something silly

for a moment i forget to worry

pairing → xu minghao x reader

word count → 3196

genre → fluff + angst, college au ↳ tags: strangers to friends to lovers </3, college kinda sux, ROOMMATE CHAN MAKES AN APPEARANCE OR TWO, dance major minghao, reader is completely lost but its ok who isnt, lots of cute couple stuff, pov ur entire relationship with minghao. thats it, a sad break up scene, a solid amount of crying

summary → there’s something about minghao. maybe it’s the way he dances, vibrant and youthful, or maybe it’s the way he loves you. based off of hunger by florence + the machine.

warnings → i hint at sex but its pretty vague, i also mention a breakdown type deal (revolving around school/life after school)

a/n → first of all this was NOT supposed to be 3k words i dont know how it happened. second of all i’m only kind of happy with this HAHA i feel like the story itself isnt bad but i wanted it to match the song more ... idk :/ i hope u guys like it regardless !!!

pieces of you masterlist

The first time you see him is by accident.

Really - all you’re doing is trying to find Chan. You’re passing by the practice rooms, looking into them in hope he’ll be there, stopping to gaze at decorations and medals and trophies lined up on the walls. It’s when you approach a room that music plays from that you think you’ve found Chan, but when you gaze in, it’s definitely not him.

You don’t know who it is, but he moves like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

It’s hypnotizing, almost makes you want to drop your things and dance with him. There’s a sense of youth that comes from him and it’s almost overwhelming - but it’s not in energy, necessarily, but rather from the precision of his movements, the technicalities that he seems to both follow and break at the same time. Something vibrant seeps out between the seams of his body, colors you can barely recognize as they splash against anything they can reach. It’s almost tangible. 

You watch him long enough for him to finish his performance (an unknowing one) with the last notes of a song you forgot was even playing. His eyes meet with yours, slow as he completes an eloquent turn, and at the same time, a hand meets your shoulder.

A small wave of embarrassment washes over you, and you turn towards whoever touched you, effectively breaking eye contact. “What are you doing here?” Chan asks, hair still wet from what you assume was a shower.

“Looking for you,” you tell him, following as he starts to walk towards the exit. “I wanted lunch, and you owe me for that time I took your British literature quiz for you.”

Chan groans but agrees to pay, and you laugh, though the world seems a little paler than it did a few moments ago.

The second time you see him is by chance.

(Maybe.)

You’re waiting for a lecture to start, tapping your fingers against your laptop idly as you watch students trickle in last minute. It’s not a strict course, but it does start at nine in the morning, and most everyone shows up with a coffee.

You look down to brush a stray hair off of your table, and when you look up again, the dancer from before walks through the door, then looks right at you.

You feel a blush heat your face and it’s like he wants to make sure that you know that he knows, because he almost refuses to look away. You break eye contact first (like the last time, you remember for no reason) but still watch as his figure moves up the stairs, past the rows, and you hope he’ll just move past you too…

He doesn’t. He takes the empty seat right next to yours, and you don’t say anything, instead finding the peeling sticker on your laptop incredibly interesting. The professor comes in and decides that today he’ll take extra long to set everything up, apparently, and you want to scream.

“So,” the dancer says, voice quiet. It takes your breath away, the way he sounds. “Mind if I ask why you were watching me the other day?”

You cast a glance at him - not too long, you don’t think you could handle more than five seconds tops - and finally open your laptop so it makes you look busy. “I was waiting for a friend.”

“And?”

The smile in his voice is palpable. You’re already exasperated.

“You…” you start, finally deciding to look at him as some sort of subconscious power move. “You’re a beautiful dancer. It was hard not to watch.”

Beautiful doesn’t even cover half of it, but you figure he already thinks you’re weird for watching him, so you hold back the thoughts of youth and vibrancy and color. The dancer looks at you, almost blank for a moment, before a soft smile draws itself on his face. It makes your heart beat a little faster. He says “thank you” with a gentle tone, sincerely felt.

The class starts, and the two of you don’t speak throughout the next hour and a half. You type out notes on your laptop and you see him write down names of the paintings being shown on the projector, little thoughts and notes written afterwards.

By the end of class, your professor assigns an optional partnered project, and you’re more than prepared to head back to your apartment and start on it yourself. The dancer stops you before you leave, however, asks if you’d like to be his partner.

(And he says it like that, would you like to be my partner, polite and somehow sweet.)

You know your answer. “I don’t even know your name,” you stall, standing from your chair. 

“Minghao,” he tells you. “I’m Minghao, and I’d like for you to be my partner.”

You say yes easily, put your number into his contacts even easier. The sky is blue when you leave the lecture hall, trees dotted with pink and purple flowers, and it is all so bright that you forget it wasn’t this way in the first place.

The third time you see him is for school.

Underneath the excitement of giving Minghao your number, there is the knowledge that it’s for the sake of an assignment. He texts you the day after to ask if you’re free to meet up to work and you tell him sure.

(Sure is what you send back, but he doesn’t have to know that you burst into Chan’s room immediately after, plunging face first into his bed just to scream into his pillows. Chan had sighed, turned around in his desk chair to look at you, then asked what happened. He gave you two minutes to rant and then kicked you out, back to your own room.)

You and Minghao agreed to meet at the library on a day that neither of you had any afternoon classes, and you get there early, spend some time working on other classes. You have somewhere around thirty minutes to freak out to yourself before you see Minghao come in, dressed like he knows what he’s doing to you (which is really just a hoodie and jeans, but you think it’s the cap that really pulls the whole boyfriend look together), smiling when he finds you at a table in the corner.

“How are you?” is the first thing he says when he sits down, and you pull down your laptop screen a little to see him better.

“I’m good,” you say, feeling your heart pound. “What about you?”

Minghao sends you a kind smile. “Really good. Should we get started?”

You lose count of how many times you see him after that.

Meeting up to work on the project soon becomes just meeting up, and after the project’s done and turned in, it happens even more. You hang out and get lunch, send each other texts and stupid videos, take walks around campus together. The weeks pass, summer mellows into fall, then into the early days of winter. You develop a genuine friendship with him, finding comfort in his presence, looking for him wherever you go. 

(Although the crush is still there, potent and patient, stubborn in a way you’ve never experienced before. You wonder if it’s a sign of some sort.)

You’re in one of the practice rooms with him, sitting in the corner. You had a class nearby and he’d wanted to practice a little more, so you told him you’d work on your own stuff while he finished up and then the two of you could grab something to eat.

But you made a small error on your part - the dancing. You’d forgotten the way he moves (you haven’t seen him dance since that first time) and in no time at all you’re letting your screen go dark in front of you and watching him. Honestly, it’s not your fault, you really can’t help it. 

But of course he notices.

Minghao meets your eyes through the mirror and raises his eyebrows at you, and all you can do is look away, desperately try to get your laptop up and running again so at least it seems like you weren’t watching him for too long.

“You’re staring,” he says, long after you’ve looked away.

“Sorry,” you tell him anyways, immediate, quick. 

Then he says, “I never said anything about stopping.”

In a second, you look up from your laptop and up at him. He moves closer, crouches in front of you. His eyes are kind - they’re never not - but you think you see something a little more in them. “Sorry, I think I missed that last part,” you respond, blinking. Minghao smiles like you’re endearing.

“I said I want you to keep looking at me.”

You think you’re barely breathing when he shuts your laptop for you, slides it off of your lap and onto the floor (gently, with care, and it’s a wonder to you how he can focus on that right now). He practically crawls over you, one of his hands eventually reaching the junction of your jaw and neck and holding there. “I’m gonna kiss you now, if that’s okay,” he says, but doesn’t move. You nod as soon as his words reach your brain, eager and quick.

And the next few hours get a little wound up in your head, a little mixed in with the feeling of his body - that moves so youthfully, with so much vibrancy that it reaches everything around you - melting into yours and the sound of him asking you to tell me what you need, honey, and the still-playing slow jam music he was practicing to.

You watch him sleep next to you, hand curled around yours against his pillows, and think that nothing bad could ever touch him.

The two of you… come together, after that.

Neither you nor Minghao use any proper labels, but you both seem to know. No labels are needed, really. You have each other and that’s all there is to it. And everything is really good.

You work together and laugh together like you’ve always known each other. He tries to teach you to dance with him when you’re in the practice room with him, pulls you up by your hands and guides you through your giggles. He was the first person you called when you realized that you had no idea what you were working towards, didn’t have a clue what you actually wanted to do with your life. He gets along well with your friends and you text his because they’re basically yours, now, too.

Winter turns back into spring, slow and easy. Vibrant and youthful. You’re not able to meet Minghao’s parents, but he meets yours (and you’re sure a quick introduction to his mom over a FaceTime call has to count for something). The two of you take advantage of the newfound warmth of the season and try to get out as much as you’re able to, with picnics and city dates and anything you can think of. A drawer in his dresser is reserved for your things, you bought an extra toothbrush for him to use when he stays over.

You watch him dance. It still feels like the first time, like color and breathlessness. You tell him he’s beautiful every time, feel yourself fall a little deeper when he still gets bashful amidst his comedown. You tell him you love him for the first time after he gets done with a performance - a proper one, for a showcase of the dance club he’s in. He says it back.

You think he put all the stars in the sky just for the two of you to gaze at them together.

Things shift the beginning of your junior year.

Minghao tells you about a program he’s applying to, a proper dance academy in New York that could really kickstart his career. Training under some of the best choreographers and performers in the world.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” You ask him after he tells you, and he shrugs, leaning back in his chair. You’re studying at his apartment tonight.

“It’s just…” he frowns. “It’s so far away, you know?”

Oh. You hadn’t even thought about that, too caught up in the excitement of him being able to apply at all. A quick sigh leaves your lips, and then you reach for his hand, hold it between both of your own.

“That’s okay,” you tell him, though now that you’re thinking about it, you feel nervousness in the pit of your stomach. “We can work something out, though, when we get that far. We’ll figure it out.”

Minghao nods, a fond look in his eyes. He pulls one of your hands to his lips. “We’ll think about it if I even get accepted,” he says.

It’s bittersweet, but a promise nonetheless.

Fifteen minutes after you get a call from Minghao, there’s a knock on your door. 

You wouldn’t necessarily say you’re worried, but, well. Everyone’s experienced the jump of anxiety when they get hit with the “I want to talk to you about something” line. Nonetheless, you stand from the couch to open the door, mentally preparing yourself for any and everything. 

“Hey,” you greet when you see Minghao, opening the door to let him in. His face is unreadable. “Everything okay?”

He walks a few steps into your apartment, waits for you to close the door before turning back around to face you. Then he holds up a piece of paper, the creases from where it was folded still bending. You send him a confused look.

“I got in,” he says, a grin breaking on his face, and you blink, then feel your jaw practically hit the floor. Minghao only nods like he understands, and before you know what you’re doing, you launch yourself at him, holding him close.

“Oh my god, Hao, that’s amazing,” you say into his sweater, then step back to get a proper look at him. Youthful, vibrant. “I’m so proud of you.”

He seems to soften at your words, pulls you back into him again with a gentle kiss to your head. “Thank you for believing in me,” he tells you, tenderness palpable in his voice. All you can do is squeeze him tighter.

Minghao spends a lot of time away from you after that.

You’re not really hurt in any way - even though he got into the academy in New York, he still has to practice. You get it, this is important. He doesn’t text you as often, isn’t able to stop by as much, and you miss him, but you know how much this means for him. But it gets… weird, almost, after a while. Strange, even for him. It feels weird that he’s set to leave at the end of January and it’s December and he’s distant.

Both of you are laying in your bed, looking at the glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling, when you decide to bring it up. “You’ve been… kinda far away lately,” you start, nudging him with your shoulder gently. “Everything okay?”

His eyes stay on your ceiling, but you feel the way he sighs. “It’s about the program,” he says.

“Okay.”

“And about… you and me.”

Oh. That doesn’t… sound the best. “About, like… what we’re gonna do?”

Minghao nods.

You say, “I wouldn’t mind visiting every so often. It’d be hard, but I’m sure we could find something to work.”

Minghao shakes his head, says, “no.”

You pause, and when you look at him he’s already looking at you. What does he mean by no? Does he want you to move with him? Or does he -

He reaches for your hand and you think oh.

His eyes are a little glassy. You feel the tears come, too.

“Oh,” you say out loud. Minghao squeezes your hand. “So this is… this is it?”

Your room is suddenly cold, and you want to crawl under the covers and stay there. The person in front of you is blurred into something unrecognizable, but you can’t be bothered to blink away your tears.

“I think so, love,” he whispers back to you. “I think it has to be.”

The two of you cry like that for a while. In your bed, loosely intertwined and broken. Even the way Minghao cries carries a kind of vibrancy that’s overwhelming, makes you think of the first time you saw him so long ago, and now -

When you manage to get a better grip on yourself, you ask him if you can still see him off at the airport. He says, “I don’t know what I’d do if you didn’t.”

Then you ask if you can kiss him again. He responds by kissing you first. 

And it’s sad, it tastes like salt and sorrow and you feel like the promises you never got the chance to make are broken. It feels like the most beautiful blue you’ve ever seen, and you know it’s only a branch of Minghao’s color.

He leaves soon after that, pulls on his shoes and his coat and turns around at the door to give you a tired smile. After he’s gone, you drag yourself to Chan’s bedroom, and once he sees the state you’re in, he offers up one side of his bed. Neither of you say anything, but the friendly reassurance of his hand in yours says enough.

You don’t fail to notice that everything seems to be washed out, a blandness you’re not used to.

The last time you see him is at the airport.

It’s a cold day, despite being sunny. The airport offers little warmth, but you figure it doesn’t matter. You won’t be here for long. 

It doesn’t take you very long to find Minghao - you still look for him wherever you go, even if you’re not looking for him. Even then, it’s still so easy for you to find him, to pinpoint that vibrancy, that youth. He’s talking to a few others, you think you met them. Soonyoung and Jun.

Minghao meets your eyes and you freeze, but then he waves you over with a gentle smile. You follow like you think you always will. 

You greet Soonyoung and Jun and the four of you talk, albeit a little awkwardly, even when Soonyoung tries his hardest to lighten the mood. Eventually he has to leave, and Jun follows with a shy goodbye. They both hug Minghao before they go.

You’re not sure what to say, but after a minute, you find words. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you,” you tell him, a little selfishly. 

Minghao says, “you’ll do good. I know you will. I’m not worried about you.”

He pulls his phone out of his pocket to check the time, and you think he’ll give you a stiff and sad goodbye, but he steps a little closer to you. Looks at you the way he used to.

“Maybe…” he starts, then pauses. “Maybe we’ll meet again.”

Maybe, you think. Maybe.

“I hope so,” you tell him, then watch as he leaves.

Cross My Heart - CH.10

Pairing: Bodyguard!Dean x Reader; Chuck Shurley x Reader

Summary: After opening up a letter, the life as she knows it, changes forever. Her husband hires Dean Winchester to protect her but is Dean really who he said he was? And is her husband really worried about her safety?

Warnings: NSFW, flangst

WC: 2759

SERIES MASTERLIST

It’s the third day that they’re in the new cabin and their daily schedule changed completely.

Mostly, they’ll get up around noon and stay up until late in the night. It’s easier for Dean to bring her along if he has to go into town. Easier to blend into the night without people recognizing her. 

Not that they’ve been out and about a lot, but whenever he needs to, it’s better that way.

Dean would set the alarm in the mornings to send Chuck a text message on time so that Chuck won’t have to call in again. According to Chuck's answers though, it’s not like he cares. One time, Chuck answered the next morning at four, and it made her wonder if he’s been up til then or if he’s already up for the day. Not that she should care anymore either. 

Y/N can feel that Dean hates Chuck. He doesn’t even need to say it, she just knows, because Dean would scoff every time he gets a text from Chuck and his mood changes for a minute or two. Until he realizes that she’s around either, and then he would slip back into being his grumpy self, turns his anger inwards and not outwards towards her. 

It’s going to eat him up if he’s not careful.

They didn’t have sex again either. But they kiss and when it gets heavier, Dean always breaks away. She doesn’t know if it’s because he still thinks that he has to be professional with her when he doesn’t really need to anymore.

But he did move into the bedroom right from the start. Although under the false pretense that it’s easier to keep her safe when he’s in the same room. She just smirked at that and she swears she did see him blush.

So today, she gets up and after her shower, changes into some shorts when Dean walks in after he showered and she’s standing there naked.

His eyes widen and his lips are pressed into a thin line. There’s a vein standing out on his neck. It pulsates the longer she looks at it. He doesn’t say anything but he frowns when he sees her getting into the shorts without wearing any underwear, “I know it’s probably not my place to ask, but why aren’t you wearing any panties?”

Uh-oh.

Does she want to tell him that she’s been changing her panties more often, up to three times a day, because she’s wet all the time lately?

Nope.

“I don’t have any clean ones left,” She shrugs and finishes buttoning her pants up before she pulls a shirt over her head. She doesn't wear a bra either.

Dean groans and rolls his eyes, “Jesus, you are testing my patience.”

She laughs and walks past him but he holds her back, pulls her into a kiss, while he pinches at one of her nipples that pokes through the shirt, making her yelp up. He presses his damp body to hers, and she couldn’t miss the bulge in his underwear.

“Tonight, we’ll go to the laundromat.” He whispers into her ear and with a soft spank on her ass, he lets her walk out of the room. 

*

It’s past 3am when they arrive at the laundromat that apparently opens twenty-three hours a day — at least that’s what it says on the sign. 

It looks kind of grim inside.

Dean carries their bags with their dirty clothes in and to the back, and she follows wordlessly.

The back of the laundromat is well shielded from the front of the store by big washing machines. Nobody could see them from the outside and the bell on the door goes off when someone comes in. She knows now why he has chosen this laundromat. They can never be careful enough. 

He jingles with the coins in his palms when he walks over to the vending machine where there are detergents, while he asks her which ones she’d prefer, but she doesn’t really know any of it because she hasn’t been doing her own laundry in years, so she let him choose for her.

Dean settles for something organic because apparently her skin’s delicate.

It’s the constant dropping of these hints that makes her blush and he fucking knows it. Smirks to himself, when he sees the flush on her face.

She’s never been at a laundromat before so Dean has to tell her what to do. They decide to wash their things together. The only thing they will do is separating the whites and start their own machine for that one.

When everything’s in the machines, Dean turns to her, “Everything in there that needs washing?”

Looking down on herself, she decides to drop her pants. 

His eyes widen when he watches her shimmy out of it and throw it into the waiting machine.

“How are you going to sit on the chair and wait now?” Dean asks with amusement in his voice when he turns the machine on and she pulls at Dean’s oversized shirt that she’s wearing. It’s one of his shirts he once told her to wear and she uses it as a sleeping shirt now. It’s actually long enough and it goes way over her ass so sitting on any chairs should be okay.

She slums provocatively into a chair, the seam of his shirt pulled as far down as it could go, just to prove a point, which makes him grin.

Dean walks over to where a stack of magazines are laying around, and takes a couple, drops it on the chair to her right and sits down in the chair on her left. They’re both well shielded by the machines.

“How long does it take?” She asks him after about two minutes. She doesn’t like to read magazines and wishes she had a phone to pass the time like Dean has.

“About thirty minutes,”

“That’s so long!” She exhales, slumps further into her chair and Dean chuckles.

He pockets his phone back into his pants, “You’re very impatient, you know that? It’s driving me nuts.”

Y/N stands up, paces around to prove her point that she’s bored but Dean reaches out a hand for her, pulls her down, making her stumble into his lap. 

“Christ, Y/N! Don’t walk around, someone could see you!” He hisses grumpily.

She sits on one of his thighs, feet dangle in between both his legs, his hand on her lower back while one strokes at her bare thigh.

“‘M sorry,” She mumbles and his hand travels up her back, resting at the back of her neck before he pulls her in for a kiss.

Dean pulls away and stares up at her, “It’s okay,” He says, “It would just make my job so much easier if you’d remember.”

Her heart sinks every time he mentions that she’s his job. Which is stupid and childish of her and she really shouldn’t be, because he’s right.

“I forgot that I’m your job. Sorry.”

He notices the change in her demeanor and places his hand beneath her chin, making her look at him, “Stop that, you know what I mean.”

“Yes, that I’m just a job to you,” She pouts and Dean’s thumb comes up to paint along her lips.

“You are, but also you’re not.”

She raises her eyebrow, “What do you mean?”

“The truth is, your asshole husband hasn’t paid me after someone tried to kill us. I usually get paid daily. So, really, what I was doing for the last three days is purely on my own will.”

“You still report to him.”

“Yeah, but because I want him to think that we’re still on his side. Something about our whole situation rubs me the wrong way.”

“But we could just go forward with the things we know?”

“No,” Dean speaks in his final voice, “He wants to play dirty, he can have it.” He manhandles her on top of him so that she now straddles his crotch, her knees on either side of his thighs, and she can feel something swelling in his pants. 

“But why? Why don’t you just walk away?” She’s baffled at his revelation. Baffled that he decided to stay and help her when he could have easily walked away.

He cradles her face in between his big palms, “Baby, you just don’t see it do you?”

Baby.

Her heart flutters.

Y/N bites down on her lips, shakes her head.

“I’m so fucking gone on you,” He whispers, his hands drawing her in for a kiss, his tongue teasing at her bottom lip, until she lets him in. 

Dean's big palms roam her back, stroking downwards until he grips her hips, helping her grind on him. The kiss grows hotter, heavier, his tongue mapping out the inside of her mouth and she loves that, loves how hungry they get for each other, loves how his kisses tingles her in all the right places. She’s soaking wet and he must be feeling it too.

“Dean,” His name left her mouth in a whimper when he bites and sucks down her throat.

“We shouldn’t, we’re in public,” He mumbles against her skin but he doesn’t stop. It’s as if he’s not able to — like she isn’t either.

“Please,” Her hands finds his hair, nails digging into his scalp while he sucks at her pulse point.

He licks a broad stripe up her chin, kisses her again wet and sloppy, bites on her bottom lip, “Fuck,” His fingers gripping her hips so tight she’s sure that he’ll leave bruises.

She works her mouth along his scruff and across his cheeks, nibbles at his ear while her hands travel downwards. Sitting back a little, she makes more room for herself, and her fingers deftly work on his belt, “Please?”

Sucking on his earlobe, Dean lets out a moan before he tilts his head to her, face craning for her lips, “Okay, fuck— okay,”

Y/N grins into the kiss and her fingers lowering his zipper, and pulls his jeans down a little. She pauses and frowns but the frown turns quickly into a mischievous grin, “No underwear?”

Dean chuckles with a shrug, “It’s laundry day.”

She pulls the jeans down only enough to have access to his cock and balls, and wraps her hands around it, jerking him off while she kisses him, and he can’t help but to buckle up into her fist.

“That’s it,” He says, watching her spit on it to be able to massage him better, “Make it nice and wet, baby.”

God, the way he talks. She could come from that alone.

“Twist your grip at the tip,” Dean whispers as he watches her jerk him. He probably knows that her last sexual experience was too long ago but he doesn’t say anything mean, instead he helps her and tells her what he likes. She likes for him to teach her, would love for him to teach her even more things.

Y/N gets bolder and lays his cock onto his stomach, lifting herself up a little and rubs her wet cunt along it, lips parting so he could rub at her swollen and sensitive nub. Dean bunches up her shirt to be able to see better. 

“Just like that,” His voice is raspy, his gaze on her pussy, watching her lips part and rock against his shaft, watching her slicking it up with her juice. Dean soon loses his cool, “Can you sit on it— I— fuck,”

His hands go up to squeeze at her tits before he loops the seam of the shirt through its neckline. She’s exposed to him from her tummy downwards.

Her hands braces on his shoulder and she lifts herself up while Dean grabs his cock by the base and then he helps her impale herself on it with one hand around her hips.

Y/N groans out at the feeling of him filling her and Dean throws his head back, closing his eyes for a brief moment.

Slowly, she works him in. Going down an inch and back a half. She lets his thick cock stretch her tight pussy on her way down, until she sits on him, her cunt presses against his skin. 

“Oh my god,” She moans out, her eyelid starts to flutter, “I’m so full.”

Dean has to chuckle, pulls her face down to kiss her while she starts to move above him. He breaks the kiss to suck down her throat, “So good,” His breathing is ragged, “Jesus, baby, you feel so good around my cock.”

She’s rocks above him, doesn’t dare to bounce too hard because they’re in public after all. She almost forgot until the machines started to beep. 

At one point, she switches to grinding because it feels so good to feel him deep inside of her while her clit rubs against his groin. 

He reaches his hand below her shirt, pinches and twists at her nipples, making her moan out loud to which he has to hush her by shoving his thumb into her mouth. She sucks at it and Dean lets out a groan of approval. 

Soon he replaces his thumb with two of his fingers and she sucks before taking his finger deeper, until she gags a little, “Fuck, I would love to feel your mouth around my cock, baby,”

“Mmh,” She moans, agreeing with him, because oh god, she wants that too. 

“Such a good girl, taking my fingers and cock like a good fucking girl,” His voice a little strained, “You’re close, ain’tcha? Fuck—”

Yes, she is so close, and her pussy clenches even more when she hears the good girl comment. He knows just how to push the right buttons.

“Come for me, baby,” He helps her guide on his cock, hands firmly placed on her hips, fingers digging into her flesh, “Did he ever make you come on his cock alone, huh?”

She closes her eyes, drags her teeth across her bottom lip while her grip tightens around Dean’s neck, “N— no,”

It’s true. Sex was never like this. She never thought sex could feel so good. How could she not know that sex like this exists?

Y/N opens her eyes to see Dean smirking at her, but his eyes stay dark and hungry. 

He pulls her down, kisses her deep and rough, “Ride me, use me to come, baby. You’re doing so good, feels so fucking perfect,”

Her legs start to tremble and then it happens. A wave of pleasure crashes around her, making her slump down and she buries her face in the crook of his neck. She breathes heavily, takes in the smell of him. It’s intoxicating.

Dean follows her over the edge right after, kisses the side of her face, sucks at her skin as he moans softly into her ear. 

“Oh my god, I just came without even touching myself,” She chuckles, feels Dean's laughter rumbling in his chest, and she pushes herself up to look at him. 

He’s grinning, kisses her between her eyebrows, pecks her nose, the corner of her lips, “I think I passed out for a minute there,”

She giggles at that and pecks him back on his nose before she’s getting off of him but Dean holds her back, his grip tight around her waist.

“No, stay. A little longer?”

“Okay,” She says and she leans back forward, buries her face in his neck while he strokes her back. 

It’s a long while until Dean speaks, his voice deep, it rumbles in her chest, “I promise, alright? Nothing bad’s gonna happen to you when I’m around.”

Y/N knows that already. Of course she does. She doesn’t know why she starts to cry, though.

*

They stayed in the laundromat longer than they thought they would because after their clothes were done, they had to wash the clothes where they just fucked in. And while they waited, they almost fucked again. Dean really had to walk it out as not to fuck her on top of the washing machine. 

She had to laugh at him, although she was not opposed to the idea of feeling vibrations underneath her when he fucks into her deep and hard. 

Before the laundromat closes for the hour that they need to clean the place, they are out and on Dean’s bike again, with her clinging to him as if he’s the only thing that keeps her alive. 

And she thinks that maybe—

—maybe he is.

CH.11

A Kiss Is a Kiss (Connor|Request!)

TLDR: Confessions are sometimes the best way to say ‘I love you’

Word Count: 2,082

TW: Wholesome Fluff, Minor Language 

A/N: Kiss Prompt: 67. “When One Stops The Kiss To Whisper “I’m Sorry, Are You Sure You-” And They Answer By Kissing Them More”   |  I don’t mind at all! And you’re right! My main android boy needs love. Here we go! I have a couple other requests in my queue to get to but the ask box is still open for business!

“Just relax, Connor.”

“How am I supposed to, as you say, relax?” Connor’s brows rose incredulously. Listening to advice from his partner can potentially lead to unwanted probabilities. As the deviant android sees it now that is a high percentage from current assessment. 

Obviously it is clear in his face how distracted with analytics. Filling up his brain, running diagnostics over personal status and somehow the thought of you makes him overheat. Continuously as a matter of factual -

“Don’t analyze shit! Be your goddamn self!” 

Hank’s biting words cease the android’s internal struggle. He is still learning despite having been free for some time now. You make him question. It is not a negative thing. Being a machine while you are so human, pure and-and he feels so much. 

“I can’t do it, Hank,” Connor murmurs uncharacteristically lacking in confidence.

The android formerly sent by Cyberlife who infiltrated, took down various guards to free his people in the tower warehouse is afraid to watch a movie with you. 

Not just anywhere. Here in the comfort of the lieutenant’s home which Hank is attempting to leave making it much more intimate than it should be. 

“Jesus. Get a grip! It’s a damn movie. Not a marriage proposal!”

Grabbing keys off counter set Hank off for his front door. The look of disgust is written on his face.

This kid jumps from buildings to moving trains and can’t even sit his ass down for a regular human activity. This pining shit he’s doing is pissing Hank off. Why else is he purposely getting out of here? “I’ll be at Jimmy’s Bar. Don’t wait up.” 

“I don’t think…”

A slam of the door cuts into the android’s protest. Leaving Hank to go off drinking is not the best idea. He has cut back but it does not mean it’s become good for his health now. Mulling this longer than typical shows how strangely human this feeling of trepidation can be.

“Wait, Lieutenant!”

The minute he wrenches open front door is the single highest spike his system ever experiences. Connor’s lips part unable to process with you already on the porch; hand in the air with impending knuckles about to crack upon its surface.

An immediate stillness takes hold looking into his face. It honestly takes a minute for you to move again. Is this your body telling you that you’re breaking down? Funny, humans attain those problems albeit in an entirely different way. Oh, it’s just a very handsome kind right now.

“Connor,” you say his name with soft affection. How can you not? He’s just-

“Hi.” A smile brightens the second you study him better, standing there in a casual button down almost identical to the hue of thirium. How fitting. 

Actually, it’s nice to see him out of those work uniforms. As much as you enjoy a man in a suit and tie; your breath draws slowly locking onto warm chocolate. Richer than a good mug of hot beverage you’re sure.

There is something about his eyes. Always saw how deep they can go just a faraway galaxy of cocoa. Swirls of caramel flecks shining starry and alive, you find yourself pulled into the softest black hole the universe may create. Nothing can be fuller or livelier than the eyes of this wonderful detective. 

Often you think about days waking up to see them early hours of the morn. Knowing they were always going to be part of your existence.

Fantasy really. Call it an overactive taste for the romantic. He exudes your deepest dreams from long ago. It came back as an adult now ever since you saw him.

“Y/N.” Connor’s voice is stilted. He blinks before narrowing eyes towards driveway. Hank’s car is gone. Did the lieutenant pass you? Of course he must have. There is no chance you avoided each other due to the time frame in which he stepped out and you…

“Earth to Connor.” Snapping fingers up to gain his attention causes a light giggle on your breath. How cute is he? Well, that’s a rhetorical question. “Are you OK?”

Something in the tone you present makes him straighten. This time he finds himself prepared or – an equivalent of preparation. “I am fine. I was… Please,” he decides to act with proper etiquette. 

Standing aside to let you inside allows the android to watch closely as you accept. Unable to stop studying the moving sway of your body sets his internal core temperature to dangerous levels. Overheating whenever you are near is a constant he comes to crave. Looking forward to those fleeting sensations, he wants to always have a reason to experience them now.

“I just saw Hank.” You confess really wondering why the man barreled out of here like a bat out of hell. Well, who cares honestly? That means the two of you are alone for once.

“Ah, yes,” Connor nods, closing door securely. “He had something important to accomplish.”

Does that include knocking back a few at the bar? Keeping it to yourself, it’s obvious that Connor’s acting a little off. He seems…nervous. Why would he-?

“So what did you have in mind? For tonight I mean.” Quickly explaining your choice of words it’s not every night you’re alone with Connor. The thought of it makes everything light. A flutter deep in your stomach ripples nervously because he’s so close. Does he know? Of course he can scan you but this is nice either way.

His smile is lopsided, light and partially dazed. The android completely snaps out of his distraction. Finally he registers your question. “Ah, I...I did not think that far ahead.” 

“Oh,” a quiet huff leaves you. 

Connor immediately regrets his response. “Y/N, I did not mean I forgot about tonight. I only...”

“Connor.” Hushing him with a gentle brush of fingers against his cheekbone radiates shared warmth between you two. Making him uncomfortable is never something you can live with. You thought - well, you’ve been closer. That’s all you want. “You know for having such impressive skills you’re lacking tonight in your negotiator tactics. You could probably get me to do anything.”

Anything. He hears your voice but can only focus on the lovely form of lips that spill words. How shining your eyes are as they look at him as if he were a regular man. It isn’t long before you decide to drag him into living room.

Contact from your skin to synthetic fuels his longing. This thing burning in his chest that has raged so long for you is one thing only. It is love.

Seating yourself on the couch, him following without speaking, you eye the room, searching for Sumo. Wonder where he’s  lounging?

“We can always look through what movies Hank has lying around. Maybe then…” Your voice ceases abruptly, fading into the ravenous lips of your ‘date’ who cradles your face in a delicate draw. The connection is a tidal wave of feelings washing over the two of you.

Pushing his arms down to hoist up on seat cushion, you’re already snaking arms around the android’s neck. It comes quickly this need to tangle and both of you are in sync to a burning tempo unleashing every secret held since the beginning. 

His arms are full of you; pulling your body flush and it forces you to sink down from the hasty kneel atop couch. Instead he catches your body down against his.

You cling to him aware of the thundering beats rapping against ribs. Can your heart even stand how much fire runs through veins? Strong hands locking onto hips holds you in place and this is the moment everything falls together. Except Connor will never let you go.

Connor pants into your mouth feeling how far this physical contact takes him. Arousal shoots through him to the point of blindness in his circuitry. 

He wants to lay your body down, gently at first, worshiping every part, tasting what makes you so perfect to him. Then he wishes to show you how much he will give in his raw, human splendor that continues to make him more than machine.

Thoughts are furiously whirring. He thinks of every possibility but remembers. He is an android and you-you are worth more than the stars above. “I’m sorry,” the deviant’s whisper is full of true desire. Even as he tries to pull away from your gravity he hardly wants to end the kiss. “Are you sure you-”

Answering with a breathy kiss shuts up any doubts. Those are the same you know he still goes through but every time there’s a reminder of how deserving of this he is. That’s what happens now. Letting his lips become a beacon alighting passion and love. Never have you felt this for another being and never again will you. Only will it be him because you love this sweet android more than he knows.

“Stop talking and just kiss me a little more.”

The instruction brings a full smile to the detective’s face causing the rare appearance of dimples in his happy thread of emotions. Reading your heart rate now it appears you enjoy this aesthetic. Yet, he still has questions. “Wouldn’t you prefer to be with a human man?” 

Is that why he’s been so hesitant? All this time how can he even think you want anything else? Growing close, finding so much together while falling further into this human life and it fits him like a glove. He’s more than anything in the world. Does he even realize? Can he see that to you he is the whole of the universe?

You slide fingers up his chest. Making a point to place a palm dead center it’s all there is to show. “I feel your heart. It beats just like mine,” a fragile whisper speaks the truth. He may disagree but his heart is human enough for you. 

“Connor, I don’t want a human man.” What does human or android matter? Love is love and this is it. “I don’t need anything at all in the world. I just want you.”

A series of simple words but they completely shatter this prototype android snapping every seam of doubt. He never should have questioned but you are far too precious for him to make a mistake. 

“I-I want you too,” he confesses his deepest human desires. “Dare I say I need you to function?” 

The android smiles a brief moment before his lips fall. In a line they paint his deeply rooted worry. It's been eating away for some time. “The thought of you finding another, being with someone else rips apart every one of my emotions. Emotions I am still grappling with on a daily basis but I know.” Connor reaches to scoop up your hands in his. Twining fingers through soft human digits, his gaze softens in complete adoration. He is in love with you. Of this he is more certain than anything in his continual learning. Deviancy means discovering all of those things and he wants to continue with you.

How soft he is only makes your heart flutter more. He can take out a room full of men in three seconds flat with those skills. That wouldn’t take away from his other side, the affectionately sweet side. 

“Well, aren’t you a nervous goose,” a silly tease slips out.

He cocks his head in confusion. That is not one he has heard before. At least not from Lieutenant Anderson but it does not fit something he would say. 

“Y/N, I am afraid that idiom does not quite make sense.”

Your eyes narrow. “Shut off that intelligent brain of yours and cuddle with me to a cheap romcom.”

Some late night cheese flick lit up the TV by the time Hank sneaks back inside. Shutting his door and locking up without losing his damn keys this time sure didn’t prepare for this saccharine bullshit. 

No lights on, you soundly asleep with a head nestled underneath Connor's chin. The android’s arms wove around your sleeping form, his eyes shut as he clearly went into stasis to match your need for rest. 

Hank shakes his head at the lovey dovey shit stuck to his couch. To think that plastic asshole almost turned tail and ran. 

“Guess it went better than expected. Huh, Sumo?” 

Drawing the dog’s attention it's pretty clear. Considering the pair of you a minute, the lieutenant ultimately switches off television and heads for bed.

Tag List: @elydith

Dialogues With A Dreg, Part Four

Spoilers for Destiny and Destiny 2 ahead.

Hello, Guardian.

Let’s drop the allegory for a while. I don’t think it was working to begin with, and I prefer to speak plainly instead of in prose.

I love the game you serve as the protagonist in, at least mechanically. Part of the reason I’ve put nearly a thousand hours in piloting you around and clicking on enemy heads is because I’m chasing that satisfying “pop” when something’s brain explodes after I get them with a linear fusion rifle. I guess it’s better than being addicted to drugs or alcohol or video games with gambling mechan- oh shit god dammit wait, fuck, there’s Eververse here, I forgot.

Anyway, Destiny 2 has my full buy-in when it comes to gameplay, as I think it’s grabbed many folks in its three-year lifespan. I’m not as big a fan of the many modes to choose from in the game, and I think the story – when looked at holistically – is more-or-less a wash. But one aspect I can’t ignore is one I’ve tried to reason out in these Dialogues: Bungie, the game’s developer, wants me to live at least part-time in this world, and there are certain ramifications that come with that.

I first noticed these ramifications during the Faction Rallies in D2Y1, when it asked me to pick a faction and fuck shit up across the solar system. I picked what I thought was the coolest-looking faction, a group of (it turned out) thanatonautic, neoliberal warmongers calling themselves Future War Cult. They basically killed themselves over and over to see the future, and as a result they want Guardians everywhere to become absolute war machines. But as far as I could see, they were a “better” option than the other two factions: Dead Orbit, who just wanted to get the fuck out of the solar system and away from the Traveler, our slumbering charge, and New Monarchy.

New Monarchy is the MAGA hat gang of Destiny 2. They want to keep humanity safe by locking them inside the Last City, forming an eternal Guardian-led kingdom, and ruling with an iron fist. Yeesh.

In my first Faction Rally, I fought hard for FWC. I liked the gear they were giving me, not to mention the guns I could earn from them. They had an aesthetic I liked, and the story of thanatonautics is interesting enough for me to want to know more about how all that worked. But I didn’t like the insistence that we “reclaim” the far-flung reaches of the solar system, as if they belonged to us inherently. I didn’t like the ramping-up, constant drumbeat for war they were throwing out. Even if Lakshmi-2, FWC’s leader, seemed like the eye of a hurricane – calm, yet clearly still dangerous – the hurricane she was the center of was starting to irk me.

I’m sorry to say I didn’t drop FWC in subsequent Rallies, even if I wasn’t as enthusiastic about them as I was initially. If I could pick again, though, I know now I’d pick Dead Orbit. They had it the most right, plus Peter Stormare plays Arach Jalaal, the faction’s leader, which is just cool.

But the winner of pretty much every rally was New Monarchy. I couldn’t see the appeal, even if you stripped the clear trump-ass bullshit away. But a LOT of other Destiny 2 players fought for them, and they were the victors constantly. Bungie took the Faction Rally away in D2Y2, but it basically put me on an inexorable thought track to where we are today.

Simply put, I think the world that Destiny 2 is advocating for is at best a fascist one. At worst, we’re talking about reinstating the divine right of kings. Not only does mortal humanity lose in this bargain, but every other living creature inhabiting our solar system suffers for it as well.

Now, Guardian, I can see that this is an unwelcome statement to hear. I get it. After spending the entire five years of your existence thanklessly putting around the solar system and killing gargantuan, god-level threats to humanity and life itself, watching some nerdy, doughy writer cast aspersions on everything you do probably extends past irritation and into wishing you could shoulder-charge me into Glimmer particles. But I want to be clear: yours isn’t the only video game world – or even the only sci-fi world in general – that does this. As Nic Reuben (the original Destiny 2 fascism warner) put it in his 2017 post on the subject, Bungie writers are “blindly following a set of culturally encoded science-fantasy tropes”:

“‘True leaders are born. It’s genetic. The right to rule is inherited.’ Any time you play as a really, really ridiculously good looking person killing mobs of ugly things for a vaguely defined reason, you’re witnessing this kind of ideology first hand.”

One thing I would like to point out, though, before we continue: Guardian, I know you personally. I’ve fought as you across the stars. I know you don’t inherently want to rule over anything. You are intentionally a blank slate, you never voice your own desires except for that one time when a possessed Awoken prince killed your best ramen bud, and I want to believe that the only thing you want — which is the only thing I want — is to race Sparrows on Mars. But the version of you I play as is not the only version of you that exists. There are over a million of you. And aside from that million iterations of you that exist in this game world, there are others who absolutely want to rule. It’s high time to interrogate this world.

Fantasy Space Fascism: The Game

In his book Against the Fascist Creep, freelance journalist and Portland State Ph.D candidate Alexander Reid Ross defines fascism as “an ideology that draws on old, ancient, and even arcane myths of racial, cultural, ethnic, and national origins to develop a plan for the ‘new man.'” He continues:

“Fascism is also mythopoetic insofar as its ideological system does not only seek to create new myths but also to create a kind of mythical reality (ed. emphasis mine), or an everyday life that stems from myth rather than fact. Fascists hope to produce a new kind of rationale envisioning a common destiny that can replace modern civilization. The person with authority is the one who can interpret these myths into real-world strategy through a sacralized process that defines and delimits the seen and the unseen, the thinkable and the unthinkable.

“That which is most commonly encouraged through fascism is producerism, which augments working-class militancy against the ‘owner class’ by focusing instead on the difference between ‘parasites’ (typically Jews, speculators, technocrats, and immigrants) and the productive workers and elites of the nation. In this way, fascism can be both functionally cross class and ideologically anticlass, desiring a classless society based on a ‘natural hierarchy’ of deserving elites and disciplined workers. By destroying parasites and deploying some variant of racial, national, or ethnocentric socialism, fascists promise to create an ideal state or suprastate – a spiritual entity more than a modern nation-state, closer to the unitary sovereignty of the empire than political systems of messy compromises and divisions of power.”

Ross, A. R. (2017). Against the Fascist Creep. AK Press.

The Destiny franchise begins with you, a freshly-reborn Guardian, shooting and punching your way through a hive of vaguely-arachnid aliens your Ghost companion calls “Fallen.” You find a decrepit jumpship deep in the heart of the Old Russia Cosmodrome, which your Ghost fires up and uses to take you to the “last safe city on Earth,” a walled metropolis underneath the Traveler. You first meet with the Vanguard triumvirate, Titan Commander Zavala, Warlock Ikora, and Hunter Cayde-6, and then, after completing some tasks for them, you are granted an audience with the Speaker (voiced by Bill Nighy):

“THE SPEAKER: There was a time when we were much more powerful. But that was long ago. Until it wakes and finds its voice, I am the one who speaks for The Traveler.

“You must have no end of questions, Guardian. In its dying breath, The Traveler created the Ghosts to seek out those who can wield its Light as a weapon—Guardians—to protect us and do what the Traveler itself no longer can.

“GUARDIAN: What happened to it?

“THE SPEAKER: I could tell you of the great battle centuries ago, how the Traveler was crippled. I could tell you of the power of The Darkness, its ancient enemy. There are many tales told throughout the City to frighten children. Lately, those tales have stopped. Now… the children are frightened anyway. The Darkness is coming back. We will not survive it this time.

“GHOST: Its armies surround us. The Fallen are just the beginning.

“GUARDIAN: What can I do?

“THE SPEAKER: You must push back the Darkness. Guardians are fighting on Earth and beyond. Join them. Your Ghost will guide you. I only hope he chose wisely.”

Bungie. Destiny. Activision Entertainment, 2015.

This introduction to the world of Destiny is… shockingly reductive. Even playing the campaign when this happens, my first thoughts were, “wait so we’re not even smart or good enough to hear the children’s scary stories about the history of this world? what the fuck?” But over the course of years, we find out more and more about the so-called Golden Age of Humanity, the tools humans built with implied assistance from the Traveler, the various rich families and corporate megaliths that consolidated power over people across the solar system in the years and decades leading to the arrival of the Darkness and the ensuing Collapse.

Not only that, we start to get a pretty clear image of what life was like immediately following the Collapse. Humanity was almost driven to extinction, and the people left alive after this apocalypse soon wished they were dead. The Traveler “defeated” the Darkness but in the process put itself into something similar to an emergency reboot mode. It deployed the Ghosts, who resurrected people who could, as the Speaker put it, “wield its Light as a weapon,” but the first of these “Risen” were nothing short of horrific. They used their Ghosts’ regeneration and resurrection powers to become regional warlords, subjugating what few mortal people remained, draining the desolate wastes of what few resources they had, and basically sealing the deal on the “Dark Age” brought on by the Collapse. It wasn’t until the advent of the Iron Lords that these warlords were defeated and the “age of Guardians” could begin, but even the Iron Lords did some pretty heinous shit – like use a whole town of mortals as bait to lure in a band of warlords on the run.

But when it comes to creating a mythical reality, the Speaker has his formula down pat. Don’t get too bogged down with details, paint the conflict in stark good vs. evil, literal “Light vs. Darkness” broad strokes, and mythologize the actions of Guardians (but most importantly, our Guardian). And oh, what fodder for mythology we are.

By the end of the first campaign, we’re the hero who severed the connection between the Hive, the Vex and the Traveler and tore out the heart of the Black Garden. By the end of The Taken King, we’ve slain a god-king. In the Rise of Iron expansion, we stop the spread of a virulent nanoparticle with murderous intent called SIVA in its tracks, using nothing but our fists. In Destiny 2, we become the Hero of the Red War, the one who put an end to a Vex plot to sterilize all worlds, and who killed a Hive Worm God. We avenge our fallen Hunter Vanguard, we kill a Taken Ahamkara. We are the hub on which the spokes of history are turning.

In terms of video game power fantasies, I really truly can’t imagine a better-feeling one. It’s basically pure uncut dopamine being transmitted directly to the pleasure centers of the brain, one Herculean feat at a time. And if we were the only Guardian, if we were not part of a larger world, if everything around us was in a vacuum, I don’t know if I would be writing this article. But Bungie has been very clear about wanting to make a world where our actions do materially affect our surroundings. As such, we are essentially a walking propaganda tool for the Consensus, a pseudo-democratic government over the Last City, consisting of faction leaders, the Vanguard and the (now-presumed-dead, hasn’t been replaced) Speaker.

The Consensus wants badly to declare the advent of the New Golden Age, a time in which Humanity can finally emerge from under the shadow of the Traveler to pick up where it left off prior to the Collapse. The problem we supposedly face is the never-ending onslaught of Enemies. Four alien species showed up on our doorstep after the Collapse, all seeking to finish us off (according to the Speaker): the Fallen, the Cabal, the Hive/Taken, and the Vex.

Of the four-ish races of enemy, only one can said to be truly, deeply “evil” in the sense the Speaker intends: the Hive and Taken, led by Taken King Oryx and his sisters Sivu Arath and Savathun, the only force in the galaxy more fascist than the Guardians. The Vex are a race of machines whose only focus is on making more of themselves, a threat similar to SIVA. The other two alien forces, the Fallen and the Cabal, are certainly antagonistic toward Guardians but our initial reasons for fighting them are, frankly, butt-ass stupid. Basically, we fight them because they’re there. They have the audacity to land on planets that “belong to us” and scavenge resources from them. Until the Red Legion showed up on Earth, we basically only ever fought Cabal on Mars, and there’s really no reason as to why.

The Fallen, or Eliksni, on the other hand, end up coming off more as the tragic victims of our flippantly rampant genocidaire practices than actual “enemies.” They’re probably the weakest alien species we come up against. Their backstory involves them living in peace under the Traveler before their entire society was caught up in a Collapse-like “Whirlwind” and destroyed. Rather than give them Guardians, like it did with us, the Traveler instead just up and peaced out, leaving the Eliksni for dead against the maelstrom of the Darkness. The surviving “Fallen” got in their skiffs and desperately chased the Traveler across the heavens, stratifying the remnants of their society into “houses” and developing religious devotion to machines like Servitors in the process.

They tried to take the Traveler back at the Battle of the Five Fronts and Twilight Gap, and lost. Their armies were shattered, and we’ve been nonchalantly killing them en masse ever since. They are the “parasites” our Guardian must exterminate, along with the Hive, Cabal, and Vex. When we make friends with, or even simply allies with, a Fallen (like Variks the Loyal, Mithrax the Forsaken, or the Spider), it is made clear almost immediately that this 100 percent doesn’t change the relationship we have with the Fallen as a group. Variks is absolutely subservient to Mara Sov and the Awoken. Mithrax wants to create an Eliksni House that bows down to Guardians and Humanity for being “better stewards” of the Traveler than the Eliksni was. The Spider makes it clear that he only wants to grow his crime syndicate, but that we can help him out if we want. Never once does the Vanguard or the Consensus reach out to these allies and try to broker peace. And in-game, we simply don’t have an option but to fire on and kill Eliksni in droves. Kill or be “killed,” right?

When it comes to Humanity itself, while we never get a chance to actually leave the Tower and walk through the streets of the Last City, there are at least hints as to the deep class stratification at work here. You can’t get much more on-the-nose than an ivory tower of immortal beings overlooking an enclosed human race. Guardians atop humanity, the Speaker above the Vanguard over the Consensus over the people, and you, the very fulcrum on which history pivots, functionally over everything else. But in the mythical reality of this game, it’s really the Traveler über Alles, and humanity underneath the Traveler has become a wonderful, diverse melting pot without class, without fear. An ideal state where the walls keep Darkness at bay and humanity can discover the joys of tonkotsu ramen yet again.

A Light Story Vs. Lore Steeped in Darkness

Destiny has a reputation, unfairly earned, for being an okay game with a bad story, or at best a nonexistent one. The story isn’t really all that bad, it’s just poorly implemented up front, and I think my willingness to engage with the game’s world to the extent that I have is a testament to how powerful and evocative some of the beats in Destiny’s writing truly are. If we dissect the game we can separate the writing of the “story” from the writing of the “lore,” and in watching the plot develop over the past few years, we can see a gradual unification of these two areas start to occur.

This is helped greatly by third-party resources like Ishtar Collective, and by mechanical decisions Bungie made in D2Y2. Adding the lore back into the game with Forsaken was a good idea; choosing to fully integrate the lore into the world starting with Season of the Forge was a great one.

A side-effect of this lore-plot unification is a dismantling-in-real-time of some of the game’s most beloved and widely-spread legends, like the legend of Shin Malphur and Dredgen Yor. Even our personal legend is challenged in this way, and it’s a really neat way that Bungie writers new and old are critically engaging with their work. But it also really throws into stark relief some of the issues I’ve laid out in this article so far.

Take, for example, the lore book “Stolen Intelligence.”

Presented to us as intercepted secret Vanguard transmissions, “Stolen Intelligence” shows us exactly what the Vanguard really thinks of our actions, and what their goals really are. It was part of Season of the Drifter, which overall had a “trust no one” vibe to it, but some of the entries here are BLEAK, y’all.

Here’s an excerpt from the first entry, titled “Outliers.”

“Fallen armed forces continue to fall back from active fronts across Terra. Factions of House Dusk remain active in the European Dead Zone. Throughout the rest of the globe, refugee attack incidents have dropped by more than 70 percent since the conclusion of the Red War – largely attributable to depressed Fallen and human populations rather than any significant change in interspecies relations.

[…]

“The recent trending emergence of so-called “crime syndicates” (cf. report #004-FALLEN-SIV) is emblematic of the continuing destructuralization of Fallen society. Likely an artifact of multi-generational colonization of human strongholds, this agent believes that because these syndicates have no relation to indigenous Fallen culture, young Fallen are appropriating and imitating human mythology in absence of a strong cultural heritage of their own.

[…]

“VIP #3987, another former confederate of the Awoken, is a lesser-known personality known as Mithrax. Scattered field reports suggest that like #1121, #3987 styles himself a Kell of the so-called “House Light,” an otherwise unknown House apparently founded by #3987 himself. We have secondhand accounts that Mithrax has engaged in allied operations with Guardians in the field, though we have not as yet been able to corroborate these accounts with any degree of veracity. This agent is inclined to treat these reports with a healthy degree of skepticism until otherwise confirmed, as they may be propaganda from Fallen sympathizers in the Old Russian and Red War Guardian cohorts. We have requested intelligence records from the Awoken which may further clarify the matter.

“In addition, whatever the findings of said intelligence records may be, it should be stressed that one or two sympathetic outliers cannot be relied upon to erase the wrongs of past centuries, nor should their good-faith efforts to correct the sins of their forbears be taken as sufficient symbolic reparation.

[…]

“We have come too far to pull our punches now.”

Bungie. Destiny 2: Forsaken – Season of the Drifter. Lore Book: Stolen Intelligence. Outliers. Activision Entertainment, 2019.

Here’s another piece of “Stolen Intelligence,” about our relationship with Cabal Emperor Calus:

“Related to the above, #3801’s aggressive propaganda campaign appears to have been successful. Despite #3801’s recent inactivity, sentiment polls captured in the Tower at regular intervals over the last several months indicate that he has successfully swayed a significant percentage of the Red War cohort to believe that he may be a potential ally. Given our history with the Cabal as well as the events of the Red War itself, this is shocking and perhaps attributable to a case of mass traumatic bonding.

“It is my strong recommendation that the Vanguard pursue a reeducation curriculum before #3801 invites any Guardians of the City to defect to his service, a possibility which we have documented in multiple previous reports.”

Bungie. Destiny 2: Forsaken – Season of the Drifter. Lore Book: Stolen Intelligence. Passivity. Activision Entertainment, 2019.

Other entries detail the efforts of the Vanguard from keeping ostensible “conspiracy theories” from being published in the Cryptarchy’s journals; show the apparent oddity of mortal-Guardian “integrated neighborhoods;” and discuss the ongoing surveillance of the Drifter, a rogue Lightbearer who has survived since the early Dark Ages and who uses Darkness-aligned technology to run a PVEVP game called “Gambit”.

There are many other stories like these, scattered throughout the lore. Stories of Cryptarchy students being banished for making fun of New Monarchy’s leaders, of Guardians messing with Hive technology being burned alive and killed fully by the Praxic Order for their crimes of experimentation. Stories like these wouldn’t happen – couldn’t happen! – to our Guardian, because they’re too important, but are seemingly everyday occurrences to less consequential members of this society. In the real world, we’d call that an increasingly oppressive police state. In Destiny 2, it’s just flavor text.

There was a degree of narrative complexity added to Season of the Drifter that hadn’t been in the game prior. The entire season was essentially boiled down to “which side are you on, the Drifter’s or the Vanguard’s,” and in our path to make a choice, we heard from various bit players in our world. The Drifter told us his story in greater detail than perhaps we needed (and how much of it is true is debatable), but his story is also the story of a less morally-pure Guardian class. Everyone from the warlords to the Iron Lords did heinous shit to humanity while the Drifter watched, and it hardened him. The Praxic Warlock Aunor goes all in on her adherence to the City’s propaganda and ideology, trying to show us how untrustworthy the Drifter is. She ends up revealing more of her order’s goals than perhaps was wise.

This narrative complexity is nice, but it still betrays the game in a fundamental way. We now have the documents. We know what Guardians are actually about, and how they’re not exactly shining beacons of unwavering good like the Speaker would have had us believe. Regardless of declining Fallen activity, of a shift in Fallen culture, of actual living Fallen who want to ally with Guardians, the Vanguard is still adamantly pursuing “extirpation,” which is a fancy way of saying genocide (I’m not kidding, it literally means “root out and destroy completely”). We know the Vanguard and the Praxic Order have a hard-on for exile, reeducation and information suppression.

On top of everything, the narrative complexity was not met with any kind of mechanical complexity. Even with proof that the Vanguard wants to kill every Eliksni in the system, conscientious objectors don’t get to opt out. The narrative path that forks between the Drifter and Aunor converges again by the end of the quest. The “conspiracy theorist” that has been trying to publish paper after paper detailing exactly how the Nine worked with Dominus Ghaul to sneak his fleet into City airspace undetected was proven right by lore WE FIND IN THE GAME, but that doesn’t change our combat relationship with the Cabal remnants anywhere in the system, and homeboy still gets his papers rejected.

Ikora and Zavala, our remaining Vanguard members, insist repeatedly that Guardians are not a warfighting force, that the Vanguard and the Consensus is not an authoritarian organization. But everything we do says otherwise.

“A peace born from violence is no peace at all.”

Guardians do not get to choose their paths in the world of Destiny 2. The paths laid out before them lead to a life of warfare, of pain, of endless murder. Ostensibly, they are agents of good, trying to beat back the forces of evil, but if you look too close you see that really they’re just a bunch of indiscriminate killers with a mandate from the Orb God. Desperate to get out from under the heels of warlords, the Guardians created a fascist society, and adding insult to injury they pretend it’s a democratic, free one. Killing the Fallen is genocide, but you can literally never stop killing them because the game won’t let you. The only right way to play at that point is to turn off your console and go outside.

Destiny 2 isn’t the only video game to fall into this trap. As Nic Reuben said in the follow-up piece to his first story on how Destiny 2 is fascist, “I’m not saying Destiny is propaganda, just reliant on some of the same narrative tricks that make propaganda so powerful. At the same time, I don’t think that it’s too much of a stretch to say that games like Call of Duty make certain assumptions about what is justifiable, righteous slaughter and what is terrorism. Replace modern military hardware with future tech, replace terrorists with alien races that have traits synonymous with cartoon portrayals of traditionally marginalized social groups, and you’re effectively playing through the worst aspects of Call of Duty with a new coat of a paint.”

There is one glimmer of hope in the game. One sliver of lore that gives us pause and helps make the game bearable in its current state. It comes in the form of Lady Efrideet, former Iron Banner handler, youngest member of the Iron Lords, and a Guardian in self-exile from the City, the Vanguard, and its fascist dogma.

Lady Efrideet is one of the most fearsome Hunters in the Destiny universe. She is known as one of the best marksmen, if not the best one. She is impossibly strong, having once thrown Lord Saladin bodily off a mountain into a Fallen Spider Walker, destroying it. And she is also one of the only named pacifist Guardians who isn’t a member of the Cryptarchy. Her story is the story of the fall of the Iron Lords, as well as the beginning of the SIVA crisis, many years before our Guardian’s rise is documented.

But it isn’t SIVA or the Iron Lords that we’re interested in. Instead, we know that after SIVA was sealed away, Efrideet snuck away from Earth. She saw the deaths of everyone she knew and her will to fight was shattered. If this was the result of fighting for the Traveler, she didn’t want any part in it. So she took to the stars. In doing so, she ended up in the far reaches of the solar system, beyond even where we currently roam. It turns out, a small enclave of other Lightbearers, hesitant or unwilling to use their powers to kill, had also fled to this part of the system and had established a colony. It’s there that Efrideet resides, and it’s there I’d like to go.

Unfortunately, our Guardian is too “important” to the vast tidal forces at work in the Destiny universe for us to be able to leave for the outer reaches whenever we want. Because we are the hub on which the wheel of history turns, and there is no escaping that now, if ever we could. We are death, the flattening of a complex and intricate universe into one of simple shapes, the sword logic in a human/Awoken/Exo body. We are needed for the plans of the Nine/Mara Sov/Hive Queen Savathun to come to fruition. When or if the Darkness ever does come back, we will be the force that faces it and, win or lose, shape our future afterward.

Sometimes it’s nice having a video game place your character on a linear track. Games like Half-Life or Titanfall present to us simple choices in otherwise-complex story environments: progress, or die. Our characters are not immortal, but they have help from the technologies around us, are tenacious, are resourceful, are quick to adapt to changing situations. In Destiny, we simply exist. We can’t truly die. Even when it comes to the rules of the game, our immense “paracausality” causes us to shrug Darkness Zones off as mere inconveniences where other Guardians have died their final deaths. Because we are necessary. The Vanguard and Consensus need us to justify their horrific fascist policies. The great forces at work in the background need us to work as a pawn. Even Bungie itself needs us, powerful, trapped beings with a sense of right and wrong but no agency to actually act on those ethics, to continue its game.

I haven’t preordered Shadowkeep yet. For once I’m glad we’re not focusing on the Fallen or the Cabal. Going to the Moon means we’ll pretty much just be dealing with Hive, to say nothing of the unreal Nightmares we’re supposed to face. But I’m still undecided as to whether I even want to order Shadowkeep in the first place. If Lady Efrideet can go to the edge of known space and live peacefully with other pacifist Guardians, maybe I can put my controller down and step away, once and for all. It would be nice to have the extra space on my Xbox One’s hard drive. Other games exist to be played, and having the time and energy to do so would help me here, with No Escape.

But even then. I’m not expressing agency as a Guardian, but rather as the person who controls you, Guardian. While I go off to play other games, you sit and wait in stasis. Even if I don’t play, there are a million iterations of you willing to commit genocide daily for cheap rewards (shoutouts to the sixtieth Edge Transit drop in my inventory this month alone). Sure, it’s just a game. But this is what having a dynamic world means in practice. There are consequences to your actions. There always have been.

There is no reason why Humanity couldn’t share the Traveler’s gifts with, at the very least, the Eliksni. There is no reason why we couldn’t just ignore the Cabal in a state of mutually assured destruction, given how small a faction the Red Legion was relative to the Cabal army’s full size. Of the two remaining enemies, the Vex are less evil than they are simply a thing that wants the universe to be like it, and that’s threatening to diverse life throughout the universe, not just Humanity. The Hive/Taken are the true enemies in the game, but even they are directed, pawn-like, by their Worm Gods.

There is, likewise, no reason why the Risen had to organize in the fascist context they did. They could have created a society in which everyone could come and go freely, where ideas and actions could be given and received absent interference, where a true “golden age” could have sprung up naturally simply by living together harmoniously and using the Light the Traveler gave them to create, rather than destroy.

But that’s not how this story shakes out.

Chapter 12: Finding Help

Summary:

Stan awakens in Ford's recovery room and gains some comforting knowledge. Later, he speaks to Dr. Braum about a medication that could potentially help Ford get some restful sleep.

Notes: Somewhat of a more hopeful chapter this time...

Warnings: Discussion of surgery, eye trauma, surgical trauma (as usual, nothing graphic but warning just in case.)

Look! There's more art! by the wonderful @cthulhu-of-the-night

Also, thanks to Energywitch for the idea of prescribing a medication that could provide dreamless sleep. (And for ideas for things that they've tried over the years.)

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six Part Seven (with illustration) Part Eight Part Nine (With link to more art!) Part Ten Part Eleven More fics An illustration (from part one) "Huh?  Wuzzat?  No.  No refunds."  Stan sputtered, his head slumping down.  His fez tumbled to the floor as his elbow slipped off the padded armrest of a chair that was not his.  His muscles were stiff against its rigid back and his shoulders tense and sore.  He blinked in the dim light, taking a moment to register the beeps behind him, the breaths beside, and the odorous assault of antiseptics.  He remembered listening to Ford, writing out notes for him, then... He guessed, from the look of the notebook laying open on the floor, he must have fallen asleep. A jolt flashed through him, his heart skipping a beat as he scrambled into an upright position.  He scrunched up his coat sleeve and squinted at the gold watch Ford had convinced him to buy a decade ago if only to symbolically rub it into their father's face. 5 am.  Phew.  Plenty of time before the Shack opens...  He thought.  Except...  He turned to the bed where his brother still slept.  His glasses lifted to his forehead as he massaged the sleep out of the corners of his eyes.  "I can't just leave you here like this," he muttered. "Stanley?"  Ford slurred, his eye barely open, wriggling his wrists in the restraints as if he didn't have the energy to buck against them.  "What's going on?" "Hey, it's alright, you fell asleep for a bit," Stan answered, his back and knees cracking as he stood.  He hunched forward, waiting for everything to settle before turning to lean over the bed rail.  "You're still in recovery." "Oh.  Right," he breathed, followed by a string of barely decipherable curses. "Ford?" Stan asked with a raised brow, "You alright?  Need me get you anything?" "Sorry, it's just..." he said with downtrodden exhale, clenching and unfurling his tingling fingers, "It's still gone." Stan couldn't find words to reply.  He wanted to say things would be fine, wanted to tell him not to worry but, it would almost be an insult to do so.  He'd need time to grieve his loss and to adjust to everything it affected and implied.  "I'm sorry," He finally said, placing a hand on his brother's shoulder.  "I'm so sorry everything is so shitty right now.  I can only imagine what you must be feeling."     "It was so," He said, squinting up at Stan, silhouetted in the lamplight, "It's still so...  vivid.  I could feel it all, Stanley," Ford rambled, his face paling with the churning of his stomach, "Not pain, thank all the gods in the multiverse, but pressure, poking, and prodding and then-" "Okay, okay.  I get it," Stan said, holding up his hands in surrender.  "I feel like I'm gonna barf as much as you look like you're going to." "I could see everything, hear every word but I couldn't move.  I couldn't speak.  I couldn't tell them!" He paused for a breath, closing his eye for a moment before continuing at a calmer pace, "But, even so, it wasn't...  Completely terrifying.  Dr. Braum was there.  Even without my glasses I could tell it was her.  I could see her hair.  It's unmistakable," He gave a single husky chuckle and added, "I kept thinking, 'I bet Mabel would squeal in delight if she saw this.'" "I bet," Stan added with a half-smile, leaning forward, his arms on the rail and chin resting on them. "And, I could hear her voice more clearly than in everyday life.  It was soft and kind... Reassuring, even.  She was explaining everything as if she knew I needed to hear it, as if she knew I needed to understand what was happening." "Wow.  She didn't tell me that part," Stan said, his brows raised in bewilderment. "And," Ford paused for a deep breath before continuing, "I knew he was there sometimes.  He tried to move my head, tried to move my limbs but...  He couldn't." "Interesting," Stan lifted himself to his elbows, intrigue furrowing his brows, "What was it the doc said about a para...  para...?" "Paralytic?  Yes.  In the anesthesia.  I suppose, if neurological-transmission is suppressed for me, it is for him, too.  Or at least, he may not know how to overcome that obstacle yet," Ford hypothesized, "Doesn't stop him from wreaking havoc in my mindscape, though," he added in a sarcastic huff. "But that means he didn't cause any physical problems, right?"  Stan said, turning to pick up his Fez and the notebook, thinking he'd jot down a note about it.  He knelt down, lifting the chair to reach the What is the Mystery Shack? pen. "Thankfully," Ford answered, awaiting his brother's reappearance at the bedside rail. Stan's hand grasped the edge, using it to lift himself back to his feet.  He adjusted the fez over his matted hair and turned to a blank page in the notebook.  After scribbling out Ford's hypothesis, he flipped back to the passage Ford had dictated the night before and reread the last few words, trying to remind himself what had happened before he’d fallen asleep. "Hey," he said, "Looks like you fell asleep mid-thought here in your novel notes.  Want to tell me the rest?" "Oh?  I don't really remember.  If it's not too much trouble, could you read back what we have so far?" Ford asked.  "Actually...  I'm sorry to bother but...  My mouth tastes like a sewer right now.  Can I-?" "Yeah!  Of course," Stan answered. He set the notebook on the chair and grabbed a styrofoam cup, complete with lid and straw, from the rolling table.  He filled it at the wash station and scooped a few handfuls of water into his own mouth, swishing and gargling to clear out his own sewage-flavored saliva.  Meanwhile, Ford found the button to lift the back of his bed into an almost upright position. After Ford thanked him, Stan eased himself back into the chair and read the short passage back to him. "Ah right," Ford said. "You remember that part?"  Stan asked, readying the pen above the paper's green lines. "Yes." "Soooo," he prompted, "what's next?" "I have no idea," Ford said with an exasperated sigh. "Oh," Stan's tone mimicked his brother's. "I know this was going somewhere," Ford groused, his blanket crumpling between his clenched fists.  "Somewhere important...  but now I don't remember where." Stan wanted to reassure him that he'd think of it, that he'd remember at some crazy point in the middle of the night, but it was his experience that when Ford forgot something, if Stan, himself, didn't know enough about it to jostle the memory loose, it wasn't going to come back to him.  "Well, you'll figure out something," he finally offered, clicking the pen and tucking it in the breast pocket of his coat along with the notebook. Ford closed his eye for a moment, his head pressed back against his pillow.  He suddenly gasped, his head turning to Stan, eye peeling open as he blurted,  "What time is it?  Don't you need to go?" Stan breathed out, releasing the anxious knot Ford's outburst had tied in his chest.  "No," he answered.  "I don't.  I'll call Soos and have him cancel tours today." "What about Dipper and Mabel?" "They'll be fine with him and Wendy there.  I’ll have her at least open the gift shop," Stan said, crossing his arms as if willing an end to the matter. "No, you should go, Stanley," Ford said, shaking his head, "I'll be alright now that I've gotten some decent rest." "No.  I'm not leaving you here alone, again." The two argued back and forth for nearly five minutes until Ford settled the matter with a point he loathed bringing up, "Can we afford it?" He hated those words.  "We."  He considered.  What a joke.  Like I'm actually contributing anything...  But "you" sounds so...  Accusatory.  He hated it.  He hated that his existence was so expensive.  He hated that the most he could do was try to help Stan brainstorm ideas for the Shack through crayon drawings and finger paint, even if Stan claimed he appreciated it.  If only he could finish that novel.  Or others.  If they were picked up by a publisher, maybe it would help at least a little.  Even though Stan had told him over and over that they're family and being able to be such was more than enough, Ford couldn't help feeling like he wanted to be...  Useful.  Ironic.  It's the same damn feeling that got me into this mess to begin with.  He knew it.  And knowing it only made him feel worse. Stan paused.  He'd barely scraped together enough of their savings to pay off Rico and cover Dr. Braum's initial visit.  As it stood, she'd agreed to reduce the cost to self-pay rates and open a tab for them for what he couldn't cover in medications and surgery costs.  With a sighed succession of curses, he conceded. He stayed another hour, doing all he could to give Ford any shred of comfort then promised he'd be back again once the kids were asleep. **** With a heart as heavy as his feet, Stan slipped out the door to Ford's private room.  He shuffled down the hall, the scent of fresh coffee perking him up.  It seemed early but he supposed not too early for a member or two of the staff to arrive.  A disheveled mop of rainbow hair caught his eye as he passed the nurses station and he paused, uncertain of what to do. Dr. Braum was hunched over the desk, her head resting on her arms and a light snore passing through her lips.  The coffee machine, one of those fancy single service ones, gurgled and dripped, startling her awake. "Oh!  Mr. Pines!  I wasn't sleeping, I swear," she sputtered, nearly knocking over the rolling chair as she jumped up from it, straightening her lab coat and patting her hair as if it would help the tangled mess. "Actually," Stan said with a shrug "I'm surprised your still here.  I thought you would have left when Ford and I fell asleep." "Pfft!  What do you think I am?  A monster?  I would never leave a patient without proper medical care," her cheerful professionalism melted into a perturbed grumble, "even if the rest of my staff was busy tonight."  She readjusted her smile and continued, "Someone had to check his vitals and make sure he got his antibiotics.  Glad you two slept through that," she said with a light laugh.  "The other surgeons will cover for me today so I can go home and get some sleep.  Besides, there's no way I'd leave anyone alone in here.  This business means everything to me."  She reached for the freshly filled coffee cup, held it out to Stan and offered, "coffee?" "Definitely.  Thanks," he took the cup, ignored the cream and sugar on the counter and rushed straight for the first scalding slurp.  "Yeah," he replied, "I get it.  The Mystery Shack is everything to us these days.  But, if this place is so important to you, isn't it risky to help people like Ford and I?"  He leaned against the desk, staring remorsefully at the steam preventing him from downing the entire cup of coffee.  "It can't be easy.  and It can't all be cases involving weird shit like us.  You must deal with some rough clients from people like Rico." "Well," she said, setting up the machine for a cup of coffee for herself, "I do get quite a few patients from the valley who wouldn't otherwise get help simply because of who and what they are.  But, yes, the majority of them are referred to me by people like Rico.  But, you know what?" She said, turning to Stan, "Most of those people never asked for the life they live.  They're just trying to get by in a world where no one else would offer the help they needed." "Yeah," Stan said with a snort, "Damn.  Yeah.  I get that." "Besides," Dr. Braum said with a shrug, "the money's good." "Heh, I like your style, doc," he chuckled, raising his cup to her as a salute.  "Well, thanks," he added, swirling his cup and staring into the inky darkness, "Ford told me how you handled things during his surgery.  Thanks for that.  Seems like it did a lot to help him."  Stan took a deep breath and spoke aloud something he'd rather have kept to himself, "It's been a long time since we've had someone to help." "That's because you're stubborn old men who think you can do everything for yourselves," she said, pointing a finger at him. "I suppose we are these days.  It's just...  hard to keep looking for help when nothing has helped yet." "Well, you call me anytime you need anything, alright?" She said, turning at the gurgle and sputter of the coffee machine.  She lifted her freshly filled cup and returned to the rolling chair.   "Thanks, doc," Stan said, raising his cup for another drink. "There's one more thing I wanted to talk to you about before I head out for the day," She added, setting her cup down and lifting Ford's file.  "Those nightmares your brother has...  I'm sorry for hesitating in prescribing anything for him but, given this," she explained, turning the file to face him and displaying his own handwritten account of medications they'd tried, to what degree they worked, and when they'd stopped.  "I thought," she continued, "it would be best to speak to you first, especially since he was being..." "Difficult?" "...Yes," she answered, flopping the file down and flipping through three pages of data, "This is a rather, um, detailed...  And long...  List of past medications.  I mean, thanks for the spreadsheet and all, it actually does help but...  Wow." "Yeah," Stan said with a sigh, reaching out for a creamer and three packages of sugar to add to his coffee.  "We went through a lot of different medications.  Some made things worse.  Some didn't work at all.  And, when we were lucky, they worked but stopped after about a year or so." "How did you even get all of these?"  She asked, raising her cup for a drink. "If I told you, you'd spit coffee all over me," Stan answered. She swallowed hard and answered, "Alrighty then, I won't pry.  Anyway, thing is," she continued, pointing to characters that weren't of any earthly language, "I don't recognize some of these." "Yeeeeaaaah...." Stan said, taking a long sip of coffee before confessing, "Those are potions." "Should I ask?"  She said with a raised eyebrow. "Probably not." "Right then," she quipped, flipping the folder closed with a smack of her hand on its cover.   "Listen," Stan said, setting his empty cup on the desk. "Ford described it to me once in a way that made a lot of sense.  He said that Bill being in his head is like having an angry toddler who's a fast learner living there.  He makes a mess of things and rearranges them and even breaks things.  But, Ford can pick things up and put them back where they belong to some extent.  When things are broken, though, he needs glue to fix them, like when I can help him remember things by showing him photos and stuff.  When it comes to nightmares, Bill is basically taking out old memories and fears and leaving them all over the floor like Blego Blocks waiting for you to step on them.  When he takes certain medications, it's like being able to put those things on a shelf the toddler can't reach or in a cabinet with a lock.  But, eventually Bill learns how to climb the cabinet or pick the lock and the pills stop working." "I see.  What about the local Shaman?" Dr. Braum suggested, "Perhaps a dreamcatcher?" "I have one that sometimes works since my nightmares aren't 'cause of having a demon in my head."  Stan explained, "Ford's never did work, though.  Apparently Bill once possessed a Shaman and knows all of those secrets already." "Do you think he'd be willing to try a medication that's fairly new to the market?" Dr. Braum asked, "even if it might only provide short-term relief?" "That's entirely up to him," Stan said with a shrug, "if he wants it, I'll pony up for it.  Somehow." "I'll speak to him about it today, then," she said before downing the rest of her coffee. "Thanks.  Now go home and crash, lady.  You look like Ford used to when he got hyper-focused on a science project." "Yeah, like you look any better after sleeping in a chair all night." "Eh," he said with a shrug, "sleep is sleep."

Notes:

Jrrg oxfn jhwwlqj vrph idvw fdvk, Ihc. (Also, Ford’s thoughts regarding his situation stem from his own depression and do not reflect reality.)