#feeling like there's such a hard expiration date stamped on them | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dastardlydandelion · 3 years

Note

Please post the sickfic prompt turned corpse disposal. 😂

sure! that one’s p bloodless, i can post that one.

ao3 link

content warnings: implied/referenced child abuse, implied/referenced spousal abuse, minimally described fresh dead body, illness description

Billy isn’t sick.

Billy doesn’t get sick. He really doesn’t. Hasn’t had so much as a cold in years, albeit he’s claimed one as cover here and there whenever coke overuse made him maybe sorta sniffly and Neil started to eye him up like he might be suspicious.

Billy isn’t sick.

If he’s feeling achy, well, he’s just sore because Neil laid the belt on him pretty hard two days ago after he got sent home from school midday Monday, written up and suspended. If he’s coughing, well, it’s just because he’s been smoking more than usual. Neil’s been stressed out lately, so that means Billy’s stressed out too.

“No,” his father says sharply when Billy takes a seat at the breakfast table.

And Billy blinks at him, confused but careful.

“You’re not going to sit with us and cough all over the food like a human biohazard. I raised you to show more courtesy than that.” Neil gives him a stern look. “Go back to bed.”

“I’m not even—“

“Go back to bed, Billy.”

Billy hears the warning heighten in his father’s tone. He doesn’t argue. He hauls himself back to his bedroom and it’s whatever. He wasn’t really hungry anyway.

* * *

Okay, so Billy is sick.

He got himself suspended because he felt something coming on. He knows his body. He was feeling off kilter and sluggish, uncomfortable in the chest when he inhaled too deeply. So he put his boots on the desk in history class and flipped the teacher the bird when she asked him to sit properly. Even went the extra mile and sneered, told her to blow him when her jaw hit the floor.

He figured it’d buy him enough time to recover without having to call in sick, or get in trouble for skipping class. A suspension was one indiscretion and only likely to invoke one punishment. Skipping multiple days would’ve been multiple indiscretions and more likely to invoke multiple punishments.

In retrospect he should’ve just called in sick because the whole point of avoiding that route was avoiding having to admit it, but he can’t really hide it. Whatever he’s got came on hard and fast, doubled-down by Monday evening. It hasn’t gotten any better. Billy feels bad all over, the cough is near constant, and he’s shaking with chills. Puts his leather jacket on before he buries himself under the blankets and still can’t get warm.

And the coughing, ugh, the fucking coughing. Billy knows he’s being loud. He tries to hold it in but he just can’t. Spasm after spasm squeezes his lungs until they’re aching for air. His chest feels like it’s full of swamp muck and all he can do is ride it out, clutch at his ribs until he makes it to the oxygen on the other side.

Billy should get up. He should make himself get off his ass, go buy some cough drops or at least refill his glass of water. He’s going to make it happen. He’s definitely going to make it happen…just maybe not yet.

He never really gets around to it. Spends most of the afternoon slogging through coughs and trying to get comfortable even though it doesn’t really matter which way he tosses or turns, he’s still cold to the bone, chest stabbing with every burdened breath. The day drags and Billy catches snippets of the other members of the household moving about, knows it’s evening when Neil sticks his head in.

“I dug this out of the cabinet for you,” he announces, holding up a blue container. “Vapor rub. It’ll calm your cough down. Help you sleep.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

His father pads across the carpet, sets the container down on Billy’s nightstand, right within reach. He hovers uncertainly, eyes narrowed. Opens his mouth to say something and maybe he does, but Billy doesn’t catch it, snapping upright to bury another flurry of coughs into his closed fist. It’s a forceful fit and before he knows it, his father’s thumping him on the back. He’s probably trying to help but the heel of his hand connects with one of the bruises the belt buckle left and Billy can’t stop himself before he flinches.

Neil retracts his hand, leaves without another word. Billy rakes in breath at the coda of the coughs, air scraping against his roughshod throat. He goes as deep as he can even though it hurts, snatches the container of vapor rub.

Billy begins to unscrew the lid and notices some of the ointment is crusted under the lid. It flakes off. This stuff looks old. Billy checks the date on the label. Sure enough, it’s been expired for close to a year.

He throws it across the room in frustration, watches it bounce off the wall. Lies back down and pulls the covers up to his chin.

At some point Neil bangs on his door and demands he cut out the racket, probably thinking Billy rebuffed his generosity. Billy’s too exhausted to bother explaining the shit’s expired. Instead he turns his face into the pillow and smothers his fits into the fabric, hoping it muffles the sounds.

* * *

Sometime later Thursday morning, Susan knocks on his door. Billy contemplates pretending to be asleep. Really, he wishes he was. He’s feeling pretty rundown but he can’t seem to get more than a wink before he wakes up coughing.

But if he doesn’t answer it now, she’ll probably just bother him later. So Billy plods to the door and pulls it open.

“What?”

“Um,” Susan begins eloquently, blinking at him as she fiddles with the thin object in her hands. A thermometer.

“Neil tell you to do this?”

“N-No, but, uh. It’s probably a good idea to check your temperature. No offense, Billy, but you don’t sound so good and you’re awfully flush…”

“If I cared, I’d check myself,” he snorts irritably. “Try to stick that under my tongue and I’ll break it in half. Save your mother hen shit for Max.”

With that, he slams the door in her face. They’ve no love for each other. On infrequent occasions Susan will forget this and make some half-assed attempt to get closer to him. Billy’s always quick to remind her where they stand. It doesn’t take much.

Afternoon rolls around without Susan bugging him anymore. Billy isn’t a big reader but he doesn’t feel up to much else between increasingly productive coughing bouts that leave him hacking up gross, greenish globs into his small wire mesh trashcan. So he flips through some music magazines and the book he’s supposed to read for english class until he gathers enough energy to kick himself into gear.

He didn’t bother changing out of his clothes yesterday so he doesn’t need to change now. Just sprays himself with some cologne, figures he probably smells because he’s sweating nonstop. Discomforting drenching cold sweats like getting caught outside in icy rains, an experience Billy was blissfully unfamiliar with until Neil decided to leave sunny California behind.

He browses the small medical selection at Melvald’s, grabs a couple bags of cherry flavored lozenges and a bottle of cough syrup. Covers a couple fits with the crook of his elbow on the way to the counter. He swallows the gunk that comes up because there’s nowhere to spit it into and scrunches his nose in disgust, feels like freaking slime sliding down his throat.

It’s the town cuckoo who rings him up. Or that’s her reputation anyway but she doesn’t seem particularly nutty to Billy. Hell, seems less weird than Susan does when she’s doing shit like talking to the spiders she takes outside.

“Time to go, Little Creepy Crawly,” she’d singsonged last week, shaking a daddy longlegs out of her tissue on the front porch. “Go be free.”

“You need fucking friends,” Billy had told her after the fact. Sound advice, he’d thought. Susan only ducked her head and disappeared into the next room.

Town Cuckoo gives the amount. Billy digs through his wallet and comes up two dollars short. Ugh. Fucking brandname linctuses. Shit’s a ripoff but there was no generic equivalent on the shelf.

She tells Billy it’s on the house, forehead crinkling just a bit as she studies him, eyes all melty with sympathy. Screw that shit. Billy isn’t anybody’s charity case. He gives her a pointed glower as he stamps a five down on the counter, takes the two bags of lozenges, and leaves.

He eats through half of the first bag until his throat tingles with menthol and artificial sweetness, and actually manages to sleep for a few solid hours. He knows it’s been hours because when he wakes himself coughing, it’s dark out. Nighttime.

Billy curls inward with the spasms, tries to catch his breath between stabbing pains. This sucks so much. He’s hacking up more gunk. Attempts to rub some of the discomfort from his heavy, congestion leaden chest to no avail.

He just keeps coughing and coughing and he knows before long, Neil’s going to get in his shit about the noise so he forces himself to throw off the covers. His bruises are still healing. He doesn’t need any more.

Billy crams his feet in his boots and drags himself down the hall. To his surprise, Susan’s sitting at the kitchen table. She’s crying. The sobs wrack her whole body the way the coughs wrack his and her cheeks are blotched cherry red just like his lozenges, tear tracks shining under the kitchen light. It throws him, really. He’s lived with Susan for years and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her cry. She just. Doesn’t show much emotion at all, let alone displays like this.

Billy watches it the way he’d watch a car crash. Susan doesn’t even notice him until he’s coughing again. He curls his fist around his mouth, muffles them as best he can. Fumbles for his car keys when he’s made it through to the other side.

“Where could you possibly be going?” Susan asks, her voice thick, like there’s a bubble in her throat.

Maybe Neil hit her. Billy’s seen it so he knows it happens sometimes even though he’s pretty sure it’s not often. Not like how Neil hits him. Or hit his own mother. Susan is probably Neil’s favorite, obedient like a well trained dressage horse following all of his cues. Isn’t anything like his own mom who defied Neil like a wild mustang he couldn’t tame, who went braless and smoked hash with the hippies, screamed her lungs out at Neil in furious harpy volumes and called him names no matter how mad it made him. Who did her best to give back as good as she got even outmatched, even if it made him madder, throwing things or fists or swinging Billy’s Little League bat.

Susan is submissively behaved and tepid tempered, always wears her bra under the clothes Neil buys her in the fashions he prefers her in. Susan speaks softly and sweetly, never stays out unscheduled and doesn’t smoke anything at all, always smells like floral perfumes and lotions, never ever, ever like cigarettes or marijuana or other men’s cologne. When Neil hits Susan she goes slack and sloth and silent, and does not lift a finger to fight. It is the only thing she and Billy have in common.

“Nowhere,” he answers. “Gonna sleep in the car before Neil gets on me about making noise.”

“Billy, it’s too cold for that…besides, Neil isn’t going to wake up yet.”

“How do you know?”

What, does Susan think she’s a fucking fortune teller now?

Sure enough, she doesn’t have a straight answer for him. She stumbles over syllables that don’t shape into sentences and the last thing Billy feels like doing is indulging her.

“Pfft. That’s what I thought. By the way, you’re ugly when you cry.” Billy glares at her until she turns away, timid, bowing her head. He heads out to the Camaro, gets in the driver’s seat and pulls it back.

Yeah, it’s cold out but he can’t get warm inside under the blankets anyway. Neil’s already in a bad mood. He’d only barked about the racket last night but his father’s bite is worse than his bark and Billy knows better than to expect a second warning.

* * *

Friday morning, the frosty air scrapes Billy’s throat raw and makes him cough so, so hard. He’s beyond done with this shit, fuck everything. He takes shallow breaths to avoid the pangs of going too deep. The coughing still brings up gunk he spits out and he can feel the congestion crackling in his chest like thick, goopy molasses drowning his lungs, sticking between every rung of his ribcage.

It’s actually. Kind of. Beginning to concern him.

Is being sick normally like this?

Billy hasn’t been sick in so long, he seriously doesn’t know. But it’s been days and he’s not feeling any better. He feels worse. He really does. Breathing has become a grueling travail. Even to his own ears, his exhales sound wet and ratty. The coughing was a nuisance when it first came on but now it’s just downright exhausting.

But.

Well. He’s gotta be okay. He’s too young to be like, seriously sick. It’s probably just one of those things where it’s going to get worse before it gets better. A lot of things are like that, right?

Everything gets worse before it gets better. He’s fine. He’s definitely fine.

Billy goes inside. Everyone’s at the breakfast table and he doesn’t take a seat because he’s a biohazard and Neil already looks dour. Susan’s pouring him coffee. Max nibbles at a piece of toast. She has a cut on her cheek that wasn’t there when Billy saw her yesterday. Doesn’t look bad, just a simple scratch stretched under her eye, but when he peers closer is that…is that a bruise?

Yes. It’s pretty small. Faint. He would’ve missed it entirely if the thin red thread of her cut wasn’t so stark against Max’s pasty skin.

He’s smart enough not to ask in front of Neil. He doesn’t say anything. Gets the juice from the fridge and pours himself a glass. He’s two sips in before he has to set it aside, covering his mouth as another fit takes hold.

Neil is glaring when he makes it through. Right. Don’t cough around the food. Billy isn’t even sitting with them but whatever. He’s not gonna poke the bear. Heads off to Max’s room and waits.

Eventually she comes in to get her backpack, frowning at his presence. “What’re you doing in here?”

“What happened to your face?”

“Geez, Billy, you sound terrible.” Her nose crinkles.

“I asked you a question, Max.” Billy impatiently twirls his finger, slightly annoyed. He already knows he sounds bad, doesn’t need to be reminded.

Max turns away from him with a shrug, starts stuffing her textbooks into the bag. “I fell on the pond yesterday when I was playing with my friends. Where I fell…the ice wasn’t smooth. It was rough and it scratched.”

Billy narrows his eyes and measures her up. It isn’t a particularly unlikely story. But he wants to be sure.

“You’d tell me if it was Neil, right?”

“…of course I’d tell you if it Neil.” Max looks up from messing with her stuff and faces him with clear resolution in her gaze. “Neil hits you all the time so if he hit me, you’d be the first person I’d tell.”

Billy keeps his eyes on her as he goes over what she said. She doesn’t look like she’s lying. She doesn’t sound like she’s lying. Besides, Neil’s striking hand probably would’ve left a bigger bruise and he can’t place anything on it that would’ve scratched her skin like that. Neil’s fingernails are short and blunt, smoother than Billy’s, which get jagged when he bites. He doesn’t wear rings beyond his wedding band, and his is smooth silver, no shiny rock cut in the middle like Susan’s.

“Alright,” he concedes, turns to leave.

The coughing fit hits heavy, like a wrecking ball to the chest. Billy hangs onto the doorframe with one hand, covers his mouth with the other. It’ll pass. It’ll pass. It’ll pass.

Christ, he’s sick of being sick.

It passes. Billy keeps his grip on the doorframe as he works on drawing in air.

“You okay?” Max asks from behind.

And he can’t actually answer that just yet, still catching his breath.

“You sound really gross, like you’re literally dying.”

“I’m not…I’m fine…even run you to school, if you want.” Billy relaxes his grip on the doorframe and turns back to her.

“Oh.” Max perks up at that, eyes bright. “Yeah, can you?”

She lowers her voice as she adds, “I’m mad at my mom. I don’t really wanna ride with her.”

Billy doesn’t ask what for. It’s probably something stupid. Susan getting after her for not zipping up her coat or touching yellow snow or some other dumb shit. He’s too tired to care, really.

“Sure I can, s’what I just said, isn’t it? Finish getting your stuff together, bus leaves in five.”

* * *

Billy does’t go home for a long time. After dropping Max off, he just sits in the parking lot for awhile, rests his head against the steering wheel while the heat blasts from the vents. He’s got it all the way up and he’s so sweaty his hair’s plastered to the back of his neck, but he’s still freaking cold.

He doesn’t know what he did to deserve this.

Or.

Okay, maybe he does.

Eventually he pulls out of the parking lot, drives around listening to music just to be doing something. Winds up in another lot, an empty lot, where the rumor is they’re going to build a mall next year. Billy hopes so. Hawkins is mind-numbingly boring. Sometimes he just wants to scream about it, set fire to the fucking cornfields and scream at the top of his lungs.

His lungs aren’t really up to screaming right now though. Neither is his throat, really, tender from coughing spasm after coughing spasm tearing it up. Billy doesn’t know if he’s even been this sick.

He’s even considering bringing it up to his dad, maybe even. Asking Dad for help. And that.

That means he’s either desperate or delirious, and neither is a particularly reassuring thought.

Fuck.

Billy despises the fact it even crossed his mind. He can’t go to Neil. He won’t. That’s stupid. Neil would probably just dig him out some more expired vapor rub. Definitely wouldn’t take him to a doctor, at least not until the bruises heal. Maybe he’d compromise and get him the cough syrup Billy didn’t have enough cash for…

Between musings, Billy finds himself squeezed in another fit that pummels his chest like invisible fists. It’s so bad he’s left battling for just a breath of air, so forceful for one very scary second he’s even worried he won’t get it. That the coughing will go on and on, and he’ll never take another breath again. That they’ll find his body right here in the empty lot where maybe the mall will be one day.

Except the coughing eventually does subside and Billy does manage to get some air. But the fit spooks him a little. Takes enough out of Billy that he decides he’s probably going to have to go to Neil. Shit.

He puts it off as long as he can. Doesn’t even go home until he knows everyone is done with dinner. To his surprise, Neil isn’t watching tv. Billy heads down the hall. The light is on under Max’s door. The light is on under the master bedroom door too. Billy hesitates before knocking.

Does he really need to go to Neil?

Maybe he was exaggerating when he was worried earlier. Billy’s hand retracts from the door. It's promptly clamped around his mouth for what must be the hundredth time. He’s hacking hard into his palm, chest throbbing.

He doesn’t actually mean to open the door. But he grabs the knob for support and jerks when the metal is shockingly cold under his fingers. The next thing Billy knows, he’s stumbling over the threshold.

Susan whips toward him, eyes as wide as dinner plates and mouth frozen open in horror. At first Billy thinks it’s him. She’s so disgusted she’s horrified by him and his biohazard germs and any second Neil’s going to pick his head up from the bed and bark at Billy for intruding without so much as a knock, and then—

Then his eyes fall to the long bloodied baiting needle in Susan’s suddenly trembling hands.

“S-Self d-defense,” she quavers, backing away, that needle outward in her shaky, shaky hands almost like she thinks Billy’s going to advance on her. “It was s-self defense, B-Billy, I had to.”

Because Neil’s still motionless, facedown on the bed even though his son’s still coughing, making a racket and expelling biohazard bacteria in his very bedroom. He’s still coughing, fuck, his eyes are watering, but they aren’t so watery he can’t see what’s right in front of him. Billy plants a hand down against the dresser and tries to breathe.

“Self defense,” he rasps at the end of the fit, blinking at the acupuncture kit open inches away from his hand on the dresser.

“S-Slightly preemptive self defense,” Susan amends, swallowing. “Make no m-mistake, I had to. I had to, he— he was right on the verge of a b-blowup. You know your father, Billy.”

That is true. Billy knows his father well. He doesn’t speak to Susan as he shuffles up to the bed. Gulps down some of the gunk in his throat, grazes his father’s cheek with his fingertips. There’s blood welled up in a hole at the base of his skull but he’s warm, kinda, so maybe Susan didn’t kill him after all. He moves his fingers to feel for a pulse.

It isn’t there. Neil’s dead? Neil’s really dead?

“Dad?” he tries. It comes out a hoarse squeak. He clears his throat and tries again. “Dad? Dad, c’mon.”

Billy jostles his father’s shoulder. It yields no response. The bare skin is still warm, deceptively so. There’s not so much as a flicker of life beneath it.

“Holy shit,” Billy gasps.

Susan presses back against the wall, eyes still very wide, clutching that baiting needle so tight her knuckles are blanched. Her hands shake and shake.

“What are you going to do?” she asks in a whisper.

“What am I going to go?” Billy echoes. “I— I don’t know! What are you going to do? Call the cops?”

Because even if her self defense was preemptive, to use her description, maybe it’d still fly. Billy has bruises. Maybe Susan has some too hidden under that deep cranberry dress.

“Cops?” Susan’s mouth tightens as her head gives a firm shake. “Of course not. Don’t you know what police are like? Your father would’ve fit right in.”

Billy considers this as he coughs, stuffing them into the sleeve of his leather jacket. He can’t say his own experience with the law has ever been positive. And Neil was a security guard. What’s a security guard if not a wannabe cop?

“You planned this,” Billy heaves out when he’s done coughing.

“I’m….I mean, y-yes, but I—“

“What was your plan?” Billy interrupts. “Where were you going to go from here?”

“I didn’t expect you to show up,” Susan says, soft and frowning.

“I live here,” Billy points out and he laughs. Strange, strained laughter peals out of him until it triggers another bout of coughing because. What. The. Actual. Fuck.

“Oh, Billy…do you want some water? Maybe you should sit down.”

“Where?” he rasps between coughs. “Next to my dead dad?!”

“Keep your voice down,” Susan urges, waving the needle like a conductor’s baton. “Max is still awake.”

Billy wipes the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. Stares at Susan as he does his best to take even breaths.

“You’re wheezing.”

“You’re deflecting,” he fires back. “What are you going to do?”

“Um, uh…chop him up,” Susan admits quietly. “I’d p-planned to chop him up.”

“That’ll make a mess,” Billy blurts out, blunt.

“Messy, yes, but it’s the easiest way. I can’t exactly carry him.”

Billy touches the small of Neil’s bare back, skims his fingertips between hair thin acupuncture needles. He probes at the small of his own back, winces when dull pain pulses through the bruise. His throat is thick with something other than phlegm and his heart is racing rabbity fast. In this moment, Billy makes a decision.

“Not by yourself.”

Susan gapes.

“Where we taking him?” Billy asks.

“I…I honestly didn’t have an exact location mind, but farther away. Not here in Hawkins, the town is too small.” Susan swallows again and tugs at her sleeve. “I planned to bag his parts in pieces and drive a few hours out and spend the night disposing of the bags in different areas.”

That makes sense, he thinks.

“Sometimes I go to this gay bar about two hours away. Pretty big dumpster in the back.”

Billy tries to hit it at least once a month, if he can save up enough of his allowance for gas. Sometimes he collects enough chump change from idiots at school who forget to close their lockers, and isn’t above duping people outta their dough by turning on the charm, either. His interest in girls isn’t exclusive, he finds a helluva lotta guys interesting too. It’s just nice to get out of fucking Nowheresville even on the nights he doesn’t end up fooling around with anybody.

Susan looks absolutely bewildered.

“Gay bar,” he repeats slowly. “You know. Pride pub, homo hub?”

“I know what a gay bar is, Billy. Why on earth are you going to one?”

“Gee, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m secretly a drag queen bingo champion,” Billy scoffs in annoyance and it turns into a cough. The one sets off a fit.

“Billy, um…I don’t, um. I’m not judging your preference in partners or your private life, but you’re too young to be going to the bar. Any bar. It’s not legal, you’re a teenager.”

Jesus, he can hardly breathe. He feels like he’s going to fall over. Maybe he actually should’ve sat down next to his dead dad.

“Oh dear. I’m— I’m going to get you some water.”

Billy doesn’t fall over. He has good stamina. He’s hard to knock over, prides himself on that fact. He makes it through the fit upright. His chest is sore from the stabbing and he’s a little dizzy, perhaps from fatigue or breathlessness, but he’s steadfast.

Billy accepts the glass Susan holds out to him upon her return. Her fingers feel like icicles as they brush his and he suppresses a shiver. Takes slow sips and finds a little relief. Eventually sets the glass down on the dresser when he’s done.

“Technically, it’s not me who goes to the bar. You’re right, I’m not twenty-one yet. But Jason Scott on the other hand, well, he’s twenty-five.” Billy fishes his wallet out and frees his fake ID from its fold. “Looks pretty legit, right?”

Susan silently studies the piece of plastic and worries her lip between her teeth.

“But we don’t actually have to go into the bar to put my dad’s body in the dumpster anyway. I mean, going inside would really be a pretty bad idea…”

“Indeed it would, but I’m glad you showed this to me. It wouldn’t be smart to put Neil anywhere you or I associate with at all. But if you’re not actually associated, it’s an option.”

“It’d take less time than the way you were gonna go about it. Cleaner too.”

Susan nods her agreement. “However, I still might…mm, Billy. I’m not sure if you’re going to like this. But in order to prevent him from being identified, I think I’m going to chop off his head…and his hands. Well, perhaps those I’ll just burn with the clothes iron, um. Either way, his fingerprints need to be destroyed.”

Billy’s gut lurches as he soaks it in. It sounds logical. He can’t deny that, but something about the idea of his dad’s decapitation doesn’t sit. Kinda gives him the heebie-jeebies. And that’s weird. That’s really weird because he’s okay with everything else.

Well.

Okay, maybe he’s not okay with it, but. He understands it. It’s Neil. Of course he understands the bruises she may or may not be hiding, the fear in her heart regardless.

“Do you have to chop his head off? Can’t you just smash his face in?”

“I considered that,” Susan says, nodding again. “Those cast iron lion bookends on the shelf are nine pounds each. I weighed them this morning.”

Billy likes the sound of that better. Neil is going to be dead and disfigured either way. He’s not sure why it makes a difference. Maybe it doesn’t, really. He thinks he might have a fever. Maybe the fever’s just getting to him, making him a little loopy and pulling his thoughts in less than rational directions.

“I could do that part,” he offers. It’d probably take him less time to bash Neil’s face in than it’d take Susan. He has more physical prowess, after all, more power to put behind the blows.

“Are you up for that?” she asks, eyeing him skeptically.

“Yes,” he snaps, somewhat defensive. He’s sick but he’s not helpless.

Billy’s claim isn’t undermined by the brief bout of coughing that overtakes him. He halts the reflex to clutch his ribs. Not now, not in front of her. Especially not with what they have to do.

“There’s two bookends,” Susan points out, seems a little nervous as she watches him cough. “We could take turns.”

With that, she disappears from view. Billy hacks some more gross globs into his hand and for convenience’s sake, just wipes it off on his jeans. When Susan comes back, she has one of those big black contractor trash bags. Spreads it out on the bed beside Neil’s form.

They roll him together and Billy doesn’t know what to make of what he feels when he actually sees his father’s face, features devoid and dead. Very, very dead. Tears do not sting his eyes. They just well up watery because he’s coughing again, battling for breath again, so, so wrung and exhausted, lungs like sodden sponges sopped with sputum.

Then he’s holding the bookend, cast iron artistically sculpted, the maned king of the jungle bearing his teeth in a roar. Billy looks at his father’s dead face and hesitates for only a heartbeat. When he brings the heavy object down, he puts all the force he can muster behind it and it makes an utterly atrocious noise Billy will never forget, but—

Some part of him has always wanted to do this. For that part of him, it is the only thing he’s ever truly wanted. And when Susan takes her turn Billy watches her face and realizes, oh, going slack and sloth and silent with the taste of Neil Hargrove’s hand isn’t the only thing they share at all.

* * *

They wait until late to don gloves and roll Neil up in the shower liner. They stuff him in the bed of his own truck for transport. Billy takes the torso end because it’s heavier, Susan hefts him under the legs. Billy drives because he knows the way even though it’s the last thing he feels like doing.

It goes mostly okay. He only has a paroxysm bad enough to make him pull over once.

Susan reaches across the seats and rubs his shoulder. Billy’s too busy getting his breath to shrug her off.

“I’m sure you’re not going to love this idea, but I think it’s time to see a doctor. This could be bronchitis, Billy, or even pneumonia.”

“Pneumonia isn’t real,” Billy grouses tiredly. “It’s like the boogeyman. Just some story old people made up so their grandkids wouldn’t play in the rain and track mud all over the house.”

“Uh…um.” She blinks owlishly, forehead creasing. “No, that’s not quite accurate…”

“I’m screwing with you, Susan.” Because that’s easier than conceding to her.

It would’ve been one thing with Neil. As fucked up as things were, Neil was his dad. Neil was supposed to take care of him.

But Susan. Susan is different. Susan is mostly Max’s weird mom who displays about as much emotion as a mannequin whenever she isn’t (wasn’t) dancing on Neil’s puppet strings or talking to the spiders as she shakes them free from soft tissues. Albeit tonight is a game changer. They’re very literally partners in crime now.

“We could even go to the ER after this,” she suggests uncertainly, wary edge to her tone.

“That’s for emergencies. I can wait.”

“If you’re sure.” Susan hums in her throat and draws her hand away.

They have good timing. The bar’s been closed for almost an hour by the time they get there and all the cars have cleared out. Billy backs up to the dumpster so he and Susan can stand on the bed and lift Neil in that way, rather than having to drag his deadweight out and struggle to raise his cumbersome bulk up over the side.

He doesn’t want to be out here any longer than he has to. Whole thing gives him the heebie-jeebies. He feels like a cop is about to pull up any second now and frankly, it’s cold as fuck. He’s cold as fuck.

Not as cold as the unearthly chill that seems to pierce through the plastic liner when Billy lifts his father’s trunk for the second time tonight.

“Do you feel that?” he irresistibly asks Susan, watching her adjust her grip on Neil’s legs and searching her face for the eeriness he’s feeling.

“Feel what?” Susan asks, frowning.

Death itself? Billy doesn’t know.

“Nothing, it’s…just cold, I guess.”

“Oh, Billy, I think you have the chills.”

And he knows he does but it’s not the same thing. He doesn’t comment any more on it. Together they get Neil up on the metal rim of the open dumpster, push him over. Garbage crunches and crinkles beneath his deadweight. Billy feels another coughing fit coming on and manages to suppress it until he gets back inside the truck.

“Do you want me to drive home?” Susan asks.

“No. I know the way better, it’s easier if I do it.”

“You could, um. I mean, you could direct me if I get a little turned around. You’re looking pretty tuckered out.” It’s dark but Billy can hear the frown in her voice.

“Alright,” he sighs out. “Fine.”

Because she’s not wrong. He’s drained at this point. Shoving his dad’s body in the dumpster spent the last store of energy he had. He and Susan swap places. She doesn’t have much trouble once she actually gets back on the main road.

“Thank you,” she murmurs eventually. “If I had to do this myself, I’d still be in the middle of it.”

“Yeah…sure thing, I guess.” She killed his dad. No big deal. Billy blinks, isn’t sure what else to say.

“…so, um…you like the fellas, huh?” she asks, voice light and not a bit unkind.

“Uh-huh." He shrugs. "Guys, girls, I mean, I'm not that picky. A hole’s a hole, a mouth’s a mouth, fingers are fingers.”

Susan chokes on a scandalized gasp and Billy gets a chuckle out of it, even as it turns into a cough.

“That’s, uh. T-That’s certainly crude.”

And it’s funny really, that Susan seems more creeped out by a boorish comment than she did by holding his dead dad’s corpse legs.

By the time they get home, Billy’s so beyond spent he knows he can’t even make it to his room. Doesn’t bother to try. Collapses on the couch cushions without attempting to take his boots off. Smothers what has to be the goddamn millionth round of coughs into the throw pillow.

When he picks his head up, Susan’s standing there, fiddling with the thermometer again, fretful expression on her features. Oh, fuck it. Fine. Billy bites the bullet and takes it from her, begrudgingly jamming the thing under his tongue.

#billy hargrove #susan hargrove #neil hargrove #my fic tag #anonymoose #can't get enough of these two as a murder duo

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gynoidwren · 5 years

Text

Every girl like me I know feels like she was born with an expiration date, like there's a number stamped on her forehead that says "26 years old" that says "six months after the money runs out" that says "when you can't do this anymore" that says "as soon as you work up the courage," and I'm one of the lucky ones, because that scares me, Sometimes I think I have an immigrant's patriotism for this world, because it took me 20 years to decide that I wanted to live in it. Maybe that's what hope is.

But I don't know how to say that the greatest poet I know and her girlfriend, who looks so like me she nearly made my mom faint when she opened the door, are probably not going to last another year. So everybody told me to vote for Bernie Sanders. It's not enough.

Now people are saying this might be the end times, but I want to remind them that we have already been living in them, for as long as I can remember, and I don't know why it's so hard to keep in contact with someone I don't see, to reach out across that burden of distance with the uncertain arms of exhaustion, but I know why it's hard to reassure somebody, when all you can say is "I'm scared, too." How much money do you give somebody, when money is the thing you don't have? For time, same question.

A trans woman I had never met came into my shop one day and pointed me out to her friend, she said "you are my sister," and I said "yes, I am." So when I saw one of my sisters out on the street with a slice of cardboard, I brought her a bottle of water and all the cash I had in my wallet, because afterward I couldn't stop crying for six hours, and I don't think anybody asked me why.

Maybe this is why there are so few things that feel important to me anymore. I said "the only things people like me make are cries for help" and I got 128 reblogs. Apparently, some people find that relatable.

A lot of people have told me that I'm the most optimistic person they know, and I don't tell them that I have to be, I take it as a compliment.

The thing they don't tell you about hope is that it's cyclical, it needs to be refreshed every single day, Hope is just like every other kind of work you do on your body. So what does a story mean, to that? What can a poem mean, to that? I abhor maintenance. I don't want to have to say anything anymore, I want to walk to the place where all my words are done, And build a home there. It's not enough. All your pleas and all your promises, your fights and feats and failures, are not and never will be enough. Not for us. This world was not made for us.

So let's build a better one. Let's start right here, right now, just us, not with a kiss or a fist but just you and me pledging to not let go no matter what comes, deciding even when the love is gone that we're not gonna let each other drown anymore. So I want to offer my hand, to every girl like me who needs it, and walk with you into a place beyond these empires, a place that doesn't exist yet. And that, I hope, is enough. Because that's...everything.

#writings #girls like us #poetry #transgender

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zafaria · 4 years

Text

Mythopoeia

She told them her school.

They had said “That’s fine, we guess, but be careful what you do there.”

They had said “We really trusted you would be a thaumaturge. We’d have even been okay if you were a pyromancer, like your uncle; or maybe a diviner... you have creative energy.”

They had said “Is it too late to change?”

Was it too late to change?

Was there an expiry date on learning? No, maybe not. She’d stick with it though, the test was adamant to her, it almost seemed to threaten what would happen (or, worse, what wouldn’t) if she didn’t submit to being a conjurer.

A tricky thing.

It was all fine and well those first few years at the school. Kind of boring, actually. Cyrus was a very mean professor, and she was a meek and restless child. So, maybe her disposition wasn’t great for Myth. She was flighty and subdued, not grand, not like a legend. She did daydream a lot, in a lost, wistful way, but the haze of it all made her think maybe she would’ve been better off curled behind the desk in the back of the Storm classroom. At least, maybe, Balestrom wouldn’t yell at her for it. Maybe he wouldn’t even say anything.

She did like her preliminary classes in the Fire school. She liked the flame and the heat, but she was absolutely miserable at casting, at focusing her attention and getting things to stay and materialize with enough magnitude to be meaningful. She’d have switched over to Fire, but she dreaded the idea of starting all the way from the bottom of the ladder, years and years and years behind, trying to overcome what appeared to be just an innate lack of a knack for it.

So, in the Myth class, she found her spot. Not quite at the bottom of the ladder, but low enough on it. Good enough in ability to pass, bad enough in her behavior to warrant lots of public ridicule in front of her classmates. Cyrus seemed to think that by calling on students, bad students, in front of everyone, he had embarrassed them or taught them a lesson or something, but the reality was that none of the other students really cared. There was no bullying or rumors or harassment for being called on, just a glance of well-meaning but undesirable pity after class. They all got it. They had all been the kids sitting disengaged at the back of the classroom once.

Her parents would write her once every week or so.

“How are you doing?” “Fine.” Occasionally, she’d add in one episode of her trip to the Shopping District and what she bought.

“What are you learning now?” “I’ve been stuck in the Library for three days writing essays.”

“Have you made any friends yet?” “I have a lot of friends, but they are all in different schools so I don’t get to see them during the school days because our schedules are different.” Signed. Stuffed in an envelope. Wax dripped over the fold. Stamped. Sent.

Her signature took on a different look every time. The top loop of the “J” got larger and wider, more grand, the little loop at the bottom got finer, more dagger-thin. In a few days, the return letter would arrive.

“Be smart with your money. Do you have a part-time job where you’re earning?” and,

“Work hard.” and,

“Do you think you would like to switch schools so you can be with your friends?”.

She would sit on the letter and let it expire, waiting instead for her parents to send another one that reverted back to the usual questions.

And it went on, for a couple of years. And then, it changed. And then there was the noise, the loud rumbling from all around the City during one of the afternoons she had detention.

She wanted things to change so badly, and everyone was distracted, and she was just finally fed up with wasting her afternoons continuing to be forcefully immersed in a subject she couldn’t bring herself to care for. She ran down Unicorn Way towards the sound to see what was amuck; when the guards asked her to show her badge, like a pass, to show she wasn’t a novice and would be safe, dutiful, thoughtful, she palmed her sister’s old adept’s badge from her pocket. The guards looked at it quickly and waved her along, not noticing the mismatch of the Ice symbol on the badge and the yellows and blues of her robes.

So it spiralled from there. The dead were undead, and then they were dead again. Had she really done that? With Myth magic?

The cards and spells were so different in battle than the practice duels that Cyrus would take them to in the Arena and the few seconds of spellcasting she and her classmates would do in the classroom before Cyrus entered in the morning and told them all to hurry to their seats, sit straight, and prepare for lecture. They rarely got to attempt magic, and then they'd have practicals where their nerves got to them and the spells came out wonky.

But there, in the streets she had once only been able to try and stare down, it was all so real, so vibrant. The magic pulsated through her, like a second heartbeat.

She had that same kind of enamor with it all the way through the worlds. In Krokotopia, her magic never made her feel bad. In fact, it was the fire that made her feel bad; when she burned the Ahnic mummies. That left her feeling like her hands were always covered in soot, grimy, guilty. The soot stains on her soul never faded.

Then in Marleybone, there was just a hint of a shudder running around her bones, a shiver within the marrow, when she beheld the faces--or lack thereof--of the agony wraiths in Big Ben. Where had they come from? Did they miss those places, those tombs or graves or mausoleums? Were they even of Marleybone, or were they far from the grounds of their homes?

She didn’t try to think much of it when she went for the duel. She was too busy thinking of giants dislodging the bones with a club, long hollow femurs clattering to the wooden floor; an earthquake following and swallowing up the center of the clocktower. When she left, her lungs felt blackened from spending too long in the city breathing in the smog.

In Mooshu, it sank in the most. She would summon earthquakes in spirit realms and feel the little chunk of earth she was on rattle, the chasm opening up from nowhere. The friction between the worlds and shifting dirt underneath would normally propel the earthquakes, but in those disconnected little places, where the grounds were thin and hammered out flat like saucer-plates, she wondered where they stemmed from. The chasm and the shadows within it seemed to plunge deeper than the earth actually was.

The onis that stared into her seemed to be looking deeper than they actually were. Her mind sweltered. The whole of the place was confusing and demented. And she thought that maybe it rubbed off on her too. Everything felt out of reach.

Her parents wrote a letter.

“How are you?” “I am tired. I have been travelling a lot. I am doing an externship as a part of my schoolwork, for Headmaster Ambrose. It is very busy.”

“What are you studying?” “High-level Myth magic. I have learned some new spells, but they required that I go collect some things from different worlds, that’s why I’ve been visiting so many places.” She’d include one of her sketches she did of the yellow windows of Marleybone or the endless fields of Mooshu in the envelope. Her parents would’ve liked her to travel, as long as they knew it was purposeful and being done in structured way, a safe way.

“How are your friends?” She didn’t address the question, and instead sent her parents a pressed flower. Sealed. Stamped. Sent.

Then, before Dragonspyre, Cyrus pulled her aside after class. He said “Malistaire is my brother,” like she wouldn’t have maybe guessed from appearances. And then that he wanted to duel her, to see if she was competent enough to handle the war-ravaged world alone.

She desperately wanted to prove she had attained something, she had learned, she was good at this. She desperately wanted to come close in the duel, to be on the precipice of winning, but just barely lose, and to sob, put her head down, beg for help. She wanted to prove she could, and also that she couldn’t do it alone.

But the flow of battle, the rhythm of that second heartbeat in her dictated in a way all its own. It was powerful in that duel in a way it never had been. It was totally engulfing, pounding in her ears and vibrating against the veins in her wrists, and she won and she had to. If she didn’t, maybe her skin would crawl and split from the overbeat of the magic that was left unfulfilled.

Oh, and that feeling rose up once more when she faced Malistaire, when she could smell a metallic and humble aura of death and lava all across the top of the volcano in Dragonspyre. The same feeling, rushing over her, her hands floating in the air like she was only watching the spectacle and not acting in it, like her hands weren’t even hers. She was acutely aware of all she was doing, how fast her mind was moving, though. Her actions were all her own. At least, she thought, these few things I own wholly, no matter what, and they were not left to fate, nor the headmaster or the Book of Secrets, or ancient warring tribes, or an old tree’s prophecy, or her professor or her parents.

She wondered if she became overzealous at the thought. If it made her too fierce. Cyrus sat back somewhere, afraid to intervene, maybe knowing he couldn’t. Maybe he didn’t want to have his brother meet an unfortunate end at his hands, so he made his student do it for him.

Or maybe she wanted to show Cyrus her unflinching worth, and that training and practicing across the worlds and in the streets taught her something he never could, that he never thought would emerge in her: a dauntless courage to face cruelty, sometimes with cruelty in turn.

But, deep down, both knew that the most important factor of why Malistaire died, why he lost the duel and didn’t manage to stand to his feet again after, was because he was an incredibly ambitious man with a gravely weakened soul. His magic truly had split out of his skin, creating the aura that permeated around them, and infusing with the rituals to raise the Dragon Titan. And the human, non-magic parts of his soul were broken all across too. His wife was gone, truly gone. And his brother couldn’t face him, and he was beating on…a child. A hopeful, brave child who had the whole world in their eyes. And he just had nothing left in him at all.

Returning home after that was difficult for her. She walked out of the volcano and into a portal, with Cyrus’s hand pressed against her shoulder. He was guiding her toward the foggy vision of the Headmaster’s office, urging her forward but also holding her down to the ground. Under his palm, she wasn’t going to float away in a confused mire, and she also knew she couldn’t slink from under his palm into a ball on the ground and cry. She could only move forward. She knew he was telling her she had done well, she had done the right thing.

How was she going to explain to her parents that this is what her “externship” was about? That she wasn’t being a student, not at all; she was being a hero. And though a hero seemed much grander and fancier, it was very, very different from what she had prepared for. It was thoroughly taxing in the most unpredictable, inexplicable, extraordinary ways. There was no training for how to be a hero.

And after she was emotionally spent and wasted away in her room for a few days, she packed her things and went home.

“Sabbatical, dear.” That’s what Greyrose said to her. “When you’re old and wizened like me, you take one every so often to remember to slow down.”

“You need one,” said Balestrom. “Very badly, you do need one. You look tired.” She was tired, and confused, and no longer hungry when all her life she had loved food, and she felt dirty and greasy.

She turned in a letter to Cyrus, who just stared down his nose at her, then nodded. His mouth stayed pressed shut through the entire process. She almost cried. She could feel her teeth pressing into each other, and they were so tightened in her jaw they felt soft, like little marshmellows. She thought she could maybe tell that Cyrus’s jaw was also more levelled out, more squared, like he was also clenching his teeth.

She walked out very quickly.

She walked into her home very quickly. Her parents hugged her, her father gave her a kind of firm pat on the back that made her shake a little. Like he was welcoming someone he didn’t particularly like into his home. Maybe she overthought, but her mother’s laughter was all wrong too. It used to fill the room, like a joyous thing, but now it filled the room in a suffocating way.

“We laugh to show our teeth, to show they’re still there,” she remembered from the readings for one of her essays, where she spent her time in the library for a day.

They sat together at the dinner table, a plate of mashed potatoes with a loaf of bread and turkey casserole before each one of them. She picked at some of the things, then had her elbows on the table as she tore the bread into tiny pieces and began to chew them slowly, one-by-one, like a mouse.

“Are you okay, honey?” they asked. “Do you want to talk with us about something?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Oh. Okay. How are classes, by the way? Have you been doing well?”

“Yes. I actually, uh, I did some directed independent studies with Cyrus.”

“OH! Advancing so fast, are we? Are you the teacher’s pet, and that’s why you get to do higher-level work?”

“Uhm, kind of. I also just needed to do something different. For my learning. Sitting in the classroom all day wasn’t really working for me.”

“Oh, like a practical? You’ve been safe, haven’t you? Are you missing any classes?”

“No, I’m actually on a short break right now,” she said. The questions were sweltering.

“Listen, we received some post from Headmaster Ambrose, that you’d maybe have something you want to share with us? Maybe about the kinds of schoolwork you’ve been doing? That you’d have something to tell us?” The curtain was up. She stared blankly, with her mouth open, blinking a little.

“Well, yeah, I... uh, Ambrose had a special assignment for me, I guess. There was...Listen, it sounds mad, but you must’ve felt it, the disruptions, and all of the ash and stuff. Anyways, there was an unhinged necromancer trying to destroy the Spiral? So, Ambrose had me and a few other strong students help him out with getting rid of undead monsters on the streets.” Calling Malistaire “unhinged” felt wrong, like a spike was being driven across her mouth, through her cheeks. She added the bit about there being friends, thinking that maybe if other students had been a part of the picture, her parents would find it less dangerous.

“So he had students acting like dogs for him,” they said, sitting back in their chairs. Her mother crossed her arms. She could barely look to them, unable to balance one disapproving face and the other. “And Cyrus approved of this all and had this count as your study versus the schoolwork you should’ve been doing on-campus?”

“It wasn’t as bad as it seems.”

“You’ve went all over the Spiral, you could’ve been killed. And we are aware about the changes recently, from that necromancer. And we’re also aware that he was a Professor at Ravenwood once, a Professor Drake. Cyrus is a Drake too, yes?”

They sounded like they were accusing her, but she wasn’t sure of what. It wasn’t like it was up to her that Cyrus and Malistaire were brothers.

“So your professor had you meddling in his family affairs. Ambrose and Professor Drake had you engaging in some blood feud with Drake’s old family. That isn’t appropriate for a student,” her mother said, like she was going to try and create a case against the school and Ambrose. “You know, we didn’t like the idea of you being a conjurer,” she continued.

They all got into a yelling match over the schools, whether she was a disappointment, if she was cut out to continue on there. They blamed conjurery, endlessly. Always. Always, it was the fault of the Myth school and Myth magic.

Out of one of their mouths came “you killed someone,” or perhaps it was “I killed someone,” from her own mouth, owning it. Whoever said it, it greatly upset everyone at the table. Her parents talked to her, level again, and said “you can’t go back.” They would consider getting her an apprenticeship in something like bookkeeping or art.

“You could’ve listened to us. This wouldn’t have all happened if you had just studied under Professor Greyrose, like Katarin.”

Sitting at the table, she now could look her father in the eyes as he said those words. She was frowning, and crying furiously, a silent crying, and untempered one that showed no weakness, but instead infinite and defiant strength.

She had learned some things in Cyrus’s classes. Not magic, nor imagination. She had been ridiculed in front of her peers, she had known that her professor saw her as low and untrying. She learned an unending patience, and the grace to know when the fight was over.

“That’s fine,” she barely murmured. “That’s fine.” A tear dripped off her chin with the movement of her jaw as she spoke. She grabbed her plate off the table with both hands and walked it over to the sink, scraping the contents off in one motion, then walking to her old room.

She spent the night there, passed out after dinner with the door locked in a stupor that reminded her of what her past few years should’ve been like. And then, in the morning, she packed everything she cared for from that room, swiping things off the dressers and desk and putting them into every corner of her backpack until it was nearly splitting its seams and lumpy all around.

And then she left, waving goodbye to the silent dark house behind her as she opened the door. She knew that her parents were people so different from her and that, despite their words, they had sent letters every week, cared about whether she was lonely or not, invited her back home often though she didn’t visit every time she possibly could’ve. They didn’t understand. They might never have understood. And because they didn’t understand, they seemed to want to wash their hands of her, their restless, second, failed child. At least for the immediate future.

So she would let them. They acted like she might be a student of some promise, like her studies and advancements were making them proud. They let her throw out their follow-up letters and pretended like they never existed. She would let them pretend like she didn’t either.

But she understood. She would find them later, if they wanted to be found by her. They didn’t think she was doing things that a mere student should have been resigned to. She was a conjurer, roped into an unfortunate, yes, feud. And she had done one thing that was horrible, and many things that were wrong, and she would never rid herself of those things. She resolved to do the only thing that she could’ve done, and pressed onwards as a hero.

#w #j

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myaekingheart · 3 years

Text

112. Missing Identity

read the scarecrow and the bell on ao3 index | from the beginning | < previous | next >

Rei could barely keep her eyes open as she sat before a bookish clerk in the Konoha Social Affairs and Labor Office. She kept crossing and uncrossing her legs, pinching her inner elbow, chewing the inside of her cheek. Anything to keep herself from passing out. Kakashi reached over and took her hand in his, smiled politely, covering for her.

“And that just about sums it up!” the clerk, whose nametag read Gurio, grinned. Before him was a stack of papers nearly a foot tall. Rei swooned at the mere thought of reviewing them. Konoha never did make marriage licenses easy to get. No wonder so many ninja preferred to stay single. Gurio slid the papers across his desk towards them, adding, “I’ll just need you to fill these out and return them here by 5pm on Friday, and make sure you bring all the necessary forms of identification, as well.”

This man—who was, by the way, the absolute most basic looking human being Rei had ever seen—seemed far too chipper for something as mundane as paperwork. Rei wondered if that’s what happens when you’re trapped in an office all day, or maybe he was brainwashed or did meth before his shifts. There was no way he was naturally that upbeat and polite. Despite his grin, in his eyes, she could tell that he was dead inside.

Toshio licked at Rei’s fingers as she skimmed the paperwork that night at the kitchen table. He lapped up the chalky, cheesy residue left behind from her chips and for a moment, Rei was jealous that his biggest concern was when he would get table food next. The paperwork was daunting and the print was so tiny. She squinted at the next paragraph and shook her head. “Kakashi, why is any of this important?” she asked. “It all feels so specific and invasive. Next thing we know, they’ll be wanting to know the last time I took a shit.”

Kakashi couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, when was it?” he asked jokingly. He, too, found all of this grueling but he did not complain. He knew this was necessary. If they were to be legally married, they would have to traverse the slog.

Shaking her head, Rei turned back to the paperwork and replied bluntly, “Thursday.”

Kakashi winced before grabbing a granola bar from the pantry and sliding it across the table toward her. “You need more fiber.”

“Ha, very funny” Rei replied, shoving the granola bar to the wayside. She wiped the remaining seasoning residue on her pants (a mistake, she quickly found, since she was wearing black) before turning the page over and groaning at even more fine print.

“We don’t have to get all of this done today, you know” Kakashi assured her. “So long as we turn these back in by the end of the week, we should be fine.”

Whining, Rei stamped her feet against the floor like a child and threw her head back. “I know, but I don’t want to put this off!” she complained. “If we don’t do this now, then I won’t be able to stop thinking about it for the rest of the week. I can’t handle that kind of distraction. It’s bad enough you got Tsunade to get me off night shift, so now I have to work extra hard to prove I’m not a wimp.”

“Because I value your health?” Kakashi asked. “There’s nothing wimpy about that.”

“To you, maybe” Rei replied. “But assigning me to the night shift felt like a step up, even if it was a pain in the ass. I need to prove to her that I’m still a good enough ninja even without that. So I can’t have all of this stuck in my head while I try to work.”

Kakashi hated the way she pushed herself to the edge like this but then again, that was how she got to this point in the first place. She never would’ve become an ANBU if she had not tested her limits. Sighing, Kakashi reached across the table to take her hand in his. “Well then let’s quit talking and focus” he suggested. Pursing her lips, Rei gave a definitive nod and powered through.

They did not finish until late into the night, the streetlights flickering outside their window. The only sounds orchestrating their victory were the springtime cicadas and Toshio’s garbled snoring. Rei slumped down into her seat until she had nearly slithered onto the floor, pressing the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. “It’s finally finished” she groaned. “We can fucking relax.”

Kakashi nodded, stretching his arms out in front of him. As he rolled the tension out of his neck, he replied, “All we need now is to get all of our identification in order and we should be good to go.”

“What all does it call for?” Rei asked.

Picking up the first page of their paperwork, Kakashi skimmed the instructional paragraph before landing on the list. “Birth certificate, passport, general ID card, and ninja registration card” he explained.

“Well, who the hell hangs onto all of that?” Rei snarked.

Before she could say anything else, Kakashi had reached into the cabinet on the lowest level of their bookshelf and pulled out a pristine file folder, flipping it open to display each of the listed documents in perfect order. “I guess I do” he laughed sheepishly. Displeased, Rei reached across the table to whack him on the arm.

“Okay, Mister Perfect. That’s just great” she muttered. She rose to her feet, paced the living room briefly as her panic surged. Her parents likely still had her birth certificate, her passport was with her ninja supplies, and last she checked her general ID card was in her nightstand. Her ninja registration card, however, was another story entirely.

Within the Five Great Nations, the ninja registration card was perhaps the most important identifying document for any shinobi. It served as a badge of sorts, an unforgeable way to prove your station. The village’s emblem was vague on the background with a set of numbers scrawled along the bottom much like a social security number. Anything and everything tied to one’s career is attached to this number, which desperately must be protected. Also provided is the shinobi’s birthdate, their ranking, the date they graduated the academy and therefore became a true ninja, and the date upon which their current registration expires. Fortunately, the registration card is valid for a total of five years before one must once again visit the cold, unforgiving registrar’s office for a renewal. For ANBU specifically, there was a special holographic sticker in the top right corner indicating that this shinobi is particularly deadly: a federal agent. Shinobi are only granted a total of two replacements outside of the renewals and promotional updates.

When Rei tried to remember where, exactly, her registration card was, all she could manage were hazy visions. At one point, they were in her pants pocket. At another, in her locker. And yet she could’ve sworn the last place she had it must have been her back pouch. She dug around to double check but it was no use. Rei had a massive problem.

“I’m sure it’s around here somewhere” Kakashi assured her, approaching to wrap an arm around her. “There are really only so many places it could be.”

“Are there, Kakashi?” Rei asked, skeptical. “Are there really? Because for all I know, I could’ve dropped it in the middle of a foreign country and some cheap thug somewhere could be masquerading as me. You don’t know.” With each word, her voice rose in pitch until she was borderline hysterical. Kakashi rested his hands on her shoulders, drew her into his chest, in an attempt to calm her down.

“I’m sure that’s not the case” Kakashi replied. “I doubt there’s anyone short enough to try and impersonate you anyway.”

Disgruntled, Rei drew back and swatted him on the arm yet again. “That’s not funny, Kakashi.”

Kakashi chuckled, rubbing his victim arm. “Hey, since when did I become your favorite punching bag?” he jested.

Turning on her heels, Rei collapsed on the couch and draped an arm over her eyes. None of this was funny. She needed to find her registration card and fast. This was about far more than just the marriage license now. One wrong move and she could be in major trouble. She wasn’t due for a renewal for another two years and she had already used up both of her replacement opportunties. She could not stand to face Tsunade asking for a forgiving third. Toshio lumbered toward her and rested his heavy head squarely on her stomach, huffing as if he, too, understood her plight. She knew there was no way he ever could but she at least appreciated the sentiment.

“Come on” Kakashi sighed, extending a hand out to help her up.

“Where are we going?” Rei asked. For a moment, she expected him to take her all over Konoha looking for it right this instant. She knew, however, that that was unrealistic.

“It’s late, we’re tired, and I think we’ve done enough for today” Kakashi replied. Once she was upright, he skirted around her to place his hands on her shoulders from behind. “Let’s just call it a night and worry about it in the morning” he added, guiding her to bed. “Sleep deprivation never did anyone any favors.”

Huffing, Rei rolled her eyes and muttered, “I don’t know about you but it’s done me plenty.” She knew that protesting was futile, though. And really, she truly was absolutely exhausted. She fell back onto the bed in defeat, curling up in the blankets as she scooted against Kakashi. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Together, they fell asleep quickly and easily.

Come morning, Rei was groggy and sore. Her head felt heavy and her throat dry. She shuffled into the kitchen only to stub her toe on the corner of the coffee table. Toshio barked at her from the bedroom doorway, waking Kakashi in the process. He cocked a brow as he saw her hold her foot and hop towards the kitchen table, avoiding whatever clutter was on the floor. “You okay?” he asked, stifling laughter.

Rei glared at him, nursing her sore toe. “No, Kakashi. I am not okay” she replied bluntly.

“Still stressed about last night?” he then asked, skirting around the mess to sit beside her.

“Of course I’m still stressed about last night!” Rei exclaimed. Burying her face in her hands, she groaned and shook her head. “We’re running out of time. I can’t sit here and waste another second.”

Kakashi scanned the living room, the piles of paperwork stacked on the coffee table and miscellaneous clutter on the floor. Dirty socks, a plastic bag, napkins from the other night’s takeout. It was really no wonder they couldn’t find anything. A small smile touched Kakashi’s lips as he turned back to his fiancée. “What do you say we just not worry about it today?” he asked.

“W-what? Kakashi, no!” she shouted, eyes wide with anxiety. How could he possibly suggest such a thing? Time was of the essence. She would not be able to relax until she got this taken care of.

Kakashi, however, seemed completely unaffected. “Come on, just trust me” he grinned and there was a sparkle in his eye that made Rei skeptical. She knew that look. That was the look of a man who was up to something.

“What are you plotting?” Rei asked suspiciously, leaning back with a cocked brow.

“Me, plotting?” Kakashi rebuked. He swatted at the air, feigned ridiculousness. “I just don’t think we’ll get anywhere if we stress out about this. A watched pot never boils, right?”

Rei frowned and slumped in her seat. “It does if you wait long enough” she muttered under her breath. But Kakashi had made up his mind. He rose to his feet and began rummaging around in the kitchen. “So what do you suggest we do all day then?” Rei asked, peering to get a better view of him. With his back to her, he shuffled through drawers before migrating to the corner of the room. Tucked beside their pantry stood a broom, a mop and a bucket, a duster, and a half-empty bottle of all-purpose cleaning spray.

“Well, we are well into April now” Kakashi started, tossing Rei the broom. She fumbled but caught it, utterly confused. “And the house is in pretty bad shape, so I think it’s safe to say that some spring cleaning is in order.”

“Spring cleaning…” Rei repeated, unconvinced. There was no way anyone, even Kakashi of the Sharingan, could convince her to feel motivated to clean. Of all the chores of domesticity, cleaning was the one Rei despised the most. She could handle washing laundry, perhaps even folding it, and while she wasn’t a chef by any means, cooking was tolerable enough. Cleaning, however? Absolutely not. Rolling her eyes, Rei fell back in her seat and stabbed the butt-end of the broom to her chest dramatically, her tongue falling out of the side of her mouth.

Kakashi sighed and shook his head. “I know there are a million other things you would rather do, but we can’t avoid this any longer” he replied.

“I mean, I think we’re fine” Rei lied. “The house isn’t that bad.” As she said this, however, Toshio lodged his snout underneath the couch desperately. He resurfaced a moment later smacking on the remnants of a stale chip. Rei turned back to Kakashi with a sheepish smile, but he seemed completely unamused. When it was clear he was not backing down, Rei’s face dropped. “Alright, fine, we’ll clean!” she exclaimed, raising her hands in surrender.

Smiling, Kakashi approached with a duster in one hand and a small trash can in the other. “You know, not to bite the bullet but for all you know, this might even be fun” he jested.

“Fun?” Rei repeated. Kill me. Kill me now. The only thing worse than cleaning was pretending it was enjoyable in any capacity. Kneeling onto the living room floor, Rei began picking up miscellaneous garbage. “I find it hard to believe that you can make cleaning fun” she scoffed.

“I wouldn’t speak too soon” Kakashi replied. Before Rei could say anything else, Kakashi flicked on the stereo and an upbeat tune immediately filled the room. Rei’s head snapped up, searching Kakashi’s face for any sign of mental instability. Not only was she not expecting him to play music to begin with, but his choice of music alone was startling. She never expected him to be into something so…dorky.

She watched with wide, confused eyes as Kakashi turned his back to her and began dusting the bookshelves. He swiped left and right in time with the beat, then began shaking his hips as well. Rei could barely restrain her laughter. “You’re ridiculous!” she exclaimed over the music, throwing a balled up napkin at his back. Kakashi whipped around to face her, spinning the feather duster around in his hand to hold it fluffy side up and began mouthing the lyrics into it like a microphone. “Who knew I was marrying such a dork?!” Rei laughed.

Kakashi shrugged before pulling her to her feet. He took her hands in his and forced her into dancing with him. He pulled her hands in and out, back and forth, a simple little two-step. Her face turned bright red as he leaned in close and jested, “You’re cute when you’re flustered, you know that?”

“Oh, shut up” Rei laughed, averting her eyes and slapping him playfully on the shoulder. He released her to continue his dusting, but he refused to sacrifice his rhythm. Laughing, she shook her head as she approached the broom propped up against the wall to sweep the crumbs off the floor. As she did so, however, she hated to admit that she felt the allure of the music seeping into her bones, too. Try as she might, she could not resist. Her hips began to sway back and forth as she swept, her voice quietly singing along. A massive grin touched Kakashi’s lips as he glanced at her over his shoulder. Everything was going exactly as planned.

Just as the song reached it’s climax, he gave the shelves one last swipe before whipping around to take Rei’s hand. She leapt over a small pile of clutter and spun into him, laughing. He wrapped his arms around her and swayed along with her, planting little kisses along her neck and shoulder. “You know, I had no idea you were such a dancer” Rei commented.

“Mm, yeah?” Kakashi smiled. “It’s my best kept secret.”

“Maybe Chikara should’ve recruited you for the Tomiko Trio then” Rei joked. “I bet you’d look cute in that little kimono.”

Kakashi shook his head. “Absolutely not” he replied. “This is just for you.”

“What a shame” Rei pouted mockingly. “If only the rest of the world knew that the infamous Copy Ninja shakes his ass while he mopped!”

“And that is exactly why it’s a secret” he said matter-of-factly.

Before Rei could offer a quip back, the current song faded out to make way for a new tune. With just the first few bars, Rei’s face filled with recognition and a small smile touched her lips. “I love this song” she said quietly, almost shyly. It was certainly not the type of music she usually listened to, which took Kakashi by surprise. He had never expected her to enjoy anything that didn’t involve sleazy guitar riffs and inhuman screaming. And yet now here she was smiling softly as she bobbed her head and swayed her hips. As the song progressed, she slowly became more comfortable with enjoying herself fully in front of him until, by the moment the bass dropped in the chorus, she whipped around toward him to shout the lyrics into the butt-end of her broom. It was clear she was still embarrassed and yet in that moment, she no longer cared. And seeing her happy made Kakashi happy. He proceeded to sing along with her, ripping on an air guitar as Rei whipped her hair back and forth with her microphone broom. Toshio jumped and spun around, barking in accompaniment. When it was clear he wanted in on the action, Rei patted her thighs as a sign for him to jump up, holding his paws at her hips and turning so as to dance in a little dog conga line around the living room.

Kakashi could hardly restrain his laughter as he turned to follow behind Toshio, the three of them singing along as they danced. As the song faded out, Toshio abruptly jumped down and stood alert before racing to the couch. His sudden departure left Rei startled, stumbling back into Kakashi’s arms. He caught her dutifully, of course, laughing as he helped her regain her balance.

“I didn’t know you got so excited about glam rock” he commented.

Rei shrugged, jesting “Best kept secret?” Although, to be fair, it was really just that one song in particular that she really enjoyed. She had never kept up with the rest of Konoha’s hair metal.

The couch shifted and squeaked as Toshio shoved his bulky body underneath as best as he could. Rei and Kakashi shared confused glances before rushing toward him to see what the trouble was. The last thing they needed was for him to get stuck and knowing Toshio, he would.

“What do you smell under there?” Rei asked, tilting her head to try and get a better view. It was no use—it was too dark to see. Kakashi tried to guide Toshio out from under the couch but the dog was determined. Any attempts at veering him off course were met with deep, threatening growls. After a few more minutes, he wiggled himself free and in his mouth was a small scrap of paper, crumpled and soaked with slobber. Rei winced as she took it between thumb and forefinger, turning it over to inspect it. It was the holographic little sticker in the corner that gave it away. “Oh my god, he found it!” Rei squealed, a smile spreading wide across her lips. She turned it toward Kakashi so he could get a better look.

“How did it even get under there?” Kakashi asked. He scratched behind Toshio’s ear in congratulations, though an accomplishment like this really deserved a treat.

“I don’t know” Rei shook her head. “It must’ve fallen out of my pocket when I sat down” she mused. “I’m just glad I actually lost it here and not in some foreign country.”

Rising to his feet, Kakashi entered the kitchen and pulled a jar of dog treats out of the pantry. Toshio darted across the room in excitement, wagging his tail and whining as Kakashi turned one over in his hand, tempting him. “Now I just hope they’ll accept it in it’s current state” he jested.

“They’re going to have to” Rei replied. “It’s the only I have.” Despite this, she knew they would likely not be appreciative of her neglect. A long shoestring of slobber dripped down from the card’s bottom corner. The name and birthdate were nearly completely faded. In the only dry corner of the card was a thick patch of cheesy residue from a bag of chips. If the card itself had not been so disgustingly important, Rei would’ve thrown it in the trash immediately. It would just have to do.

The following evening after work, Rei and Kakashi returned to the Konoha Social Affairs and Labor Office lugging along all of their completed paperwork. Gurio met them with a bright smile on his face, readily accepting their forms. “Let’s take a looksee!” he grinned, flipping through the pages.

Rei watched him with a scrutinous eye, praying that there would be no mistakes. She knew he wouldn’t be able to approve them on the spot—marriage license applications always had to go through much more thorough investigations—but the initial skim was the first crucial step. God forbid if anything was misspelled or any sections were skipped over, the applications would be deemed null and void and they would have to go through the process all over again. Rei felt her leg begin to bounce up and down as she shoved her panic deep down into her chest. “Hey, Gurio?” Rei finally asked. Her voice had risen an octave, grown shaky and desperate in her panicked agony. “Do you ever think all of this is a little, I don’t know…excessive?”

“Oh, no, not at all!” Gurio smiled, pausing his reading. “We take marriages very seriously. After all, you wouldn’t believe the types of things people try to cover up with marriages! We have to make sure you’re both official citizens, we have to run background checks to see if you’ve ever committed any acts of domestic terrorism or leaked intel to other villages, we study your entire mission history. If we ever let an illegal citizen slip past our protocol and endanger the Leaf, we would never forgive ourselves!” There was a tinge of nervousness in Gurio’s nasally laughter as he turned back to their paperwork. Rei narrowed her eyes, studying his face intensely. She wondered what kinds of things he had seen working here. Perhaps an office job was more exciting than she had initially thought. Or perhaps he just liked to ramp up his own experiences to make himself seem far more seasoned and badass than he really was.

Kakashi glanced to his fiancée for a moment before posing his own question. “By the way, do you happen to have a girlfriend, Gurio?” he asked slowly, suspiciously.

Gurio chuckled. “You know, everyone who comes in here always asks me that!” he replied. “It’s the funniest thing. I don’t know what it is that makes everyone so curious.”

Rei and Kakashi exchanged comic glances, stifling laughter. “I’m sorry, boyfriend?” Kakashi asked cautiously.

“Oh, no, no!” Gurio replied, raising his hands in surrender. “Why? Are you trying to set me up with someone?”

“No, no! Just making conversation” Kakashi smiled politely.

“Well, sorry to burst your bubbles, folks, but I am, in fact, taken!” Gurio grinned. It was clear he must have been deeply in love with this person as the joy and pride in his eyes was immeasurable.

Rei, however, could not restrain herself any longer. “Who?” she blurted, tone backed by the force of her anxiety. The moment she realized what she had done, she clapped her hand over her mouth and averted her eyes. She needed to get out of her as soon as humanly possible. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could handle being stuck here.

Gurio, however, seemed completely unphased by her question. If anything, he was delighted to talk about his girlfriend. “Not to toot my own horn, but she’s the most beautiful woman! Sunkissed skin, eyes like the sea. She has the softest hair, too, just like sunshine!”

“Oh my god” Rei whispered to Kakashi, voice muffled by her hand, “I had no idea people actually talked like that…”

“Shh, shh” Kakashi hushed, though he was stifling his own laughter. Gurio must have been a Makeout Paradise fan. His descriptions were straight out of a romance novel. “That’s great to hear!” he replied. “I bet you’ll be laughing when you’re the one who has to fill out all this paperwork, huh?”

“Oh, no!” Gurio replied. “I know the importance of having all of this in formation on file. I’d be more than happy to fill all of these out when my time comes! And I know my girlfriend would be, too.”

“Well, at least you share the same values” Rei murmured, nodding awkwardly. She exhaled sharply, locking her eyes on the floor and trying to focus on the nails pinching her elbow rather than her bobbing leg and heavy chest.

Gurio grinned and hummed as he finished flipping through the last of the paperwork. “It looks like everything is in order!” Gurio announced. A tight, rising sensation overcame Rei’s throat.

“So that means we can leave now, right?” Rei asked, leaping to her feet. The promise of sunlight and fresh open air was driving her to the brink of insanity.

Gurio chuckled, shook his head. “Not so fast! Don’t forget we need copies of your identification. Now that’s going to be your birth certificate, your passport, your general ID card, and your ninja registration card. I hope you remembered to bring everything!”

Kakashi pulled his little folder out of his back pouch and set it on the desk, flipping it open to display all of his paperwork in perfect order. Rei grinned sheepishly as she dug around for her own, unfolding her birth certificate across the desk as she fished out everything else. She saved the ninja registration card for last, still sticky with Toshio’s slobber. Gurio winced as he took it gingerly, thanking her under his breath.

“Let me just, uh, go make copies of these to have on file” he said, turning and taking the paperwork with him. He rounded the corner and from the other side of his desk, Rei and Kakashi could hear the loud grinding and whirring of the old, outdated copy machine. When Gurio returned, he handed back everything but Rei’s ninja registration card. Her heart leapt into her throat as she thought of all the things that could go wrong. Had it been deemed invalid? Would they have to come back and do this all over again? She didn’t think she could bear it. “Now, about this…” Gurio began, holding up the sloppy card.

“Listen, I can explain!” Rei exclaimed. “You see, what happened was—”

“Oh, no! No!” Gurio interrupted, “No explanation necessary. We’re just going to, uh…replace this for you.”

Rei cocked a brow as she watched him slide a trash can out from under his desk and throw the card straight in with the rotting apple cores and stinking cups of half-eaten yogurt. She tightened her grip on the edge of the desk, feeling her finally begin to lose her nerve. “B-but I already used up all of my replacements for this term!” she stammered.

Gurio grinned at her sheepishly, replying, “Don’t worry, ma’am, you’re a, uh…special case.” Another machine whirred and squealed from around the corner, startling Rei. Kakashi rested a comforting hand on her shoulder but even that didn’t help. What was she supposed to do without her registration card? Who was to say how long it would take to get her replacement? She never should’ve lost it in the first place. She cursed herself under her breath as she watched Gurio excuse himself and turn the corner once again.

“Hey, just try to calm down” Kakashi whispered. “It’s being taken care of. The paperwork was accepted. Everything’s fine.”

“I-I know but I just…” Rei whispered frantically. “He threw my card in the trash! What if there’s an issue? What if I can’t actually get a new one? What am I going to do without it? I just—”

“Here you go!” Gurio interrupted, having returned seemingly out of nowhere. He extended his hand across the desk, a crisp new registration card in hand. Rei took it carefully, turning it over to ensure it was real. The cardstock was still warm from the printer, the ink still damp. She titled it this way and that, studying the way the holographic sticker in the corner caught the light. It seemed legitimate enough and really, Gurio had no reason to trick her, so she ultimately assumed it was safe to accept. She thanked him quietly and then took Kakashi’s hand as they made their way back home.

“Now let’s try to keep this one in a safe spot, alright?” he smiled. Rei fanned the little card as they walked, eager for the ink to dry so she could put it away.

“Oh, no, believe me, I will not be making this mistake again” Rei assured, shaking her head. She fished her wallet out of her back pouch, sliding the little card into one of the slots and patting it before closing it up, fairly pleased.

Kakashi nodded, though he was unsure if he really believed her. He wanted to have faith that this horrible experience had taught her a lesson in organization but he also knew her well enough to know the way she was with mess. “Maybe we should invest in a filing cabinet” he mused.

“Oh yeah?” Rei asked. “We can put it on the wedding registry.”

A small smile touched Kakashi’s lips then as he interlocked his fingers with hers. “We’re one step closer” he replied. Rei looked up at him then and the love in his eyes filled her a certain special kind of warmth, radiating from the center of her chest and outward. Kakashi brushed her bangs back so as to get a better look at her face and kissed the tip of her nose through his mask. “One step closer to being husband and wife. One step closer to our future.”

Rei loved the sound of that. Our future. She pressed her left hand to her stomach, catching the glint of her engagement ring in the dusk sunlight. The thought of their future made her so giddy, exploding with an excitement stronger than she ever could’ve imagined. It would take roughly three weeks for the registrar’s office to conduct their full investigation and get back to them on the status of their application. The wait would be agonizing, but it would be worth it. After all, anything was worth it for their future.

#rei natsuki #kakashi hatake #the scarecrow and the bell #naruto #naruto oc #fanfiction

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alaughingfreak · 4 years

Note

Spy goes to Scout this time because the mere mention of Bidwell sends him into stumbling mess land, and pretty much everyone in the base has noticed. He now has to help Scout in a similar scene to expiration date, and instead of pulling the 'the briefcase is gone' stunt him and Spy basically just buy all the weapons they can to get Bidwell to come over (Also i vote we name the ship Same day shipping or some variation, idk im not good with ship names)

Thats really good but all I can imagine is calling in for faulty plumbing and Bidwell comes over to investigate. Scouts there in a suit (to match the man) and has an absurdly large bouquet of flowers. The flowers dont have meaning and tgeyre all daisys and dandelions he picked on base. Throughout the scene Bidwell just ignores scout (or just doesnt realize its all for him) because he has his work to do. Theres no plumbing problem.

Also hell yeah!! Took a while for me to reply to this this morning cause I wanted to try and come up with some ship names, feel free to add on your own! Some were a bit hard to make kdkdh these are a lot harder to do than I thought

Bidwell x:

Scout: Same day delivery, express delivery, shipping express, fast delivery

Soldier: Carepackage

Pyro: Burnt letter

Demoman: Scottish postcard

Heavy: Snail mail

Engineer: Packaged parts, parts parcel, tool box, coffee stains (idk it just sounds like it could fit)

Medic: Exotic organs (after all Bidwell delivers them)

Sniper: Resupply

Spy: Suits and stamps

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #bidwell #scout #bidwellxscout #I couldnt choose one for scout or engi rip

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imperiuswrecked · 4 years

Text

Fanfic Authors Tag Game

Tagged by: @marblesarelost Tagging: @veliseraptor @traincat

AO3 Name: ImperiusRex

Fandoms: Marvel & DC (comics mostly but I enjoy other stuff too like cartoons and movies), Mercy Thompson book series, Dresden Files book series, Black Sails, Star Trek, early seasons of Vikings.

Number of fics: 66 trying to get to 100 before the end of the year hopefully!

1. Fic you spent the most time on: I really can’t say, because a lot of my fics are ones that I start and then put on pause for a time until I find the muse to start/finish them again, which takes anywhere from one day to years. However the longest ongoing wip I have is: To Find my Soul a Home; very long fic about Namor’s life and has slow burn Jim/Namor as the endgame. I have been working on it on and off for about 3 years. Still working on it.

2. Fic you spent the least time on: Strange Customs; short Jim/Namor fluff fic set during the Oracle Inc holiday party.

3. Longest fic: Catching Quicksilver; 61,858 word fic (26 chapters) featuring Remy/Pietro. It’s my first published fic too.

4. Shortest fic: Mister Dibbles; 556 word fic about Pietro learning more about his new pet.

5. Most hits: Catching Quicksilver ; currently at 4,422 hits

6. Most kudos: The Thief's Heart (Remy/Pietro fic) ; currently at 214 kudos

7. Most comment thread: Strength & Weakness (Namor/Pietro fic) ; currently at 46 comments

8. Fave fic you wrote: My favorite fic is always changing and it’s usually the fic I have not finished yet. I like all of my fics but I think the ones I will love most when it’s done is either To find my Soul a Home, or Lighthouse which are both Jim/Namor wips.

9. Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: Currently none, I really don’t like to go back to fics after I post them because I take so long to even finish one and if I don’t know when to say stop, then it never gets finished. So I try to just be ok with whatever I wrote.

10. Share a bit of your WIP or share a story idea that you’re planning:

From: To Find my Soul a Home: Jim/Namor fic: This scene takes place in middle of the story, long after Jim and Namor had parted ways. Jim has been buried in the desert by his enemies, which was the explanation of why the OG Human Torch was not around for decades. warnings for angst, mentions of war, and burial:

He is crushing darkness around him. There is something wrong with his body, he is unable to move, unable to cry out, Jim is trapped inside his mind as the sounds of dirt hitting dirt slowly fades away until they stop. They have buried him in some place he does not know, deep under the ground. What did they do to him? He strains to try and move but nothing happens, he can’t even wiggle his fingers. Lips closed so that any words he would have spoken were sealed forever. This can’t be happening, not again, not again! He remembers the last time he was trapped in such a way, when his father- when Horton sealed him in the concrete under the ground because they were all afraid of him.

“I’m sorry my boy… I have to do this for your own good. I f I leave you out here they will destroy you. I will come back soon and set you free, and teach you more about this world. When it’s ready for you. Be good my boy.”

Anger burns in his chest and he can’t feel his body heating but it’s a weak fire smothered by dirt and lack of air. Horton never came back for him, he never returned and Jim had to free himself. Horton would not free him now either. The world had never been ready for the Human Torch, but Jim had demanded they try, he did everything he could to be human and now he can’t even die like one. Trapped in this suspended animation as he hears the men’s boots stamp over the dirt of his grave before muffled sounds of their voices fades away. Was it night now? Did it matter? He was never leaving here, Toro hadn’t even known what happened to him, what would happen to the boy? Would he search for Jim? He couldn’t let himself hope for that. He hopes Toro will move on with his life, he was old enough now that he could make it on his own. Still Jim feels a tear slip down the side of his face, he would never see his son again, never hug him and ruffle his hair and tell him how proud he was, how much he loved him. Toro could be an old man before Jim ever escaped from here.

Time has passed, how much? Jim doesn’t know, he could have been here a few days but it feels longer than that, weeks, months maybe. His body’s functions had been shutting down slowly, he feels his artificial heart slow to just a few beats per minute. His mind is clouded by the memories of the past, like a bad tape it skips around and some scenes run on repeat. If he was human it would be called hallucinating.

“Look at me Pappy!” Toro flames on by himself for the first time without burning any of the surrounding furniture in their tiny home, his fire spark smile is wide as he lifts his arms up in success. Jim folds the newspaper down enough to watch him. “Good job son. I’m proud of you.” Toro grins as he slowly flames down.

Jim wants to smile at the memory but his face is frozen.

“Come on now Jim, you can’t tell me you still hate him? Even after everything you two have been through?”

“Why are you pushing this Betty? I thought you would be happy that whatever Namor and I had was over.”

“I never saw you as my rival Jim, we both love him, but you know what he’s like.”

“I know. I know, but dammit Betty he gets me so mad…”

His partner in the police force, Betty’s face fades away, the tape skipping again as he tries again to move. He panics again, the cycle of screaming in his head, hoping someone will come, despairing when he comes down from this latest panic attack because nothing changes except his heart is a beat slower than before. Knowing that with every moment that passes his body is shutting down and soon he will be for all intents and proposes, dead. Jim had never died before, he knew what it was like to be shut off, a dark sudden black before the light came on again. Is this how humans feel knowing they have an expiration date? Knowing that one day they too will cease to exist?

“You’re too quiet firebug.”

No. No. No. NO. Jim panics again, tries to get his mind to turn over this tape, switch it to a different record, anything. He doesn’t want to see him.

His face is turned away from Jim in the memory, they were somewhere in France on the shore of a beach. It was the war.

“I don’t have anything to say.”

“I find that hard to believe, you’re always quick to voice your mind when it comes to me, how many times have you insulted me in the past?”

“So you came to find me because you missed my insults?”

“Missed you.”

Jim doesn’t reply to that.

“Say something Firebug, it’s too quiet here.”

Jim follows Namor’s gaze and looks out at the sea of dead soldiers that littered the beach. Their eyes blank as the gulls pick at the corpses. He looks down at his feet as the blood soaked wave washes over his boots.

Jim wants to claw out his brain, he wants it to STOP. He hated the war, he wasn’t like Namor, something happened to the Prince during the war. Jim could compartmentalize the trauma, he locked it away and did his best to be a support system for Toro, but Namor felt everything more deeply. He doesn’t want to see anymore, and for the first time Jim begs Horton’s god to let it end. More time passes.

The edges of his vision are blurry now, and each memory that comes is slower than before. He sees Toro again, in the circus doing his act. He sees Steve sitting in a chair in the clock tower, his face in his hands, the tired slump of his shoulders tells Jim that Steve has not slept again. Papers scribbled with art is strewn everywhere. He sees Namor in the rain.

He knows this.

Jim’s mind is finally on its last legs as it begins to shut down the last of his conscious mind. He is in a house and every room has a light on but the lights are being turned off one by one. He doesn’t want to be alone in the dark again.

The rain soaks Namor, plastering his dark hair and making his pointed ears stick out even more, it’s cute. Jim never told him that.

He knows this night.

Jim follows him out into the rain, away from everyone else.

Another light is turned off and Jim doesn’t try to waste the little energy he has left trying to move his body again. He wants to relive this one more time, he wants to hold on for just one moment more-

He and Namor are pressed against each other in their little alcove, the dirt of the trench wall behind him turns to mud. Piercing green eyes, and warm breath fills his senses as Jim clutches the Prince’s wet dark hair and pulls him closer. The war is worlds away as he feels Namor’s lips connect with his in a kiss. Soft and sensual, it is a sharp contrast to the harshness of the world they live in.

He knows this… the last light turns off and Jim is in the dark, the grainy picture in his mind fades and the record skips for the last time.

“Say something Firebug. It’s too quiet here.”

“I love you.”

Jim sleeps. A man forgotten by time and those who loved him.

#sorry marbles! i finally posted this #tag game #long post #jimor #im just very bad at going back to stuff once my brain shuts off and says: get the fck out of here and go write something else #which is why i don't think i will ever revise anything once its posted #mim writes a thing

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rkjinhyuk-blog · 5 years

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hello everyone! this intro post is super belated, but thank you for all your kind messages! i’m slowly but surely responding to all of them right now, but i figured i should get one of these up before it’s too late! i’m super excited to bring my best boy lee jinhyuk into the rp ♥ some quick stats: lee jinhyuk, 21, works as a delivery boy for yum yum chicken and at an escape room service, no escape! he’s also a former idol; he was in a group called spect8 (you can read more about them here) which officially disbanded earlier this year, so naturally he feels some kind of way about it. you can read more about him on his profile and background pages, but i’ll drop some notes + wanted connections under the cut as well! if anything interests you, please hmu or alternatively, if you’d like to plot please hit the like button on this post and i’ll pop into your ims ♥ thanks for reading and i can’t wait to write with you all!

TL;DR:

so: lee jinhyuk, former stage name is wei but he’ll still answer to it now because he’s fond of it. recently turned twenty one but sometimes he feels a lot younger and other times he feels like he’s ancient. stuck somewhere in the middle but definitely does not feel entirely normal

what’s up, my peers? cannot connect with you!

former idol (or failed idol, if you prefer). got scouted in his final year of middle school by a small company preparing to debut their first group, passed the audition and trained all through high school. was added to the debut line up in 2016 and it was honestly one of the happiest days of his life!

and then, you know, shit sucked. the group was never popular and suffered further when two of their most popular members left. were put on hiatus around the beginning of 2018 and officially disbanded in 2019, though most members had already gone their own ways before then

post disbandment, jinhyuk returned home and tried to get his life together, eventually realizing that he really did not want to give up his dream of becoming an idol just yet. so he’s still! fighting! to debut again, hopefully with better results this time

lives with his parents and younger sister - she attends hanlim and very much wants to be an idol in spite of jinhyuk’s own failure. does his best to be a supportive brother but he’s a little worried about her lmao

decided not to attend university after disbandment; he did one semester online @ kyung hee before dropping out and he genuinely like... does not think academics are for him

spends his time working as a delivery boy for yum yum chicken. works some pretty weird hours, tbh. also works part time at no escape! he’s really good at escape room puzzles so it’s a perfect fit

volunteers at the local community centre when he has time; teaches a baby’s first hip hop class, basically, which is great for him because he loves working with kids. probably would’ve gone into like childcare or early education if he had the drive

his specialty is definitely rap + dance but he doesn’t consider himself all that skilled yet. both are talents he had to work hard to develop after he became a trainee. still tries to take classes and keep up with practice when he can...

a really good boy... like he’s genuinely very bright & friendly and easy to get along with. collects people like you might collect stamps... has a good memory so will remember the most random facts or things you’ve said but it’s because he cares about you. also generally laid back, doesn’t get angry easily, not really shy or afraid of anything. super affectionate, can get silly/dumb, adopts kids like no one’s business

can get morose sometimes especially when his ~idol past is brought up. like he tries to pretend he’s not bothered! but he is... though he’s mostly sad because he’s internalized the failure as his fault and part of him worries he’s used up his one (1) chance at his dream but it’s fine. takes a lot for his bitterness to come to the surface but it happens occasionally

pls................... love him

WANTED CONNECTIONS:

his ride or die best friend!! is probably close to many people but like... (1) friend (preferably long term/established) who knows all the shit jinhyuk’s been through and stuck through the good times and the bad. jinhyuk would 100% take a bullet for them... he’s not good at leaning on people but someone who could like actually allow him to relax around them would be great

former fans of spect8? current fans? was pretty involved with fans (think wonho from monsta x lmao) so he had a good reputation in the fandom! the group was never all that popular to begin with, so jinhyuk valued all the fans he had. with disbandment he thinks they’re essentially forgotten--so to discover they still have fans would be really cool

big fan of rebuilding relationships so like old friends or classmates he lost touch with after he became a trainee and is slowly reconnecting with now... not the same person as they remember, probably, but that’s fun to play with

yum yum chicken customers?? that one person who always orders the same thing @ 2 am and jinhyuk’s the one who delivers it every single time.... the person with the suspiciously large order who invites jinhyuk inside to eat so they don’t look like it’s all theirs... the person who made him run around the riverside searching for them so he can deliver their food please

also no escape! customers? you gave up 10 minutes into your escape room and now you’re just chatting with jinhyuk over the phone instead of asking for hints... you refuse to leave the escape room until you solve it even though your time expired like 2 hours ago... you and jinhyuk get trapped in an escape room but this is like the only one jinhyuk hasn’t memorized the puzzles for rip

other people who volunteer at the community centre, whether with dance classes literally anything else? they have a good working relationship or a friendly rivalry for whatever reason?

or you come to drop your siblings/cousin/friend’s kid/whatever for dance class and meet jinhyuk who kind of ropes you into joining in with the rest and won’t take no for an answer! it’ll be fun!!

jinhyuk helped you out of a tight situation or something once and you accidentally caught feelings for him... and he knows you did but he doesn’t want to bring it up so now he just pretends he’s oblivious!

you’re small and jinhyuk is a giant and you absolutely hate being next to him but you get paired up or tricked into doing a lot of shit together. he thinks you’re.... so cute... but you want him to get away from you

you and jinhyuk were rivals in like the fifth grade and when you see him again after falling out of touch, you’re filled with rage... turns out he doesn’t remember your rivalry and thought you were friends the whole time

jinhyuk’s friends set you two up on a blind date. he’s literally never been on a date before and has 0 experience with romance so it would sure be something?

you’re with jinhyuk when he gets injured and he’s like “i’ll deal with it!” but you try to get him to go to the hospital and he freaks the fuck out

you play basketball/video games together all the time and jinhyuk always loses so you think he just sucks.... turns out he’s been letting you win this entire time

you always meet jinhyuk at the public baths and you’re convinced he doesn’t exist outside of them like some kind of house spirit but...... you run into him at the store and you’re amazed

this is so long already but i’m really open to almost anything so please plot with us!!

#[ out of character. ]#[ me: tl;dr! ]#[ narrator: it was not a tl;dr ]

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zrtranscripts · 5 years

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Season 8, Mission 6: On The Hunt

Hidden depths

TOM DE LUCA: We've reached the red barn beside the old gun emplacement, Jane. Where do we go from here?

JANINE DE LUCA: Laird Reid informs me that the owner of a cottage north of you spotted zombies in its herb garden.

JODY MARSH: No sightings of Jones?

JANINE DE LUCA: None. But I gather news of his murderous intentions has spread. There's a great deal of unease.

JODY MARSH: At least you know his timetable now. Whatever he's planning will happen at the festival next month.

TOM DE LUCA: Although we still don't know why.

JANINE DE LUCA: Luckily, should he succeed, I will not be around to see Jones crowned king of the rocks. My expiration date is a week earlier.

JODY MARSH: Expiration date? Janine, don't talk like that.

JANINE DE LUCA: [coughs] Excuse me.

JODY MARSH: Janine's turned off her mic. How is she, Tom?

TOM DE LUCA: The nanites are doing something to her stomach. It's unpredictable. Yesterday, partial blindness. Today, nausea. Tomorrow? Who knows.

JODY MARSH: It's 20 days left today, isn't it? Jones can't keep hiding forever. After he killed the Macleans, there can't be anyone on the island who'd shelter him.

TOM DE LUCA: I hope he's been too clever for his own good. These zombie attraction devices could lead us to him.

JODY MARSH: How do you mean?

TOM DE LUCA: I don't want to jinx it. We need to get to that herb garden as quickly as we can. Let's run!

JANINE DE LUCA: Runners, I'm back. Please don't ask for details about my health! Just proceed with the mission. Cams indicate you're closing in on the objective. Sitrep, please.

TOM DE LUCA: Roger that. I have visual on the cliff path. No hostiles in sight.

JODY MARSH: [laughs] You guys! You're great, honestly. I'm just imagining you as kids. "Sitrep on the breakfast, Jane." "Roger that, Tom! The soldiers are advancing on the yolk. Expect contact at 0700!"

TOM DE LUCA: Actually, Janie never liked runny yolks. She said they looked like snot! Mum told her she couldn't get up from the table until she ate her breakfast. Five hours later, she was still there, her little arms crossed, pouting. Mum let her eat what she wanted after that.

JODY MARSH: Figures. Still stubborn as anything. Five, here's the zombie attractor in a rosemary bush.

TOM DE LUCA: Let me have a look. [foliage rustles] I was right! See here, about five yards away behind the mint?

JANINE DE LUCA: What is it?

JODY MARSH: A hole in the ground, really deep.

TOM DE LUCA: A blowhole from the cave systems below, I believe.

JODY MARSH: And there's something in it. Is that a spy camera?

JANINE DE LUCA: I see! Mr. Jones has been hiding in the caves. He's using blowholes and small cameras to ensure that no one is in sight when he plants his devices. Very clever.

TOM DE LUCA: Do you mean me or him?

JANINE DE LUCA: Both.

TOM DE LUCA: Most of the devices were planted in a three-click radius of the black barn, including this one. I'm sure Jones' base will be within that area. We've got him, Jane!

JANINE DE LUCA: Not quite yet!

JODY MARSH: Bother! That thing's drawn some zoms. They're coming up the cliff path. Stamp on the attractor, Five. [device shatters, JODY MARSH sighs] No use. They've got our scent.

TOM DE LUCA: That's good. There's a cave entrance on the beach. If the zoms follow us down there, they should cover the sound of our passage. With any luck, we'll be able to sneak up on Jones. Let's go!

JODY MARSH: We've reached the cave, Janine. It's on the damp side, and getting damper. The tide's coming in.

JANINE DE LUCA: I'm sorry, I just need to -

TOM DE LUCA: [sighs] She was up through the night vomiting. This could be all over today. If we find Jones, if we get the nanite controller from him.

JODY MARSH: There's no sign of Jones here, Tom. It's just a cave. Rocks, algae. It doesn't look man-made. I know you want to find him, but not all these caves are connected. If this one's a dead end, we'll be cornered by the zoms.

TOM DE LUCA: Janie would tell us to return to base so we can formulate a plan to take advantage of new intel.

JODY MARSH: So... back home?

TOM DE LUCA: Hmm. Jones has been one step ahead of us from the start. He managed to grab a walkie-talkie. He used zombie attractors to lure Five and Paula into danger. We have to accept someone on the island might be helping him, Jody. And this is the first time we could have the jump on him. We have to keep going!

JODY MARSH: Well, the zoms are right behind us, so if we're going, we go now. Run!

[water splashes]

JANINE DE LUCA: I've returned to my post. I'm adequate to perform my duties. Sitrep, please.

JODY MARSH: Do you want the good news or the bad news, Janine?

JANINE DE LUCA: I would prefer a detailed action report, Miss Marsh.

TOM DE LUCA: We've lost the zoms, but the water's a little deeper.

JODY MARSH: A little? It's almost up to my nostrils! And there's only about six inches between us and the cave roof.

TOM DE LUCA: Five's taking point to check that the floor doesn't fall away ahead.

JODY MARSH: And what are we supposed to do if it does? We can't turn back. There are zoms behind! This is horrible!

TOM DE LUCA: I'm sorry, love!

JODY MARSH: No, I'm sorry. I thought you'd be the one panicking in here.

TOM DE LUCA: Well, I can't say I'm enjoying it, but... we'll get through, I promise. I have a hunch we're on the right track.

JANINE DE LUCA: Military operations don't run on intuition, Tom. You should turn back and look for a side tunnel. If I'd been at my post, I would never have allowed you to pursue this hunch!

JODY MARSH: Wait, look! I can see Five's shoulders. It's getting shallower.

TOM DE LUCA: Yes, I can feel we're heading upwards quite steeply.

JODY MARSH: Give me a hand, Five. The floor's dead slippy.

TOM DE LUCA: We're out of the water, Janie.

JANINE DE LUCA: [whispers] Oh, thank God. [out loud] Report please, Miss Marsh! What do you see?

JODY MARSH: We're in a cavern. A big one with a really weird roof. It's hard to tell, but it looks like someone's painted it red, and it's all bobbly like a giant egg box.

JANINE DE LUCA: Neolithic carvings, perhaps. Miss Maxted would have been able to tell us more.

TOM DE LUCA: Look, over here. I was right. It's a campfire.

JANINE DE LUCA: How recent?

TOM DE LUCA: The ashes are cold and wet. Jones must have used water to quench them. But the wall beside it is still warm. Jones was here recently, and there's only one other exit. We've got him! Five, Jody, let's go!

JANINE DE LUCA: Report, please. Have you sighted Jones?

TOM DE LUCA: Not yet.

JODY MARSH: We've been lucky so far, though. No branches to the tunnel. There's nowhere else he could have gone.

TOM DE LUCA: We'll get him. We'll have the nanite controller for you today, Janie. This afternoon. Soon!

JANINE DE LUCA: Please, Tom. Don't...

TOM DE LUCA: I know you don't want us to go after him just for you. But we didn't. He's a danger to the islands. He has the missing piece of the Edda. Finding him is mission critical! Don't blame yourself.

JANINE DE LUCA: No, I just... I can't hope it's over until it is. I cannot allow myself that luxury.

JODY MARSH: Look! There he is! Jones. I saw him, just a glimpse disappearing behind the bend in the tunnel. If we speed up, we'll catch him. Come on!

[bullet ricochets]

JANINE DE LUCA: What was that?

JODY MARSH: Jones. He's firing at us, but he can't aim properly while he's running. We've nearly got him.

TOM DE LUCA: Up ahead, do you see, Five? The tunnel widens into a cave and I can see a crate and other equipment scattered around. He's leading us right back to his main camp.

JANINE DE LUCA: Be careful. An animal's most dangerous when it's cornered.

[bullet ricochets]

TOM DE LUCA: Five and I brought guns, Jane. I'd rather take him alive, but I'll shoot him if I have to.

JODY MARSH: To the left! There's another exit tunnel. Jones is heading for it.

TOM DE LUCA: But he's slowing down. We've tired him out. Quick, Five, one last push and we'll have him.

JODY MARSH: Watch out! He's got a grenade! Get down, both of you!

[explosion, Runner Five's ears ring, JODY MARSH and TOM DE LUCA shout]

JANINE DE LUCA: What happened? Tom, can you hear me?

TOM DE LUCA: We're all in one piece. Jones must have had a stock of munitions. He threw the grenade at it and it all went up.

JANINE DE LUCA: And Jones?

TOM DE LUCA: Must have taken off down that tunnel. We'll go after him.

[cave rumbles]

JODY MARSH: We won't. Look, the explosion cracked the roof of the tunnel open. It's about to fall.

JANINE DE LUCA: Take what you can and get out.

TOM DE LUCA: But - !

JANINE DE LUCA: That's an order, Tom. You have his equipment. The roof may cave in at any moment. Capturing the man today isn't worth your lives.

TOM DE LUCA: All right. Five, you grab those rucksacks and whatever those bottles are. Jody, can you manage that wheeled trolley?

JODY MARSH: No problem.

TOM DE LUCA: And I can take the rest.

JANINE DE LUCA: Get out of there! Go!

[cave roof collapses]

[tunnel collapses]

JODY MARSH: We made it, Janine! The tunnel sealed behind us, but we're clear.

JANINE DE LUCA: Good! I'm glad you're safe.

TOM DE LUCA: So close to catching him! If I'd thought to arrange a pincer movement, Five, we'd have had him.

JODY MARSH: Yeah, but look at this! We've got all his stuff. Vials of blood just like he used for the Exmoor massacre. And all that stuff on the trolley. It's the components for the zombie attraction devices. And he blew up his own weapons cache. This is good. This is really good.

JANINE DE LUCA: What about the Edda?

TOM DE LUCA: He knows its value. I imagine he keeps it on him at all times.

JANINE DE LUCA: And the... nanite control box? It's not there either, is it?

JODY MARSH: No. We haven't found it.

JANINE DE LUCA: I see. There is little reason for Mr. Jones to keep that with him at all times. I suspect he no longer has it. In all likelihood, it's at the bottom of the Atlantic. There'll be no cure for me.

TOM DE LUCA: There will be! The nanites came from the Hebrides. There must be a way to cure them here. I promise you, whatever it takes, we're going to find it for you!

#zombies run #zrs8 #s8m6 #on the hunt #zr transcript #zrs8 spoilers

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aggresivelyfriendly · 6 years

Text

~Who Names The Colors~

Chapter 24-Charge of the Lancers

Hi Guys! Is it Friday yet?? I am wiped, and this chapter....There are some really sweet moment, Come share your thoughts to cheer me up! I got my Wo-woman tattoo yesterday! As soon as its healed enough to wear a bathing suit, I’ll share a selfie! I have people to thank! -to @nocontrolforlouis for quick beta reads, to @bleedinglove4h for songs that break my heart and @dirtystyles for inspiration and indelible images!

Jo sat in her office worrying her empty right ring finger. She wondered if anything had festered in the days she was off campus. She hadn't been to her office in nearly a week by the time she made it in to her office hours this morning, the flu kept her in bed for forever, so if anyone saw them, her and Harry, in the parking lot, Jo thought that may be the only place they walked the line, she was blithely unaware still. They did well inside. She doubted she'd get hauled in by the dean anyhow. They'd done ok, maybe got away with it, being in public together.

Except with his mother. Harry slipped multiple times there and she still hadn't put the screws to Harry to find out what Anne had said. He had been there, to her house when she was sick, had noticed that she hadn't come to her office and turned up with things to make soup. She'd been so ill, and he'd been there.

Zoe was on the mend by then and he spent a good amount of the afternoon entertaining her when he'd come to check on them mid week.

"C'mon flyaway Zoe" she had heard from the living room faintly, the door snicked and there was blessed quiet for her to sleep off her fever.

Jo was moaning a little, into the still air of her room and she felt like the whole place smelled like her body, and she needed to pee and she wanted a shower so bad. But she couldn't get up yet.

"Jo?" God, she loved his voice and that he was here. He came to her bedside and placed his hand to her forehead, then his lips.

"Don't!" she said." You'll get it!" And pushed his hand off of her, so he just kissed her forehead.

"Then you'll take care of me." He squeezed her cheek and it hurt a little because everything ached. "You're burning up baby."

He disappeared for a moment.

When he had come back in, a minute or an hour later, she was bleary-eyed and hotter, he picked her up like the sack of sticks she was. The bathroom rang with his voice. "Jo, when was the last time you ate? You're really thin babe."

"What day is it?" Her voice skipped like a scuffed dvd.

"It's Wednesday, morning. I knew you had come down with whatever Zoe had when you weren't in your office." He pulled his t-shirt off her shoulders and picked her back up and stepped into the bath with his jeans on to put her in.

"Your jeans, you'll be uncomfortable—" It was too late, but she put up a protest. "You went to my office?"

"You didn't answer my text yesterday afternoon and I knew you told me to steer clear on Sunday because of the fever. Monday, I gave you a pass on class because I figured Zoe was still sick." He got out of the bath and onto his knees. "Can you wet your own hair?"

She dipped beneath the water and watched him pour shampoo into his hand and wanted to cry. It had been four days since she had washed up. She was too tired and then too sick.

"I hate how wonderful you are," she said as he put the shampoo into the crown of her head and massaged her scalp.

"You don't," he told her and poured water over her head with the cup on the tub sill she used to wash Zoe's hair.

"I don't. I love you." She blubbered a little.

"I missed you, and was trying to wait to talk." He seemed as tender as her with time and unspoken words like there were broken boards on the suspension bridge between them.

"I'm scared, Harry." She had let him sink into her bones, and Jo felt like their expiration date was the time stamp on that video. "Did you delete it?"

"We haven't watched it." He dodged. "Jo, after I clean you up, I need to feed you." His hand ran up her gaunt torso. "Can you try some of the soup I made, and drink some water?"

"Zoe?"

"I fed her at the pub, the one with the playground?" Jo nodded. That was a local place. Did anybody notice them out together? She was almost too tired to care.

"Was anybody there?" She asked and his brow furrow. "That you knew? Or knew Zoe?"

"Why?" He asked while he felt her ends to see if the conditioner was out. Him having long hair was paying off for her right now. She loved it cosmetically, but the knowledge was helping her out in a more immediate way in the moment.

"Harry..." he soaped her up and poured water over her body and grabbed the nearby towel after letting out the drain. "We, still, lover, don't you think someone will notice if you're always with my kid?"

"I'm her babysitter." He said off-hand and wrapped her in the towel. "Can you walk?"

"Yeah." But she was weaker than she thought and happy he stayed next to her. "We need to be careful, I think the walls are caving in." She shivered as he pulled off the towel and dried her hair.

Pj's?" He asked, then laughed at her head shake. She didn't really wear those either. Jo was afraid he was gonna sidestep her worry, ignore it. And she didn't have the hutspah to bring it up again. He got up and came back with old trackies and his t-shirt. "Baby, we are fine. Walls are still up, and I'm done with school in a month and a half. We can do whatever then."

"We can't. Not right away." She said. "We have to talk to people, too." He kept brushing her hair and started to braid it. "How do you know how to do that?"

"Big sister. I was her dolly." He kissed the side of her head and her back where the end of her hair lay. "I'm gonna cook."

"Did your mom say anything?" He tucked her in.

"I'm gonna go cook." He said and stood to go, "Check on little miss."

"Harry, your mum?" She couldn't raise her voice, he had been close enough for her whispers. He went out and she lay down exhausted from worry and flu.

"Your mum?" She said when he brought her water a minute later. "She say anything, ask about your slip?"

"Yeah." Harry kissed her head. "We'll talk about it when you're better."

And he had avoided the topic while he fed her soup and set her up. Harry had avoided any hard topics, and she had been sick and too thankful for the help. Harry had checked in on her on Thursday too via FaceTime. Zoe had spent the day with Audrey and Jo had spent her final day in bed. Harry had slept on the couch the night before and set her up for the morning before his classes.

"Feel better! I love you. I have class until late." He kissed her forehead and leaned down to kiss her lips. "Your fever broke in the night, babe. Do you want me to change your sheets?"

Jo moved her head to the side and his kiss glanced off. "No, not yet, Harry, let me be a day clear of it before we start kissing. And I feel much better. I think I can handle the sheets, lover."

"Ok, want me to come over tomorrow, after your classes?" He was buttoning up his shirt and hoisting his messenger bag. "Spend the weekend?"

"It's Colin's weekend. I can stay with you if you want." She tried be coy and cute, but her pallid hue didn't do her much credit.

"Yeah, that would be nice!" He stopped at the door, a light bulb above his head. "What if we went out?" He caught the look on her face and dimmed, she knew her brow was furrowed. "On the far side of town, away from school."

She'd nodded. And been excited despite herself. They hadn't gone out much after Liverpool, had laid their bellies to the ground for months. It was a happy life, domestic to a fault, but clandestine. The idea of another date, a time to be his, especially after the debacle with the tape, another thing they hadn't discussed, was a relief. Maybe they should have just planned a date, that had to be safer than filming themselves fucking.

The tape worried her but the thing she lay awake over was the ring. She had to get Ethan's ring back. It had been a desperate move and now she regretted it. Jo was scared to bring it up. They had so much pressure from without, she didn't want to add it from within. She hoped Harry understood. They could talk about an alternative token of affection. Hell, maybe she would get a tattoo, long as she appeased Harry and got that ring back on her finger.

The ring and the video seems like ammunition aimed at them. Nothing had changed as far as Jo knew, but she had had fever dreams about being caught out in the rain naked. She was tearing through the woods with hounds on her heels. Jo could hear them barking and a sharp tooth pierced her heel as she was run down. She woke up when her knees hit the packed ground of the path in her dream. But they never needed to hit the ground, so long as they deleted the evidence, or were careful about it. She stopped then, deleting it was the only way.

Some of their other issues were matters of time. They just needed to let the clock run out on school issues and Victoria's suspicion. So long as they remained careful.

After they fended off those foes, it was the hardest parts. Revealing themselves to their loved ones, Harry's mum and Ethan. Jo would use these hours to list out their issues so they could discuss them. Then she was going to get ahold of her man, and they would spend the weekend together, happy, and even go on a date. They would talk over the next month and a half and make plans to talk to the big guns. And she could finally feel like they had just avoided an iceberg. She figured two days in, and out, with Harry and she'd feel unsinkable.

Jo watched the clock as her reflection on the last week and her office hours ended. Nobody had come, which was not entirely odd this time of the semester, especially when she had been out all week.

She hoped Harry fed her. Maybe he would have cooked for her by the time she got there. "Will you make me chicken tagine?" She sent the text with a pouty picture of her, and looked up from locking her door just in time to see Ewan and Victoria going into her office.

Ewan waited outside and waved to her until Victoria gave her a curt, "Professor." which she returned before calling Ewan shrilly to follow her. Somebodies eyes followed her out, Jo didn't turn back to check who. She may be able to pull ostrich on that issue, and she intended to.

She was excited to get to Harry, but found herself fiddling with her naked finger a lot. That she wanted to remedy. She wasn't exactly sure how, but figured she would find a way. Jo navigated the streets to Harry's house and wondered why he hadn't text her back about her plans to meet him. Or the food she pouted for.

She got her answer when he came to the door.

"Baby!" He reached for her and she side stepped his public display. He was in jeans and no shirt, his fingertips were colored and she sighed at the sight of him. The music was loud and their playlist was on.

She immediately felt better, like Atlas must have taken back his burden now that she was here. The air was even easier to breathe in his presence.

Jo pressed the door closed behind her and leaned back against it hoping he would lean back into her, or whirl around like the dervish he became when he was ecstatically creating some landscape portraiture alchemy. Normally, she'd follow him and get to watch.

Tonight, he danced with her though and she smiled when he went to kiss her. Harry stopped just short of her. Jo could smell the coffee on his breath and he had grey paint in a whisp near his hairline. She leaned up to close the distance; he pulled back just a fraction.

"We allowed to kiss again?" He let the curled edges of his pussy pink lips curl against her. "Is it safe now?"

"You're an ass!" Jo was really liking this teasing confidence. Maybe giving him the run of her and a token on affection had some effect besides her anxiety, the old cheeky Harry imbued with her reverent lover. His playfulness warmed her belly and she needed to move him along. And she needed to find a way to broach lots of subjects before the weekend was up. But now wasn't the time, they were in the middle of something.

Har-- Harry," She wasn't without her own power either.

"Yeah, that's my name!" He groaned and closed the circuit between them. She gulped when he gripped one thigh then the other to lift to his hips and carried her into his room.

It had been a while for that too.

Jo liked all his sexual moods, but worshipful was her very favorite she realized as she catalogued the way his long hair felt sliding down her chest to her belly. It tickled in the bends of her elbows and she giggled when he flicked it over his shoulders and it snaked over her upper thighs. She loved his wet lips and when he would lay his head on her hip joint to count her heartbeats for her.

She loved their velvet nights.

It got better after when he pulled her up and made sandwiches to share. It wasn't chicken tangine, but she was too hungry to care by then. They sat naked at the bar where they did months ago, and this time she fed him the remainder of her sandwich when he'd eaten his like he'd just discovered sliced bread and peanut butter.

"You are a hungry man today!" She laughed while he nipped her fingers on the way out. She felt light as candy floss.

"Been painting for hours. Found the siren in those rocks. Come look." He stood up, naked as the day in that comfortable way he had infected her with and brought her to the studio.

He had found a lady indeed. She wondered if she should point out how much they looked like her, all his ladies. Maybe she was just projecting. But that looked a lot like her backside and her profile.

"Who's getting bashed on the rocks?" She grabbed a canvas and was wondering if they were still even there, if they went through their supplies equally. Harry had insisted it wasn't a big deal and been properly offended when she mentioned chipping in on them that one time. So she tried to bring things with her and casually leave them.

He gave her knowing glances, and when she had "accidentally" left the palette knife he always used at her house, the really good one, he had given her that look and just shook his head. "I'll pay in kisses." He'd said. And worked off some debts.

They set themselves up and Harry disappeared about thirty minutes into their session to come back with a bottle of red, the kind she preferred her pleased smile noted, and the music switched to PJ Harvey and she shared her grin with him.

"What're you painting today, who's got the beat?" He handed her the bottle and she took a sip and stared at her cowering lass.

"Dunno." Jo quirked her head to the side. "I think this time the beat has got her." She had only sketched out her own faceless lady, she was in the middle and the beat was a serious shape, lances pointed at her cowering head, surrounding her.

Harry grimaced. He kissed the top of her head and whispered, "Nobody is gonna get us. We will make it, we'll be fine." But his desperate grip made her wonder if he believed that. "Do you wanna talk about it now?"

Jo realized he had avoided it so strongly when she was ill, which was unlike her direct man. But she could very much relate at the moment. "No, I just want to paint now. Can we do the difficult stuff later?" Her head went deeper into the sand, it was nice there.

"Course!" His whole body looked relieved like taffy after a pull. "And I'll be your bubble, like in the Incredibles, the daughter?" And Jo remembered the cute movie Ethan had liked as a boy. "Nobody is gonna poke you."

"Well, I hope somebody will poke me!" She flirted and he painted her nose with the brush she had just picked up. They wound up painting each other instead of the canvases. She pressed him against a wall and got the whole side of his face. But his size and youth won out when he took her down. Once Jo had given up the fight and lay beneath him, she'd let him paint her face in a Mondrian print and laughed when he took a shot on her phone. She'd set it as her background, since he couldn't. And then smudged the paint on his face and chest kissing him. They'd made it to the shower not long after their game of paint tag.

It was just one moment of joy from their weekend. Friday night was long and naked, and they slept in Saturday morning to compensate. Jo woke up first and made Harry tea and then the both of them smoothies and they'd curled up in his bed for hours, they watched "Peaky Blinders." And Harry got confused and jealous at her Cillian Murphy crush.

"He is so attractive!" She sighed.

"He looks like a cadaver!" Harry grumped and she laughed.

"Think he'd mind a live girl?" Harry tackled her then and made her admit he was the handsomest.

He was.

When they had turned off the show after nearly a season, they decided to go out. They made it to a pub after the street fair and botanical garden they had enjoyed the improving weather in. This was after a tense discussion over whether they should go to Home. Harry had been itching to see the gallery, but It was too risky, and Jo felt bad she had to tell him so. Harry had been very keen.

She hated to disappoint him.

They both shook it off in the name of their day out, but the clandestine requirements weren't as titillating as they once had been, it was stifling lately. With Harry pushing for more, more, more and Jo trying to rein him in like an unbroken mustang too beautiful to release but too wild to control.

The pint glass in her hand was getting warm she realized while she ignored that errant thought; she had been kicking his ass at trivia and it was more fun than drinking, so she took her time. It wasn't her last beer, but it may be her last victory. Though Harry seemed chuffed at her win. He loved when she took the piss out of him, she could tell by his grin. Didn't mind when she bested him. Later, after they had danced til she was sweaty, she stole his hair tie out of his bun.

"I have more hair." She pouted and he nodded and caught the ponytail she was gathering and held her by it to kiss her.

It was the second best date of her life.

They'd fallen into bed and his arms were warm and his laughter throaty, while she teased him about his abysmal sports knowledge. "Honestly, how have you not learned more, simply from making conversation?" She looked down to ask from his favored resting spot on her left ass cheek.

"I was to busy learning to paint from you and how to braid hair!" He nipped her cheek and flipped her over before crawling over her. "I think both are more useful skills."

"Have any other skills you'd like to show me?" she was a little breathless and bright eyed.

"Yeah." He'd breathed into her sternum where he pressed the first kiss.

It was a perfect 36 hours, but the next morning, the ring she had purchased at the street fair was burning a hole in her pocket. Harry was in the shower and she had pulled on sweats when goosebumps erupted over her skin when she got out from the covers. The apartment was colder than it had any right to be. Jo knew it was her nerves at the looming conversation/ She didn't want to do this in the bedroom, in case it went bad, and they fought, or the studio. Both were sacred spaces to her. So, she went to make tea and wait him out in the kitchen, neutral ground.

She was staring into her cup, stirring it slowly when Harry came out to her in his own loose pants and bare chest.

"You look ominous." He sidled up next to her. "Time to talk about my mum?" He was counting his fingers. That curious thing he did when he was nervous, but in control enough to not pinch his bottom lip.

Shit, his mum. She'd been so preoccupied by the ring when she woke up, since she saw the alternative really, she'd forgotten about their other obstacles.

It was as good a place to start as any.

"That and other things." Jo looked up from her cup and exhaled as many of the bats in her belfry as possible. "What did she say? Did she ask outright?"

He shook his head and sat at the place she had made for him, across from her. She should have put them side by side. Men did better that way, less adversarial.

"No, she never asks outright, or scolds me, but she did say we still seemed close, like we had been when I was younger. She emphasized that, younger not young. And she warned me, about how people might perceive it." He took a sip of his tepid tea, grimaced, maybe over it not being perfect. "But she gave me this look, one I know, where her eye contact is intense and her right brow is high and we both know she is saying more than she is saying."

Jo wondered if he knew he wore that look sometimes too. "Did she, did she say anything about me?" Jo bit at her lip and tried to remember that she and Anne were peers at least, if not friends. Never would be now.

Harry gave her his eyes then, "Just that you must be lonely without Ethan and after a divorce. How she felt for your desperate situation."

"She thinks I'm desperate?" That chafed.

"No, she's trying to tell me that if it seems you like me back, it's because you are lonely and need attention." He gripped his coffee cup. "She still thinks I get crushed by my crushes. I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling her that if you were a crush, I would get flattened under the weight if the real thing ever happens."

"I'm not lonely," that wasn't quite right. "or I was, but I didn't want it to be you." She sighed, "It just was."

"What's the plan, then?" He took her hand and coasted his ring clad pinky over her knuckles.

"We wait? More. Until school ends. Then we tell her." She gulped, he loved his mum expected a lot from her. "And we expect her to disapprove, like most people will."

He nodded, "They doubt because they don't know." He cocked his head with a sad smile. "They don't see us spending days together, that feel like minutes, that we are forever." He winked the ring at her, held his hand up.

She stared at the ring on his pinky "Harry, I hate that we have to talk about things like this, but there are lots of things we have to talk about." she gulped a breath.

"Like?" She took his hands at that.

"I want you to have something from me, and I gave you that ring," she gestured at his hand. "but." And she bit her lip.

"But Ethan gave it to you and you want it back." He looked hurt, but unsurprised.

"I'm sorry Harry. I wasn't thinking, you were so upset and angry and I didn't want to leave you empty handed." She took a big breath. "But that ring was a mistake, to give Ethan's ring was," she shook her head, she couldn't find a word. "and once I woke up from fever I had to talk to you about it."

"Jo, baby, I understand, it's not this ring, really. Though I love this one, the symbol on it. Any will do. It's not his particular thing, but what it means. I want what it means, the real symbol?" His voice had taken on a hue she didn't know, she heard it as deep purple.

"What symbol?" She was confused about his passionate segue.

"I just want to know it's forever for you too. That when you look down the line, all those titles that Colin gets are mine, because you want me to have them, think I deserve them."

Her blank face must have registered for him.

"You don't think about beyond? Like forever, Jo?"

No, she had made it a point to not think of forever. Cast those thoughts out like seeds on hard ground. "Harry..." she trailed off. This, they, had a natural end date to her, not because she wanted it, but because Harry would want things she couldn't give, naturally. "What titles do you deserve?"

"Husband. Definitely, and father." He looked down and whispered the last word, but when he looked up he was resolved and she knew one of those lances was coming to pop their bubble, but it was going to come from her, from within.

"Harry, I..." How do you tell somebody what they want was not for them, because of something as immovable as time? "You said... but you said a part of me was enough? What we have was enough for you?"

"And I meant it. I did! But you don't see more for us?" He begged. "Jo, we are so much bigger than right now, bigger than love. We're like paint on a canvas that outlives the original artist. Legacy, I see it with you." He smoothed hair behind her ear. You don't see it with me?" His desperate brow was breaking her heart.

" I do." She sighed because she did, but as a fantasy. "When I dream it's you and I with silver hair down our backs painting in a garden. But, I leave that idea in the night."

"Why? I dream that dream, too." Harry insisted and took her hands.

"Because it's, it's not fair to you, lover. I can't give you legacy." She felt her wet cheeks before she knew she was crying.

"What do you mean?" He looked like the answer was already there in his mind, but he was ignoring it, because most of the time the twenty year lap between them was less a problem than all their other hurdles, just a detail like her hazel eyes and his curly hair.

"It's not fair, giving you forever isn't. Because I can't, really. I can't have more kids." She gathered up all of her bravery like firewood to set his hopes on fire.

"What do you mean?" He cast his eyes around for a satisfactory answer. "like you think you are too old?"

"Harry, I am nearly too old." she cut herself on the words.

"But you still cycle, it can still happen." Damn he paid a lot of attention growing up among women, and to her body, probably because he never got squeamish about fucking while she bled.

"Technically, but we've only just been together four months and that's too soon." She was trying not to cut him with her truth too.

"It's not" Harry shook his head, "we aren't going anywhere Jo. I knew in my bones right away. I recognized you. Once I was grown up and looking."

She shook off his surety like shackles. "Harry, even if we started trying now." The words sparked hope in his eye. She was gonna dash it."which would be criminally stupid." she tilted her head at him, "But what I mean is, I can't. Doctors orders." The next bit she squeezed his hand over. "And Harry. I won't."

He looked up at her teary eyed. "Is it just that you don't want to have my baby? Is it me? Something lacking?"

Jo kissed his forehead, "No love, there is nothing lacking in you. It's why I don't think of forever. You deserve to have children, lots if you want, when you are ready. Older." She smoothed the lines his concentration face was trying to make permanent.

"But I want that with you. I want babies and grey hair with you." He was crying in earnest now.

It started her tears again too, "I can't Harry. It could kill me." She took a huge breath then and realized the front lines could charge all they wanted, they were about to self-destruct anyway.

Harry lay his head on the table and she stroked his hair while he wept.

"Think hard about it baby, before we tell your mum, or Ethan, or anybody. I love you, I wish I could give you this. But I can't. I've done this before, and I was told it was a bad idea for me again. My uterus was nearly see through when they cut into me for Zoe. I'm lucky to have her. I can't give you this. And somebody else can, should. And that kills me. But you should have that." She cupped his wet face and brought it up to look at her. "You will make the best dad." Then she gave him a watery smile, "You should definitely share your genes with the world, lover."

He was shaking his head and hiccuping.

"And your heart. Though I want to keep it to myself."

"No, no, that's not right. It's not what I want."

"But I love you enough to give it to you. If you still want me, for the time I can give you, and the sell-by date on our life, our love. Ok. But I'm not your forever Harry." He looked at her broken, his face cracked like a dropped porcelain doll.

He just shook his head.

"But I have something for you, to give you." she pulled her hand off him. "In exchange for forever." She pulled out the sparrow rings, one with the clear shape of the sculpted bird, the other with a more abstract flying flock, that she had picked up yesterday. Jo pulled his hand into her own and removed the infinity ring. In its place she slipped on the subtler ring she knew he would love best and started to put its mate on her own finger. Harry took it over for her, and snugged it onto her right ring finger.

"I give you wings." she whispered over a rising sob.

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles au #wntc #who names the colors #harry styles alternate universe #one direction #one direction fanfiction #painter au #art fic #ducks

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ghostmartyr · 6 years

Text

SnK 104 Thoughts

Hey Galliard.

Hey. Hey. Galliard.

LET’S SEE YOU GRIT THOSE TEETH.

We’re reaching the end of this arc segment, and I think the relief is making it a little easier to appreciate all the things happening. ...I mean it would, if anything remotely positive were still going on in this world.

Wait, Falco’s alive.

Okay team, there’s still hope.

I’m still having trouble working out why all of this is the chosen strategy. Paradis has caused an incredible amount of destruction, and disposed of most of the top brass, so looked at from an Us vs. Them situation, as long as the Scouts and Eren make it out okay, this is a pretty successful operation. It’s going to take some time for Marley to chase after their island with all the devastation.

What’s the score? The harbor, a bunch of surrounding cityscape, plenty of the interment zone, most of their top brass, and... let’s call it four Titans.

The frustrating part is that I’m having a really difficult time working out the scale of it all. In every section of this battle that we’re shown, Paradis has won somewhat easily. But I don’t know how large Marley is. Magath and Willy are willing to offer up the internment zone and all of the talking heads inside of it in order to gain allies in their offensive. They were ready for Eren. They were not ready for their Titans being out of reach, and they were not ready for Armin.

Since Eren’s decision to play along as the villain of Willy’s story, I’ve been sulking and wondering what the endgame is. What’s the point of playing right into Marley’s publicity stunt? What’s the point of making yourselves look so bad when your only contact with the outside world has been self-defense?

Reading this chapter, it’s hard not to think, “what’s the point of standing back when you know you can win?”

(Even though they’re all so very screwed if their escape blimp plan gets derailed. Like. Their eggs have 1 (one) assigned basket. And Eren’s already nearly died several times during this mess. Dun dun dun.)

And I’m not sure how much of that is a sign that Paradis has landed a fatal blow against Marley, and how much is just... here’s where our focus has been. In a very tiny corner of the world, Paradis has the upper hand.

Marley, unlike the rest of the antagonistic world, fights wars with Titans. The lowercase ones too. In this battle, they have lost two of them, one with the unique ability of controlling ravenous hordes of cannon fodder, one with the unique ability of making very kickass weapons.

What they’re left with is Reiner, Galliard, and Pieck. None of them in a state where they are a dominant force.

Magath wants Marley to enter a world where their military strength isn’t determined by Titans, but you can’t change that overnight. Their greatest trump cards have all been beaten or stolen away. In terms of Titan strength, Paradis wins right out. Marley has the numbers to win a siege war, but that isn’t the war being fought at the moment.

A few things are happening with this battle. One (the most annoying, being something Willy and Magath plan to exploit), Paradis is doing a fantastic job of selling themselves as the demons everyone calls them. Two, they’re making it clear who wins in a battle of Titans (however dicey things are during the fight, Paradis is leaving (hopefully) with three of Marley’s Titans horrifically maimed, one MIA, but presumed dead, and one actually dead). Three, they’re leaving a country that the whole world has bad experiences with in a very vulnerable position.

Marley might be putting work into making Paradis the scapegoat, but the night they declare war Paradis stomps every weapon they have faith in. Ambassadors from other countries get along with Willy, less so with Marley. One night of sympathy for the Eldian plight their buddy Willy has gone through isn’t going to change that.

The hope in the aftermath of this might be that Paradis has proven itself too dangerous to be left alone, so other countries will gladly work with Marley to stamp them out of existence, but... I’m wondering a little if those other countries might be more interested in wiping out their known enemy before turning their attention to the island. Marley has zero good will built up.

Ugh, I don’t know. Thinking about all the different ways people could respond to this makes my head hurt. Especially since Paradis does have links with other countries now, and that makes it harder to get the Beauty and the Beast mob song going.

And again there’s the question of scale. Which is really just me questioning how many Erens Armin just pulled, and how many Erens it would take duplicating to raze all of Marley to the ground. Armin’s feat is obviously destructive, but.

Fuck it, I want five pages of next chapter devoted to graphing out population and military personnel of Marley. With real numbers. The sixth page can provide Paradis’.

Has this operation hamstrung Marley as badly as their morale makes it feel like, or not? That’s all I want to know. Acceptable sacrifice vs. monstrous horrifying mass murder of horror is easier to parse out when the mission objectives and accomplishments are written in plaintext.

...It’s obviously going to end up being both anyway. I still feel really lost.

In character land, where things are slightly simpler, Armin’s having his own version of Eren and Reiner’s conversation. If Eren and Reiner are the same, so are Armin and Bertolt. That’s... oy.

I complain a lot about action chapters because I always feel like I just want to watch the anime version and get on with it without turning over every rock, but some of the complaining comes from really, really wanting to get back to the sad monologuing about feelings everyone in this series is prone to indulge. Hell, pull a Naruto and let everyone get a significant backstory flashback when it looks like they’re in mortal danger.

Armin’s from Shiganshina. Ground zero of this war. He’s one of a small percentage of people who lived through watching Wall Maria’s destruction. He’s standing right there when everything their people have known is annihilated.

Bertolt also burns him to death. Basically.

Now Armin’s the one holding all that power in his hands. He kills people and takes away their homes just by taking a few steps.

The good news is that he knows he has an expiration date, so he can look forward to that instead of seeking therapy to help him later in life.

...

Yeah, there is no good news. Let’s pan back to Falco, who is breathing and somehow showing more signs of mental stability than Gabi.

Kid’s made of some stern stuff. If Eren’s betrayal doesn’t completely shatter him, he might be able to make a bright future for himself if he stays alive. He’s compassionate and doesn’t freeze in a crisis.

Unlike some people.

-cough- Jean -cough-

Nah, that’s mean.

From the looks of things, whether it’s Pieck’s interference or Jean’s own heart getting in the way, Jean’s mind was absolutely prepared to kill the little boy if that meant removing the Cart Titan from play. I don’t know if he tried to arrange a shot that would dodge Falco, but I do think that he accepted that there was a good chance the kid would die in the crossfire, and went for it anyway.

This series was so much happier when people were getting eaten alive.

-looks at rest of the chapter-

-rest of chapter looks back-

Well. You know what I mean.

I’m glad Pieck’s alive, even if it’s only for now. Truthfully, I don’t think I want any of the Warriors to die. Their lives have been hell. I want to think that someday, all of the Eldian kiddos get to breathe free air without being a tool of war. If they die, it’s just another footnote to a sad story.

Then we have Galliard, who.

..Yeah.

(btw

Does Titan inheritance run on some kind of lottery system, and does that matter?)

I thought Eren would be done horrifying me after the civilian slaughter. I mean, where else can we go from there? Dead children hit one of the highest tiers of tragedy. Maybe more of them will fall out of the cracks, and surely the psychological trauma of individuals like Reiner will continue to be bad, but we’re done with any of it being shocking.

...

.....

Eren’s a fucking tryhard.

Okay! Okay. Uh.

Points for... pragmatism?

“Aha, I have cracked the case, if not the crystal! Hark, I shall have Jaws crack the crystal, and I shall drink up this woman’s juices as they drip from his teeth while he silently screams at me to stop!”

Eren with the Jaw Titan in the Conservatory.

I mean. If you think about it.

I have been calling the Warriors tools for ages.

Eren using Galliard as his own personal nutcracker is really only the natural evolution of that.

Yike.

I’m surprised Reiner’s already up and about. It makes sense that it’s to protect Galliard (Porco is going to have so very many issues when he wakes up), because protecting people is the one thing the world hasn’t broken inside of him. Even after all he’s been through, he still wants to be the good guy, keeping his comrades safe.

But the dude’s dead inside. He has the strength to stand, but not much else, and I don’t know how the story can lead him into anything dynamic when he’s so screwed up.

Also of curiosity is... Eren’s perfectly willing to nom Galliard. Reiner shows up, gets punched maybe a building length away, is very obviously in no state to win any kind of fight, and Mikasa and Eren walk away.

All of the other Titans are removed during the festival by strategy. Pieck and Porco get dumped down a hole. Zeke is probably working with Eren, and he’s still escorted out.

Reiner gets a conversation.

Reiner’s participation in Eren versus War Hammer would have turned the tables. The only reason he isn’t part of it is because his conversation with Eren robs him of his final will to live.

So uh. ...Eren? Not to be rude or question your moral character or basic sanity... but... I don’t know... how, uh, on purpose is Reiner’s current emotional state?

...On a related note, is that your way of keeping him alive? ...Am I. Am I going to have to start shipping you two seriously?

This has the feel of something else I’m going to find easier to discuss in later chapters, but looking at the last few pages... Eren has the chance to kill Reiner and Galliard. He definitely has no problem nomming Galliard. What changes? Reiner caring about Galliard?

Eren easily could have taken out two of Marley’s Titans, and he chooses not to. It’s a decision Mikasa is either fine with or encourages. I don’t quite know what to make of her very excellent stoic face after Eren punches Reiner. She goes from that to zooming over all “Eren!” and... does that mean killing Reiner has been judged the wrong decision all around? What’s with the interruption, you two? Is that closeup of Eren’s eyes on the opposite page just there to look pretty, or is something going on?

Look, you’ve killed everyone else in the general vicinity, I’m allowed to wonder what makes this special. What, Eren can see his sparkling eyes when his face isn’t armored up and can’t handle the dokis?

Geez, this was a chapter.

Next month we get to see how great the great escape is--only guarantee is that there is no escape from the monsters in their heads.

...I’m with Mikasa. Can we go home now?

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 104 #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #spoilers #tl;dr #chapter post

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dsmadmin · 3 years

Text

#SilentMysteries

Written by @BornHunterDean & @swinchesterdsm

Dean - A few nights in the hotel had done a world of good for the itch he felt. But he needed to hunt. He loved chilling with his brother. Hell, on this trip they had a break through. And that breakthrough was unexpected, it very much welcome. Dean felt more settled then he had in awhile. And the reason for that, held against him, Sammy.

He watched sleep, Sammy looked peaceful. His fingers trailed along his back, as Dean’s mind raced. After the talk he had with Colt. He couldn’t get it out of his mind. The rifts, the reasons behind Lucifer’s reasons. They were no where near close to figuring it out. That brought to mind the safety of his brother, as he held him in his arms. He would protect Sammy at any cost, even if that meant taking himself out. Then on the other hand he couldn’t just leave Sammy. The need to stay with him was so damn strong. We were stumbling in the dark with all the shit that was happening with rifts opening.

He couldn’t shut off his mind for the life of him. With a kiss to Sammy’s forehead, he eased out of the bed, placing a pillow under his head. Pulling on some boxers. He headed over to the table that sat under the window. Hair sticking up at every angle on his head.

Opening the laptop, he powered it on. Scratching his head. He looked over to Sammy. Damn if he would let anything happen to him. That is what pushed him to dig in. Even though, it might hurt his brain. He had to find something.

For a few hours he was deep in the internet. Looking up every possible lead that he could think of. There had to be away to find these rifts, before they even opened. But that was like looking for a needle in a hay stack. He thought of maybe bringing in Precious. But she was young. And living with Jody. There had to be someone else. Hell if he trusted anyone really. But desperate times are knocking.

The sun started to raise. His eyes felt like sand coated them. That is when he came across an odd disappearances. A father and child. In a remote town in Damn Kentucky. He dug a little bit deeper. And it just wasn’t a random kidnapping. This was something. He knew it in his damn bones. He would have to wake Sammy. And they would be hitting the road today.

Standing he dressed in jeans, shirt and his boots. Grabbing his leather jacket. He slipped out of the room. Going to a diner that was across the road. He ordered breakfast and grabbed some coffee. Once the order was ready to go. He paid and jetted back across to the hotel.

Sam: -Thousands upon thousands of hours on the rode, living in a car most the time and nearly dying on a regular basis will cause you to think a little different. They’d lost everyone they’d ever loved whether in friendship or lovers. The job was to dangerous to bring in anyone into it and it would be like being stamped with an expiration date soon as some demonic thing decided to give a little payback so in the end they’d turned to eachother. And life felt more alive now that they had, atleast for Sam. Sure it feels good to save people but that pivotal spark they needed that too. He’d slept hard and roused a bit when Dean told him they needed to get a move on. Smelling food and coffee he sat up on the edge of the bed and rubbed eyes trying to process things. He needed a quick shower so he got up and squeezed Dean’s shoulder as he walked past. “I’ll make it fast.” Disappearing into the small bathroom he climbed into the shower and turned the water on hot as he could stand it. Steam began to gather covering the mirror in condensation. Cracking his neck he let the hot water loosen the tight muscles up as he washed up. Fingertips worked up a later in his hair and he turned to rinse it out, he was starving for some reason. He actually pictured one of those three meat burritos Dean was so fond of, maybe it was the long exercise over the last few days. Once he finished he skipped the shave and wrapped a towel around his waist and went to eat.-

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dsmroleplay · 3 years

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#SilentMysteries #DSM #SPN Part One

Written by @BornHunterDean & @swinchesterdsm

•A few nights in the hotel had done a world of good for the itch he felt. But he needed to hunt. He loved chilling with his brother. Hell, on this trip they had a break through. And that breakthrough was unexpected, it very much welcome. Dean felt more settled then he had in awhile. And the reason for that, held against him, Sammy.

Opening the door, he kicked it closed with his foot. Placing down their breakfast. He went over and sat on the edge of the bed. Leaning down he kissed Sammy. Trying to wake him.* Sammy, wake up. I got us some breakfast and a case. Sammy. *he rubbed his back. They would have to get a move on. They had a long drive ahead of them.* ::::::::::::::::::::::: Sam: -Thousands upon thousands of hours on the rode, living in a car most the time and nearly dying on a regular basis will cause you to think a little different. They'd lost everyone they'd ever loved whether in friendship or lovers. The job was to dangerous to bring in anyone into it and it would be like being stamped with an expiration date soon as some demonic thing decided to give a little payback so in the end they'd turned to eachother. And life felt more alive now that they had, atleast for Sam. Sure it feels good to save people but that pivotal spark they needed that too. He'd slept hard and roused a bit when Dean told him they needed to get a move on. Smelling food and coffee he sat up on the edge of the bed and rubbed eyes trying to process things. He needed a quick shower so he got up and squeezed Dean's shoulder as he walked past. "I'll make it fast." Disappearing into the small bathroom he climbed into the shower and turned the water on hot as he could stand it. Steam began to gather covering the mirror in condensation. Cracking his neck he let the hot water loosen the tight muscles up as he washed up. Fingertips worked up a later in his hair and he turned to rinse it out, he was starving for some reason. He actually pictured one of those three meat burritos Dean was so fond of, maybe it was the long exercise over the last few days. Once he finished he skipped the shave and wrapped a towel around his waist and went to eat.-

#DSM SPN RP

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dinamicus · 4 years

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Thursday’s Child https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/thursdays-child/

One summer day some ten years ago, I was helping to paint a house. On the boombox was Best of Bowie: a long, chronological march from the beachhead of “Space Oddity,” with most songs met by indifference and occasional hums. The caressing synthesizers of “Thursday’s Child” began, and as Bowie started crooning, a fellow painter stopped mid-swipe and looked over at the CD player.

“What happened to that guy?” he said.

We’d made it through “Dancing In the Street” with a few chuckles and “Under the God” without comment. But “Thursday’s Child,” on that hot afternoon, sounded awful: treacly, gaspy, wan; the limp expiration of a career. When heard as the close of a sequence that runs through “Rebel Rebel,” “Ashes to Ashes,” “Modern Love” and “The Hearts Filthy Lesson,” “Thursday’s Child” sounds like a man falling down in the street, a hasty end scene tacked onto an overlong Act V. “I’m done with the future: here’s a song for your grandmother.” Dies, borne off stage right.

Sure, any slow, fragile-sounding number could’ve gotten a raspberry that day from our collection of young and recently-young NYC snobs. It’s not as if “Thursday’s Child” is an ill-constructed or poorly-sung track: if anything, it’s one of the few Bowie compositions of the period sturdy enough to withstand being a cover, whether a trumpet solo or a busker’s guitar piece (solo electric guitar interpretation by Jake Reichbart here). Its verse melody, a dance of mild leaps and modest falls, suits a lyric crafted for common use. In the verses, an older man regrets the paths he’s taken; in the choruses, he dares to hope a new love can give his life meaning. It’s Bowie’s “September Song.”

But “Thursday’s Child” wasn’t hip; it didn’t offer any pretense that it was—it sat in a comfortable present tense and stewed on the past. It felt genteel and a bit shabby. After a few years of running across stages in his bottle imp incarnation, after his stabs at industrial and jungle, after all the interviews about Damien Hirst and body scarifications and Millennial doom and Internet-as-cultural-dynamite, Bowie suddenly turned up as the sad clown again. He’d dusted off his Buster Keaton suit and reclaimed the shadow bloodline of his “rock” one: the Bowie of “When I Live My Dream” and “As The World Falls Down,” the cabaret and mime Bowie, the “light entertainment” regional thespian, the bedsit saddo, the Mod who worshiped Judy Garland and Eartha Kitt (see below).

The singer of “Thursday’s Child” is another of the Pierrots he’d played since the Sixties: a perpetual loser at love, like the glum figure of his “Be My Wife” promo. Take the Mr. Pitiful tone of the opening verse—

All of my life I’ve tried so hard doing the best with what I had: nothing much happened all the same…

—with its most desperate emphases (“best,” “hope”) cued to gloomy B minor chords, while the verse’s circular structure strands the singer back where he started, on an augmented E major (“breaking my life in two”). You can take the song as a straight-faced lament, as a quietly over-the-top spoof of the same, or both (it is Bowie, after all).

And while the chorus offers a hope of release from the cycle, its alternation of F# majors (“falling”) and F# minors (“really got,” “my past”) suggest the hope’s rather thin. The repetitions of “throw me tomorrow” start to feel desperate; Bowie’s “everything’s falling into place!” is someone trying to hypnotize himself. It’s as if Bowie’s answering Joni Mitchell:

It’s got me hoping for the future And worrying about the past

Ours was the most exciting show that had hit London since the war…I was glad that I was born in a part of the world that had been so well protected, but I was also ashamed of my protection. I carried guilt inside for being a privileged character when the rest of the world was being destroyed.

Eartha Kitt, Thursday’s Child, 1956.

This song, I might point out, is not actually about Eartha Kitt.

Bowie, 1999.

He’d taken the song’s title from Eartha Kitt, Bowie said upon introducing “Thursday’s Child” on VH1 Storytellers. Writing the song, he’d recalled the paperback cover of her first autobiography (“it just kind of bubbled up the other month”). It had been an erotic memory of his youth (that and D.H. Lawrence, he said).* Using Kitt as a starting point suited Hours’ theme of a middle-aged assessment of lost youth, a 50-year-old flipping through a box of mold-speckled records shipped from his childhood home (Ray Charles’ “Lucky Old Sun” —a man stuck in the middle of life and envying death—also gets a nod).

The title also plays with an old prediction rhyme—“Thursday’s child has far to go” (another variant is “Thursday’s child is merry and glad”)—that had come out of the ground somewhere in medieval England. The rhyme was a popular corruption of court astrology: Thursday was considered a day of great fortune as it was under the sway of Jupiter, kingpin of gods. The Book of Knowledge, by one Erra Pater (1745), notes a “child born on Thursday shall arrive to Great Honour and Dignity” (By contrast, David Robert Jones was born on a Wednesday “full of woe”).**

So the refrain of “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday born, I was Thursday’s Child” was Bowie spading up his old occult interests, presenting them in anodyne forms: the little boxes tucked away on a newspaper’s comics page: horoscopes, birth stones, fortunes, lucky numbers (see “Seven��). It’s the “secret histories” of the Sixties reduced to syndicated copy; it’s another diminishing of unearthly power into ordinary life.

It’s also a clever way to cloud the lyric. What to make of the chorus kicker: “only for you I don’t regret/that I was Thursday’s child“? It’s at odds with the picture the singer’s painted so far: that he’s someone for whom little’s worked out, someone who’s estranged from everyday life yet firmly stuck within it (“He’s a teethgrinding, I’ll-get-this-job-done guy,” Bowie said of the narrator). (It’s also possible that, as Nicholas Pegg noted, Bowie’s referencing the VU’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties“: “For Thursday’s child is Sunday’s clown.“) But a Thursday’s child would be a lucky child: someone with pull, some who had far to go: a Kitt, or a Bowie.

Go back to Eartha Kitt for a moment. Born in South Carolina, she’d reinvented herself in the early Fifties as a nightclub goddess who’d seemingly flown in from the Continent; she played the seductress, the gold-digger with taste (“Santa Baby”) who captured men with her boxful of languages. She’d be cast in that role for the rest of her days: a life spent forever vamping. But what a role! As her biographer John L. Williams wrote of her performance of “Monotonous” in the film New Faces: Eartha is playing a character that’s almost unimaginable in reality [in 1954]: a black American woman who’s tasted all of the world’s delicacies and found them lacking…we wonder, who on earth is this woman? And how can she seem to be so indifferent to the laws and mores of her time? A question that could have been asked, with a gender change, about another performer in 1973.

So maybe the singer is someone like Kitt: not some teeth-grinding anonymous drone but a bright public figure, someone whose name everyone knows, someone to whom things seem have come easily. Doing the best with what I had becomes a modest boast; shuffling days and lonely nights are those of a stage life. Or maybe even the common life of an office drone is a stage life. Bowie had called himself “the Actor,” but in a way, we’re all actors.

Composed in Bermuda in late 1998, “Thursday’s Child” appears to have been mainly Bowie’s work, written on acoustic guitar. It was earmarked as a potential single, with a prominent role for backing singers. The question of who those should be became a bit contentious once Bowie and Gabrels were back in New York.

After toying with having Mark Plati’s six-year-old daughter sing the “Inchworm”-inspired “Monday, Tuesday..” line (she turned Bowie down! “she said she’d rather sing with her friends than with grown-ups,” Plati told David Buckley), Bowie thought of contacting the trio TLC. In 1999, they were arguably the premier female R&B vocal group of the decade. But they were tottering. Rife with personality and financial squabbles and having taken five years to cut their follow-up LP, they were about to be dethroned by Destiny’s Child.

Using TLC sat poorly with Gabrels, who thought it stunk of Bowie’s “New Jack Swing” moves in 1992: “Thursday’s Child” could be another potential Al B. Sure! fiasco. Gabrels had positioned himself as the house purist: some faint analogue in the Bowie camp to Steve Albini. He’d met Bowie during the nadir of Never Let Me Down and he saw it as his charge to keep Bowie honest and weird, to stop him from embarrassing himself by chasing trends after their sell-by date. During the making of ‘Hours’ Gabrels came to feel that his time with Bowie was over (we’ll get into this more in next week’s entry); his veto of TLC would be his last strategic win.

His alternative proposal had a touch of self-interest: he recommended a Boston friend, Holly Palmer, who Bowie auditioned via speakerphone (“let’s hear it with more vibrato now”). You could argue that Palmer’s vocals were just as time-stamped as any TLC vocals would have been: the Liz Fraser-inspired vocalese, the coffee-shop ambiance (a slightly edgier Dido). But Bowie liked what he heard and Palmer joined his touring band in 1999-2001.**

Another question was how far to take the production. David Buckley argued that the song was “crying out for strings,” and the various synthesizer fill-ins for woodwinds, strings and brass can make the song seem stuck in an embryonic state. Had Bowie held “Thursday’s Child” back for what he was calling the “Visconti album,” slated for 2000, it likely would’ve had a much grander production. Perhaps what kept “Thursday’s Child�� from being a monstrous hit was that it hedged its bets too much.

The last piece was Walter Stern’s video. “Bowie,” with little makeup to mask his plus-fifty face, and his partner prepare for bed. They brush their teeth, she takes out her contacts (verrry slooowly). There’s a naturalist feel to counter the tasteful Wiliams Sonoma bedroom set: you hear Bowie cough, mumble and half-sing over the recorded track (taken from Elvis Costello’s “I Wanna Be Loved” video), and the plash of water in the sink. He looks in the mirror, transfixed by his aged but still beautiful face; he’s a veteran Narcissist. A twist of the glass and he sees younger versions of himself and his partner.

The mirror pair have the easy, arrogant confidence of youth; they stare at the older couple with the cold pity of what Bowie once called “the coming race.” They seem like beautiful wraiths. Bowie, seemingly infatuated with his younger self, does the Marx Brothers Duck Soup mirror game with him. The double plays along for a while, then stops, bored and disgusted with his older self. We passed upon the stair, Bowie had sung long ago, upon meeting another double. He’d been on his way up then, his life still mostly potential. This is the other end of the staircase: a man realizing that time has changed him, that the majority share of his life lies behind him now, that his younger self would’ve regarded the current him like some threadbare costume. Perhaps that was the right question to ask after all: What happened to that guy? He kisses his wife in his imagination, and so to bed....

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astoryaboutwar · 7 years

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our doubts are traitors snippet 7

Heeeeey, so I’m still alive! Surprise!

Seriously, you have no idea how guilty I feel that our doubts has been so monumentally delayed. I AM SO SORRY.

BUT. It has NOT been abandoned, I promise. Let me console you with a new snippet! Things are finally coming to a less angst-ridden head! Ya...ay?

Enjoy!

*posts and runs away*

Snippet 7; Present Day

July, three years, and December now. Time treading on, endless, date stamping lives as if marking their passage means something to history.

Men fear death, fear being forgotten, fear the ignominy of time so much they spend all their lives working to scar themselves on this world. Vast ruins of sand-blasted stone and rain-shelled monuments; behold my works, ye mighty, and despair!

You die twice, they say, once when your body expires, and the other the last time someone says your name.

Bullshit. You are never whole in memory. Parents, lovers, friends, strangers, even your own. Autobiographies are works of fiction, coloured by vanity bias of the worst kind.

That’s the secret, probably.

No one will know you, most and least of all yourself.

The water is freezing, frigid with the Tokyo winter. It’s quiet beneath the surface, splashing loud through air, then down to liquid silence.

The rooftop pool is deserted, the saner among the condo’s residents staying resolutely indoors.

Water sluices. Burns with cold just the right side of pain, tastes of chlorine when it gets into his mouth.

Victor swims.

Cuts through the water, one stroke, another. Kick, surface, breathe. Repeat.

Don’t think.

Don't think about the way he laughed, full-bodied and rich, don't think about how he hated mornings, rooting down into the duvet and pillows, don't think about quiet boys with warm smiles and kind eyes.

Don't think about these things. Memory is a faulty device, rose-tinted and biased in the most dangerous ways.

Think, instead, about how -

How you lost your footing and fell, hard, head over heels for a man you're not sure even knows himself; who are you in love with, then? Your own imaginings?

You made him feel, then he made you believe. He made you feel, then you made him believe.

Round and around and around we go.

Victor dives low, cuts a line through the water to skim the bottom. From here, the sky is a distant, fragmented light, rippling and amorphous.

No sound, no air. Almost a universe unto itself, and he thinks about the inevitable destruction of celestial bodies, how probability and infinity means everything must come to an end.

Oxygen runs out, and he rises, surfaces to the glittering vista of Tokyo at night. There are no stars in the sky, outshone by grounded man-made ones of neon and amber. There’s the moon, waxing, and he wrinkles his nose at it, lets his body relax enough to float.

When he emerges from the pool, fingers and toes pruned and pale, there’s an email waiting in his inbox. It’s a stark white that blinds when he opens it, a brightness that hurts his eyes.

I’m not going to tell you where he is, it writes. But he’s fine.

Victor towels through his hair, refuses to read the rest of Phichit’s reply until he’s down the lift and back in the suite, cradling a glass of bourbon.

It’s been years, Victor, the final paragraphs reads. Maybe it’s time to let go.

Floors below, there’s a baby wailing in abject misery, a mother irritated and concerned; two doors down there’s a serene presence, peaceful and calm; there’s anger in the building north-east downwards, someone else having sex mixed in with sadness and lust and confusing jealousy -

Everyone and the sheer weight of their living stacked atop one another and packed in so tightly he can taste the salt of their emotions, choke with the life in them and never be alone in his head.

There’s someone furious a building over, someone else idling in dreams. Someone grimly determined passing by below, someone buildings over cruising in a contented stream.

And he’s standing here, in this fucking flat, this silent, hollow flat with a highball of hard liquor in hand, and there’s a laptop screen dimmed now with disuse, read email left open and furiously unanswered.

Hollow, he repeats.

Hol -

Low.

That’s it, that’s the word, the syllables themselves onomatopoeic and resonant. Form follows function, makes itself universally understood across cultures, and Victor’s only a sad parallel of that, surely, because if form follows function then -

He is a vessel, an empty, vacant thing, and maybe once he could've been something more, but he’s forgotten how; he’s set the whole thing on fire and never realised what they made him burn.

Victor drains the glass, set it down hard enough the crystal chips. Stands there, hands pressed against the edge of the sink, head bent, and thinks -

That -

God, if love is a conquest, what does he know about love when it’s only ever moved through him, holy dove and halle-goddamned-lujah, taught him how to shoot anyone who outdrew him -

If love is a conquest then Yuuri broke his throne and cut his hair and took him for everything, razed his city and made Victor breathe the smoking ruins and think, still, of the brush of his lips, made him bleed over the wreckage and wish, still, for the press of his hands -

If love is a conquest then Yuuri conquered.

Victor can be angry about that, despite everything. Despite the way truth is often foreign on his lips, the way his tongue shines silver.

Despite the way he’d been twenty-five and insulted, first, that some upstart had stolen his contract and killed Victor’s mark, his, the Victor Nikiforov, then intrigued about the beautiful boy he’d tracked down who’d done the deed.

And despite the way everything, later, lined up like dominoes, and the whispers, the rumours, made sense as truth fell into his lap.

He can hate the way a part of him remembers what it was like to hold Yuuri, to rain kisses along his nose and the slope of his cheeks just to hear him laugh.

He can hate the way he can’t forget that he once knew what it was like to be - maybe not half-full, but only half-empty, and that it makes the emptiness now vast and yawning.

Maybe it’s time to let go.

Don’t you think Victor’s tried?

He’s run the gamut of loathing and fury to jagged despair and helplessness, and still, still -

Still.

There’s a beautiful boy with a smile too sweet for someone like him, who made Victor forget what he was and played him for all he was worth and nothing, nothing about it was real, formless like the steam in the Hasetsu baths that draped over their first meeting.

Victor pushes away from the sink, breathes in sharp and deep. Retrieves his laptop and wakes it from sleep, stares at the blank white of the reply box, the blinking cursor.

Thank you, he eventually types. It’s alright, I’ll take it from here.

Send. A single, quick depress of a button.

Whisper together, quiet and meaningless, more distant and solemn than a fading star.

He books a flight to Barcelona.

#allie writes #our doubts are traitors #fanfic #fic #victuuri #viktuuri #yuri on ice

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