjama bottoms on. It’s nearing 1 in the morning now, and I’m just cracking open my second beer. (Don’t actually like them, but they’re tolerable.)
“Aesthetic, Penn.” I cringe after a thick gulp, squeezing my eyes tight. Shit tastes like a gym sock. “Premise of it all to put up a video that looks like a bloke who hasn’t properly slept in 10 years on his floor trying to build a shitty flower crown.”
She’s been a bit fed up with it for a little while, and I can see her point. Insomniatic tendencies aren’t something you particularly want to profit off of, but it pays the bills (and gives me something better to do than stare at my ceiling and try to count sheep into the thousands).
I hear her huff, my back turning to grab my mobile off the counter as I try to chug back a few more gulps.
Thumbing through notifs, I see a post alert for Baz Pitch. Something on Twitter--commenting on the flawed mentality of what socialistic systems are seen as vs what they are, or some other poshly worded bullshit about something that only really matters if you’re taking a secondary school course on politics.
Or if you’re Penny, I guess.
“You’re looking at Baz’s shit again,” she mumbles over her mug, sipping slowly as I glare back.
“What?”
“You get this look on your face--that one where your brows come together and makes you look constipated.”
“Yes, and? What about it?”
She smirks. “Well, you only ever get that when you’re looking at something Baz posted.
I pull my brows together when I look away, just for emphasis, and slip my mobile into my pocket. “Not only,” I counter, going for another pointed sip and holding back a cringe as I point at her, going on. “And it’s only because he’s full of himself. I don’t need, nor do I want to hear his halfhearted ramblings on something that he won’t have any affect on.”
“Then why do you have him on post-notifs?”
I try to look offended, but I just stare, mouth hanging open. “Maybe I like to keep a keen eye on him.”
She hums, unsatisfied.
“Excuse me for wanting to keep track of the man I’ve got an ongoing tiff with.”
“Ongoing tiff? Is that what you’re calling it now?”
I shrug, ignoring that with another shitty gulp.
“Look, Simon, just talk to the bloke. He’s a smart guy, if you give him a second of your time and attention beyond a twitter feud over some dumb shite like his family upbringing.”
“He’s rich, Penn! Guy’s a hypocrite.”
“Maybe,” she gives me a halfhearted shrug, leaning more over the counter. “You’re just mad that he’s got more following on his personal Twitter than you do on your proper Instagram.”
“Of course not.” She’s right, but I won’t dare admit it.
I’ll never admit to being jealous of Basilton fucking Pitch--some bloody political page gone pretty boy vlogging. His main work is only relevant because he talks about shit that’s within the dizzying political-sphere, nothing of which is something I really like to think about (I vote for whoever Penny describes as the best, then hope some other prick doesn’t throw us deeper into the cesspool that is this Brexit nightmare).
But he has his vlogging channel. A popular one, at that. Talks about what he’s reading, where he’s traveling. Skincare routine. Mindless bullshit, that I’ve forced myself to sit through just so I have a proper excuse to go off complaining about him.
Never seen the bloke break a proper smile, though. Not even in fan pictures. He smirks, and he’s got a barking, bitter laugh, but I’ve never heard anything that relates “Joyous” and “Basilton” in a similar sentence.
It’s a wonder he and Penn interact amicably.
She scoffs at me, sipping her tea slowly as my shoulders slump, beer can held tight enough in my hand that it’s denting in at my fingers. I should probably let go of it.
“Are you gonna help me set up?” I ask, deflating from the conversation and trying to distract with a new one.
“If you need help.”
“Need? No. Want? Yeah.”
She rolls her eyes, settling the mug down onto our countertop anyway before turning to start dragging the lights out of the side closet while I polish off my drink and head to grab my camera and tripod.
I’ve gotten better at this over the years. Swapped majors from social work to media studies, then minored in advertising, once the channel had hit 1k subscribers. Hadn’t quit my dayjob at the cafe until I hit 100k, but the steady rise since hasn’t been bad to us. Penny’s got a decent income, too, and she still decides to work in the school’s library as she’s working on her PhD in Sociology.
The flat’s a better one than the one we’d started in. We’ve even got a guest bedroom (screams disposable income). And, well, nicer equipment. A real sense of seriousness and maturity while we work.
Well, mostly.
I’m speaking as the grown man with a metal cabinet full of crafts supplies.
Business man with craft supplies.
Makes me sound more professional than “Newly 27 year old Youtuber who does nothing of serious impact, other than hoping to make others smile while throwing together terribly made, barely functioning crafts.”
I make my way back into the living room after setting up the camera and wandering back off, arms full of supplies as Penny starts setting up cameras, glancing over her shoulder. “What’d you choose tonight?”
I look down, then plop myself onto the floor and spread out my shit. “Uhh,” I say, shifting through. “I was thinking a beer can ghost.”
“Beer can ghost?”
I nod, holding up the gauze and glue. “As a Happy Halloween episode.”
“It’s not even October yet, Si.”
I shrug. “September’s close enough.” I grin, going off to grab my empty beer can and sprawling back out onto the floor. “Want to join in?”
“I think I’ll take a rain check for this episode, thank you.” She smiles teasingly, brushing past and messing my hair a bit as I’m settling myself onto the hardwood floor. I don’t take it harshly; I never take her harshly. I don’t think I’ve got the room to take it harshly, given I don’t seriously have anyone else in my life besides her (at least on a consistent basis).
“Suit yourself!” I call back, watching her disappear into her bedroom while shutting the door behind herself.
Before going at it, I take and post a quick Instagram picture at the layout in front of me, adding Halloween-themed emojis (so everyone knows I’m serious about wanting to get festive) as the caption.
I sigh and clear up my space, glancing around to make sure the area looks clean-enough, then get up to press start. It takes a second to make my way back and get myself properly situated on the floor, exhaling quietly and collecting my thoughts before shooting my head up and grinning at the camera angled a few feet away and slightly above eyeline with me.
“Hey everyone! Welcome back to Simon’s Arts ‘N Crafts!”
BAZ
I don’t understand the hype of Simon Snow.
I never truly have. He feels like he’s the sort of mindless bloke to pull out a guitar at uni and unironically start playing Wonderwall.
Allow me to rephrase; I don’t understand the hype of Simon Snow’s channel.
Snow himself, on the other hand, is a different story.
Cheerful smile, rosey cheeks. Curls that stick out at all angles (you’d think he’d try to style them properly, given he’s got the time and money now, but he doesn’t; he looks as disheveled as the day his channel began). Snow’s an utter mess just trying to occupy himself while avoiding other aspects of life, and somehow, for reasons I can’t chalk up to anything but his glittering disposition, he’s popular.
Not too popular, no. A couple million popular. Sponsored by major chains popular, due to the spike in young hobbyists trying to “Unleash their inner child” following his lead. But, of course, he donates huge portions to schools, giving them arts supplies and, for some saintly reason, gives to orphanages too.
I wonder at times if there’s anything deeper than just a handsome public face and overly generous donor. And, usually, I try to doubt there is, but I can’t quite ignore the occasional sign that Simon Snow may be a saint, and I fucking hate him for it.
I hate him for a number of reasons, starting with “He hates me”, and ending with “He’s gorgeous, and he hates me”.
I scroll down my Instagram feed, then refresh, immediately getting his post as a priority (I feel as though I’d be damned if anyone knew how often I go to simply look at him, or try to snoop through his older pictures to put the pieces together). It’s not much; his lap, which is a pair of grey joggers (Chris, I bet he looks fit in them), mismatched athletic socks, and a pile of half pulled-apart gauze, supplies for paper mache, an emptied beer can, and a sponge brush laying on a disposable plastic tarp. It’s simply captioned with a set of emojis that are definitely a few weeks too early.
baz.pitch Can’t count a calendar, Snow? Not surprised.
I stare at the comment for a brief moment, jaw clenching and swallowing back the strange, twinge that comes with our either interaction as quickly as it appears before trying to scroll and avoid any further thoughts on the matter.
It isn’t much longer before a notification drops down, hanging over the top of my screen.
(baz.pitch) buncespeaking: Are you still awake, or sleep-commenting?
I snort and tap onto it, letting the direct messaging screen load up.
baz.pitch: I am awake
baz.pitch: Is there something you want, Bunce?
Penelope Bunce and I interact far more than I’d originally thought we would. At first, when she first reached out, I’d assumed we’d quarrel, given her general harshness brought through her Twitter account, but I soon learned that she and I have a good bit in common. Personal views align, and she’s got a devilishly sharp sense of humour on her (not that I’d ever tell her, of course). Never thought I’d consider her not only an ally, but a friend in this harsh digital age, but I’ve found solace in her conversations.
That, and she teases Snow for me more than I could ever repay her for.
When I say tease, it isn’t quite the taunting I find myself regularly drawn into, but rather the simple name drop can be enough to get him to squirm in place (I know; I’ve seen it through live streams). I’ve never found it in myself to say any of my opinions on Snow to her, but given her intellect, I’d assumed she knows far more about my views of him than what Snow knows himself.
Which, at times, scares me. Nobody should know any vulnerability about me, unless I know equally as much incriminating information on them.
But so far, I haven’t had much a reason to worry.
(baz.pitch) buncespeaking: Do you know when you’ll find yourself in London again?
Interesting question.
Intentionally? Who the fuck knows.
As of recent, my life has consisted of no proper flat (which has begrudgingly left me living in my family’s manor, avoiding a permanent residence) while I hop about the island, then once a month, I spend a week in some various part of Europe. I just see it as trying to squeeze the most out of my life as a pitiful bachelor, but some others (Snow) consider this as me being a privileged arsehole and not wanting to commit to a proper life. (For the record, I regularly donate to LGBTQ+ nonprofits, but you don’t see me flaunting it in my personal work.)
Whatever. He probably hasn’t gotten snogged in the back of a Porsche in Venice during late spring.
Although, admittedly, that wasn’t very fulfilling.
Those trips never quite are.
And, sadly, neither are the men. All looking somewhat of a similar face; square jawed, wide-nosed. Long necks, wide shoulders, and curly hair that I love to tug and hold back.
But none of them are ever named Simon, and none of them hit quite the spot that this damned yearning has held.
Which is, I suppose, why I’m rarely ever in London. I’m not sure what I’d do with myself in London, unless I’m there with a purpose. I feel like I might go off the rails and try to actually find Snow without the guidance of some other party. I’d be a walking disaster.
baz.pitch: Depends on why you’re asking
(baz.pitch) buncespeaking: Well, a couple of reasons.
(baz.pitch) buncespeaking: Which all ultimately have the same suggested outcome of us collaborating on a video, and I’m not particularly set on getting myself out to Hampshire to sit in your frankly terrifying mansion.
(baz.pitch) buncespeaking: Plus, you can put me out of my misery and finally speak to Simon in person, for once. He’s driving me mad, and at this point, I’d pay for you to just put him to silence in person, for once.
As tempting as it seems, a small part of me worries that Bunce is believing that I’d sock Snow instead of snog him (maybe both are possible, but assaulting someone on their own property is risky at best).
I stare at my screen for a good, long pause, worrying at my lip as her typing pop-up ceases. It’s hard to not leap at opportunities I really wish to take--to just hold my dignity to somewhat of a respectable point.
But Snow crashes any barriers of my real rigidity.
He has for well over a few years now--ever since we were introduced digitally.
I’ve found myself watching his videos, over and over again, and trying to imagine how we’d play about. I like to wonder whatever happened to that pretty girlfriend of his (I’m aware they broke up, but he’s certainly too private to share the rest).
It’s been years since I first heard about Snow, and since then, I can’t quite get him off my mind.
It’s quite dizzying, trying to get Snow off my thoughts. I try to occupy--I try to fulfill. I try to find my way through life without some dull half-rivalry, full-teasing he and I share through out linked lives, but it’s like a drug. Draws me in, making me wish I had more of a good thing while trying to ignore that the good thing isn’t quite good for me, but rather simply a shocking want, prickling under my skin and bringing me back for more.
In all the things I do to occupy myself--to occupy the life I’ve been trying to lead (without success)--Snow’s been my favorite distraction. And I might just have to break through this and meet him, for once.
baz.pitch: Give me a time and a place and I’ll fit you into my schedule
#carry on#snowbaz#fanfiction#fanfic#fic#mine#YouTube au#we are far too young and clever#simon snow#tyrannus basilton grimm-pitch#tyrannus basilton grimm pitch#baz pitch#simon#baz
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