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queen-scribbles · 3 years

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The Long Burning Torch ch 3

Oh, look, another chapter for the 20s AU I started for the @shepherds-of-haven Summer Event, which has taken on a life of its own. In this chapter: A couple new (but familiar!) faces, and the plot thickens.

----

Five minutes into Ashtown proper, Xaeryn was exceedingly grateful for the directions Mr. Syndran had provided. He hadn’t been wrong comparing the place to a warren.

“You look lost, doll.”

Her head snapped up from the paper in her hand to meet the gaze of a lanky man lounging against a wall, a soft cap slouched down over his forehead. His--very familiar--green eyes were much more vivid in person than they had been in her scry.

Xaeryn arched a brow coolly. “And what led you to that conclusion?”

He smirked and pushed away from the wall. “The way you keep checking that paper for one, Sunshine.” His hands slid in his pockets. “Also, we don’t get dames that look like you here all that often. Anything I can help you find?”

“You’re awfully helpful,” Xaeryn said, resisting the urge to run a hand down her outfit.

He doffed his cap and sketched an exaggerated bow, giving her a wink when he righted. “Consider me the Ashtown welcoming committee.”

“And what a charming first impression you make.” Xaeryn regarded him for a moment or two more, then decided to see how things would play out. “I’m trying to find Chase Trinaeste.”

The man’s eyes twinkled, bright as the scarf tossed ‘round his neck. “I think I can help with that. Right this was, Sunshine,” he said blithely, as if he wasn’t the aforementioned Trinaeste himself.

A large part of Mr. Syndran’s adamant belief Thieves guild had been involved in the theft rode on Trinaeste’s presence in her scryed vision. “He trusts his lieutenants with the vast majority of their... jobs,” Mr. Syndran had explained, nose wrinkling slightly in distaste. “His being there shows it was a heist of high importance to their gang, fitting the theft of an artefact.”

Xaeryn had no reason to doubt his logic. But she’d be a fool to show all the cards she held at the outset.

“My name is not ‘sunshine’,” she said briskly instead.

“Well, then, doll, what am I calling ya?” Trinaeste asked, unruffled by her tone.

“Miss Shrike will do for now, I think. And what do I call you?”

“Who says you need to call me anything?” he returned as he led her down several new streets in quick succession.

“It might come in handy if I want to commend your hospitality to Mr. Trinaeste,” she countered, trying her best to memorize their route. Left, left, right...

“I’ll get by, Miss Shrike,” Trinaeste said with a light laugh.

He was very good at dodging, she did have to give him that. “For politeness’ sake, then. Perhaps I’d feel better about following you into the depths of Ashtown if I at least knew your name.”

He laughed again, pausing by a wall decorated with a... creative interpretation of a cat’s head. “Well, then. I have a confession to make, in that case.”

“Oh?” Xaeryn marked the two brunos nearby--one down an alley, the other lounging by a door--despite their affected nonchalance. “And what would that be?”

“Chase Trinaeste at your service.” He skipped the exaggerated bow this time, instead shoving his hands in his pockets, elbows akimbo, and grinning at her cheekily. “Now that you’ve found me, what do you plan to do with me?”

“First thing that comes to mind is ask why we couldn’t have the introductions back where we first spoke?”

“Let’s say I feel safer on home turf, doll. Just in case your reason for wanting me is less fun than I’m hoping.”

She glanced significantly at one of the toughs. “And if this arrangement doesn’t thrill me?”

“You can leave,” Trinaeste said with a shrug. “We ain’t going to stop you.” His grin widened, cat-like. “But you seem the type who doesn’t like leaving empty-handed, Miss Shrike.” He gestured toward the door next to one member of their small audience. “Whatever it is you’re after, I think we’ll be more comfortable in my office, don’t you?”

She doubted he cared between the two locations as strongly as she doubted it was an actual office, but Xaeryn did have to admit some privacy for this conversation would be a good thing. “Do I strike you as the type to just follow strange men into unfamiliar buildings, Mr. Trinaeste?”

He laughed. “A dangerous question, doll. You strike strike me as the type who enjoys a good mystery.”

(Or even a bad one, Xaeryn finished wryly to herself.)

Trinaeste raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. “On my honor as head of the guild, I promise you will leave in the same condition and carrying the same things as when you got here, so long as you don’t threaten me or mine.”

“A fair deal,” she said in assent, and nodded toward the door. “After you.”

Red would have a heart attack if he knew what she was doing. She swallowed a laugh at the thought; less than a week reconnected and his reaction was one of the first things to cross her mind. Her gut said it would be a worthwhile risk. While Trinaeste was indisputably a dangerous man, there was a clear sense of ‘only when necessary’ to his skill that gave her confidence she would be fine.

“One more condition,” Trinaeste said as he led the way into the building. “Call me Chase. No idea who ‘Mr. Trinaeste’ is, but he sounds too high-class to be me.”

He’d kowtowed to her chosen address easily enough, and she did want him amenable to talking. She could grin and bear the informality for one conversation. “Very well.”

They didn’t go far from the outer door before Chase swung to the side through another doorway. Xaeryn almost tripped over the abruptness as she followed. There was no desk, or any other typical office furniture save chairs. There were five of those; loosely grouped on one side of the room. Opposite them a stack of shipping crates were shoved against a tapestry-hung wall. It was eclectic and flamboyant and (she’d just bet) full of secrets. A perfect match for the man now flopped in one of the fairly-comfortable looking chairs and grinning at her again.

“So, Miss Shrike, what did you want from me?”

(From the way his eyes twinkled, that phrasing was very much on purpose.)

Xaeryn chose her seat and her reply with equal care; the former so she could see both her host and the door, the latter to convey intent without accusing. Yet. “I’m investigating a theft and have reason to believe you may have seen something helpful.”

Chase laughed. “You think I did it.”

“You do helm the Thieves guild, Chase,” she said lightly, crossing her legs and flicking dust off her hem. So much for trying to be subtle.

“Fair point,” he conceded with another laugh, before leaning forward to brace his elbows on his knees and his chin on his palms with still-twinkling eyes. “So, what is it you think we stole?”

“An artefact.”

She was interrupted before giving a description as Chase’s grin went cat-like gain and the twinkle in his eyes shifted to a hard glitter. “Syndran set you on us, didn’t he? What did he lose?”

“Mr. Syndran didn’t lose anything. Transit is a possibility for when a piece was stolen,” Xaeryn said primly. “And while, yes, he may have pointed me in your direction as an avenue of investigation, I wouldn’t be much of a detective if I followed accusations that lacked supporting evidence.”

“Ah, you’re a private dick,” Chase smirked, eyes once again twinkling in amusement. “Tell you what, Miss Shrike, since you bein’ here is bountiful evidence Riel’s people not only dropped the ball, but bad enough he doesn’t want to involve the cops, I’ll tell you whatever you need to help. That being the best news I’ve had this week and all.”

She arched a brow. “Whatever I need?”

He spread his hands. “I’m an open book, doll.”

“Chase!” a new voice scolded. The owner, a slender brunette, paused in the doorway to scowl along with her critique. “You know better than to offer open season on guild secrets like that!”

“Calm down, Ari.” Chase slouched back, waving one hand in Xaeryn’s direction. “Our guest seems a smart enough dame to not ask for more than she needs.” That glimpse of danger was back under the last word.

“I’m not after your secrets,” Xaeryn promised. “Just trying to find a missing artefact.”

“And what artefact would that be?” Ari asked, still wary, and still poised in the doorway. Xaeryn noted but didn’t comment on the jangling stack of bracelets that sheathed a good three inches of the other woman’s wrist.

“A pendent, this big.” she indicated the size. “Black stone and bronze.”

“Wasn’t us,” Chase said easily.

“You were witnessed along the transport caravan’ route.”

“Oh, we were casing it,” he acknowledged with a wink.

“Chase!”

He just grinned at Ari’s beratement. “We didn’t steal anything, though. Couldn’t get a good shot at what we were supposed to nick.”

“Supposed to?” Xaeryn interjected. “So this is something you were contracted to steal rather than...” She waffled a moment over word choice, “...personal?”

“Yeah. Like I said, though, we didn’t get anything.” Chase shrugged. “Just as well; our butter and egg man never showed his face after.”

“Hm.” Xaeryn made a mental note to look into how popular a target the caravan had become. “Did you notice anyone else who seemed to be casing it? Aside from your people?”

“N-” Chase’s brow furrowed and he stopped mid-negative reply. “There was that one mug Kato saw right before the trucks made the museum lot. Don’t have anything more than ‘foreign-looking’ and green hair, and he didn’t see where he went, just was a little too casual in his loitering, gave Kato an odd impression.”

It wasn’t a lead solid enough for her to really follow, but it did seem confirmation multiple parties were interested in the caravan. “I see. And what was your... client after?”

“That’s not something you need to know,” Ari said firmly.

“Knowing what else was and might yet be targeted will help my investigation, so I would have to disagree,” Xaeryn said just as firmly. “I’m not going to rat you out, in fact I plan to tell Mr. Syndran you were not responsible. But this information could be useful. Please.”

“A necklace. Gold, rubies, opals; sounded worth a pretty lyss,” Chase said, turning to flash a grin at Ari. “She did say please.”

Ari sighed but didn’t protest.

“Alright I’ll be getting out of your hair, then.” Xaeryn stood, smoothing her skirt. “I appreciate your talking to me, It was enlightening.”

She held out a hand to shake, and Chase kissed the back of it instead, shooting her a wink as she rolled her eyes. “Not a problem, Miss Shrike. Good luck catching your bad guys.”

Xaeryn couldn’t help a small chuckle at the comment as she withdrew her hand and headed for the door. She half-expected to be blocked from exiting, but that proved unfounded. She retraced the route to the edge of the Ashtown district, then headed for her office to call Mr. Syndran just as it started to rain.

---

Her call to update Mr. Syndran went about as well as it could; he was disappointed Thieves guild hadn’t panned out as a lead--Xaeryn detected some personal disappointment as well as professional they weren’t responsible. “Do you have anything beyond their word they didn’t do it?”

“No,” Xaeryn said, leaning forward over her desk to skim her notes as they talked. “Well... their word and a gut feeling they were being level.” Which is all I really have that you aren’t responsible. She was polite--and wise--enough to not make the comparison. “They were hardly going to let me search their warehouse.”

“So what’s your next step? There’s not long until the exhibit opens, and I dislike the number of dead ends you’ve encountered.”

“Oh, I’m not happy about them, either, believe me.” Xaeryn pursed her lips and fought to keep a sharp note out of her voice at his implied censure. “Next is talking to the curator at the Hall. They may have seen this green-haired foreigner Thieves guild mentioned, or something else suspicious that didn’t show when I scryed. Either way, I can get more information about the exhibit and the pendent’s owner.”

Mr. Syndran sighed. “I highly doubt this convenient and vague ‘foreigner’ exists as anything other than a red herring to lead you away from the Thieves guild, but your other goals are sound. Let me know what you learn, if anything.”

“Of course.” They exchanged farewells and hung up. Rain still pattered against the window, and a quiet growl from her stomach reminded Xaeryn she was overdue for lunch, so she bumped back calling the Hall in favor of a quick bite to eat.

And it was quick; she loved mysteries but hated being stymied at every turn like this case had done. She wanted a workable lead. While she agreed with Mr. Syndran the ‘foreigner’ was too vague to pursue on his own, green hair was far from common in Haven, even in the Mage community. If someone else made mention or he was spotted later, it wouldn’t be hard to connect the sightings. For now, she’d call the museum, speak to the curator. Hopefully that would get her somewhere.

The secretary who answered her call sounded both bored and frazzled, which Xaeryn found impressive. “Haven Hall of History and Culture, how may I help you?”

“My name’s Xaeryn Shrike, I wanted to speak to the curator about-”

“Ms. Acquell is very busy,” the receptionist cut her off. “We have an exhibit opening in just over a week, she doesn’t have time for meetings with random curiosity seekers or history aficionados right now.”

Xaeryn let a bit of edge color her voice. “I’m a private detective Mr. Syndran hired in regard to the artefact caravan.”

A long pause, the line crackling with silence, then, “Can you be here in half an hour? I’m sure she can clear some space in her schedule, though there may be bit of a wait.”

I thought you might say that. “I can. Thank you.”

“Very well.” The secretary hung up.

Xaeryn arched a brow at the receiver before she placed it back in the cradle. “See you shortly,” she muttered. Wonderful attitude for someone in such a socially involved position. She glanced out the window and was gratified to find the rain slacking off. She’d still drive, of course, but it would be less of a headache.

Xaeryn cleaned up from her lunch, gave her outfit a quick check to ensure it was still presentable after her visit to Ashtown and the Merchants Guild garage, and tucked her notepad back in her handbag before tugging on a hat and heading out the door.

The drive to the museum was uneventful aside from a couple pot holes and a pedestrian chasing his umbrella into the street with nary a regard for traffic. Still, Xaeryn did arrive in one piece. A determined breeze tugged at her as she made her way up the steps, and she almost dropped her handbag in her instinctive grab to hold her hat on.

It’s pinned, you silly goose, she chided herself ruefully, and brushed drizzle off her clothes as she stepped inside. She exchanged a brief conversation--light on pleasantries--with the receptionist,and was waved toward one of the long cultural wings to wait for when Curator Acquell found a moment to speak with her. She perched on a bench that sat between a statue of the first High Augar and a glass case displaying a map of the known world at the time. At this hour and with this weather, there weren’t many other people, and the gallery was mostly quiet.

Ample opportunity for Xaeryn to ruminate on the irony her chosen seat appeared to be smack in the middle of an exhibit on the Castigation, or one of the uprisings that followed. At least, if the painting across from her was anything to go by; a group of determined Norms gripping pistols as they surrounded a cluster of bloodied but unyielding Hunters whose hands glowed with grace as they clung to their weapons...

Xaeryn shook her head and very deliberately focused on reading her notes.

---

It took half an hour--closer to three-quarters--and Xaeryn had switched to roaming the gallery to take in the sights before a short, bespectacled blonde approached.

She hesitated briefly but noticeably before clearing her throat. “Are you... Miss Shrike?”

Xaeryn nodded and held out a hand to shake. “And you would be the curator?”

The blonde bobbed her head as she shook her hand. “Shery Acquell. I’m so very sorry about the wait.” She smoothed a hand down her rumpled brown and pink dress. “We’re terribly busy trying to get the new exhibit together.” She bit her lip. “Or, as together as we can get it, at least.”

“That’s actually what I’m here to talk to you about,” Xaeryn said. “But I think it’s something better discussed away from potential prying eyes and ears.”

“Oh, right, of course.” Miss Acquell briefly clasped her hands in front of her and bit her lip. “This way.” She gestured to a door. “We can speak in the Cultures of Blest wing if you don’t mind dodging crates and museum staff?”

“Not at all,” Xaeryn said as she followed the other woman through the indicated door. Getting to see behind the scenes of a museum exhibit was the opposite of an inconvenience, to her mind.

“It’s not terribly exciting, I’m afraid; lots of boxes and dust and swapping things around until you find the right arrangement. But I think we can find somewhere to talk. My office is a mess right now, or we could just go there.”

“It’s fine,” Xaeryn assured her. “A little dust won’t kill me. I dress practical for that very reason; no telling where an investigation will take me.”

“OH, that’s... smart.” Miss Acquell fiddled with her glasses and inclined her head toward an empty display pedestal. “That’s where the pendent will go, assuming it’s back before the exhibit opens.” Her face went red and she winced apologetically. “N-Not that I doubt your skill as a detective, Miss Shrike, it just seems to have vanished into thin air, and, well....” She half shrugged and let the words trail off.

“I’ve definitely hit enough dead ends for the comparison to be apt,” Xaeryn said, swallowing the spike of defensiveness to keep her tone level as she peeked at the other artefacts in the case. A belt with a snake-head buckle, a silver circlet set with a single moonstone, an ornately carved hair comb, a silver ring that resembled a basilisk eating its own tail. At least one item hummed quietly with magic of some kind, but enchantment and binding weren’t her forte, so Xaeryn couldn’t tell which. “So, to confirm, how long did the shipment sit before you and your staff started opening crates?”

“Oh, an hour?” Miss Acquell bit her lip. “Maybe two, at most? There was a... small kerfuffle in the art wing; some unruly children, and we didn’t get to the crates until that was settled. But there was a watchman outside and one in the museum, neither of them reported seeing anyone.” She played with her necklace. “As well as a Whitestone Couriers representative. Pink-haired young lady, very irate by the time I spoke to her, though that is understandable, with how long we kept her waiting.”

“Did you not have enough staff for someone to take care of the artefacts while others handled the... disturbance?”

“Normally we would have.” Miss Acquell stepped into a small alcove to move their conversation out of the way for the six or so staffers busily yet carefully removing things from crates to arrange in various displays. “But it was a lightly staffed day--Thursdays are usually slow--and I had a couple people who didn’t come in. We weren’t able to find anyone who could cover their shifts, so we were running a bit short.”

With Ms. Aerin keeping an eye on the artefacts once they reached the museum, it was no wonder Mr. Syndran was so convinced a potential theft would have occurred during transit. “What do you know about the pendent, Solimer’s torch? I’ve learn some things of its history, but what of more recent years? The last century or so?”

“A little,” Miss Acquell said, flicking a nervous glance to the side as a pair of workers fumbled the statue they were shifting. “The last century is a bit... muddy for that pendent. It’s changed hands several times, several people have made claims, few have been able to back them up. The current owner, Ms. Aescar, has the strongest claim. She can trace ancestry to the last known owner of the pendent.”

“Prior to the cheiftain of debated identity with whom it was rediscovered?”

She nodded. “Yes. The others who have tried to stake ownership claim ties to the debated chieftain, or the original tribe, or the first to conquer them, but none have ever clearly proven a connection like Ms. Aescar. And if they could, it turns into a debate predicated largely on the intricacies of right of conquest for who has the strongest claim.” She hesitated, wrung her hands. “There are some in the historical community--niche as this piece may be--who... feel it would almost be better if no further claims are validated. I-If someone can contest Ms. Aescar’s ownership, the pendent has to go in a vault until true provenance can be determined. Which means no one can display it....”

“And that process can take a very long time,” Xaeryn finished for her. It was an issue she’d run into a couple times during her years at Solhadur; an artefact she was researching was hard to get clear information about because three people had equally strong claims and it was tied up in the arbitration.

“Yes, it can.” Miss Acquell pursed her lips and looked back at the intended display. “For now, though, Ms. Aescar has a very open policy for lending it out. Far fewer requested protective measures than most. It’s as if...” she paused, brow furrowing for a moment, “as if she doesn’t really care what happens to it.”

Interesting. “Do you have her contact information? I’d like to speak with her if I could,”

“I do.” Miss Acquell nodded vigorously. “It’s in my office, so I’ll need a minute to dig it out.”

“No hurry,” Xaeryn said. “Are those watchmen here today by any chance? Accommodating as your staff has been with my other earlier inquiries, I haven’t gotten to talk to them yet.”

The curator, who had started for a nearby hall, paused and bit her lip again as she thought. “Theo is,” she finally said. “He was watching the outside lot that day. Today I think he’s in the exhibit on Norm innovation? But I can’t remember for sure. The schedule’s also in my office, I can check while I’m getting Ms. Aescar’s information.”

“Alright, I can wait.”

“Feel free to look around.” Miss Acquell waved a hand toward the progressing displays. “Just don’t touch anything? Some things would survive, but others are too fragile.”

“I generally avoid disturbing museum exhibits,” Xaeryn assured her. “I’ll keep my hands to myself.”

With a final nod and small nervous smile, Miss Acquell scurried off down the hall. From the way she’d talked about her office, Xaeryn gathered this might take more than a few minutes. She wandered through the half-assembled exhibits and display cases, careful to keep enough distance she didn’t disturb the staff or risk damaging anything.

A small smile curved her lips when she caught sight of a necklace--complete with matching cuff bracelets and a diadem--that fit the description of what Chase claimed his guild had been hired to steal. That backed his story up, at least. There was a placard declaring they had belonged to a Queen-Consort from Karzai once upon a time.

Xaeryn was engrossed in reading a Kettish tablet when Miss Acquell returned, and it took a moment to register her presence. In fact, it wasn’t until the curator cleared her throat timidly that Xaeryn’s focus was broken and she swung around.

“Sorry. This sort of thing is a passion of mine,” she explained. “Very easy to slip off to my own little world when I get a chance to indulge.”

“I understand,” Miss Acquell said with a faint smile. “I can be the same, when I get lost in my work. Here’s Ms. Aescar’s information” --she held out a small piece of note paper--”though I should warn you it’s for her estate out near the Jalis desert and she’s apparently not home much? Bit of an adventuress, away for weeks at a time without word of how long she’ll be gone. I’m honestly not sure if we’ve managed to contact her yet to tell her the pendent’s missing.”

“Thanks for the warning, both of them.” Xaeryn slipped the paper in her handbag after checking the legibility. “I’ll keep them in mind.”

“Theo is up in the innovations exhibit, if you want to speak with him.”

“Oh, I very much do. And if something comes up and I need to talk to you again, do you have daily office hours?”

Miss Acquell nodded, then blushed. “Oh, except... except Sunday,” she amended. “I-I have church.”

“Won’t be a problem, so do I.” Normally not a detail Xaeryn shared with strangers, but the woman seemed braced for blowback to the statement.

Her face lit up with the revelation, so it was apparently a good call. “Oh, really? Where do you go?”

“The Whitestone Cathedral,” Xaeryn said. She liked the crowds, the ability to simply sit in the back, worship, and slip out before too many people even noticed she was there and tried to be chummy.

“Oh, that one’s too big for me,” Miss Acquell blurted with a bashful laugh. “I go to the chapel over by the docks.”

“I know it,” Xaeryn said with a nod. She’d had a couple cases over that way. “Thank you very much for all your help, Miss Acquell. This visit has been very informative.”

“I’m glad to have been of help, and you can just call me Shery.” She held out a hand to shake farewell.

“Goodbye, then, Shery. And good luck setting up your exhibit.” Xaeryn shook her hand then headed off following signage toward the exhibit where this guard Theo was posted. She had some rather burning questions to ask him.

---

Her conversation with Theo held mixed success. His memory was fuzzy, which Xaeryn had expected after the time that had passed. He did remember some loiterers, but they were all far enough away from the lot he couldn’t discern features. One or two may have come across as “too casual” with hindsight, but he hadn’t clocked them as suspicious and thus hadn’t paid much mind in the moment. No accounting for street hooligans and how they spent their time, right? One might have had green hair, but they were wearing hats, and “like I said, I wasn’t payin’ much heed, Miss Lady Detective,” so he couldn’t swear by it.

With that tenuous connection possibly made slightly less tenuous, and a much-increased desire to speak with the elusive Ms. Aescar, Xaeryn wandered the museum a bit--might as well; she was here and it would help her think--before heading back out to her car.

“Ladies first,” a dark haired gentleman said, holding the front door open for her and allowing her to precede him down the steps.

Xaeryn nodded and flashed a brief smile of courteous thanks for his chivalry, noting he headed for a gleaming, high-end motorcar, black with red accents, that made hers look dingy. Bet it’s a nightmare to keep that fancy, she thought, paying the man no further mind. She started her car and flicked on the headlights to counter the settling dim of evening as she pulled away.

With her thoughts split between the road and mulling over the case, it took a few turns for her to notice a pair of headlights that appeared to be following the same route she was. That wasn’t terribly unusual, but the fact they were deliberately keeping back was. Tricky as surreptitious glances in a motorcar could be, Xaeryn managed one the next time she had to stop for traffic. Just as her... friend passed under a streetlight.

Black car, with red accents.

Gooseflesh prickled up her arms, and she shifted her planned route home to one with sparse enough traffic covert pursuit would be impossible. Two turns into the new path, her tail must have picked up on her plan and lammed off down a side street. Xaeryn wondered if he thought he was being subtle, and kept a careful eye out the rest of the way back. Despite not seeing any further tails, she remained on guard until she turned the key in her office door, slipped in, and locked it behind her.

“Intriguing development,” she murmured to the empty room as she unpinned her hat. And an interesting end to a very full day. Xaeryn sat wearily at her desk and kicked off her shoes. Even choosing comfort over style, her feet were sore from all the walking. Merchants’ Guild, Ashtown, the Hall... and barely a chance to sit all day. She returned her notepad to the desk drawer and locked it again, but left the stiletto blade in her handbag. She’d likely need it tomorrow anyway. Particularly if it was anywhere near as busy as today.

Busy enough to have missed any telephone calls that came while I was gadding about. Normally while already on a case, that would bother her less, but Red had said he’d call if he learned anything new. She’d hate to be missing information that could help the case, she mused, flicking a glance from the telephone to the clock on her wall. Hopefully this wasn’t too late for her to call him. She dug her notepad back out and flipped through the pages until she reached the section in Red’s sprawling shorthand. There, on the back of a previous page, tucked in the corner like a random doodle, was his office telephone number. Xaeryn smiled at the close resemblance of his eights and zeroes, but knew her own ones and sevens weren’t much better.

After only a brief moment of further hesitation, she pulled the telephone closer and started dialing. It wasn’t that late.

It was answered on the third ring, a slightly breathless, “Hello?”

“Liefred?”

“Xaeryn.” There was a note of surprise in his voice.

“Got it in one, smart man.” But I knew that.

He laughed. “Not that hard; you’re just about the only one who insists on calling me that, even if you don’t need to.” There was a small creak that conjured mental images of him leaning against the desk or slouched in his chair. “Everything alright? Did you need something?”

“Other way ‘round, actually.” Xaeryn fiddled with her notepad. “I’ve had a busy day and it occurred I wasn’t here much if you’d called, so I thought I’d check.”

“There are these people called secretaries, Xaeryn,” Red teased. “You might look into hiring one of them.”

“I know, I know.” She snorted softly. “Especially since most people don’t have your genial reaction to me missing their calls...”

“Most people haven’t known you since you were a gangly fourteen year old trying to cram yourself in the library loft to read in peace, either,” he said warmly. “I know how focused you get. And nothing new, I’m afraid. I got stuck lecturing first-years all day.”

“And you survived,” Xaeryn laughed, curling her toes in and out when they started to cramp.

“Barely,” Red said with a rueful laugh(she’d bet he was running a hand through his hair). “And that despite their best efforts.”

“See, this is why I didn’t want to stick around,” she said, only half-joking.

“Smart woman,” he deadpanned. “But I knew that already.”

Flatterer. It sounded coy and thus stayed in her head, replaced with an equally joking, “I won’t guest lecture, before you ask.”

“Damn,” he said lightly, “At any rate, I’m sorry I don’t have more yet-”

“Don’t apologize,” she cut him off. “I wasn’t expecting anything. Only checking. Just in case. Your responsibilities come first and they kept you busy today. I had plenty of other leads to chase today.”

“Where did they take you?” Red asked. “You mentioned being busy...”

“Merchants’ Guild to start. Then Ashtown-”

“Xaeryn.” His voice was already bristling worry.

“--to talk to Thieves’ guild.”

“Alone?! Ryn-” Red huffed a sigh of exasperated, retroactive concern and she bit back a laugh at how well she’d pegged his reaction. “Do you... take risks like that often?”

“Only when I need to,” she said carefully. Wouldn’t be mentioning the tail on her way home, then. “I know how to handle myself, Liefred. I was polite, we talked, I left. It was fine.”

A long moment of silence. “If you say so.” He didn’t sound completely convinced. (She decided not to tell him her office-apartment sat right by the boundary between Astown and Smoketown) “What else?”

“Just the Hall of History and Culture to speak with the curator.” She shifted in her chair. “That one took a while, but I got some good information to follow up tomorrow.”

“Best of luck with that, and... be careful?”

Xaeryn smiled fondly, unsure whether or not to hope it carried into her voice. “As I can be.” A beat, then she added lightly, “I’d hate to wind up a cautionary tale in one of your lectures, Headmaster.”

“Xaeryn.” She could practically see him trying to glower at her(and failing; Red couldn’t be that mean) through the telephone. “I’m serious.”

“I know.” And I appreciate it. She sobered her tone to match his. “But my line of work comes with risks sometimes.The best I can do is promise not to exacerbate them.”

“I’ll take it,” Red said softly, then was quiet a long moment. “I should let you go; it sounds like you have another busy day tomorrow?”

“I do.” She’d still stay up til midnight talking to him in a heartbeat, but, “and you probably need to recover from this one.”

“Mm. I get to do it again tomorrow, too,” he said glibly.

Xaeryn laughed. “I’ll keep you in my thoughts,” she said with mock solemnity “Good luck to you, as well, in that case.”

“Thank you, I’ll need it,” Red chuckled softly. “Goodnight, Xaeryn.”

“Goodnight, Liefred.”

She stared at the telephone a long moment after hanging up, smile curling her lips, before pushing out of the chair. After a day like this, she needed dinner, a hot bath, and a good night’s sleep. In that order.

She still double checked the door was locked before turning in.

----

(what you don’t see, bc I stuck with Ryn POV, is Pan was in Red’s office with him when she called. :3 Cue Pan promptly batting his eyelashes, making exaggerated lovestruck faces, and generally being a little shit bc He Knows, while Red’s gesturing for Pan to GET OUT of his office. and trying to get him to listen without actually talking so Ryn doesn’t know someone’s there(he doesn’t know why he doesn’t want her knowing that, he just doesn’t). Pan finally relents but hangs in the hallway til they’re done and comes back in with the biggest shit-eating grin “You’re still stuck on her, aren’t you?” Red, groaning and burying his face in his hands: “Pan, close your head, PLEASE. yes”)

#queens fic #shoh #xaeryn shrike #red antiqua #chase trinaeste #shery acquell #tlbt #ryn/red

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spiltscribbles · 4 years

Note

211 please! Any ship!

Notes: Thank you bubby! This actually helped me get out a slump lol, i really really hope you enjoy this fluffy mess and I would love to hear your thoughts!

A Reblog saves a life! | Send Me A Prompt

Annabeth is a fully fledged adult now, honest.

She subscribes to the New Yorker, listens to podcasts in the morning while getting ready for her crummy, right out of college internship in one of the most prestigious architecture firms in the city. She votes even in the primaries and remembers to reload her metro card before it’s out and has even got a God forsaken schedule that she relies on like a lifeline.

All this to say, Annabeth had really once thunk that becoming an adult meant your life turns stale and your days become monotonous. But that was before she began boarding with three literal definitions of spitfires in a Bushwick apartment way too small for four girls, and way to run down for the countless prank wars waged between them and the boys across the way.

Annabeth tries telling Piper this one Thursday afternoon while she’s loading her Nerf gun with the water balloons that Rachel’s preparing with such precision that it kinda terrifies Annabeth shitless, if she’s being frank.

“’s too late to surrender now Chase!” Piper bellows, cocking and then setting down the toy gun in a neat row for the next to be prepared. “It’s about honor now.”

“Honor?” Annabeth repeats in a voice that’s flat enough to cut.

“They’ve won the last two rounds Annabeth,” Rachel tells her, point blank as she ties the next water balloon to be passed off, alabaster skin freckled with paint like always when she comes back from one of her classes. “They’re getting too big headed over this.”

“Yesterday Leo offered to buy me a latte! The little fuck.”

Annabeth’s fair brows knit together, totally confused to Piper’s sudden flash of anger, but reckons that it would be impossible to understand the perceived slight even if she asked Piper to explain.

“You guys are off your rockers,” Annabeth informs them instead, flickers her gaze over to Hazel for some support from someone who is actually sane. She in turn only shrugs, endeared looking as she returns to her sketches.

“Et tu Brute?”

“it’s fun,” Hazel says in her southern drawl, which Annabeth once thought was sweet because it reminded her of venturing outdoors in the Virginia foothills when she was a tot. Though now Annabeth has decided that the accent is actually a ploy to make her sound welcoming for her pray before she killed them off. Knows it for a fact that she’s done it with that friend who visits enough that he’s practically living with the guys too, which obviously means he was roped into all this ridiculousness.

“You’re either with us or against us baby doll,” Piper winks Annabeth’s way, starts a new round of ammunition with Rachel. “This one’s for Mama Fisher in the stars!”

“Insane! Fucking insane! Annabeth repeats emphatically before storming out there apartment to grab the mail, suddenly feels accosted with unwelcome nerves when she steps into the elevator only to be met face to face with one of the aforementioned boys across the hall, the objectively good looking, but impossibly kind one. All ebony locks and crooked grins and eyes the color of sea glass.

Oh fuck.

“Annabeth,” he crows, positively gleeful sounding, which only makes it so her cheeks begin to redden, and her chest contracts.

“Percy, hey how’s it been.”

“Fine,” he says with a one armed shrug, begins scratching the back of his head sheepishly. And God fucking damn it, he doesn’t also get to be cute! That’s not fair! “You headed to work?”

“oh, ah yeah, I mean just for some overtime. We got commissioned for this new thing in Germany of all places, and they kinda need all hands on deck.”

He whistles, low and impressed.

“Why do I get the sense that they’d crumble without you?” He asks with a quirked brow.

“Because flattery is a great way to make friends,” Annabeth smirks, strolls out towards the back row of mail slots to get the inevitable pack of bills and adverts that’s waiting for them.

“Oy, I take offense to that Annabeth,” he sniffs, leans against the wall besides her, one leg crossed over the other, effortless in the whole CW pretty boy with a mysterious past shtick he’s got working for him. An even more hilarious thought on account to Annabeth knowing how his ma sends him a basket of homemade, blue cookies every Sunday afternoon, and that he spends most of his free time protesting for action against climate change with his best friend from literal childhood, a scruffy, adorable dork named Grover.

“Is that right?” She snorts as she shuffles through the letters, tosses away the offer for a free garden gnome from some Lady named Aunty Em, crams a coupon for a free panty from Victoria’s Secret into her bra, and texts the group chat for Rachel to pick up a letter from her dad and Hazel one from her older brother.

“Course,” Percy sulks, big eyes glittering a thousand shades of green that it kinda takes Annabeth’s breath away. “I thought we’ve been friends, at least for a while now.”

“You know what they say about assuming Perseus,” Annabeth snorts, hip checking him as she makes the track down to the nearest subway stop, at least a five minute walk. She totally is not utterly elated over the fact that he’s still walking besides her, dimpling down like there were no where else he’d rather be.

“You know I didn’t even think you could allude to curse words,” Percy guffaws, impossibly bright and impossibly real. “I thought you were too prim and proper for that sorta behavior.”

“Shut up seaweed brains,” Annabeth laughs, can’t help the smile that breaks her face in half whenever he’s around.

“No deadass Chase!” he defends, emphatic. “I even bet Jason that you were related to like Grace Kelly or some shit, that it’s like illegal in your familial bylines to present yourself as anything other than perfect in public.”

“You are such a pain in the ass.”

“Oh my God! You did it again! It’s like it’s Christmas!”

Faux aggrieved, Annabeth rolls back her head in exasperation, eyes alone definitely not enough to emote the proper level of feeling.

“Hey don’t blame me,” Percy raises his hands in concession. “You’re the one who refuses to have fun, like you were a forty year old lawyer.”

Annabeth hikes up her brows, affronted.

“i have fun!”

“Right,” Percy snorts. “I’m sorry babe but Friday night board games don’t count.”

“Those are fun Percy!” Annabeth argues.

“You wouldn’t know fun if it hit you in the face!” Percy insists, stopping outside the stairwell.

“And what? Pelleting one another with water balloons like we were Freshman’s in college again, that’s fun to you I suppose?” Annabeth charges, glare firmly set and weight slung to her left hip.

“Why yes Grandma, it is,” Percy tells her, words hugged in a playful cadence that really could entice anyone to commit a felony with him. The bastard.

“You are a prick,” Annabeth informs him waspishly.

“And you don’t always gotta be so stressed. I mean I respect the hustle Chase, but you’re allowed to just chill once in a while, let down your hair and all.”

“You couldn’t handle that,” she sniffs, pulls out her card to swipe. “If I actually tried me and the girls would ruin you fools.”

“Is that right?”

“Wipe the floor with you,” Annabeth assures.

“Well then, looking forwards to the challenge Chase,” Percy beams, softly tugs on her high pony before walking back to the apartments. It feels like a legion of butterflies are swarming down deep in Annabeth’s stomach over the small contact alone.

“Damn you Percy Jackson.”

“Remind me again why you’re helping? Hazel asks for the third time that Saturday morning as the four sum are crowded around the makeshift map Annabeth had sketched out for them to follow, fully determined now.

“Shh,” Piper swats at her arm, as if physically trying to shoo the question away. “Annabeth we don’t care as long as you explain the plan just one more time.”

“Slower,” Rachel tacks on, gnawing on her thumb nail nervously.

“Right, well just listen closer ladies, this is a one and done deal, okay?” She’s met by a chorus of nods before she repeats her game strategy, one where each girl takes one of the four main hotspots around the building, skulking in the shadows until the predicted guy ends up there, surprised and defenseless when met by the water balloons of doom.

“I’ve already casually told both Jason and Leo that my parents were throwing us a brunch up state, so they don’t even know that we’re here.”

“God Annabeth if I didn’t think it would ruin our friendship I’d kiss you right now,” Piper sighs dreamily.

“Focus that pretty little head McLean,” Annabeth instructs, elbowing her side caustically. “You’re position is by the gym, Jason always goes there Saturday afternoons cause he thinks it makes it alright for him to get plastered that night.”

“You’re fucking a nerd,” Rachel tells Piper and both Annabeth and Hazel can’t help but nod along.

“No judgment zone!” Piper demands petulantly.

“Whatever,” Annabeth waves her off. “Hazel you’ll be in the front, waiting for Frank to come visit, and Rachel you’ll be waiting in the garden area where Leo comes to build one of his freaky gadgets.”

“Totally, you can count on me babe.”

“And what about you Annabeth?” Hazel asks.

“I’ve got Jackson,” Annabeth tells her, tone mock grave as she cocks her own toy weapon determinedly.

“So sexy,” Piper marvels.

Their building rents out a corner on the bottom level to a small bistro with friendly smiles and tasty enough brew that it keeps them coming back. It’s where Annabeth and Percy had first met when he had moved in with the others nearly six months ago. It’s also the first place Annabeth heard his laughter, and where Percy listened when she went on a tirade about her crazy parents and their crazy expectations and how sometimes she just needed space away from all of it. It’s where Percy told her that his mother is the most important person in his world and how he thought he never cared what his father thought of him until he had to make a decision on what he’d major in, and of course he followed in Poseidon’s footsteps. It’s where they stayed up late trading stories about their complicated childhoods and dreams for their futures and the place that Annabeth knew for sure that if she let herself, she really could fall for Percy. For the candor in his brilliant eyes. For the pretty smile he sports for the sake of his loved ones over himself, and for the conviction in his beliefs.

Annabeth tries not thinking of any of that when she crouches down deeper in the dark nook behind one of the decorative plants as Percy gets up from his table, tossing out his latte and shouldering his work bag.

It’s now or never.

The moment Percy steps through the threshold Annabeth pounces up and aims. What she doesn’t expect is for him to keel over to block her, and instead of hitting his insanely chiseled pecks, the water balloon hits straight in his face. Close enough and hard enough that the water suddenly darkens to red, mixing with the blood pouring out his nose.

“Holy shit!” Percy cries, pinching his nostrils shut.

“Oh my God!” Annabeth yells, frantically grabs for a pile of napkins from the counter besides her— toppling over a mess of straws and sugar packets in her wake— and then dashes over to press them into his grasp. “I’m so so sorry! I didn’t in my wildest dreams imagine that would happen! I swear!”

Annabeth expects at least for Percy to bemoan the injury, but instead she’s answered by a frankly terrifying boom of cackles.

“Percy? Have you cracked? Did I knock your brains out permanently?”

“When you said you’d ruin us, I didn’t think you’d literally cause physical harm Chase,” Percy retorts, still fighting down bubbles of laughter.

“You’re manic,” she pouts, long suffering.

“And you’re terrifying.”

“Bet it works for you though,” she preens, can’t help but be boastful over the way a blush touches the tops of his cheeks.

“Talk about adding harm to humiliation,” Percy grouces.

“Poor baby,” Annabeth mock croons, thinks that today actually might turn out pretty amazing.

She brings him upstairs to properly clean off the blood from his face and to come up with the conditions with at least a temporary truce, definitely not so she can finally trade a totally thrilling snog with him in privacy.

“You drive a hard bargain Chase,” Percy tells her, settling into the sofa as Annabeth unfolds her game of monopoly for them, having proclaimed that it’s a perfect time for her to prove how much fun board games can be.

“Oh hush,” she cuffs him on the back of the head playfully. “You’re just mad I won.”

“More like you committed battery,” Percy contends, pouting moodily, is only consoled when Annabeth leans forwards to kiss him again.

“You looked pretty bleeding— Oh God! Did I just say that out loud?”

Percy dissolves into a peals of laughter once more, and Annabeth tries her damndest to melt into a puddle right on spot.

“I can’t believe I’m so into such a maniac,” Percy tells her, eyes and smile glittering.

“SO rude,” Annabeth sniffs, arms crossed against her chest.

“But accurate Chase.”

Annabeth doesn’t bother to argue anymore because Percy’s already slanted their lips against one another again, and he’s doing this insane thing with his tongue that it makes her toes curl.

Yeah, today turned out amazing indeed.

#Percy jackson #pjo #annabeth chase #percabeth #bellonnabelle #thanks so much my love #ily #i wrote this too quick and it's probs crap #i just got so excited i finally had an idea for something for the first time in a bit #SPILT INK

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mindwideopen · 3 years

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Disclaimer: anyone embarrassed of my cleavage, please bypass this post. Thank you. (Again, repeat this disclaimer out loud, and say it like Steve Martin being his insane yet loving character “ruprecht” in “dirty rotten scoundrels”)

Faux Monty python auditions:

Disclaimer 2: NOT based in reality, because the actual members of Monty python are gentlemen, and are kind. No character assassination intended. My intention for writing this is harmless satire because of my admiration for their group. And, the fact that as women, they are prettier than I am.

(Lights up on a very large board room with a very long table. All of the members of Monty python are sitting in a row, facing Kari.)

Kari: hey! Nice to meet you all! (Shakes their hands) you guys are fantastic! I’m so happy to get the opportunity to audition for you, and be considered for your group.

Monty python: nice to make your acquaintance. (Whispers amongst themselves at the long board table they’re sitting at, evaluating Kari) who is she?! A bird. What kind of bird? I don’t know... let’s analyze... pull up her headshot. A “headshot” is a picture for you people who don’t know what a head shot is. We don’t mean an actual gun shot to the head.

(To Kari) Ok. Let’s...

Kari: let’s what?

Monty python: look at your portfolio of character work.

Kari: I write, mostly, but these are silly pictures of me for fun.

Monty python: we love fun. Quite.

Kari: we have that in common then!

Monty python: quite.

Monty python: no. Ok. You are not a bird. This is not you, is it? No, it can’t be. You are a cat woman. Unusual.

Kari: oh, that’s a filter on Snapchat.

Monty python characters: Snapchat? What’s that?

Kari: it’s an app that makes you into different creatures.

Monty python: what’s an app? Our show is based primarily in the 1970s we think, we have to look it up to be reminded, and haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about. Well, regardless, let’s all pull up a better picture of you, since you are not really a cat. We’re quite sure, yes, quite, that you are a human being, although not sure, so no. Next slide, please! (We’re British, so we’re polite about our requests...)

Monty python: ok, no. In this one, you are a shocked and lacey, bear creature. Are you a biological man?

Kari: no.

Monty python: one of the criteria of joining our group is that you are a man.

Kari: well, I’m not. See the next slide.

Monty python: please discuss something amongst yourself while we confer about you, in front of you.

Kari: ok. (Kari starts talking about ray rayner, and chelveston the duck to herself...)

Monty python: well, we’re not sure why she’s here if she’s not a man. We play all the women in our sketches. Um, also, we hate to bring this up and look naive, but is she writing us? We don’t know. Some of us aren’t even alive, so it’s hard to determine what’s happening in this case, as we’re all speaking the same words at the same time. If she is writing us this is highly irregular, which is a state that we’re used to being in. The words keep coming. Yes, but she never differentiates the difference between one of us, and all... so we sound like a men’s spoken word chorus. Do those exist? They do now, we are it. Who is this insane woman? God only knows...

God: no, I don’t.

Kari: well, I’m done with my conversation with myself, are you guys done as well?

Monty python characters: yes. Quite. ok, well, next slide pleeeeease.

Monty python: oh my.... yes. Not a man. Ahem. Yes. Clearly. Right. Kari, would you please excuse us again, as we need to confab about you yet again.

Kari: ok. (Kari discusses her love of Kurt Russell and Goldie yawn amongst herself. Both national treasures, both not in the movie, “national treasury, or whatever it’s called...)

Monty python: all in favor of her being in our group, say we! Wait! Before we vote, oh. My... (they Hub hub hub hub peas and carrots. Please say the hub hubs and the peas and carrots like all of the characters in the movie “waiting for guffman”.)

Monty python: Kari, We need a moment to discuss you.

Kari: do you want to discuss me, with me?

Terry Gilliam: yes! Absolutely eventually at some point not now no yes. But we need some privacy at this time.

Kari: ok. I need to take a shit. I’ll be back.

(Monty python all sit and analyze this photo. 4 hours later)

Monty python: yes. Quite. ok! Next slide, please.

John Cleese: um, I’m not done. You all proceed. I’ll hang back a bit, because she looks like she could get rough. I will protect us... because she’s evil... I hope.

The rest of Monty python: very well, next slide, please.

Monty python sans the John Cleese cause he went off to shoot his cameo in the “great muppet caper” 40 years ago...: jooooohhhhnnnnn..... she is evil....

John Cleese: on it! (Mumbling to himself but half to us, the reader, which is me only, cause I write for my own amusement) But not, because she’s married and I think I am but I’m not sure, cause she’s writing this, and unaware of my marital status...) I will call, the only ghostbuster she isn’t pissed at right now because he’s dead... and doesn’t ignore her insane writing because he’s unaware or aware that she writes... oh Egon....

Egon Spangler (as portrayed back in the 80s, by Harold Ramis, or, as Kari lovingly refers to him, Hamis.): yes, this is a classic class F case of a “she be piiiiiiiissed” poltergeist, fairly common around these parts as of late, shouldn’t be an issue. I accept rubies (not to be confused with a ruby gem stone) and zorks currency as payment. Payment due up front.

John Cleese: (yelling) well I don’t have a ruby or a zork on me?!? What do you think I am?! The queen or something?!

Queen the band: definitely not.

John Cleese: (yelling and flailing his arms around like Kermit the frog because he idolizes him, and just worked with him, in the great muppet caper, so he’s heavily influenced by his dynamic personality) see?!?! Now how are we supposed to exercise her?!? She’s the devil! She writes insane things not unlike us, but we’re fine because we’re men that dress like women, and that is socially acceptable, but a woman who acts like a man, is not! And she sometimes acts like a black man, and that is doubly not acceptable, not in a way that cancels itself out, but in a way that emphasizes my point profoundly. She MUST be exercised!

Richard Pryor: have you tried walking her around the block after meals?

John Cleese: (still yelling per the ush) what the hell are you talking about??!? Walk her around the block after meals?! I couldn’t get a harness around her if I tried! She’s writing me flailing around like Kermit the frog! The woman must be stopped!!!!!!

Richard Pryor: just a suggestion. You need to relax, Jack, ok? Cause you’re more than a little uptight.

George Carlin: British.

Richard Pryor: ok. Got it.

Carlin: and isn’t it, exorcised?

Richard Pryor: not as funny.

Carlin: ok. got it.

Eric idle, who stands idle to the fact that his last name is also “idol” when said, and also leaves too many questions like others who suffer with the same affliction have... which idol are we discussing? The sun god, Rah? The sacred cow? American?

Eric idle character: oh god.... scene...

God: I love Kari, I do, because she believes I love everyone, so yes, scene is fine.

John Cleese character: yes! Quite.

Egon Spangler: 70 zorks, please. No personal checks.

Svengoolie (not his son, just him): yes. No.... personal.... checks.....

(Kari walks into an empty conference room)

Kari: um, hey guys? Anyone here? Oh well, I feel better now that I’ve pooped!

(Monty python jump out from underneath the long board table)

Monty python: Boo!

Kari: oh! You startled me! Good thing I just pooped!

Monty python: yes, quite. So, here’s the thing; we’ve reviewed your portfolio and you’re brilliant with the exception of a few things.

Kari: what’s that?

Monty python: well, the first thing is that you’re a woman.

Kari: yes, I am. I saw proof of that in the bathroom.

Monty python: ah, yes. The second thing is that according to Wikipedia, a website we have never heard of at the point in which we were in the first picture, let alone the fact that the internet as we know it was not conceived yet either, and all we had were encyclopedia brittanicas, our show ran from 1969–1983, 1989, 1998–1999, 2002, 2013–2014. All years past. You were born, when?

Kari: 1974.

Monty python: ok, now see? We were in full swing at that point in time. You were a bit too, not available for us, and also too much of a woman for us all, and that’s great! Because you’re way more intelligent than we imagined, we can tell by your pictures, and truth be told, we’re more than a little afraid of you, because you write for us, even though some of us have ceased to exist on this celestial plane. And although we enjoyed our time chatting, we are going to have to take a pass.

Kari: that’s ok! It was nice watching you chat about me a bit while I talked to myself. I’m going to get a soy pumpkin spice latte now from Starbucks. Care to join me?

Monty python: no, thank you. As Starbucks isn’t invented, and neither were pumpkin spice lattes.

Kari: ok! Maybe in 2020 after the Covid shit subsides a bit.

Monty python: yes. Quite.

Scene, scene... (whisper this one) scene.

The aforementioned scene was not real, nor was it endorsed by the real Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, Eric Idle and John Cleese. But, I think terry jones and graham Chapman (who is a chap, and a man, making him a double man, which is very manly indeed, loves me, Kari Keillor, for who I am. Not egoic, but loves herself enough to write still, even its for her own pleasure, and to herself. ❤️)

#monty python #funny #mind wide open #kari keillor #self reflection #i get by with a little help from my friends

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movienotesbyzawmer · 4 years

Text

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

I mostly like Quentin Tarantino's movies, but when I saw this in the theater I considered it one of his worst. But I still liked some stuff about it. I liked the thick atmosphere of late-sixties Los Angeles, and I liked Leonardo DiCaprio's character's arc & his performance, and I liked some of the playful touches, even though some of them feel indulgent. "Indulgence" is a big concern when it comes to evaluating QT's movies. Sometimes his indulgences are charming and sometimes not so much. I'm kind of hoping a second viewing will make me like this movie a bit more. Okay, here goes…

Vintage Columbia logo. That kind of thing always works well on me.

First five minutes or so are cinematic in a familiar way, not much to note. But at about 0:06:15 there's a jarring little interruption where a narrator tells us LD just lied. The only moment of narration at all.

Then Al Pacino is reflecting on some of the movies he's been watching, and we see some clips. They look kind of vintage, but also kind of Tarantino-y. Like, that scene where LD torches Nazis doesn't actually look like it could be from the 60s.

"Bounty Law! Starring Rick Dalton!" Then a cut to a dorky TV musical sketch. Kind of funny. Not subtle. I love that announcer voice that says "Bounty Law!"

One thing that often works well in QT movies is when he has an actor deliver, and savor delivering, a weighty minute or so of dialogue that really sets up a situation. Think Christopher Walken's monologue in Pulp Fiction or the first scene with Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds. This AP conversation where he talks to LD about where to take his career is like a mini version of one of those but doesn't last as long.

0:15:10 - First really nice period shot of LA. Very nice to look at.

I think the intended audience for this movie knows details about the Manson murders that most moviegoers don't actually know. For example, the ominous close-up of the sign for Cielo Drive. I don't think it's a mistake; I think he's knowingly alienating some viewers so he can give a better experience to those who do know about them. So I can't imagine recommending this movie without also strongly suggesting studying the Manson murders first.

Brad Pitt speeds down a boulevard in West Hollywood, a filming location which has been very lovingly decorated in the style of the period. The production design of this movie was rightly heralded.

Sequence with BP in his trailer making dinner for himself and his dog. Vivid; at one point they cut to a closeup of a pinup poster. Doesn't seem to be a reason for that except for "I'm Quentin Tarantino and I do whatever I feel like". Indulgent, is what I'm saying.

Also indulgent is this minute we're spending watching Roman Polanski drive to this party at the Playboy mansion.

I don't remember noticing this before, but that's Damian Lewis playing Steve McQueen and that's kind of perfect.

Scene where Kurt Russell is telling LD that BP has a creepy vibe and killed his wife, then we cut abruptly to apparently a scene of BP having a mundane argument with his wife maybe… okay, leaves the audience wanting more info, but maybe in kind of an irritating way.

Now this scene with Bruce Lee holding forth. Bruce Lee probably didn't generally speak in arrogant, bullying Quentin Tarantino monologues. Entertaining scene though.

But the left-me-wanting conversation from the previous scene helps this scene with Bruce Lee be more tense. Also the not-ringing-true snottiness of Bruce Lee makes it funny how that fight goes down.

0:52:30 - Okay, LD is in costume as a bad guy on a show, and he's got the long hippy hair that was spoken of in the AP scene. Just saying, I like that it was described and now we're seeing what I'd pictured.

And now this memorable conversation between LD and the little girl actress. The kid acts so grown up. This could have failed because of course no eight year old talks like this girl. But this scene is awesome. And without movies by QT, there aren't scenes like this.

Now Margot Robbie. We've seen her in a few scenes so far as Sharon Tate, but she's only been depicted as a dancing starlet bopping around town. For those of us that know she's a Manson victim, it works in a certain way. But does it work otherwise?

Okay, this is a peculiar part of the movie, it's pretty fun but kind of insider-y. LD is talking about being in the running for Steve McQueen's role in The Great Escape, and they edit in some outstanding CGI scenes of LD in the actual movie of The Great Escape. Playful, but just a weird bit of color…

…but then here's this next scene where MR, playing Sharon Tate, happens upon a cinema playing a movie she's in, and after a leisurely-paced interaction with the cinema workers, she goes in and watches the movie. Unlike the CGI trickery demonstrated in the last scene with LD, we watch actual Sharon Tate on screen. MR is visibly delighted to see "herself", and to hear the audience reacting to her performance. It all works, maybe more in spite of than because of QT's ever-present choice-broadcasting (which is also why we get a good look at MR's feet in this scene).

This is followed immediately by the sequence of the TV show LD is shooting. More playful indulgence. We see the scene edited as it probably would have been edited in 1969, but shot with modern cinematography, and interrupted by LD calling for his line, then backing up and redoing some of the scene. Can it be justified beyond just the undeniable fact that it's pretty interesting? Maybe that's enough. Maybe I'm being a snob, but also, what, was I not supposed to acknowledge it at least?

Stuff now starting with BP picking up Margaret Qualley's dirty hippy flirty cultist character. Before she even has any lines, the screen is practically bulging from the force of MQ's personality. It's entertaining.

1:28:30 - More of the TV show. We get to see LD's character be a good actor, and impress the director and the kid actor, which touches him, it's nice.

It's an hour and 38 minutes into the movie, and now we're to the scene on Spahn's Movie Ranch. I'm already thinking that by now we should be deeper into some kind of story than we are, and now this scene that I remember vividly. Not totally in a bad way, but for all the good things about it, it is stretched way out. Suspense is built up, skillfully, but without the kind of payoff we'd probably like. I mean, it's like a horror movie, with the rat squirming in the trap and the tense music and the "HE MAY BE TIRED" line from Dakota Fanning, but then it's back to not being a horror movie….

…in fact, it's on to this charismatic-tough-guy scene that feels Pulp-Fiction-y. Our MINDS are BLOWN that he hit the guy so hard and made the cultists so mad, it's a fantasy come to life, but just in a movie!!! This stuff is long, but not THAT boring, but maybe it could have been a little less boring, plus more relevant to later events.

LD and BP are now watching an episode of a show he'd done. Way more violent than TV shows probably were in 1969. They like watching his little "heavy" role and chuckling about it.

Then a SIX MONTHS LATER card, and some narration for the first time since that little jokey bit in the beginning. Also jokey is the fact that this new section is narrated, VERY narrated, and is the fact that Kurt Russell is the narrator also jokey?

2:02:50 - "…going back to Missouri." LD's character is from Missouri? With that accent? Is this also an in-joke?

The aforementioned narration persists for a long time. Seems gratuitous. QT was clearly like "We'll do the first two hours of the picture without a narrator, and then suddenly there will be a whole bunch of stupid narration hahahahahahaha! No one else would do that!!! That's reason enough for me to do it!!!!"

Finale is going on now with the Manson cultist killer people approaching the house. If you know what really happened, you're freaking out. But if you know what really happened and you already know how this movie changes that story… it's entertaining. What I'm saying is that it's funny this second time through, without the worry about seeing what really transpired.

"And you were on a horsie!" "Nah something dumber than that" Hahaha BP is super funny in this scene.

Dang, the dog just mutilates Tex, and it's funny!

He violences that woman very very very much, it's nuts, kind of funny but so disturbing.

LD flamethrowers that girl in the pool. She's in the pool. But still dies from being on fire. /shrug

We never did get the whole story about BP killing his wife.

The last scene, MR talks to LD, inviting him up for a friendly drink with her friends. It ends with us thinking how nice it would be if she and her friends hadn't been the victims of a cruel slaughter just moments earlier. That's not a bad way to end a movie. But it's a long movie, and I'll say this again: indulgent. You might not feel that in on the jokes, and even if you do, you might not have as much time for them as this movie requires.

#once upon a time in hollywood

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doomedandstoned · 4 years

Text

Wasteland Coven Summon Doom From the Rust Belt

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

You're about to meet a true blue, dyed in the wool doom band from Ohio, which I discovered just a few weeks ago. This is WASTELAND COVEN, aptly named considering the industrial devastation that has visited the midwest, accentuated now even more in a time of pandemic. 'Ruined' (2020) is their debut EP and it features a singer, Susan Mitchel, that I would rank with Susie MacMullen of Brume and Dorthia Cottrell of Windhand. Sometimes vocalists try to pull off that coveted, full-bodied range, but end up sounding thin and wobbly. Not here.

Performing double duty on bass, Susan is joined in this Toledo crew by guitarists Bill Anderson and Brandon Collins, along with drummer Jason Wilcox. This is meat and potatoes doom, too, each of the three tracks on Ruined bearing the formative influences of Candlemass and Saint Vitus (the vocal cadence and guitar solos of "The Great Colossus"), Trouble and My Dying Bride (the mysterious and dramatic "Endless Night"), and the aforementioned Windhand (the riff laden intro to "Midsummer Days").

This mix of beauty and beast works well for Wasteland Coven. Susan's vocals take wings with sad urgency, rising above the dense, darkly downtuned procession of smoke and fire. Bittersweet leads break through the haze here and again, too, if for no other reason than to accent the gravity of the moment.

I've listened to the EP multiple times in a row and it is substantial enough to keep my appetite for doom satiated, without overstaying its welcome with an overly-familiar taste. Look for its release on Friday, April 17th (pre-order CD here), and listen to the record whole right here, right now via Doomed & Stoned!

Give ear...

Ruined by Wasteland Coven

A Chat with Wasteland Coven Guitarist Brandon Collins

Take us back to the band's origins. How did it all begin for you guys?

Things got started in late 2018, when our drummer Jason posted on Facebook asking if anybody wanted to play something dark and heavy. He was already playing in a punk band (The Old Breed) and a noise rock band (Sog City) so he was really looking to start more of a Manilla Road inspired band - he's a big Manilla Road fan. Sue (bass and vocals) and I (guitar) were both interested in Jason's pitch but style shifted a little bit as we all got together. By the first time we met up, he said to aim for Candlemass meets My Dying Bride (which I declared sorcery) and from there we drifted into the doom menagerie that we're at now.

Jason quickly roped in another guitar player, but after a month or two he lost interest, so we spent some time looking for another. During that search period we sketched out our first songs and booked some studio time for later in the year - we were going to record what we had regardless of who we had. Eventually Sue reached out to Bill who solidified the lineup midway through 2019 and we were officially a band. We practiced, finished up the songs as a four piece, and went to Lakebottom Recording House in September 2019.

How about a walk-through of the songs on 'Ruined' (2020)?

Midsummer Days

I think we all agree that this is the best song on here. It was going to be a shorter and simpler song originally, but it really kind of blossomed with all of us adding new bits to it. Lyrics mainly involve the imagery and feelings of a dying world. Really it's a sad, poetic veil over the changing of seasons, summer to fall to winter - seeing everything in nature fade and decay as seasonal depression kicks in. Admittedly, "Midsummer Days" isn't really a doomy title, but when you realize that they're dead. That'll teach you to judge too quickly! Kinda had to push Sue a bit to do the "trailing off into the void" vocals right at the end. She was reluctant, but I'm really glad she did them. It really adds some resonating loneliness.

Great Colossus

So originally, I came up with the riffs for this, played them for Jason, and when he added drums, his style immediately put Sue in mind of robots -- giant robots. And that drove us to make this our weirdest song lyrically, about falling in love with a giant robot with sexual overtones. Sue and I went back and forth on the lyrics for this one a lot, tweaking it to put just the right sultry spin on something cold and mechanical. This song sort of prompted the cover art. Around the time we were recording songs Sue was at an art show and saw the piece. Made her think of the song and said we needed it on our EP!

Endless Night

This was our first song, so I like to say it has first song syndrome -- not quite as strong as the others and maybe sticks out a little more 'cause you're trying to find your direction. But the main riff and the solos are still fun, so why not? Since it was going to be the first song for our doom band, the lyrics hit on a pretty typical doom metal topic: death. But I suppose the twist is that it's more about setting aside your fears and finding peace in your demise -- even as the music kind of betrays that peace and hints at the dread and dark thoughts behind it all. Solos here were fun to do. I take the first half of the solo section and Bill takes the second half, so we each get a chance to go our own direction just meeting for a moment to hand it off in the middle.

What was the recording process like for the band?

The bulk of it was done over the course of two weekends, September 27-29 and October 4-6 in 2019 (with a bit of touch up and review a few times afterwards). We went to Lakebottom Recording House in Toledo owned and operated by J.C. Griffin. Jason had recorded with J.C. many times before and refused to go anywhere else. But for the rest of us, it was our first time there and it was fantastic.

It's hard to imagine how it would have worked out with anyone else. J.C. is super encouraging and immediately invested in making sure you're getting a great sound - he's gives great direction for process, equipment, and performance. Really great weekends overall hanging out and playing music the whole time. The hardest part might have actually been the work week in between those two weekends -- coming down from all the joys and excitement with days full of music made "regular" life such a dull slog where we were just desperate to go back and do it again. Easily the most fun and best experience I've had recording.

In retrospect, maybe it was a bit weird that we were all so happy and having such a great time producing this melancholy music, but I don't think we put any thought into it at the time. Susan was extremely nervous and self-conscious when it came time to do her vocals, but with enough liquid courage she nailed it.

It looks like you had the album cover commissioned?

Artwork was done by Jackie McKown who lives here in Toledo. Sue saw the piece at an art show where Jackie was showing her stuff. These giant robot creatures wrecking shit was pretty in line with the initial themes of Great Colossus - it was lacking the sex/love angle, but it still fit just fine with the kind of destructive war-machines that could inspire love. Sue was very taken with it right away, so we went with it.

There's also presumably death and longing for better times involved in that kind of city-wide rampage, so you can tie into the other tracks as well. We sort of let that guide us, having the artwork inspire the title "Ruined." We had a city being ruined on the cover and we could find some form of ruination in each song. Then when it came time to lay everything out, we decided to ruin things a little more, adding wrinkles and dirt marks and imperfections.

This last question is just for the gearheads! Tell us what you're sporting these days?

Brandon: Epiphone Les Paul Studio guitar with an Orange Crush CR120C amp (frequently used to accidentally drown out everyone else), and for pedals: Big Muff Pi (with Tone Wicker), MXR EVH Phase 90, Cry Baby Wah.

Sue: Ibanez BTB 5 String Quilt Top bass, DR Dragon Skin strings (allergic to nickel), with a Fender Rumble 500 Combo amp and Big Muff Pi pedal.

Bill: ESP LTD Viper-256 w/Gibson 498T bridge guitar, ESP LTD EC-100 w/EMG 81/85. Amps include Peavey Valveking 2x12, Carvin X100-B 100 watt head*, and Carvin 4x12 Cab (used as needed). Pedal of choice: Digitech GNX4 Multi-Effects.

Jason: Tama Rockstar Drums.

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

#D&S Debuts #Wasteland Coven #Toledo #Ohio #Doom #Metal #D&S Reviews #HeavyBest2020 #Doomed & Stoned

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starkravinghazelnoots · 5 years

Note

Orange or yellow and Peter or Tony for the drabble thing! (rly predictable ik sorry!)

ORANGE

Energy, balance, warmth, enthusiasm, vitality, expansion, flamboyancy, and autumn.

This turned into way longer than a drabble. I couldn't resist the pull of writing some Biderman in honor of Pride. I had a ton of fun writing this, so I hope this lives up your expectations and that all of you enjoy!

I apologize in advance if the line break doesn't work. Tumblr really hates when I try to use line breaks.

xXx

How to be Proud

Peter was pretty confident in himself. What's more, he had an extremely supportive family and group of friends, some of whom understood what he was going through better than others.

But that didn't mean it was always easy to be proud of himself. It wasn't for Peter, at least.

But Spider-Man? He didn't have that problem.

"Don't fucking touch me, homo!"

Peter rolled his eyes behind the mask as he shot a web over the criminal's mouth. "Trust me, buddy, I'm not gonna touch someone as nasty as you." He gestured to the purple, pink, and blue cape tied around his neck. "And for the record, Mr. Homophobe, I'm bisexual. If you're going to insult me, at least get it right."

Peter called the police to report the location of the tied-up criminal before swinging away. His curfew was in ten minutes, which meant he had to hurry if he wanted to make it back to his apartment on time.

He dove through his window right as the clock on his dresser changed to midnight - on Fridays he was allowed that extra hour, but he did have a tendency to push it.

"How was patrol?" May asked. She was leaning against the door frame of his room. She must have just gotten back from her shift at the hospital, because she was still in her scrubs.

"Pretty good!" Peter said, standing up. The Iron Spider mask disappeared from his face. "Stopped a bank robbery and some petty theft. I also rescued Mrs. Post's cat again. He keeps escaping and climbing up the tree next to her house." Peter snickered. "It's still so funny to me that she named her cat Jeff."

May smiled at his amusement. "Well, I'm sure she was very grateful."

He laughed. "Yeah. She always tries to give me cookies or some other kind of sweet before I leave." Peter snapped his fingers, remembering the last thing he did before returning home. "Oh, I also stopped a kid from being beat up. I don't know who he was, because he ran away when I swung down into the alley, but I took care of his attacker." He untied the flag from his neck and hung it over the chair in front of his desk. "He was a nasty guy, too. Homophobic. Smelled like hot garbage."

May chuckled. "Well, it's a good thing you were there to take care of him." She gestured to his bisexual flag. "Get any compliments on that?"

Peter beamed at her. "Yes! It was so great. A girl actually burst into tears when she saw me because she was so happy her favorite superhero was bisexual, too."

May held her arms out, and he eagerly accepted her hug. "I'm so proud of you, Peter."

Peter smiled. "Thank you, May." His voice was muffled by her shirt. "I love you."

May pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "Well, I love you more."

"I love you most."

"Then I love you more than the most!"

Peter laughed. "You're the worst."

"Oh, I know."

xXx

MJ slid into the chair in front of Peter, startling him out of a daydream that definitely had not involved the aforementioned girl. "We're still on for Pride tomorrow, right?"

"I am," Ned said excitedly. "I can't wait!"

Peter nodded, taking a sip from the cup of coffee in front of him. He loved this little café. "Yep. It's gonna be so cool to go with both of you." He'd been looking forward to Pride all week. It would be his first time going as openly bi, and he wasn't sure whether he was excited or terrified.

MJ smiled. "Nice. Because I had a little idea that I thought the two of you might be interested in."

Peter glanced at Ned, who shrugged. "Alright," he said, turning back to MJ. "What's your idea?"

She smirked. "There is a third person I propose we bring to Pride. But I wanted your approval before I invited him."

"Sure. Who is it?"

MJ's grin widened. "Spider-Man."

Peter raised an eyebrow. "You want to invite Spider-Man?" It was always weird having to refer to himself in the third person. "Why?"

MJ shrugged. "He's an out and proud bisexual superhero. I think a lot of people, especially the teens at Pride, could use that kind of confidence boost."

Peter felt the blood rush to his cheeks, simultaneously embarrassed and flattered. "Oh. Okay."

"Do you have a specific thing you want Spider-Man to do at Pride?" Ned asked.

"I'm glad you brought that up." MJ pulled her sketchbook seemingly out of nowhere and placed it on Peter's desk. "I drew some concept art for what I think Spider-Man should wear."

Peter looked at her sketch. "Don't you think that's a bit flamboyant for a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?"

MJ shrugged. "So what? Sure, Spider-Man is pretty down-to-earth. But if he was going to be flamboyant, wouldn't Pride be the perfect time for him to do it?"

Confidence surged through Peter's veins. "Yeah. You're right."

MJ rolled her eyes, smirking. "Of course I am."

xXx

Tony stared down in disbelief at the picture in his hands. "Parker, you want me to do what to the Iron Spider suit?"

Peter beamed at him. "Just follow the picture. You're the best Mr. Stark! Okay bye now."

Tony sighed as his intern dashed out of the building. "That kid is going to be the death of me."

xXx

"How's the suit?" MJ asked, popping her gum.

Peter smirked, gesturing to the watch on his wrist. "It's ready whenever. And can I say that it looks cool as hell?"

"Of course it does. I designed it."

"I can't wait," Ned added. "You're gonna look so badass, Peter."

Peter laughed. "Well, I don't know about that."

Pride was in full swing around them. Both Peter and MJ had bisexual flags painted on their cheeks, and Ned had a classic rainbow. Peter also had his bisexual flag tied around his neck, and MJ had an ace flag tied in the same way. Ned had turned down wearing a flag as a cape, instead choosing to wear a long-sleeved black shirt with rainbow patches running down the arms.

Time flew by. The trio marched for over an hour, maybe two, before breaking off to go to a drag queen comedy performance, then went to lunch together.

"So there's a concert in about thirty minutes," MJ said as they were leaving the restaurant. "Want to go to that?"

Peter shrugged. "I'm down with whatever."

"As long as it doesn't last too late in the afternoon," Ned pointed out. "Spider-Man is planned for what - 4ish?"

Peter laughed. "Don't worry, Ned. I'm watching the clock." His heart was racing, and he wasn't sure if that was from nerves or from excitement - either way, he couldn't wait.

The concert itself was decent. Peter thought he might have enjoyed it better had he actually known who the band was. Not to mention he was distracted, glancing at his watch so often he couldn't truthfully say he was paying attention. He a made a mental note to look into more of the band's albums later.

"Hey, Peter," MJ said, smirking at him. "It's 4 o'clock."

Peter rolled his eyes. "You guys are really living for this, aren't you?"

"Duh," Ned said, beaming. "Do it, dude!"

Peter laughed. "Alright, alright." He ducked into an empty alleyway - how fitting that the concert had been so close to one. Apparently the universe was rooting for Spider-Man to show some pride.

After making sure no one was around him, Peter crouched behind a dumpster and tapped at his watch. Within seconds the Iron Spider suit rolled out and covered him. He blinked for a moment to adjust to his sharper vision.

Peter then shot a few webs at the side of the building in front of him, getting a running start before swinging up onto the top of it.

He looked down at the crowd below him. The bright colors of a hundred LGBT+ flags filled him with elation and immense confidence. He'd never be able to replicate that feeling.

Peter shot a web at a pole near the crowd, swinging down and around so that he landed on top of it.

"Hey! New York Pride!" he shouted. His suit magnified his voice. A quick glance at his arm revealed that the suit was doing exactly what it was supposed to do - shift through the colors of as many pride flags as possible. "Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is here to remind you that you should never be ashamed of who you are! You are all amazing, beautiful, inspiring people. If it weren't for you guys, then I'd never have been able to feel comfortable expressing myself." As if on cue, the wind picked up, causing his bisexual cape to flutter behind him. "I'm able to be who I am because of this city. Thank you, New York!"

The crowd started cheering, and Peter swung down into the middle of it, managing to hold short conversations with various people before being whisked off to talk with someone else.

He ended up in front of a young boy who had the trans flag painted on both of his cheeks and a pan flag tied around his neck.

"H-Hi," the boy stammered. "I love you, Spider-Man! You're my favorite hero!"

Peter smiled at the kid. He looked to be maybe around 13 or 14. "I'm flattered. Have you been having fun today?"

The kid didn't answer, instead staring intensely at Peter. Finally he blurted out, "Thank you for saving me!"

Peter blinked. "Saving you?"

The boy nodded. "Y-Yes! A few nights ago, my stepfather, he - he kicked me out of the house, and he followed me away, and he... He started hitting me, but then - then you showed up and you saved me!"

Peter was thankful his mask hid his shocked expression. He remembered that encounter all too well. "That was you?"

"Yes. And I live with my aunt now so everything is okay but I just - I just wanted to say thank you."

Peter almost asked why the boy's stepfather had kicked him out, but given that the trans flags on his cheeks were streaked with tears... That told Peter everything he needed to know.

"Hey," Peter said, placing his hands on the kid's shoulders. "I want you to know that you should always be proud of who you are, okay? No matter what anyone tries to tell you, your identity is beautiful." He winked at the boy. "Remember, Spider-Man will always be on your side."

It was no coincidence, Peter figured, that at that moment his suit shifted from the colors of the trans flag to the pan one.

He said goodbye to the boy before swinging up and out of the crowd, high fiving people as he went.

Pride.

It was a funny word, really.

Pride meant a mixture of confidence in oneself and trust in others.

And in that moment, Peter had never been prouder.

xXx

Mr. Stark: quite a stunt you pulled at NY pride today, Mr. Parker

Peter: lol sorry i didn't tell you that was what the suit was for

Mr. Stark: first of all, it was so obvious that was what the suit was for. second, why didn't you tell me? did you think I'd disapprove? kid you know I've been out since the 90s

Peter: I was worried you might think it was too flamboyant for a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man

Mr. Stark: there's no such thing as being too flamboyant. I made a few modifications to my own armor for a trip I myself plan on making to pride tomorrow

Peter: what?! without me, Mr. Stark? how could you

Mr. Stark: Pete. I never said you couldn't go with me

Peter: so I'm invited?!

Mr. Stark: whatever you want, kid

Peter: yesssss tomorrow is gonna be awesome

Mr. Stark: uh huh. Sure.

Peter: :D

Mr. Stark: hey, kid?

Peter: yeah?

Mr. Stark: I'm proud of you. You know that, right?

A single tear fell onto the screen of Peter's phone. Maybe of happiness. Maybe of thanks. Maybe even just of sentiment.

Peter: thank you, sir.

Mr. Stark: but don't get used to the compliments

Mr. Stark: i have a reputation to maintain

Peter: sure, Mr. Stark. sure

Peter put his phone on his dresser, falling backwards onto his bed. The day had been perfect. Even if he had chickened out yet again in confessing his feelings to MJ. But that was okay.

At least he'd made Mr. Stark proud.

Huh.

Peter chuckled to himself.

Maybe he should pull flamboyant stunts more often.

xXx

Thank you for requesting this! Other drabbles probably (for my sake lol) will not be this long. If anyone else wants to send a request, please feel free to do so. Again, thank you for reading!

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mst3kproject · 6 years

Photo

Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962)

Oh, shit, it's another John Agar movie. This one comes to us from Sid Pink and Ib Melchior of Reptilicus, co-stars Carl Ottosen (Colonel Grayson from the same movie), and is about a bunch of astronauts landing on an unknown world where they find lots of beautiful women. Get Jonah and the Bots on this one, stat.

In the far-off future of 2001, after world peace has been achieved, the UN sends a spacecraft to explore the seventh planet, Uranus (they pronounce it yer-AWN-us, if you wanted to know). Upon landing, something very strange happens to the astronauts on board – they all lose consciousness for a few hours while an ominous echoey voiceover informs them that it will possess their bodies and use them to conquer the Earth! Whatever it was seems to have already read their thoughts, because instead of a frozen wasteland, they find themselves in the woods around a little village, all very cozy and Earthlike and inhabited solely by beautiful women plucked straight from each man’s personal fantasies. Just what a hostile intelligence needs to lure a bunch of red-blooded astronauts to their doom!

Once again, I’m going to start by being a pedant. The people who made this movie know nothing about Uranus. I tried to do some research on what was known about the outer solar system in 1962 and it seems like it wasn’t very much, but the term gas giant has been around since at least 1952, when James Blish used it in his short story Solar Plexus. Based on that, it seems like people in the early sixties probably knew these planets didn’t have solid surfaces, but unless I manage to find an astronomy book from that era it’s hard to be sure. Suffice to say, Uranus does not have snow, or volcanoes, or anything remotely like that. It’s methane and ammonia all the way down.

That shouldn’t ruin one’s enjoyment of the movie, though. Like its sister Reptilicus, Journey to the Seventh Planet is cartoony and colourful and quite a lot of fun to watch. The special effects are never good, whether they’re a view of Saturn from space or an amusing but also kind of scary one-eyed dinosaur-rat monster, but they tell us what’s going on. There’s also a couple of really clever moments in it, having to do with the malevolent intelligence hiding beneath the planet’s surface, and the illusions it creates to try to draw them in.

When the astronauts start to explore the woodland around their landing site, they quickly discover that the plants and trees around them have no roots. John Agar’s character, Don, tries to pull one up, and immediately falls on his ass when the plant does not resist him as he expected. This is a very nice metaphor for what almost everything they find on Uranus turns out to be: a pretty surface with no substance to it.

Then there are the women they meet there, each of whom is a match to the man she targets. In the opening scene we met the characters and heard them talk a little about their current girlfriends and lost loves. Commander Eric recalls Ingrid, a girl who took part in a local Christmas festival when he was a boy. He describes her as looking like a queen or a goddess, and so the adult Ingrid we meet a few minutes later is not just beautiful but regal and articulate, and a little bit commanding. Virginal Karl remembers Ursula, a childhood crush he never dared to approach. When she turns up, she’s in what seems to be a little girl’s frock, and claims she wants nothing more than to care for him. Fuckboy Don is the proud owner of an extensive collection of pin-ups, and they turn up in their scanty costumes to throw themselves at him.

It is also rather interesting how the men treat these women. They know the women are not real, because they know nothing around them is real – in their spacesuits they can pass through the force field around the little wood and village and find the real Uranus, cold, icy, and airless, outside. They know that something threatening is here, because they met the monsters it created to drive them out of its lair. The women know what this entity is planning because it created them. And yet, for all that, the men never seem to consider them a threat. When they go to confront the evil intelligence at the end, they find that the women have sabotaged their equipment – Karl, who was supposed to be keeping watch, let his guard down around Ursula.

Why do the men so completely disregard the threat of these women? Possibly because they know they’re not real, and are assumed to be incapable of doing any harm (although they do not make this same assumption of the equally unreal rat-dinosaur and giant spider). Possibly also because they are women, whom the men – being sixties men – assume are not as intelligent or resourceful. In this sense, using images of women as its agents was the evil intelligence’s smartest move in more ways than one. When it probed the astronauts' minds it must have seen not only their desire for females of their own species, but also their low opinion of them, and it used both against them. Though why it spends so much time having sex with them by proxy instead of getting on with conquering their wills, I really can’t say.

Even at the very end, as the planet apparently collapses all around them, the characters don’t seem to realize that the women were a threat to them. In a moment I do not begin to understand the logic of, Eric attempts to save Ingrid, who says she needed to see him one last time, and takes her aboard the ship, only for her to vanish a moment later when the evil alien dies. Honestly, I think this was a pretty lucky escape. The movie tries to present the moment as a romantic tragedy, but I’m pretty sure it was the alien’s last-ditch attempt to get a piece of itself on board the rocket. Eric should have known better at that point, and trying to take her with him is almost the stupidest thing any of them do in the whole movie.

Of course, there are a lot more problems with this movie, too. Earlier I said that most of the special effects were okay, and by and large they are – but when they eventually fail they fail very hard, and right at the climax, too. The aforementioned dinosaur-rat monster is not among the better pieces of stop motion in history but it’s not awful. Later, however, the men are confronted by a giant spider which is nothing but footage from Earth vs the Spider, tinted blue in a feeble and ultimately completely unsuccessful attempt to make it match the colour film of Journey to the Seventh Planet! You don’t believe in it for a moment, and even worse, they suddenly switch to a shot that doesn’t match at all when the astronauts bring a cavern roof down on the monster.

In this image, you can see a very little bit of a completely different creature that is evidently some kind of Claymation thingy with eyes on stalks. Apparently the sequence originally featured this beast instead of the spider, but the distributor didn’t like how it turned out and replaced it with the borrowed footage. I have a hard time imagining how embarrassingly awful the other monster must have been to be rejected in favour of this, and it makes me very, very sad to learn that the original footage probably no longer exists.

The other big effects fail is the moment when the malevolent intelligence, which of course is a giant brain with an eye in it because what the hell else would it be, eats Karl. We never see this happen, just the brain pulsing and the other astronauts shooting at it while Karl screams. It’s very confusing and it’s only because the characters talk about it that we realize Karl’s actual fate. I have not been able to find out if there were originally an effects shot here that was so bad they threw it out, or if they didn’t bother attempting one. Either way, it really deflates the climax.

My biggest complaint about Journey to the Seventh Planet is not at the end, but at the beginning. While the astronauts are unconscious on board their ship, the alien gloats in a voiceover about what it’s going to do to them. Then, as if this never happened, they land on the planet and start trying to figure out what’s going on, while the audience already knows. Wouldn’t it have been far more effective to let the audience try to solve the mystery with the astronauts, rather than waiting for them to catch up? Imagine if a Sherlock Holmes movie opened with a voiceover from Moriarty, explaining his evil plan – that would suck. Any supervillain knows that expository monologues happen at the end of movies.

Considering the fun they had with Reptilicus, I’m sure MST3K could do great things with Journey to the Seventh Planet. I don’t really want to try to guess what they’d say about it, but there is an obvious Stinger moment when Karl enthusiastically offers to try to penetrate the force field and immediately regrets it. I also want to think that Crow and Tom would have been personally offended by the way the actors pronounce Uranus. I can see a host sketch in which they get all angry about how it’s supposed to be your-anus and when Jonah asks them if they’re just saying that because they wanted to make crude jokes, they chorus “YES!” and insist that they were robbed.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #journey to the seventh planet #oh shit it's john agar #60s #tw: spiders

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curiousdelights · 6 years

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A Little Bit of Fate [1/?]

Pairing: Yoosung Kim x CMC (Areum Lee)

Plot: An odd request for help brings Areum to an apartment where she meets a group of people through a messaging application, plunging herself to help them towards a charitable goal. She forms friendships within the group and soon rekindles a spark with a member who she hasn’t seen in almost a decade.

Background: Inspired by this. When I first played Mystic Messenger, Yoosung was my very first route and guess what? I actually chose the name Areum for my MC lololol. So when we got to this part of the chat (Idk, I think this was around Day 3 in Casual Story), I was surprised lmao but it gave me this idea that MC (Areum) and Yoosung could have been classmates before haha. So anyway, this fic will be multi-chaptered so good luck to me. It’s almost like a rewrite of Yoosung’s route, probably.

I. A little bit of spark

They say first love never dies.

A cliché statement, but a famous one nonetheless.

To some, the idea is a normal component of one’s life, ironically forgotten when more loves come around to replace it in later time. To another set of some, it is simply a silly sentence that’s overused in literary and film, and not something to ponder much about; just a fleeting flick of emotion. But of course, to yet another set of some, it is a nice thought: a pure and innocent thought and proof of one’s own heart beating for another for the first time in their lives.

Most of the time, first love exists during youth when the heart is at its most tender stage, when the idea of love is a mere bud on a stem, with emotions being the nurturing guide towards bloom.

Do you remember your first love?

Thursday afternoons always held art classes under one of the most carefree teachers Yoosung has ever had so far in elementary. He looked forward to it because it gave him a break from all the textbook reading and problem solving. However focused he could be in those subjects, art class was a welcome change in pace. He wasn’t all too good at it (he’d be lucky to draw what could at least look like a horse?) but he liked this time of day and he liked trying to draw the animations he watched on television with his friends.

Yet if his eleven-year-old heart would be much more honest, those were only little parts of the reason.

The biggest reason was because he could approach a certain young girl he fancied. Due to the freedom provided in this certain art class, all of them were quite free to wander around the classroom and mingle with their classmates, provided that you were still discussing the current project, not making any noise, and actually doing the assigned task to be submitted at the end of the period. So Yoosung takes this chance, albeit in careful portions.

He was a shy and sensitive kid, but he had an excuse to walk up to the aforementioned girl. She had a friend that was good with art. He could pretend to need help from that one but talk more with the other.

Today, they were tasked to draw sceneries with the use of pencils. Shading and outline were the focus. Yoosung was thankful they didn’t dabble with watercolors this time around. He hated watercolors. He thought they were messy under his fingers so he wondered how artists didn’t mind and still end up with masterpieces.

He may never really know.

Yoosung, along with his friend, Hyunsik, tabled with the group of girls. They had been doing this for about a week now and the former only hoped it didn’t seem all too weird, although it seems nobody minded anyway.

“Hi!” Yoosung greeted the group. There were three of them: Hana Kim, the artist he could actually learn from, Miyeon Park, the quiet one, and last but not the least…

“Hey, Areum!” Yoosung’s smile towards her was usually brighter compared to the others.

Areum Lee, the pretty one. When she smiled back at Yoosung, hiding the thin streak of blush on his cheeks would have been almost impossible. Her whole being, he thought, truly lived up to her name. He remembered she had longer hair in the first half of the year. She cut it short this time and always pulled it back with a red headband. It suited with her hair which was the color of sweet milk chocolate. How come she could still be pretty in any style? Yoosung saw others when they changed their appearance and sometimes he didn’t think it suited them.

That’s not the case with Areum.

“Heya, Yoosung! Time to draw again.” She laughed. God, how it hit Yoosung’s heart like a shooting star. “Got a scenery in mind now?”

Yoosung and Hyunsik took their respective seats beside the girls as they maneuvered their tables around to group together. The former made sure he could sit beside Areum and Hyunsik couldn’t manage to even hide the snicker that erupted from his throat. He knew about his friend’s crush but paid no mind. He knew he’d probably break down in embarrassment if Areum somehow found out.

Yoosung thought for a while, but drew a blank. “I… have no idea. I’m never really super prepared for art class.”

“I know, right? Hana probably doesn’t need to think so much about it compared to us!” She said, elbowing said best friend.

Hana stuck her tongue out at all of them. “It’s not my fault I like drawing.”

Areum winked. “We know! We’re just teasing.”

“Might as well start now. We only have about an hour left.” Hyunsik reminded them. He was already starting to outline his shapes. Yoosung thought it looked too round for a mountain but kept his mouth shut.

“Any thought now, Yoosung?” Areum asked, turning her attention towards the brunette and his blank sheet of paper.

He thought sitting beside her was already the nearest he could get, but she almost leaned towards him and he grew flustered.

“A-Ah, no—not yet!”

Areum huffed then turned back to her own desk. Then, as if the bulb in her head lit up, so did the expression on her face and she offered an idea to Yoosung. “Why don’t you draw a night sky with a lot of stars? It pretty much fits you and we can use colored pencils anyway!”

“Ooh, not bad!” It really wasn’t, but how come he didn’t even think of something that should have been obvious to himself? “How about you? What are you gonna draw, Areum?”

Her mouth formed a pout. He thought it was cute.

“I’m still at a loss but…” She tapped her pencil on her paper, then looked back again at Yoosung. “I think I’ll draw a beach. I went there last summer with my family. I thought it was pretty! What do you think?”

“That sounds good. I’m sure you can draw it well.”

“Yeah! It’d be nice to use a lot of yellows and oranges for it. I watched the sunset then.”

“I should do that next summer. It probably looks nicer at a beach, huh?”

Their discussion kept on going between the two of them until Miyeon had to speak up. “You guys do know that you could run out of time by talking about it so much, right?”

Yoosung and Areum looked at each other and then scrambled on to their work. Even if neither of them was good at art, their teacher put in a lot of grades for effort and that wasn’t to be overlooked.

“Ah, Areum, I forgot my eraser.” Yoosung said, not looking up. “Can I borrow yours?”

She nodded, busy with her own work. “Sure. It’s by the pencils.”

“Okay, let me just…” He reached over to the bunch of pencils blindly, patting his hands over the table while his focus was all on filling up the hillside drawing with a deep shade of green.

Areum was on her way to doing so as well, unsure if whether Yoosung knew where it was so she might as well get it herself for him. Her reflection of the orange sun on the sea seemed to be lacking, so she colored it more to bring out the vibrancy, digging her pencil a little harder than she did earlier.

With one similar action towards one small item, two hands met in the middle and startled the owners. Both Areum and Yoosung looked up, first to the source of the surprise, and then to each other. It was easy to see that Yoosung was the most flustered and Areum giggled more at his reaction.

She was the one who got the eraser first, so she put it in Yoosung’s palm. “Here you go!”

“T-Thanks!” To save himself from any more embarrassment, he took it gratefully and turned back to his work. All he wanted was to talk to her today, but it seemed fate was being more generous than usual.

He wasn’t complaining, though. No, not at all.

But he did grow slightly nervous.

After some time, most of them were done with their artworks. Hana and Miyeon had submitted theirs already, waiting for grading from their teacher. Hyunsik was finishing with the details. Yoosung still thought his mountain seemed too round, but who was he to judge? His hillside might as well be almost flat.

He was staring at his work now, wondering what was still lacking, when Areum popped up to speak again beside him.

“Looks good! I knew you could draw that.” Her eyes seemed to be beaming with delight, appreciating the better drawing from her classmate. “Are you gonna draw a person in it, too?”

Yoosung offered a confused face. “I don’t know. I thought we were only supposed to draw the scenery?”

She shrugged. “People can be a part of it. I think it’d look nice if you drew yourself there.”

“I think it’s lame if it’s me. I should… draw someone else to make it better.” Yoosung laughed it off lightly as he started to take a brown shade of pencil to start.

“Oh? Who’re you gonna draw?” Areum watched as Yoosung continued to sketch, then realized there was no need to ask. The red headband and brown hair was a big giveaway already, and even she felt a warmness rise up to her cheeks.

To be fair, she went back to her own drawing and smiled at the idea. It was playful and fun and harmless. She took up the same shade of pencils Yoosung had used and drew a person on her own beach. Once done, Areum stood up and admired her work. It seemed Yoosung was also done with his and ready to have it graded.

“Yoosung, look.” Areum brought up her paper, a yellow-orange dominant version of a sunset on a beachside. A small, brown-haired boy sat on the sand. “Fair enough, right?”

He was surprised. His face clearly showed it to her. “You drew me.”

“Yeah.” Her grin towards him was laced with appreciation. “Thanks for drawing me in yours, Yoosung. I really like it. Come on. Let’s get these graded. We’re the last ones to finish.”

He ended up following her to where their teacher was, but he couldn’t help but feel flustered at what just happened. It was a silly sort of exchange, but Yoosung found it to be more than enough. As far as he was concerned, his day was more than complete.

They were fortunate to be able to pass it on time and still get a good grade once the artworks were handed back. As soon as art class ended, everyone started preparing for the next one. Was it Korean history already? The day was going to end soon. Yoosung had to part ways with the girls to go back to his seat in the classroom. He sat quite some distance away from Areum so talking to her during class was never really an option available to him. His extracurricular activities also prohibited him most of the time to hang out during the afternoons.

But tomorrow was Friday and he was free then. Maybe he could ask her to hang out then. He could wait until tomorrow to ask, just so he can gather up some extra courage to do so. Besides, it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t see her at school again, right?

… Right?

“Didn’t you hear?” Hyunsik asked, his tone expressing surprise peppered with a tinge of concern. “Areum moved.”

Yoosung frowned. He had barely even arrived at school that next morning and that was the first thing he’d hear. “What?”

“Miyeon told me.”

“But we just had class with her yesterday.” He said, glancing over at what was once Areum’s seat. He thought she was just oddly late today or that she wasn’t feeling well. But moving away?

It made him sad.

Yoosung walked over towards where Hana and Miyeon sat, hoping to hear something about it all. Hyunsik followed him.

“Areum left?” Yoosung asked.

Hana looked up at her classmate and nodded slowly. “Her dad’s work thing made them move. We already knew about it a couple of weeks ago.”

“Where?”

Miyeon shook her head. “We’re not really sure. Areum didn’t say much about it.”

“I see. Too bad we couldn’t hang out much.”

Hana agreed. “I know. Yesterday, you two seemed to get along pretty well.”

“She’s always been nice.” Yoosung shook his head once and bid the girls goodbye. “Thanks for telling me. Hope she’s well.”

It would be a clear lie to say he wasn’t upset about Areum’s leaving, but he never got close to her much to expect her to say something about it to him. At least he had yesterday to remember by.

Yoosung sighed.

He really did like her.

He went back to his seat and started fiddling with the contents of his bag, ready to pull out a pen and pad to distract his mind. That was when he saw a small object chucked inside the corner of his pencil case.

A rubber eraser.

He chuckled.

That was Areum’s. Did he forget to return it?

Maybe he did, and he decided to keep it as a small token of knowing her.

With little contact they shared prior to this, it seemed impossible to see her again.

Do you remember your first love?

…

[ Areum has entered the chatroom. ]

Aaaand there we go! I really wanted to post this now since it was eating at me and I felt like I should try to move onto the next part soon or else I’ll lose my ideas. 💕

So this was like a background for everything else. I forgot how 11-year-old kids work?? But I remember we can have really big crushes on others by then lol sorry. I knew someone who ended up with his first love since elementary haha.

Anyway, I hope you guys liked it. Please tell me what you think! 💕

#yaaaay i finally got this out #this was in my mind for a while now #yoosung kim #yoosung x mc #yoosung kim x mc #mystic messenger #mysme #mystic messenger fanfiction #mysme fanfiction #mystic messenger fics #mysme fics #my writings #idk i tried again hahahah #i hope you guys like it ajdgbkl;; 💕#yoosung kim fanfiction #yoosung kim fics #mysme: a little bit of fate

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seeingdoublestans · 5 years

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Well prepare your fingers for more keysmashing ‘cause this one’s a doozy!!! ….Okay guys, so long story NOT short: I decided to camp outside near the site despite the cold. I had laid out the bait and after triple checking my cameras, decided to settle down and wait. (It was bright enough with the moon and snow to see enough to knit by btw. You inspired me to try to pick that skill back up again, but I’m getting offtrack) Shortly after 0200hrs, I was drifting off when I heard a faint rustle. To my surprise and delight, one of the largest pumpkins (about 60ft from my spot) had vanished. A moment later, another disappeared. I whipped out my phone and approached cautiously. I managed to see another leave, not unlike it was falling through the ground in the blink of an eye. It was as if the patch was made of quicksand but with an insane rate of grainlier displacement. A moment later, there was a multitude of the previously heard shuffling noise and I was surrounded by….. Have you ever watched that old cheesy movie, Tremors? With the giant worm creatures that tunneled through the ground at unreasonable speeds and ate everything? Well, standing there, I was reminded of that movie. Out of the ground came half a dozen centipede-esque creatures with large, wicked pinchers. Absolutely fascinating anatomy! Their dark and sleek armor was made of overlapping, accordion plating, like on an armadillo, covering their whole lengths. Only the plating was reversed! Very odd. The texture was pock-marked, and a countless array of spindly legs peeked out from the soft, unexposed underbelly. The odd structuring was not the most fascinating part of the insectioids….it was their riders. Holding onto the back hooked legs of each Wyrmipede was a stout, short hairy man. Approximately a foot tall each, and savage. Dressed in loincloths, and the seeming leader a toga. The only other visible garments were the strangest hood/masks. They carried miniature spears and lengths of twine/rope were wrapped about their waists. They were immediately violent, attacking me with their spears, and hopping onto the backs of the Wyrmipedes to charge. As I imagine any sane person would do, I fled. The small force whooped and yelled in an unintelligible language as they gave chase. I headed for the treeline about 100yds ahead, Wyrmipedes popping out of the ground, disrupting my sprint along with the many spears thrown my way, some of which made their mark and stuck into my legs, back, and rump. The Wyrmipedes ran at an incredible speed! One launched itself from the ground and caught my left forearm in its pinchers. Hence the aforementioned injury. Hurt like hell, and the thing took a chunk of me with it when I punched it off. Clutching my fresh wound, I reached the woods and scrambled up the first tree that had reachable branches. ….Unfortunately the Wyrmipedes began to snake up the trunk themselves. I kicked them off one by one, one glazing my calf with its sharp toothed pinchers as I fought them off. After a seeming eternity of adrenaline filled struggling, my phone went off. I had set an alarm for 0215 to keep myself awake. Thing was, my phone had been dropped at the base of the tree in my hurry to escape the small mob. Time seemed to freeze as the little warriors started at the device, instantly captivated by the glowing screen and X-traordinary Cases Theme song. The toga one slid off his steed and poked carefully at my phone with the point of his spear. Others came forward, and they discussed something in hushed tones. I watched, fascinated, frightened, and thrilled beyond all belief. After a few moments, Toga pointed up at me with his spear, yelling garrulously to snag my attention. It was all his. Then he pointed at the device, yammering some more. I couldn’t decipher any meaning for a moment as he repeated these gestures. Then I caught on. Nodding vigorously, I gestured at the phone. He nodded, picked it up, then sat heavily on his rump as he and his followers played with my phone. I cannot say how long I was up there, watching them try to figure out the “magic.” Then, he stood up, remounted his steed still carrying the phone, screamed at me for a minute, then turned back towards the pumpkin patch. The rest followed suite and I was alone. Instinct and curiosity fought within me. Part of me was rooted to the branches of the tree, determined not to go down until sunrise. The other halfway screaming to follow the odd group…and eventually won. Retracing my steps, I arrived back at the site to catch the end of their curious operation. The little men were tying the squash with their lengths of rope and expert speed. Then, they would pull down their hood/masks, tie the rope to the end of a Wyrmipede, then hold onto the long back legs, one in each hand. Yelling a command caused the insect beasts of burden to dive back into the ground, dragging man and bounty behind them. The soil was so finely churned, that it seemed almost like there was never a disturbance in the first place. Nothing else of interest occurred. Conclusions: 1) My hypothesis that the pumpkin thieves were subterranean in nature proved correct. The little savages have domesticated the Wyrmipedes and have been using them to steal goods for at least 7yrs here. The pattern of the teething of the bite on my calf match those from the sawed vines pictures, meaning the Wyrmipedes are also trained to harvest during the actual harvest season. …I wonder how they sensed there was resources available during the wrong time of year? Do they scout out the area? The hood/masks are most likely to ease breathing as their beasts tunnel the way back home. On that account, I would not be surprised if the little men (whom I have not found a name for yet) had some form of underground civilization. Imagine finding such a place! 2) Once my arm heals, I’m going to have a wicked awesome scar. Big saw marks, and a chunk gone? Yes. I’m actually rather curious as to how it’ll heal up. I had to give myself stitches, as I’d rather not try to explain the injury to a medical professional as of this moment. 3) As well as losing my phone to Toga’s fascination, I couldn’t find my cameras, just loose soil where they had been sitting. A real shame, seeing as I have no solid evidence of this adventure. I wish I were a better artist, I’m trying to draw the men and Wyrmipedes from memory, but it’s difficult when you have had no such training. I’m trying to figure out how to explain my injury to my skeptic of a roommate, and I’m wondering how well this story will go over on the paranatural forums, if at all. I’ve never heard of an anomalous race so employing another like this, and never even dreamed of the Wyrmipedes!!! …I suppose if I’m the only one who knows of the truth, that’s alright. I know what I saw and did and …freaking felt. Believe me or not, but I doubt that a hallucination could so shred my arm like this. At least Ms. Brown, owner of the property, believed my story, if only after seeing the pincher tooth marks on my leg. So, mystery solved, fun scars acquired, mysterious species to obsess over? All in all, a successful excursion! –Exhausted yet Giddy Your pal in the Paranatural, Lee

You are a great storyteller, and a great scientist, and this sounds like a great adventure! I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed reading about your discovery. Tiny people riding on giant centipedes! I can’t imagine what kind of subterranean society they must have! Thank you for describing the details of the tale!!!

I’ve been practicing sketching for the very purpose you mention; drawing realistic depictions of creatures that I encounter in my research. When we’re able to meet in person, if you describe the visual appearance of the creatures you faced, I’d be happy to draw it to the best of my ability for you! How long do you anticipate it will take for your wounds to heal? I don’t want to aggravate your injuries by scheduling our lunch meet up on a date before you’ve fully healed.

I haven’t seen Tremors, but if you’re interested, maybe we could watch it together sometime? I’ve heard that watching a movie is a common way to spend a date. (I mean “date” in whatever way you hope I mean it.)

~Ford

HOLY SHIT

#lee #submission #long post

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goldenheadfreckledheart · 7 years

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There's A Nap For That

Based on this post: “If you both agree to take a nap instead of going out, it’s a date.”

Or: The one where Bellamy and Clarke keep taking naps together. You know, platonically. See also: Let Them Rest

A/N: I started this before New Years and thought it would be done in like, three days. Oh how naive. But hey, here we are!

WC: ~6.5k Read on AO3

Clarke doesn’t plan to be alone on New Year’s Eve, but she also doesn’t plan not to be alone--if that makes sense. She could fly back to Los Angeles and attend her mother’s extravagant corporate party, if she wanted to put herself through that. It’s definitely an option.

But she’s long since decided that it’s better to deal with the vague feelings of missing out on the New Year’s celebration over fielding questions about why she’s not following in her mother’s footsteps or, god forbid, whether she’s gotten over “that whole sexuality thing” yet.

So she calls Abby the night before the party, fulfills her yearly, good-daughter quota of well wishes and pleasantries, and calls it good.

And really, doing nothing on New Year’s Eve is kind of the best thing that’s happened her, stress-wise, in the last six months.

She works in the graphic design department for an uber-trendy website that facilitates commissions for freelance artists, which makes it an incredibly lucrative avenue to get her name out there in the industry. It just also happens that the company is very concerned with staying up-to-date with aesthetic trends, and has her changing logos and web layouts on a weekly basis.

It’s the kind of somewhat crappy, over demanding job that she feels weirdly excited to have, because it means her mom isn’t paying people to make her life easier.

But it has been running her to the bone, so she’s positively delighted to do absolutely nothing for a night.

Or she is until she finds out that Bellamy also doesn’t have plans for New Year’s Eve.

“…but Bell’s gonna be around to take care of Athena, so that’s nice,” Octavia is saying, socked feet propped on Clarke’s lap, stroking the aforementioned cat curled at her side.

After spending Christmas with her brother, Clarke’s ex-roommate and her boyfriend, Lincoln, are heading out to his family for New Year’s. Clarke had been about to offer to watch Octavia’s cat for the duration of the trip, and the news that her brother will be around to do it piques her interest.

“Bellamy’s going to be here for New Year’s?”

Octavia rolls her eyes knowingly. “Yeah, he is. But don’t worry, I’m not gonna force you two to hang out. Learned my lesson on that one.”

“No, I was just going to say… It wouldn’t be terrible to get dinner or something, since we’re both here. Not,” she hurries to correct, when she sees Octavia’s eyes widen, “like a date. More like a ‘we’re the only part of our friend group that’s around, so we might as well hang out’ thing.”

Octavia pushes out a breath with an expression that doesn’t quite look convinced, but she relents. “Fair enough. I’m just happy you’re finally admitting that you don’t hate each other.”

“I never hated him,” Clarke grumbles, under her breath. Octavia just laughs.

“I hear you’re spending New Year’s Eve alone,” Clarke says, dropping down on the couch next to Bellamy, at their group’s annual belated-Christmas get-together.

He stiffens beside her. “What of it?”

She smiles a little, an attempt at reassurance. It’s fair to say that this differs from their normal pattern of interaction, mostly in that it doesn’t involve shouting. “Nothing. I’ll be here too. I figured we could do something together.”

He looks surprised at the offer, which, okay—it’s not like they’ve ever been the people in their group to seek out one-on-one time. But she really doesn’t think that they ever hated each other. They just had a hard time getting past a bad first meeting. Their conversations consisted mostly of biting comments or stupid arguments, but refusing to call him her friend had been more a pride thing than anything else.

Because, really, there is no downside to being friends with Bellamy Blake. He’s more of a mother hen than anyone else she’s ever met, and also just really fucking smart. She could talk to him for hours—she’s definitely argued with him for that long—and it’s a toss-up between which she enjoys more.

So while he and Octavia might be surprised by her idea that they spend the holiday together… she just has a good feeling about it. They could be really good at this friends thing, she’s sure.

“Unless you like being the sad person who deliberately chooses to be alone on New Year’s,” she prods with a sharp grin. Never mind that it’s what she’d been planning on, three days ago.

He rolls his eyes halfheartedly, reaches over to steal her wine glass and take a swig. “I’m not a sad person.”

She retrieves the glass with a scowl, elbows him in the side for good measure. “Then I guess we both have plans now.”

He grins, and it definitely doesn’t make her heart beat faster. “I guess we do.”

They exchange gifts with the rest of the group later, and Bellamy gives her a stupidly nice set of paints. The ones she’s been wanting. She has to resist bowling him over with a hug.

They’re definitely friends.

He opens her present later: a couple (much less expensive) biographies that he’s been rambling about for months but refuses to buy for himself, and a sketch of him and Octavia, copied from the photograph that sits on his sister’s windowsill that Clarke knows is his favorite.

He just stares for a second, and she can’t hide her smile. Leaving Bellamy Blake without words might be her new favorite thing. But before she can even tease him about it, he’s got an arm around her waist, pulling her to his side with a gruff, “Thanks, Clarke.”

She snakes out an arm to give him a quick squeeze back, and leaves it there when he doesn’t move his from her back. She even leans her head on her shoulder for a second, because why the fuck not? They’re friends, and it’s Christmas. Excess affection is acceptable. Encouraged, even.

She doesn’t step away until Miller catches her eye with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“I’m gonna grab some water,” she tells Bellamy, and makes sure to flip off Miller on the way to the kitchen.

Clarke has to go back to work for the few days before New Year’s, because apparently it’s the time of year that the company makes the most transactions, and god forbid the website doesn’t have digital snowflakes slowly drifting down the screen (“Think of how many customers we’d lose without the snowflakes,” her coworker, Roan, deadpans to her after the 4th hour of the project.)

So she nearly forgets about her plans with Bellamy until he texts her the day before.

Bellamy:

so how formal are these plans I’m being coerced into?

do I need to dress up

She smiles down at her phone.

Clarke:

again, you’re welcome for saving you from your sad life

but no, don’t dress up

come over at 5 and we’ll figure out what we’re doing?

Bellamy:

thanks for your concern

5 works, see you then

have fun at work

Clarke:

do my best

Unsurprisingly, her boss has her working on last minute edits at home on New Year’s Eve. She’s only just finished up and collapsed on the couch with some tea when Bellamy knocks at the door.

His first words to her, once she drags herself to the door, are, “You look exhausted.”

“Aren’t you charming,” she responds, waving him inside and heading back to the couch.

“Sorry,” he says, dropping down beside her. When she meets his eyes, he looks concerned.

“I can feel you mothering. Stop that.”

He grunts in offense. “I am not mothering.”

“Great,” she says. “Then where do you want to go for dinner?”

“Dunno,” he sighs. “Somewhere casual that won’t be crowded tonight.”

She musters a smile. “Where we don’t have to see like, five couples propose on New Year’s Eve?”

He huffs a laugh. “Exactly.”

“There’s a pretty good variety of restaurants at the strip-mall down the street. You wanna Yelp it?”

“Sure,” he says, pulling out his phone.

Clarke flips mindlessly through her recorded shows while he does that, settles on one of the intense baking competitions that never fail to put her to sleep.

It’s so… companionable. She keeps thinking about how they’ve never done this before, and how remarkably easy it is.

Eventually she switches channels, when one of the judges’ needlessly disparaging remarks get on her nerves.

“Hey, what gives?” Bellamy says, from beside her.

“One of the judges reminded me of my boss,” she says on a yawn. “And, hey, you’re not supposed to be paying attention anyway. Did you decide where we’re eating?”

“What’s wrong with your boss?” he asks. She’s not sure if he’s ignoring her question, or if he legitimately didn’t process it.

“Nothing different from normal boss stuff.”

The look he gives her says she’s not convincing. Which—she’s didn’t even know he could tell when she’s smoothing things over. It’s kind of a lot.

“They had you working today, didn’t they?”

When she only responds with a dismissive shrug, he prompts, “You want to talk about it?”

“Weren’t we going to eat?” she asks, pushing up from the couch to dump out her now-cold tea.

It comes off much more overly-dismissive than she intends. Because… it’s not that she doesn’t want to talk about it, but, it’s New Year’s, they’re supposed to be doing typical New Year’s things, right? Celebrating, not complaining.

“I’m not hungry yet,” he calls, so she can hear him from the kitchen. “Just… complain to me about your job and then we’ll go get food.”

It’s really not the worst offer she’s ever received. She’s just kind of surprised to get it from him.

She comes back from the kitchen. “You really want to know?”

“Pretty sure people who get together on New Year’s Eve actually talk about their lives.”

“You don’t know that. I’m sure lots of people just stare at baking shows and enjoy the respite from their,” she waves a hand, “you know, troubles.”

“So you do have troubles, then.”

She levels him a look. “You’re going to be so bored when I tell you about them. They’re so first-world, Bellamy,” she exaggerates on an eye roll.

His response is surprisingly serious. “Then that’s on me. I asked.”

It’s certainly not something she would have expected from him when they’d first met. When accusations of ignorant privilege and willful pessimism were tossed back and forth in nearly every conversation.

“It’s really not that bad,” she starts, flopping down next to him. And then, when he gestures that she get on with it, she relents. “Fine.”

As much as she failed at making it seem that way, she really doesn’t think of it as a big deal. Her boss over-works her, but the final product is always good, even if it’s just animated snowflakes. And yeah, her vacation time isn’t great, but she’s young, and it’s a job that will get her places, build a foundation for her career. Doing a little extra work now to ensure that won’t hurt.

It does look like it hurts Bellamy a little, though, judging from the way he winces at the mention of her pitifully few vacation days.

They must talk about it for a good forty-five minutes, and she finds herself, miraculously, actually feeling a lot better about it.

He asks about her co-workers, who she actually does genuinely like, and she tells him about the project she’s been put in charge of in the coming year. Her boss has, debatably, given her too much responsibility, but it’s still more of a plus than a minus.

By the time the conversation peters out, Clarke is mostly horizontal on the couch, feet on Bellamy’s lap without any tangible memory of how they got there.

“Jesus, it’s really running you down, isn’t it?”

“Mmhmm,” she manages around a yawn. “I’ll get up in a second though, promise. We need to eat.”

“Nah,” he says, “We’re not going out.”

She startles a little, but not enough to actually sit up.

“What? Yes we are,” she says to the ceiling. “That’s the whole point of tonight. We’re not sad people, Bellamy.”

“Have you ever considered that your persistent need to emphasize your lack of sadness is kind of… counterproductive?”

“Fuck off.”

He just grins at her. Which is rude.

“We’re not going out,” he says, a little more gruff this time. “You need to get some rest. We can eat something here, or I can run out and get us something.”

“You don’t have to—”

“People who aren’t sad don’t refuse help from their friends, Clarke.”

“I thought you said that was a counterproductive goal,” she tosses back drily.

“Jesus, good to know your wit still works when you’re half asleep.”

She smiles smugly into a pillow. “I’m great at multitasking.”

“Clearly. You want Thai?”

She considers arguing again, but she is pretty tired, and Thai does sound pretty good. She’s still not spending New Year’s Eve alone. That’s something.

“Yeah, Thai is good. Thanks Bellamy.”

“You’re welcome.”

She’s half asleep by the time he comes back with food, but she musters enough strength to help him spread it across her coffee table, and then dig in.

She puts on another cooking show when they’re done, but her eyes are drooping before the first five minutes are done.

“Go to sleep, Clarke,” Bellamy says, when she jerks back upright for the third time.

Too tired to argue, she just leans back against the armrest with a halfhearted, “Wake me up when it’s time for the ball drop.”

When she groggily comes to, the TV is still on, tuned to some news station with the volume turned low.

She nearly forgets why she’s on the couch until she turns to see Bellamy’s sleeping form across the couch from her, his legs dangling off the couch where they would have come in contact with hers.

Mother hen, she thinks.

The clock on the DVD player reads 3:21 AM, which means… she can’t think of what it means, for a second.

It’s only after staring absently at the TV, where anchors are talking about the first baby of the New Year, that she realizes they missed it.

It doesn’t bother her much, she finds.

She unfolds herself from the couch carefully, to go sleep in a real bed, and considers waking Bellamy, to send him home to his. But when she looks at him again, there’s some sort of pang in her chest at the sight of how peaceful he looks. It’s late now, anyway, she justifies. Better and safer for him to sleep here.

She gathers the throw from the end of the couch to drape over him, and nearly reaches down to pull his feet up onto the couch. She pauses before she does, though, at the thought that doing so might wake him up.

There’s something about having to talk to him when he wakes that scares her, and she isn’t eager to explore what it is at this time of night, foggy and sleepy as she is, so she leaves him there, and tries to convince herself it’s not as uncomfortable as it looks.

As she crawls into her bed, she idly muses that she didn’t kiss anyone, this New Year’s Eve. But it was still a pretty good night, all things considered.

The second time it happens is less premeditated than the first. Not that—she didn’t plan to fall asleep on him the first time, but at least they’d been planning to hang out.

He calls her a week into the new year, on a Saturday morning, and it shouldn’t be monumental in any way, but she hasn’t seen him in a week and… fuck, she misses him.

“Hello?”

“Hey Clarke,” his voice comes, a little distorted and awkward over the phone. Though the latter probably doesn’t have to do with the call quality. “It’s, uh, Bellamy.”

“Yeah,” she laughs. “I know. Caller ID is a thing.”

“Shut up,” he says, much more familiar than he’d been a second before. She can almost see his brows narrowing in playful annoyance. But then, just as quick, he’s back to awkward formality.

“I was, um – I was wondering if I could ask you for a favor.”

She straightens up in her kitchen chair. “What’s wrong?”

He gives a short laugh on the other end of the line. “And you say that I’m the mother hen.”

Clarke just rolls her eyes, and doesn’t bother responding.

“Alright so,” he starts after a moment, before rushing through the next words. “Feel free to say no, but my apartments is flooded, and I – I’m trying to find a place to stay while they fix it.”

Before he’s finished, she’s barreling over his words, fingers clutching anxiously at her knee. “Flooded? How bad is it? Is your stuff alright? Do you have to pay for it?”

He works so hard, enough that she’d always known it, even when they weren’t friends. Because it wasn’t rare that Octavia would complain about how annoying he was when he was stressed and overworked. He’s halfway to a PhD, so it’s hard to imagine that anything has changed. She hates to think about him dealing with all this too.

There’s humor in his voice when he answers, “It’s not that bad, but it is the bathroom next to my room, and the plumber says it’s probably better for me not to be there.”

“Do you have to pay for it?” she asks again.

“Nah, it’s just old plumbing, so it’s not my fault or anything. The landlady’s covering it.”

She breathes a sigh of relief. Then another thought strikes her. “Wait, where are you going to stay while they fix it?”

The noise he makes on the other end sounds like a laugh.

“That would be why I’m calling you.”

It takes her a second to process, to realize that that was the first thing he’d mentioned, before she got swept up in the anxiety. To realize that he’s probably not just calling to catch her up on unpleasant developments in his life.

“Oh.”

There’s a moment of hesitation, and the humor has left his voice when he speaks again.

“It’s just, uh, that Miller and Monty don’t have a ton of space, so I’d feel bad asking them. And Raven’s roommates might actually be insane, though I could ask them. But I thought maybe I could crash on your couch for a night? But it’s totally cool if--”

“What—no, sorry!” she says, interrupting, shaking her head as she gathers the words, “I didn’t realize what you were asking.”

“…is that a yes?” There’s a hint of hesitance in his voice.

“Yes!” she says, louder than necessary. There’s something warm happening in her stomach at the thought and she really needs to get it under control. “Come! My couch is yours. For as long as you need.”

As long as he needs only turns out to only be one night, and they hash out most of the details over the phone.

“Fuck, thank you so much. I know you’re busy with work so, you don’t—you don’t need to entertain me or anything.”

“Bellamy.”

“I’ll come over at night and be out of your hair first thing in the mor—”

“Bellamy.”

He stops, and she hears him take a breath. One he probably needed. “What?”

She smiles into the empty room. “You have grading and stuff to do, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool, I have a layout to work on. Bring lunch and we can work together?” she asks, her free hand worrying through a knot in her hair.

She’s not that worried that he’ll say no, but there is some small part of her that’s still in wonder of this friends thing.

She hears him release a breath after a second. “Yeah, that sounds awesome. I’ll come around 1?”

Her grin is involuntary. “Whenever you’re ready.”

To be fair, they do set out to be productive; Clarke at the small table in her living room and Bellamy on one of the stools at the counter attached to the kitchen.

Within half an hour, she moves to the couch, responding to Bellamy’s raised brow with a shrug. “Need to stretch my legs,” she says, making a show of flopping down on the sofa with her laptop, legs outstretched.

It’s another half hour before he joins her with a stack of papers, settling in at the other end with his back against the arm.

“Not enough back support,” he says, by way of explanation. “Plus I’m pretty sure you have the best couch ever.”

“Such an old man,” she says, which earns her a glare. “But yeah, it is pretty comfortable.” She shifts her legs to make space for his and he leaves aside his glare to give her a nod of thanks.

“You do have excellent couch choosing skills.”

“One of my many talents.”

With an amused scoff, he turns back to his work, and so does she.

He falls asleep first this time, which is probably fair, given the amount of shit he’s dealing with at the moment. She doesn’t notice right away though, and it’s not until her own eyes are starting to burn that she looks up from her laptop and notices his stack of papers on the floor, one arm hanging off the couch toward them and his head leaned lightly sideways against the back of the sofa.

She also doesn’t notice the soft smile on her face until she lifts her hand to cover a yawn. Her eyelids droop even as she drops her hand and it’s almost on autopilot that she pulls the throw from the back of the couch and lays it over her feet, and effectively, his as well, before leaning back against her arm of the couch, halfway adjusting the pillow there before her eyes drift shut.

She wakes up to golden evening light streaming through the window.

It takes her groggy brain a second to realize that she’s awake because Bellamy is moving, and a second more to realize how tangled their legs have become, one of her feet wedged under his knee and the other resting against his opposite shin.

“Sorry,” he says, voice gravely and sleep-heavy, just as she’s about to move her legs, a flush beginning in her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.” He gestures between them where he’s reaching toward the blanket that’s fallen halfway off the couch. “My feet were cold.”

It’s suddenly a lot, having him this close, with so much contact.

“You’re fussy with blankets, aren’t you?” she asks, a weak try at humor.

“Hey, it’s fucking cold in here,” he says, stifling a yawn.

She tries not to dwell on, like, his entire face. “I’m sorry, would you rather be sleeping in your actually flooded apartment?”

He looks up at the ceiling thoughtfully, in faux-consideration.

“You’d be underwater, Bellamy,” she says on a laugh.

He cracks a grin. “It’s not that bad.”

“It’s bad enough that you’re here,” she shoots back.

Bellamy just rolls his eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause hanging out with you is such a hardship.” He looks away from her and shifts to cover a cough, which is just as well, because she needs a moment to digest the comment. Then he’s turning back to say, “But, okay, fine. You’re my hero.”

“That’s more like it,” she says, her grin smug. She leans over to grab the remote. “Cupcake Wars?”

“Hell yeah,” he says, then grimaces. “Hold on, my foot’s gonna fall asleep.” He reaches down to lift her foot off his leg for a moment. Before she has the chance to debate removing her legs from his entirely, he’s stretching his leg out and returning hers beside it.

“Good?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says, knocking her foot against his knee, warmth growing in her chest. “Good.”

It’s stupid to pretend he’s not her favorite, after that.

Not that she didn’t like him before—even when she told herself she didn’t—but now she’s got the whole… thing. The Bellamy Blake friendship experience: casual affection, constant mothering, stimulating conversations when she wants them, and stupid debates when she’s looking for something lighter.

They hang out more often now and any given night of the week finds the two of them at one of their apartments, working or just hanging out. The amount of times Bellamy comes over to nap on her couch on the weekends is slightly alarming. In the best way.

“Your couch is magical, okay?”

“So I’ve been told.”

She loves it. Loves having him around. Likes the aura of comfort he brings with him.

The Friday night after he meets one of the many deadlines on the road to finishing his thesis, he’s slouched against her on the couch while they wait for it to be time to meet their friends. Clarke cards one hand absentmindedly through his hair while they watch Chopped.

“Aren’t we going for something relaxing?” she’d asked when he turned it on. “You’ve been stressed enough for the last, what? Two weeks?”

He frowns, makes a sound of dissent as he shifts against her shoulder. “I haven’t been that stressed.”

Her laugh is tinged with disbelief. “Are you kidding? Should I pull up the string of text messages you’ve sent me? Clarke, I hate history,” she imitates, “Why did I do this to myself, Clarke? Ceasar can suck my dick, Clarke.”

“You only remember that one because you responded with like, sixteen eggplant emoji’s. Which,” he stops to lift his head and give her a look, “Weird.”

“Besides,” he continues, gesturing to the TV before she has the chance to tell him his history boner isn’t something to be ashamed of, “This is watching-other-people-fuck-up stress. It’s different from the possibility of ruining my entire career.”

She scoffs. Bellamy Blake is undoubtedly number one on the list of people least likely to ruin his career. He’s too passionate and fucking engaging to be turned down, if her opinion is to be trusted. And she likes to think it is.

“Fine. We’ll watch hopeful people fuck up and ruin their dreams if that’s the schadenfreude you need right now.”

He relaxes back against her shoulder with a huff. “Thank you.”

“Drama queen,” she murmurs, dragging a comforting hand through his hair.

An hour or so into the marathon, her phone buzzes and she leans over to pick it up. Bellamy groans, though whether it’s at the loss of contact or because he knows it’s bound to be Raven telling them it’s time to head out, she couldn’t say.

It is, of course, Raven, telling them to meet her, Monty, Miller, and Octavia at their favorite noodle place.

She relays this information to Bellamy, who groans again. “The one downtown?”

“Do we have another favorite noodle place?” she asks, tugging at a tuft of his hair that’s sticking straight up. “Why are you being such a grump?”

He frowns at her. It’s very puppy-like, and very unfair. “Weren’t you just saying I’ve been stressed out?”

“Weren’t you just denying it?”

He huffs a little, and she catches a hint of a smile. At least he knows he’s being a drama queen.

“I was kind of looking forward to just chilling out tonight.”

Chilling out with her. It shouldn’t affect her the way it does. They’re best friends, of course he like hanging out with her.

“Because you’ve been stressed?” she teases.

“If I say yes, are you going to tell Raven we can’t make it?”

A second later, as if realizing something, he sobers. “You can go,” he says. “Obviously. I don’t want to make you miss out, I’m just… not up for it tonight.”

She can’t help a soft smile. “Yeah, okay. I’m pretty tired too. You just want to hang out here? Watch something mind-numbing?”

The relief on his face is unmistakable and it pulls at her heart. He grins. “Are you gonna be mad if I just fall asleep?”

She swallows. “Not as long as you don’t mind me falling asleep on you, too.”

“Go for it,” he says, shifting so now she’s the one leaning against him.

“Cool,” she shoots back, more casual than she feels. She shoots Raven a quick text, and then settles in against him.

It’s Raven who ruins it—or saves it, depending on your perspective—when they go out for their weekly coffee catch-up. She and Raven have been friends even before she’d met Octavia, starting their freshman year of undergrad when Raven had transferred schools to surprise her high school sweetheart, who had moved on to dating Clarke and apparently neglected to tell Raven about it.

They both kicked him to the curb, and Raven proceeded to be the best engineer their school had ever seen. She’s the most badass person Clarke knows, and that’s saying a lot, considering she’s friends with both Blakes.

“So, what’s going on with you and Bellamy?”

“What do you mean?” Clarke asks, thoughts already flitting ahead to the plans she and Bellamy have for the week, wondering what Raven is planning that she needs to run by them.

“Are you two dating yet?”

It’s not an exaggeration to say she almost chokes on her coffee.

“What? Why would you think that?”

“Is it really that surprising?” She raises an eyebrow. “You guys are always together when we go out. Though even together might be an understatement.”

Clarke flashes back to a week ago or so, at the bar, where may have been an instance of… nuzzling involved. She feels her cheeks start to go red—but then, if she recalls correctly, it was definitely consensual on both sides. Consensual half-tipsy friendship nuzzling. Totally normal.

She shrugs it off. “He’s my best friend.”

“Yeah, and we’re all glad that you don’t just yell at each other anymore, but,” Raven hesitates, “okay, just… walk me through what you guys do when you hang out.”

“I don’t know, we mostly just stay in,” Clarke starts, wondering if she’s just humoring Raven, or herself as well. “We both work long hours, and making plans to go out is exhausting. We usually end up on the couch with takeout, or he might cook. Sometimes we nap.”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupts, “sometimes you nap?”

“That’s not weird!”

“Depends on how often sometimes is.”

“Like,” she stops to think, “three times a week, tops.”

Raven looks supremely unimpressed. “I honestly don’t know what to say about this except that you guys are like, whatever the nap version of friends with benefits is.”

Clarke glares halfheartedly. “So like, just friends, you mean?”

Raven levels her an unamused look. “You and I do not nap together, Griffin. And I’d say we’re friends.”

“If you’re jealous, that’s all you had to say.”

“Honestly, this is really good, though,” Raven says, after flipping her off. “How to get with Clarke: A nap-based seduction.”

“Shut up.”

“You like him right?” Raven’s eyes are serious now, when Clarke looks up.

She makes a mental assessment. It feels too fairytale to say that she gets the best sleep when she’s with Bellamy, but that doesn’t make it not true. And that’s not even close to what she likes most about him. He’s smart, passionate, kind. Plus, if she’s being honest, holding hands? Making out? Not low on the lists of things she’d like to do with him.

She lets her head thunk against their table. “Fuck. Yeah. I do. Fuck.”

Raven pats her shoulder comfortingly. “Sorry babe.”

She does appreciate the support. And it’s fair to say she that she might not have realized on her own.

“For what it’s worth, I think he probably likes you too,” Raven says.

“I guess I have to find out.”

“That would be the mature thing to do, yeah.”

“I hate when you make me do the right thing.”

“Yeah, me too. You’re a pain in the ass.”

“Hey,” Clarke says, heart in her throat, the next time they’re at his place on a weekend. “I was thinking we should actually go out for once.”

He doesn’t bat an eye. “Yeah, sure. Where were you thinking?”

“There’s a new sushi place downtown? It’s a little high-end, but I figure after eating so much take-out, we probably deserve it.”

“Nice. I’m always down for sushi. Tomorrow night?”

She grins at him, wide, and watches him blink in response. “Tomorrow night.”

Bellamy:

not to “throw it back” as the kids say but

how formal are these plans I’m being coerced into?

Clarke:

okay a) pretty sure it’s just “throw back”

but b) please don’t ever say that again

c) it’s sad to eat take out on your own bellamy, do u want to be sad??

(it’s formal-ish, but you probably don’t need to wear a tie)

Bellamy:

okay but I don’t eat take out on my own

I eat it with you

(cool, see you at 7)

She tries not to over think it while she’s getting ready. To start, it’s not even a date, not to him anyway. Mostly because she was too chicken to broach the topic, but it’s better this way, she rationalizes. Things can’t get weird if it’s just the two of them, Bellamy and Clarke, best friends, trying out a fancy sushi place.

She settles on a maroon wrap dress and her favorite boots, because the place is nice. And if Bellamy happens to think she looks great along the way, then she’s alright with that, and feminism will support her choice.

He shows up at 7, as promised, and she’s suddenly a lot less concerned with how she looks than the fact that he’s… unbelievable, honestly. Not that she doesn’t find him ridiculously hot on a daily basis, but dressed-up isn’t a look she’s ever seen on him… it’s a lot.

She’s about to fake a cough, or do anything really, to hide her reaction, when she notices his slightly slackened jaw and lingering gaze, which is, really, just awesome.

“Problem, Blake?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know you look amazing,” he says, hardly missing a beat, his cheeks tinged pink.

She ducks her head on a smile. “Thanks. You look great too.”

“Couldn’t have you being the only beautiful one,” he says, holding the door open for her to step outside.

She laughs. “Yeah, thanks for sharing that burden.”

“Anytime.”

Dinner is, largely, uneventful. She’s a little awkward at first, overthinking things, but then he starts talking about the weird grad student in his department who sucks up to all the professors, and all her stupid fears are gone; it’s just getting a ridiculously fancy meal with her favorite person.

She does insist on paying, because she’s the one who suggested they come, and she feels a little bad for wanting it to be a date, without even asking him.

“Come on, Clarke, this place isn’t cheap. Let me pay half.”

“I told you, I suggested it. I’m paying.”

His brows narrow. “At least let me pay for drinks.”

“I swear, Bellamy,” she says, exasperated but grinning. “If you don’t let me treat you, I’m not going let you make me dinner anymore.”

It’s almost comical, how she knew that would make him frown. “That’s low, Griffin.”

“Yeah, I’m definitely the worst.”

“You are,” he agrees. Finally,he relents with a grin. “Fine. Thanks, Clarke.”

She smiles back. “You’re welcome.”

She’s yawning as they walk back from the metro, a remnant of having to be at work at 6 that morning.

He nudges her. “Hey. You work too hard.” It's the start to a familiar debate..”

She grins, gives him a soft shove. “How many times are we going to have this argument? You work too hard!”

“Because I have to, not because I’m having my talents exploited.”

Her expression softens. Not that she’s ever far from a soft look when she’s around him anymore. God, Raven was like, embarrassingly right.

“Aw, you think I’m talented?”

He blinks, a little surprised at the change of tone—a detour from their usual bouts of ‘who’s more of a workaholic’—but he’s not out of commission for long.

“You know I think you should be one of the people whose art they’re selling, instead of just doing the background stuff," he says, deadly serious. "Not,” he rubs the back of his neck, “that the background stuff isn’t important, but you deserve to be the one they’re catering to, not the other way around.”

God, she loves him.

She catches his hand, squeezing softly. “I’ll get there. Baby steps.”

He nods. She thinks he might be about to say something else, but honestly, it’s gone on long enough.

She lets go of his hand to take his arm instead, pulling them to a stop about a block away from his apartment.

“Cool, so if we’re done with that argument, I really want to kiss you now.”

His face goes blank. “What?”

Okay, so, he definitely didn’t know this was a date. Which is very understandable. Her confidence falters. “If you want to. It’s um—it’s an option.”

She thinks her heart might stop, the way he stares at her for a moment, jaw working. Finally, he lets out a shaky breath, and she might actually die of relief when she sees a smile play at his lips.

“Are there other options?”

He’s probably on board. She’s like, 80% sure. But just in case:

“Yeah, we could also go back to your place and pretend this didn’t happen.” Her smile is pretty convincing, she thinks, given how awkward that scenario would be after her proposition. “Chill on the couch, watch something dumb.”

“That sounds pretty good,” he says, serious, and she thinks she might actually have misread this, in the worst way—until he catches her hand in his, entwining their fingers. “Can we do both?”

She smiles so wide it hurts. “Yeah.”

With a grin matching hers, he pushes her hair behind her ear and leaves his hand there, behind her ear and the edge of her jaw, his thumb brushing against it. She’s the one to press forward, catching his lips with hers, but he’s quick in responding--after a sharp intake of breath--his free hand settling on her waist to pull her closer, warm and solid and perfect. She grins deliriously at his groan when she opens her mouth to him

“Fuck, I’m so in love with you,” he says when they pull apart, his forehead resting against hers, breathing shallow. She can't help a quiet gasp, and his eyebrows twitch together. “Sorry, is that too much?”

“No,” she breathes, still grinning. “Raven called me out for being in love with you last week. She says it’s weird that we nap so much.”

“Napping with friends isn’t that weird.”

“That’s what I said. But also she wasn’t wrong, I’m definitely in love with you.”

His smile is blinding. “Cool. I love you,” he says, apparently just to say it again, before catching her lips again in another searing kiss.

They decide pretty soon, that they should head back to his apartment, instead of… making out on the sidewalk.

“So, just to clarify,” he says, swinging their intertwined hands between them as they walk, “I wasn’t projecting my feelings when I thought this felt like a date, right?”

She pulls him sideways to press her lips to his again, sweet. “Nope. I was just too chickenshit to actually ask you.”

She’s never seen him smile so much. “Cool. You didn’t need to be chickenshit.”

Clarke shrugs. “I know that now. But I didn’t want to ruin anything. You’re important to me, romantic or not.”

The look he gives her sends warm shivers down her back as his hand tightens on hers. “Okay, yeah. We really need to get back to my place.”

She laughs as he pulls her forward. “I know you like napping, but your favorite couch is at my place.”

“Yeah that’s not exactly what I was looking forward to.”

“Wow, my couch is going to be so offended.”

He kisses her again, once they're outside his building. “Yeah, I think we’ll survive.”

#bellarke fanfiction #bellarke #the 100 #bffnet #blakebabesnetwork #*celebratory emoji*#finally done!!#lexi writes

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